Subscribing to RSS by using the Live Bookmarks feature such as in Mozilla Firefox may be handy for some, but as your collection of feeds grow this method becomes inefficient so it may be better to move to a dedicated RSS Reader, one choice is Liferea. With a dedicated RSS reader you will be able to get automatic updates of content from all websites where you subscribe to their Feed, and should be able to read the article from their website directly in your RSS Reader. There is a problem, many RSS feeds are basic and only provide a link to the new content and sometimes a little intro. This is a complete annoyance as RSS Feeds can very easily send the content through to a feed reader without the user ever having to visit the website from which the feed came. It seems that the "Simple" in the RSS acronym is not simple enough, or maybe just too much effort! Why should we have to leave our RSS Reader's and open our Web Browser's just the read the article? Well the short of it is I expect people usually don't bother.

RSS is a simple and powerful tool when used to its potential as it provides a way for your content to be read away from the web browser, making your websites content accessible for more than one application group. If your websites content is public and written for your visitors, it seems madness not to provide alternative ways for your visitors to enjoy your content.

A simple example of a bad RSS Feed is shown below...

I think this makes it clear. You can see the new feed and have a one line description about the article. From this one line we will decide whether to open our web browsers to read the whole article or just pass by it. It may be the most interesting article you have ever read but you are left with an intro paragraph to make the decision to read it. Mostly this little description has to be very good to convince you to open your web browser's to read it!

How about this example instead...

Its clear the difference. You have the whole article in your RSS Reader and you do not have to open your web browser or go anywhere, You can read it right here, right now! If all RSS Feeds were constructed like this then productivity will increase as you will be able to consume more information more quickly. Seeing as most people do not have a lot of time to read web articles this would be extremely helpful!

The PHP development team hereby announces that support for PHP 4 will continue until the end of this year only. After 2007-12-31 there will be no more releases of PHP 4.4. We will continue to make critical security fixes available on a case-by-case basis until 2008-08-08. Please use the rest of this year to make your application suitable to run on PHP 5.

It is normal for support for old technologies and products to end, so why is this such a big deal?

It has been three years since PHP 5, the successor to PHP 4 was launched, yet so many web applications are still using PHP 4. PHP 4 has been enormously popular choice as a web scripting language, part of its popularity was due to its easy implementation and use. However, some of the techniques that make PHP 4 easy to use can also be security risks. One of the changes that PHP 5 made was to close these risks meaning that some (as it turned out many) PHP 4 scripts would need slight re-coding to work with the new PHP 5 engine.

Because of the compatibility issues, which should only really effect badly written scripts, hosting providers still kept PHP 4 as default so their would be effected customers would not have a broken web site or application. Many hosting providers still today have PHP 4 as default and some offer the option of PHP 5 on selected domains.

As PHP 4 was almost certainly the most used version, web applications such as Joomla kept using PHP 4 as their code base as it was almost certain everyone with a PHP enabled web server could install their product. Even the yet to be released Joomla 1.5 still maintains a PHP 4 code base for compatibility with all servers. Considering this its hardly surprising PHP 5 hasn't had the best take-up.

This is a big deal as the PHP team are saying that there will be no more PHP 4 by the end of this year and all PHP 4 users with incompatible scripts will have to start making the necessary changes or keep an unsupported platform.

This move by the PHP team is a necessary step to push users towards their newer PHP 5 and with PHP 6 in development the resources do not exist to carry on supporting PHP 4 any further.

The solar panels on its campus are producing 1.6 mega watts of energy which is enough to power over a third of it's onsite servers / PCs.

This is a bold move by Google to keep up with the hot topic of eco-friendly companies and is also introducing incentivised parking for its staff allowing them to re-charge their electric hybrid cars from the solar panels. Google has so far converted several of its vehicles to have the plug-in recharging system and strives to progress this further.

Google is set to also invest a massive $10 million in companies and projects which focus on the development or support of alternative transport reducing the use of fossil fuels and emissions.

Additionally, in an initiative with the likes of Dell, Microsoft, HP, Sun Microsystems and Intel, Google is striving to work on setting a standard to incrementally improve the efficiency of power cords on PCs and servers through 2010.

Well done Google!

Search engine optimisation is incredibly important in any online presence for a modern company. As search engine optimisation is such a diverse topic we could never fully explain every aspect of it but we have recently discovered a few new techniques that compliment existing search engine optimisation strategies to produce very fast response within search engines.

If you visit our search engine optimisation page you will see us talking about the four stages of search engine optimisation. The fourth stage is some-what understated and can be greatly expanded upon. This stage is the process of refreshing your content with targeted and relevant new text information of your website.

If you wish to place your company as dominant leader in its market you would naturally be expected to stay ontop of your industry developments. As such, you will always be coming across new and useful information / breaking products and services. If you then show yourself to be displaying this information to your website users then that is deemed to be extremely useful and relevant.

Search engines love this. Their passion is to provide search results that contain the most up-to-date and relevant data it possible can. If it knows you are regularly producing new content it will hold high regard for your site and more regularly capture (or cache) your content to make sure it knows about everything on your with relevance on your website.

In the search engine optimisation of Alphomega's website we have produced two main areas of new content. These are our articles section and news section which contain industry relevant information that is regularly updated. Google in particular now loves these sections and visits them every day - hungry to find out more. As we then feed its little spiders more juicy bits of content it very quickly launches it straight to the top of the search engines.

Recently examples of how this helped our search engine optimisation were proven with one of the latest new articles - Top 10 Websites in the World. This article was written on 4th March and by 6th March Alphomega was ranked number 6 in the world for "Top 10 Websites in the world" which compete against 227,000,000 other pages just below alexa.com - one of the most regarded websites in the world!

This was again proven with articles achieving us top 1st page positions on the following interesting but no not necessarily useful phrases:

• "Google Positions" positioned at number 11 which competes against 26,400,000 websites
• "Google World" positioned at number 25 which competes against 633,000,000 websites
• "Pixel Font Size" positioned at number 3 which competes against 1,060,000 websites
• "ITV Adverts" positioned at number 11 which competes against 815,000 websites
• "M Marketing" positioned at number 3 which competes against 323,000,000 websites
• "XHTML Meaning" positioned at number 5 which competes against 1,070,000 websites

As you can see from the above, if you can keep your website up-to-date with relevant content you will very quickly achieve good rankings on those pages.

You may also notice that we have named this article search engine optimisation hampshire to prove the theory of how this article will help us rank on a very important phrase to our business.

For more information of Alphomega's search engine optimisation services please visit our contact form or view the search engine optimisation page.

The above is a complete myth as pixel font sizes have no impact on web accessibility at all. The argument that the text size can not be increased in a users browser ends with this one fact.

The only browser in current use that does not increase font size for pixel sized fonts is Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, which has just reached the end of its product life.

IE6 cannot increase pixel based fonts but its soon to be gone from our machines forever with the newer release of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7. This new version of Microsoft's web browser also has a zoom function, which the Opera browser has had for some time now. The zoom function is an important feature for visually impaired users. This zoom function enlarges not only the text on the website but also enlarges any images or other content.

The Mozilla Firefox web browser will increase the size of pixel font sizes but will not zoom the page like Opera or IE7. This leaves us with a question that has been debated before in the past.

If a website needs to have text that can be increased or decreased by the user, is this the responsibility or the web designer or the browser vendors?

There is, of course, a different way of sizing fonts on a web site. These are known as relative font sizes and the values are normally sized in em's or percentages. Browsers can easily resize these font values as they are not set or defined exactly. While this sounds as the best solution, there is a problem with this method. Operating systems and web browsers can choose to render fonts slightly differently to each other. For example check how fonts look on a Apple Macintosh compared to a Windows based computer. Also web browsers may decide what is the base font size and even change the font DPI (dots per inch). This means your fonts will never be exactly the same size between different web browsers and operating systems. For some designs of web page this can be accepted but for other design could break the page design.

With the gradual decline in web browser market share for Internet Explorer 6, as users upgrade, we can forget about font size issues and concentrate on our design and more important accessibility issues, such as support for screen readers and aural browsers with aural style sheets.

"IDC believes that mobile marketing is one of the instances in which the current hype actually underestimates the full potential of the market opportunity," stated the report.

That window will be an irresistible target for marketers over the next five years. IDC estimates that the mobile advertising market will mushroom from US$160 million in 2006 to $4.2 billion in 2011.

Beyond 'Third Screen'

"The hype is still enormous, but the hype tends to focus on mobile as a third screen, as just another way to connect with people," Scott Ellison, IDC vice president of wireless and mobile communications , told the E-Commerce Times .

"We think the real potential of mobile advertising is the ability to create a very new type of advertising experience," he continued, "one that is, in some cases, on-demand, that delivers information to you when it is directly relevant, and one increasingly based on your individual needs, interests, aspirations and behavior."

When you talk about TVs or PCs, those are multiple user devices, he explained. In mobile, each user has their own device. As a brand, that gives you the confidence that you're reaching the user individually and not someone using their device.

Holy Grail

With mass media like TV and radio, much of the money spent by marketers is wasted tossing pitches at people outside the batter's box, explained Jay Emmet, president of mBlox, a mobile advertising network provider. What mobile does is allow marketers to pursue their Holy Grail, he asserted.

"It allows them to pursue the kind of targeted, extraordinarily discrete segmentation that marketers have always dreamed about having access to," he told the E-Commerce Times .

Not only can marketers know, with some certainty, who is receiving their messages, but they can be assured that they have their target's undivided attention, Ellison contends.

"When you're doing something with mobile, you're almost always looking at the screen," he said. "It's not like TV where you go to the bathroom during commercial breaks."

High Visibility

What's more, advertisers don't have to worry about their pitches being lost on a busy computer display, as can be the case when buying search advertising on the Web.

There can be eight or more Google AdSense ads on a Web page, Ellison noted, a problem not facing mobile advertisers. Because the mobile screen is small, there are rarely more than two ads on a page. That means if you're a brand, you have a greater likelihood of getting clicked on in mobile than on a PC.

Although the mobile market holds potential for advertisers, right now that's all it holds, according to Jason Ankeny, editor of the news site FierceMobileContent.

"There's a great deal of promise here," he told the E-Commerce Times . "But currently, it's more promise than reality from whatever perspective that you look at it.

"The biggest challenge is simply getting consumers on board with this," Ankeny added.

Consumer Acceptance

There are signs, however, that consumers may not be as resistant to mobile advertising , at least in some content areas, as they used to be. Forty-one percent of people who view or intend to view mobile video said they'd watch advertisements in order to watch free content, according to a study performed by M:Metrics and released last month by the Mobile Marketing Association.

"The next six months are critical in the continued development of the mobile medium," the association's executive director Laura Marriott said. "The high level of consumer interest and enthusiasm on the part of advertisers, agencies and carriers suggests a promising role for advertising in mobile video and television."

Article provided by timesonline.co.uk

In a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Google said that revenue from its UK advertisements had risen above $1.6 billion (£825 million) in 2006. That put it ahead of Channel 4, with just over £800 million.

ITV's most recent figures showed advertising revenues of £1.63 billion, although Google was expected to close that gap after half-yearly results for the broadcaster indicated that revenues had fallen by 8 per cent.

Analysts estimate that ITV, which is to file its 2006 figures on Wednesday, will have advertising revenues of about £1.47 billion. Google denied that the rise in its revenues, which have nearly quadrupled in the UK since 2004, represented a threat to traditional media, saying that broadcasters stood to benefit greatly from growth in online advertising.

"The market for online ads is growing and there's room for many players within it," an official said.

The internet search company also revealed that the SEC had made a formal request to investigate its tax accounting. Google said that it had received several requests for information from the SEC in March last year, but so far had not responded to the request about filing taxes.

"We believe that we properly account for our income taxes," the company said. "We will continue to work to resolve these comments with the SEC."

Article provided by timesonline.co.uk

We will consider the top 10 sites based on "traffic rank," which is a combination of both the number of visitors and the number of pages viewed at that website.

In order to source this information we will look at a very popular tool which comes as a toolbar in your internet browser. The tool collects Web site traffic data and information that reveals which Web sites are most popular and traffic volumes on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. The toolbar is called Alexa (alexa.com ) and is currently owned by Amazon.com. As of November, 2006, more than 11 million users from around the world had downloaded the Alexa toolbar (www.alexasurf.com).

This toolbar is much like the Google toolbar and is not malicious or contain spyware in anyway. It cannot store any data on individual users or where they specifically go - simply the fact that 'someone' has.

Alexa's site popularity rankings are based on a significant sample, but the data are admittedly not a perfect reflection on the market. This data is based only on users with the Alexa toolbar which procludes AOL users and people using the browser Opera - this isn't a huge amount of people and it's worked on the basis that it's a thorough cross-section of people who have access to view any website in the world - therefore making the results a reasonable guide.

Here are Alexa's top 10 Web sites, in order of popularity (which is somewhat suprising!):

1. Yahoo - www.yahoo.com provides a directory of Web sites, a search tool, news, movie updates, e-mail, messaging, marketing, job searching and hundreds of other services. It is truly an all-in-one site.
2. Google - www.google.com is unquestionably the best search tool for general searching. Google is so popular that "Googling" has become a verb that means to search the Internet. Google also features Earth, a service to provide detailed close-up pictures of almost any location on earth; book, desktop, blog, shopping and image specialized search tools; and a new patent search tool.
3. Myspace - www.myspace.com is a social networking site that lets its subscribers communicate online in an interactive network of photos, weblogs, personal-user-profiles, e-mail, webforums, and groups. It is a mecca for teens.
4. MSN - www.msn.com. Another internet portal like Yahoo and Google that provides internet services, e-mail (hotmail.com), shopping, travel, messaging and more. In 2006, Microsoft rebranded MSN to Windows Live, which will also provide anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall and PC troubleshooting software for an annual fee.
5. Ebay - www.ebay.com is the premiere auction site and site for selling secondhand merchandise as well as new. It is a $46 billion business and owns both PayPal, the Internet Payment Service, and Skype, an Internet telephone service.
6. YouTube - www.youtube.com. YouTube is a recent Google acquisition that offers free video sharing. Users upload, view and share video clips, including movie and TV clips, music videos, amateur content such as videoblogs and short original videos.
7. Amazon - www.amazon.com, in its 11 years of service, has not only become the premiere site for book purchases, but myriad other merchandise: apparel, automotive supplies, groceries, gourmet foods, jewelry and even collectible coins worth thousands of dollars. It has a reminder service for important days, a baby registry, free e-cards, gift organizers and customized wish lists.
8. Craigslist - www.craigslist.org features local community classifieds and forums, places to find jobs, housing, goods and services, social activities, a girlfriend or boyfriend, advice, community information, and just about anything else all for free (unless you're a business). In spite of its .org domain, it is not non-profit.
9. Wikipedia - www.wikipedia.org is multilingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia project, written collaboratively by volunteers. This means most of its articles can be edited by nearly anyone with access to the Web site, so don't use it as gospel for any research you're doing. It has more than 6 million entries. Wikipedia will provide a definition of almost any computer, internet or everyday word, along with examples and explanations.
10. Facebook - www.facebook.com This is another social networking Web site, popular among college students. It also includes corporate, high school, and geographic communities. It is free. Users create personal profiles containing photos and lists of interests. They then can exchange private or public messages, and join groups of friends. The viewing of detailed profile data, however, is restricted to users from the same network or confirmed friends.
    

The above sites are based on current traffic levels. Some have taken years to achieve this popularity; others, like YouTube, have done it in months with serious viral marketing (started February 2005 and sold to Google for $1.63 billion in November, 2006).

If you would like to see how your website fairs in the world visit www.alexa.com and submit your site. You can then view statistics gained for your website.

Recently advertisers have been asking Google for a clearer picture on the reach and effectiveness of their ads being paid for.

Google's AdWords service brings together advertisers and websites willing to display their ads through their traditional adwords system and adsense. With Adsense, advertisers pay Google a fee based on the number of click-throughs to their site, and site operators receive a commission for each time that a visitor clicks on an ad placed on their website.

The more under-handed people out their now have special software that can click on an ad repeatedly and use it to inflate a rival company's advertising costs or boost a site operator's own revenue gained from displaying the ads. This is known as click-fraud and is becoming more and more of a problem (despite Google constantly denying it)

"Our invalid clicks rate - the activity rate - has remained in the range of less than 10 per cent of all clicks every quarter since we launched AdWords in 2002. At Google's current revenue rate, every percentage point of invalid clicks we throw out represents over $100 million per year in potential revenue foregone," Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google's business product manager for trust and safety, wrote in a post to the company's Inside AdWords blog late Thursday.

Google does not charge its advertisers for clicks it determines to be invalid. For example, if 10 out of 100 clicks were excluded Google would not charge its advertisers for the invalid clicks, cutting into the company's revenue.

If you are experiencing click-fraud you may notice credits back into your account from Google but how sure can you be that Google is being honest? We have specific software that can track click-fraud and prevent your comeptitors / malicious money making scammers from costing you a serious amount of money.

Please contact us for more informaiton on our click-fraud service.

Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee said today that although the evolution of the Web has been gratifying, it is by no means finished:

'The Web, and everything which happens on it, rest on two things: technological protocols, and social conventions,' he said. 'The technological protocols, like HTTP and HTML, determine how computers interact. Social conventions, such as the incentive to make links to valuable resources, or the rules of engagement in a social networking web site, are about how people like to, and are allowed to, interact.

'As the Web passes through its first decade of widespread use, we still know surprisingly little about these complex technical and social mechanisms. We have only scratched the surface of what could be realized with deeper scientific investigation into its design, operation and impact on society. Robust technical design, innovative business decisions, and sound public policy judgment all require that we are aware of the complex interactions between technology and society. We call this awareness Web Science: the science and engineering of this massive system for the common good.

In order to galvanize Web Science research and education efforts, MIT and the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom have created the Web Science Research Initiative. In concert with an international Scientific Advisory Council of distinguished computer scientists, social scientists, and legal scholars, WSRI will help create an intellectual foundations, educational atmosphere, and resource base to allow researchers to take the Web seriously as an object of scientific enquiry and engineering innovation.'

The Founding Directors of WSRI, alongside Tim Berners-Lee, are: Professor Wendy Hall and Professor Nigel Shadbolt of the School of Electronics and Computer Science, Southampton, and Daniel J. Weitzner of MIT.

Article provided by webwire.com

Google has recently changed its outlook on the matter as it realises more and more people are taking the results as a reflection of Google's beliefs. The engineers at Google are currently testing out a new algorithm that should curb the effect of a Google Bomb, already it seems to be working.

One of the most famous Google bombs to make it around the public is (or was) "miserable failure". Up until recently, searching for 'miserable failure' phrase in Google would present you the biography of George Bush on the official White House website.

What changes to the algorithm did they make though? By the sounds of things, sites that talk about the Google bombs will be returned more frequently than the bomb itself - could that mean sites linking directly to Google result pages might be weighted a bit heavier now? Could this be exploited by potential search engine optimisers? We are currently testing this theory and will report back shortly.

Imagine this feature available in a GPS navigation unit with wifi or 3G connectivity in your vehicle - that would be seriously useful.

Surely it won't be long before this gets rolled out in the United Kingdom?

Think of the potential to have a live map on your 'how to find us' page (using the google maps API) that instantly shows your potential customers the quickest and easiest route to your store / office.

• @Last Software, Inc.
• Android, Inc.
• Applied Semantics, Inc.
• dMarc Broadcasting, Inc.
• Ganji Inc.
• Google International LLC
• Google LLC
• Google Payment Corp.
• Ignite Logic, Inc.
• JASS Inc.
• JG Productions Inc.
• JotSpot Inc.
• Kaltix Corporation
• Liquid Acquisition Corp. 2
• Neotonic Software Corporation
• Nevengineering, Inc.
• Orkut.com, LLC
• Picasa LLC
• PiFidelity Holding Corporation
• PiFidelity LLC
• Scott Concepts, LLC
• Scott Studios, LLC
• SkillSet LLC
• The Salinger Group LLC
• Transformic, Inc.
• Upstartle, LLC
• Urchin Software Corporation
• Where2 LLC
• YouTube, LLC
• ZipDash, Inc.
• Aegino Limited
• @Last Software, Ltd.
• At Last Software GmbH
• allPAY GmbH
• bruNET GmbH
• bruNET Holding AG
• bruNET Schweiz GmbH
• Endoxon Ltd.
• Endoxon (India) Private Ltd.
• Endoxon Prepress AG
• Endoxon (Deutchland) GmbH
• Google (Hong Kong) Limited
• Google Advertising and Marketing Limited
• Google Akwan Internet Ltda.
• Google Argentina S.R.L.
• Google Australia Pty Ltd.
• Google Belgium NV
• Google Bermuda Limited
• Google Bermuda Unlimited
• Google Brasil Internet Ltda.
• Google Canada Corporation
• Google Chile Limitada
• Google Czech Republic s.r.o.
• Google Denmark ApS
• Google Finland OY
• Google France SarL
• Google Information Technology Services Limited Liability Company
• Google Germany GmbH
• Google India Private Limited
• Google International GmbH
• Google Ireland Holdings
• Google Ireland Limited
• Google Israel Ltd
• Google Italy s.r.l.
• Google Japan Inc.
• Google Korea, LLC.
• Google Limited Liability Company - Google OOO
• Google Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V.
• Google Netherlands B.V.
• Google Netherlands Holdings B.V.
• Google New Zealand Ltd.
• Google Norway AS
• Google Payment Ltd.
• Google Payment Hong Kong Limited
• Google Payment Singapore Pte. Ltd.
• Google Poland Sp. z o.o.
• Google Singapore Pte. Ltd.
• Google South Africa (Proprietary) Limited
• Google Spain, S.L.
• Google Sweden AB
• Google Switzerland GmbH
• Google UK Limited
• Neven Vision KK
• Neven Vision Germany GmbH
• Leonberger Holdings B.V.
• Reqwireless Inc.
• Skydocks GmbH

It is common knowledge that Google is dominant in the search engine world where it considers Microsoft and Yahoo to be its primary competitors, acknowledging in particular that their search engines may have a greater ability to attract and retain users than Google does through user experience.

Google's main worry with Microsoft (MSN) is the fact that it is home to more employees and with a great cash resource. As we are all seeing, particularly with the recent launch of Vista, Microsoft is investing heavily in development of features enabling web search to be a more integral part of it's Windows operating system and desktop applications.

The concern with Yahoo is the competitive edge that they have over Gogle as a result of its longer standing operating history combined with the already establish user base and customer relaitonships.

Google is also indirectly acknowledging that its modus operandi of "ignoring conventional wisdom" by designing its future business could possibly hurt its operating results, warning its operating results in future quarters may fall below expectations due to the following:

• A focus on long-term goals over short-term results
• Investments in risky projects
• Potential difficulties in keeping Web sites operational at reasonable cost and without service interruptions
• Potential difficulties in achieving revenue goals for partners guaranteed minimum payments or distribution fees.

Google also points out that Internet user traffic tends to be seasonal, exceling in the Christmas lead up, and its rapid growth has masked the cyclicality and seasonality of its business.

Google is disclosing the "significant" competitive and operational risks it faces in its 2006 Annual Report from its close competitors.

Many may believe SEC required statements are merely boiler plate disclaimers. Google, however, defies conventional wisdom even in that regard.

It is particularly interesting that Google warns that acquisitions could result in operating difficulties, dilution and other harmful consequences, saying "We do not have a great deal of experience acquiring companies." This following its recent acquisition of Youtube and partial inestment in AOL.

In noting how Google's inexperience in M & A can adversely impact the company, Google puts forth its ability, or not, to retain employees in the businesses it acquires as a risk element that could hurt its financial condition and results of operations.

Google in fact recently lost the founding management team of one of its highest-profile acquisitions, dMarc Broadcasting. Google acquired dMarc last year to diversifying into offline advertising (including adwords style adverts in newspapers) by hoping to "revolutionize"the radio advertising industry.

Not only have the dMarc founders abandoned the Google-dMarc radio ad sales initiative, Google has been unable to introduce a Google radio advertising product into the marketplace.

One thing's for certain though - 2007 will be a very interesting year for Google.

This announcement, is about Microsoft sharing proprietary code with a large Linux vendor Novell , for the benefit of the consumer to have systems that can inter-operate with each other. The announcement made clear that at this point it is only really for enterprise customers and only for Novell's enterprise product, SUSE Enterprise Linux .

I sat in my chair watching this with a big smile on my face. I was thinking how Microsoft is due some serious respect for actually looking at the enterprise market, realizing Linux is here to stay and it will still carry to grow. In fact Linux is very dominant in the Enterprise market alongside the likes of more traditional Unix such as Sun Solaris . I thought Microsoft has woken up to the fact they cannot have the enterprise monopoly as they have enjoyed for so many years on the desktop market and have such made a very sensible choice that can only benefit themselves.

Then they had a question session with the audience and a question was asked. Someone asked whether other Linux vendors such as Red Hat will also benefit with this enhanced co-operation. Steve Ballmer just squirmed himself out of answering the question properly. Then it hit me. Microsoft are not doing this for the customer, a point they are really trying to make clear in this announcement, NO they are doing it for themselves. Microsoft are still the evil anti-competition company they have always been but this time with a partner in crime, Novell.

It is no secret that Novell wants to take the enterprise Linux crown from Red Hat. Novell has far more employees than Red Hat and far more investment. But still when we think Linux, we still immediately think Red Hat. Red Hat are a very ethical company. They have a great co-operation with the open source community with their sponsored Fedora project. Red Hat uses the free and open source distribution, Fedora, to ensure their code is stable and their system is user friendly. Novell can also argue the same with their Open SUSE operating system, but there is one big difference. Red Hat is ideal to Open Source software and code from their enterprise Red Hat also get released down the tree to Fedora and anyone else that wants to use their code. Novell, on the other hand like to patent their code, leaving it just for them. Seems like the perfect Linux partner for Microsoft doesn't it?

In conclusion, Microsoft wants to smash all competitors but can't. Instead they partner up with Novell to hopefully leave only Novell left in the enterprise Linux market. Which leaves less competitors to compete with. Will this work? Hell no! The thing about Linux and its strength is the Open Source ideal. It wasn't hard to find a lot of unhappy Linux developers and enthusiasts about this deal.

Red Hat have proved the point time and time again about the benefits of Open Source. An area that Microsoft just can never enter into, or understand. A prime example is the community Open Source enterprise Linux Distribution CentOS . A perfect example of another Red Hat based operating system, with a loyal following. People using CentOS are also likely to upgrade to Red Hat if and when they need the official support that CentOS does not come with.

To end this all off this Novell - Microsoft deal may even be illegal against GPL 2 licensing!

Article by Martin Fleming, Alphomega Development Team

Yes, text links taint results, and the search engines haven't quite found a way to deal with them as yet. Until that happens, text links will continue to be the ranking technique of choice for many site owners. Why? Because text links can work to increase a site's rankings with the search engines.

The ethics of this decision deserve your consideration. So, rather than try to encourage you to use, or avoid, buying text links, we'll simply state the facts and let you make up your own mind about this particular practice.

The Evolution of the Text Link

When search engines such as Google began to rank Websites based upon the number and quality of sites that linked to them, those search engines created a digital cottage industry called link placement. Emailing for link swaps was wildly popular with some, while others placed banner ads containing direct links to their own sites. Both solutions fit well with search engine's immature algorithms.

Since then, search engines have vastly improved their systems for the filtering or removal of paid advertising links. Some of these steps have turned out to be unfair to many smaller Websites that are not connected to the larger Web publishers. As Google changes its algorithm, so the shape of the Web changes with it.

However, text link ads, or sponsorships as some call them (excluding Google Adwords ads, which Google can screen automatically), fit into the Web page less obtrusively than other ad units, and are often less easily identified as advertisements by the search engines. To this day, the search players have real difficulty distinguishing between a purchased link and a normal hyperlink. This will undoubtedly change in time, though, as the search engines' objective is to produce relevant search results that aren't influenced by advertisers' money.

Link Popularity and Link Reputation

Although search engines do assess the number of inbound links to a Web page when ranking that page, the quality of the link is seen as more important than the quantity of links. Although your link may be placed on every page of a sponsored site, don't expect Google and Yahoo! to give merit to this plethora of links. Some site owners are now varying the wording of the links they place on other sites, but this tactic will probably be filtered out soon.

The phenomenon of link buying has occurred because Google has tightened its algorithm to weed out links between topically unrelated sites, and within link exchanges. Unfortunately, most Websites have these types of links. This fact means that millions of Websites have been put out in the cold by Google's action. Sites that belong to big corporations or publishing empires are more likely to be topically-related, and they may be able to garner links from authority sites that are on-topic and have high Pagerank. The only way in which smaller Websites could compete is to buy links on these major sites.

One other recent phenomenon has given the minor sites a boost, though: blogs. The success of blogs may actually be due, in part, to Google's new algorithm - they're currently dealing with this problem in unison with Yahoo! and MSN. But in the meantime, comment links on blogs have become the spammer's tool of choice. Once the search engines devise a way to ignore this form of spam, spammers will most likely turn to text link ads.

Text Link Get Clicks Too!

Text links have a surprisingly high clickthrough rate compared to graphic banner advertising. Advertisers know this and many have abandoned banners in favor of text link ads. Although buying links to your site isn't in the spirit of organic search engine indexes, the purchase of text links is revolutionizing search engine optimization.

Buying search engine rankings certainly doesn't sound ethical, yet those who don't buy links, and who don't set aside a good part of their budget to the acquisition of paid text link ads, can find themselves at a decided disadvantage. A quick look at the top ranking sites will reveal that most gain their rankings through paid text link ads. These text links, though small and seemingly insignificant, are in fact very powerful.

So, you're aware of the pitfalls and the potential benefits. If you feel buying text links is unethical, or a waste of your time (after all, the search engines will likely find a way to avoid attributing any value to them), then it's one less task to put on your SEO to-do list. Great! You might want to skip down to the last section, "Text Link Ads and the Google Sandbox" for the wrap-up.

If you're curious as to how the purchasing and link placement systems work, however, we'll consider this next.

What Advertisers Seek in a Host Site

Websites that are ranked for the same keyword topic as the advertiser's site, or offer material that relates to the keyword topic of the advertiser's Website, are the most valuable places to place a text link ad. If the advertiser's site is about pet supplies, for instance, they'd look for sites that deal with pet supplies, veterinary services, pet shops, kennels, pet care magazines, animal training, or dog shows.

It's best for the advertiser to stick with the exact keywords for which they'd like to rank, but related words and synonyms can also be helpful. If they're placing a lot of text links, the advertiser might consider varying the copy to help prevent their being filtered due to duplication. The keyword supplies is related to suppliers, distributors, and manufacturers. The advertiser would make sure they got a link from their supplier or distributor, and even from the manufacturer in their product category.

Optimizing Text Links

The advertiser's text link ad will use their targeted words in the title area. They might also use stemmed variations of those words, and related words, in the description. Some text link ads use keywords only within the anchor text.

Others use paragraphs of content rich in keywords with links within it. This is more powerful because search engines analyze the text near hyperlinks to better understand a link's true meaning. It's a complicated process. Advertisers may also use the link title tag, however, if their link is out of place with the rest of the links on that page, as this may tip off the search engine that the advertiser's is not a regular link.

Text Link Ads and the Google Sandbox

One of the reasons Google had to delay the appearance of Web pages and sites in its index is because of paid text links. The impact of this approach began with the infamous Florida update, in which some sites had to wait up to eight months for Google to recognize new links to their site. Google couldn't distinguish between illegitimate and paid links, so it just put all new links on hold to thwart link buyers. If you were paying £500 a month for links, and you didn't see any rank increases for 8 months, you'd be deterred from link buying in the future!

One downside to Google's filtering of paid links is that innocent links can also be deleted along the way. There are many appropriate and naturally occurring links that aren't counted by Google because of the keyword topic, they're position within a page, or their appearance within the link patterns between a certain range of Websites. If your link is the only one on the page, Google may not count it. So, the last word on paid text link ads is that they might not work for you.

Google, Yahoo! and MSN all have the resources to study the paid link issue and develop effective screening solutions within their search algorithms. Since it isn't easy to detect paid links, and because text link ads are so pervasive on the Web, there is plenty of room for some strategically developed and placed text link ads to sneak through the filters and help the advertiser rank highly -- but for how long?

Summary

At Alphomega we are experts in search engine optimisation. Whilst link building is deemed as potentially flawed for the future you will find then any worth-while SEO campaigns is using it these days. In our search engine optimisation packages we don't rely entirely on paid links but complement the campaign with unique links acquired on a genuine submission basis therefore posing no threat should the search engines develop a way to identify paid text links.

For more information on our services please visit the search engine optimisation page.

1. using a non-standard title element
2. failing to optimize image markup
3. using spider-illegible JavaScript where legible code would do
4. failing to indicate the content hierarchy using header elements
5. poor grammar and spelling

Lets look at each of these in detail to explain exactly what we mean.

Using a Non-standard Title Element

First, let's define what we mean by a standard title element. Once that concept is clear, serious deviations from the standard will be obvious, and you'll find it easy to correct errors.

A standard title element should:

• include one or two of a web site's keywords
• include a reference to the page's fundamental content within the first three to five words (It's okay to include variations on one of the web site's keywords.)

The logic behind this definition is that spiders only really consider approximately the first 60 characters of a title element. Additionally, they're adept at identifying cases of keyword stuffing, which we'll look at later, and which should be avoided.

Let's consider some examples. For a company that manufactures office furniture, a standard title element might look like this:

<title>Office Furniture by Desks & Chairs Ltd.</title>

It's simple. The keywords are contained within the first two words of the title. There's a variation on the "furniture" keywords in the company's name. In total, including spaces, there are 38 characters.

By contrast, many web sites use non-standard title elements that look more like this:

<title>Office Furniture, Office Desks, Office Chairs, Office Seating, Receptionist Chairs by Alpha Office Ltd. </title>

There are four problems with this title. Can you spot them? The title uses obvious keyword stuffing -- a practice whereby a large number of keywords are included in the title in the hope that the site will be picked up for all of those keywords. In fact, this practice could cause the search engines to apply penalties to the site, which could see the site attain a much lower ranking on the search engine results page, or worse: the site could be banned from the search engine, and drop off the results pages altogether.

Adding so many keywords to the title is a waste of energy, since the spiders read only the first 60 characters or so.

The company's name, which appears at the end of the title, is probably being given little or no consideration by the spiders, which makes it difficult for people to find the site if they perform a search using the company's name.

Finally, it looks unprofessional and spammy. Who would trust a web site that resorts to such questionable business practices?

Using correct title elements can make all the difference in your search engine ranking.

Failing to Optimise Image Markup

This is definitely one of our pet peeves with webmasters today. So many talented PhotoShop gurus create wonderful banners, background art, and other images ... then add them to their pages in a way that means spiders will ignore them!

An example of some non-optimized HTML for a banner image looks something like this:

<img src"mylogo.jpg " alt="banner">

I've even seen examples that look like this:

<img src="mylogo.jpg" alt="">

In the second case, failing to include any information is, at the very least, a wasted opportunity, but will also have serious accessibility implications for those of your visitors who are visually impaired. But the first example presents a problem, too: it isn't sufficiently specific about the image.

For example, if the banner image contains the phrase "Office Furniture by D&C" (the acronym for Desks and Chairs, Ltd), then the alt attribute should also read "Office Furniture by D&C." Simple.

The fact is that mylogo.jpg means nothing to a search engine spider. So we need to describe the image to a spider via the use of alt attributes.

To describe a logo image, the company's name and the word "logo" should suffice. For a composite or mosaic image composed of several pictures, I would write "Company name logo1," "Company name logo2," and so on, in the alt attributes for those images.

Of course, people might choose to exploit this suggestion: an excessively large number of images could be used in order to create lots of alt attributes -- with keyword stuffing the ultimate goal. Again, these are just foolish strategies that risk earning the site the dreaded search engine ban. Even without a ban, displaying dozens of images would have a serious impact on page loading times, and would likely cause traffic to leave before the site fully appeared.

Alt attributes with poor descriptions prevent search engines -- as well as disabled users -- from "seeing" your page.

In short, use the alt attribute to describe, with keywords, the image content. Hold the stuffing, please.

Using Spider-illegible JavaScript where Legible Code would Do

I recently saw a "deals" web site that aggregated hot deals from around the Internet. Because it pulls is content from a variety of sources, the web site regularly has fresh content, which search engines love. However, the problem was that the site's aggregator used JavaScript.

As a result, all that wonderful, frequently-updated content was going completely unnoticed by search engines.

There are plenty of content aggregators out there that perform the same function -- pulling information from elsewhere on the Web, or elsewhere on the same site, and displaying it on the web site's homepage -- using PHP or some other server-side language. Performing the content aggregation on the server, rather than using JavaScript, will generate spider-legible HTML.

It's absolutely shocking how many webmasters use JavaScript to display the content they want search engines to index.

The point is quite simple: keep JavaScript use to the bare minimum, using it to enhance the user experience, perhaps, but not to display content that you want the search engines to see.

Failing to Indicate the Content Hierarchy using Header Elements

As you may know, header tags (h1, h2, etc.) have a clear purpose: they establish a web site's important sections and the content hierarchy. Yet, along with title elements and image descriptions, correct heading hierarchies are among the most underutilized SEO tools.

Even today, with microformats taking the concept of the semantic Web to a whole new level, the number of webmasters who continue to author pages with non-semantic markup is staggering. Even well-educated developers who use CSS to position and style elements on the page ignore the importance of a good hierarchy.

According to WebAIM , the problem with hierarchy or header tags is that "they lack subtlety: in most web browsers they make headlines look absurdly large ( <h1> , <h2> ) or ridiculously small ( <h4> , <h5> , <h6> )." That excuse is no longer valid today, though, as CSS allows developers to modify the display of hierarchy tags. Look at any Blogger.com blog that runs a standard template, and you'll find the sidebar's headers are <h2>s modified to appear an appropriate size.

According to Google's common-sense webmaster guidelines (note the page's standard title element), webmasters should "make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links."

To fix this mistake, first determine the key points your web site is trying to make (hint: your keywords ought to be included in this content). Then, use CSS to establish the display of the elements in your hierarchy. Finally, enclose the key points within header elements.

Poor Grammar and Spelling

The Google Librarian Center is Google's greatest strategic move in years, yet the organization has largely downplayed the project's importance. Through its open partnership with librarians, Google is gaining allies in the battle to develop algorithms.

As Karen G. Schneider of the Librarians Internet Index wrote in an article for the Google Librarian Center's newsletter , "authorship" is important. "At LII we're very skeptical of web sites with more than a couple of typographical or grammatical errors. In addition to how poorly it would reflect on us to point someone to a grammatically challenged web site, it's a big hint that the content on the site is generally not up to snuff." Two newsletter issues later, it appears Google has hired their first librarian, whereas previously only engineers were seen as able to solve the problems of search...

The moral of the story? Don't forget to spell-check! Beyond mere spell-checking, though, buy one of the many grammar guides available and make sure your syntax, punctuation, and other grammatical elements are in order.

For the moment, webmasters can still get away with bad grammar, but in the long term this will change, so start improving your grammar and spelling now and give yourself a head-start on the competition.

In the meantime, of course, poor grammar precludes your site from gaining customers' trust, and if there's no trust, there's no purchase. Investing in good grammar is really an investment in gaining customers' trust.

Summary

To conclude, there are five very common SEO mistakes in today's web design community:

• using a non-standard title element
• failing to optimize image markup
• using spider-illegible JavaScript where legible code would do
• failing to indicate the content hierarchy using header elements
• poor grammar and spelling

Luckily, these problems are easy enough to resolve, but, having read this article, you should be in position to avoid them altogether.

Page Rank (PR) is Google's algorithm to assess the value of a particular page in relation to the way it's built, the content on it and the number of inbound links. If you have the Google Toolbar installed you will see a little green bar showing the score of any page from 0 to 10. It's worth noting that is a logarithmic scale, meaning that 6 is many times better than 5, and 7 is going to take a whole load more work to achieve!

For Google, links are of paramount importance, so it's essential to find a large number of good quality ones if your site is competing hard in the search engines. Alphomega now have software that makes finding good links so much easier.

In case you didn't know, to get your PR rating up it is essential to have a significant number of good quality links to your site (the techy bit)... to make a link count, the page who is linking to you needs to have a PR of 4 or more (the higher the better). That's not all though... Every link that page has to another site gives some of the PR away, and every inbound link gives it more, so to know if having a link from another site is going to benefit you very much, you need to look at the PR and then find out how many inbound and outbound links is has! phew!

These results from September 2005 represent a sharp increase from mid-2004. Pew Internet Project data from June 2004 show that use of search engines on a typical day has risen from 30% of the internet population to 41%. This means that the number of those using search engines on an average day jumped from roughly 38 million in June 2004 to about 59 million in September 2005 - an increase of about 55%.

comScore data show that from September 2004 to September 2005 the average daily use of search engines jumped from 49.3 million users to 60.7 million users - an increase of 23%.

This means that the use of search engines is edging up on email as a primary internet activity on any given day. The Pew Internet Project data show that on a typical day, email use is still the top internet activity. On any given day, about 52% of American internet users are sending and receiving email.

These findings have considerable consequences for the way people gather and use information online and the way e-commerce is conducted.

"Most people think of the internet as a vast library and they increasingly depend on search engines to help them find everything from information about the people who interest them, to transactions they want to conduct, organizations they need to deal with, and interesting factoids that help them settle bar bets and backyard arguments," said Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet Project.

The evolution of search engines as everyday consumer Web tools has made them a vital resource for marketers," said James Lamberti, vice president of comScore Networks. "Search engines are obviously a critical vehicle in reaching consumers during the buy cycle, but they also offer a rich source for consumer profiling, segmentation, and measurement of product demand. To-date, we have only witnessed the preliminary impact of search engines on e-commerce.

The latest data from comScore show that Google was the most heavily used search engine in October 2005 with 89.8 million unique visitors, followed by Yahoo! Search (68 million unique visitors), MSN Search (49.7 million unique visitors), Ask Jeeves (43.7 million unique visitors), and AOL Search (36.1 million unique visitors).

The Pew Internet Project findings cited in this report come from a nationally representative telephone survey of 2,251 American adults (age 18 and older), including 1,577 internet users, between September 13-October 14, 2005. The margin of error on the internet user portion of the survey is plus or minus 3%.

The comScore data cited in this report come from comScore Media Metrix, an internet audience measurement service that uses a massive cross-section of more than 1.5 million U.S. consumers who have given comScore explicit permission to confidentially capture their browsing and transaction behavior, including online and offline purchasing.

New York, NY (March 22, 2006) - A new survey, released today by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR), found that 78% of advertisers feel that traditional television advertising has become less effective in the past two years. The survey also found that marketers are exploring emerging technologies to help bolster their television advertising spend.

The joint survey asked 133 national advertisers about their attitudes towards TV advertising and what impact new technologies, such as digital video recorders (DVRs) and video-on-demand, will have on their TV advertising budgets. Those surveyed represent more than $20 billion worth of advertising, including marketers from Charles Schwab, Colgate, Dunkin' Donuts, Johnson & Johnson, Mattel, Pfizer, and Verizon.

As DVRs look to climb above 30 million households in the next three years, advertisers are finding themselves forced to reconsider their media mix," said Josh Bernoff, Vice President, Forrester Research, who presented the findings today at the ANA Television Advertising Forum in New York. "Television networks continue to publish research that traditional TV advertising is potent as ever, but national advertisers aren't buying it and are seeking alternatives to enhance their budgets and move them beyond the customary 30-second spot.

Key highlights of the ANA/Forrester survey include:

• Almost 70% of advertisers think that DVRs and video-on-demand will reduce or destroy the effectiveness of traditional 30-second commercials.
• When DVRs spread to 30 million homes, close to 60% of advertisers say that they will spend less on conventional TV advertising; of those, 24% will cut their TV budgets by at least 25%.
• While 55% say that their top executives are closely watching changes in TV advertising, most advertisers have not experimented with advertising on DVRs (49%) or video-on-demand (44%).
• Eighty percent of advertisers will spend more of their advertising budget on Web advertising and 68% of advertisers will look to search engine marketing.
• Advertisers are also looking at alternatives to traditional TV advertising and will spend more of their advertising budgets on: branded entertainment within TV programs (61%); TV program sponsorships (55%); interactive advertising during TV programs (48%); online video ads (45%); and product placement (44%).
• Ninety-seven percent of advertisers agree that the TV industry will need new audience metrics - other than reach and frequency - to report commercial ratings, not just program ratings to effectively measure TV advertising.

"The television industry as we have known it may be challenged on a number of fronts, but continues to attract a significant media investment by ANA marketers," said Bob Liodice, President and CEO of the ANA.

As new and traditional media alternatives compete more aggressively for a share of the media pie, and marketers look to improve consumer targeting, reduce costs and enhance accountability, television is aggressively responding. With technology-based advances in addressability, enhanced television options, Internet convergence (IPTV) and branded entertainment opportunities, television is likely to continue as the dominant part of the marketing mix.

A full report on the survey findings will be available in the near future through Forrester Research (www.forrester.com). This is the third ANA/Forrester Research survey of advertisers on this topic. Previous surveys were fielded in 2002 and 2004.