Often, the hardest part of any search engine optimization or marketing campaign is getting changes made to the website. Figuring out what to do is often easier than convincing all the stakeholders—including marketers, IT departments, web developers—to take the necessary actions, and coaching them along the way as they apprehensively take baby steps forward. As search marketers, we also need to test web sites. We always want to tweak things and see if we do better, and if not, we go back and try something else. We also work in teams.

Success in search marketing campaigns often depends on the nitty-gritty details of execution. That is why I have spent a lot time investigating different tools that help automate our work flow and promote teamwork. One of my favorites goes by the apt and clever name of Subversion.

Subversion, also known as SVN, is free open source software that provides revision control of source code, web pages and other documents. Revision control means that all current and past versions of each file are saved, with notes about who edited them and what they did. If a bold change goes terribly wrong, a few clicks restores a prior version of the site. Revision control also permits multiple editors to work on the same files without wrecking each others’ work. After updating their local files, everybody can be confident that they have the latest versions. Most edit conflicts are automatically resolved.

Revision control software is much more efficient than ad hoc arrangements such as emailing files back and forth, or using Dreamweaver’s FTP synchronization feature. A web server is for serving web pages, not for syncing files. Our Subversion server provides much faster data transfer, and Subversion tracks changes line by line, so it only transfers the lines that have changed, rather than whole files, saving even more time.

Here are a few situations where Subversion helps most:

Eliminating the IT bottleneck. When a website is hosted in-house, the IT department often does not provide web server FTP access for security or management reasons. They usually want to control all changes, rightly so, because they are responsible. However, IT staff are busy or may lack experience in search optimization. It normally takes three times longer to teach a client how to fix their own website than to just do it for them. IT departments like Subversion because it saves them time, and provides an audit trail, as well as a reliable backup copy of the website in case the server ever suffers a meltdown. When a client is on Subversion, even if I do not have FTP access, I can still grab the latest copy of their website, make the necessary edits and commit them to the repository. Then I ask the client to pull updated files from the repository, review the changes on a development server, and release them to the live site. Verifying and releasing a website update is faster, and requires fewer skills, than editing.

Replacing content management systems. One of the selling points for content management systems is that clients can edit their own website, especially when multiple people are involved. Content management systems usually introduce design rigidity, causing website improvements to take longer and cost more. When websites have a catalog with thousands of parts, or a shopping cart, a content management system is obviously necessary, but when a website is just brochure-ware, content management systems can be a poor investment and an impediment to search marketing. With Subversion, we allow clients to use Dreamweaver or Contribute to edit sites themselves. Everybody on the team uses Subversion to coordinate changes, and if somebody wrecks the site, we can roll back to the prior version. With Subversion as a safety net, the editing process goes faster, and more people can have access.

Delegating work.When managing staff, I need to see what they are doing, and be able to jump in on a moment’s notice when help is needed. Having direct, immediate access to the source code makes it easy to fix a bug in the middle of the night when a client complains. I do not need to tell everybody “sync your files” or risk having them erase my change. Subversion handles that automatically. If a client emails a request, any employee can help themselves to the latest code from the repository, and make edits. Without Subversion, having more than one person working on a site risks confusion.

Backups and using multiple computers.My nightmare scenario used to be losing my computer. What if it breaks? I’ve switched most of my business management tools to cloud computing, such as Basecamp and Freshbooks. But I still have a few important files on my machine, plus all the websites I am working on. Subversion provides secure cloud storage for all those critical files. Subversion makes both of my computers interchangeable. I can right click on any folder to quickly synchronize files from the repository.

Subversion has two components: a server that stores sets files (called modules), and a desktop client for accessing the server. The Subversion server can be installed locally, or on a remote machine. I prefer to use a hosted service such as CVSdude, where they handle all the details for a nominal monthly fee. Tortoise SVN is the most popular Subversion client for Windows. Tortoise asks for the URL of the repository, a userid and a password. All files in a module can be checked out, edited as needed, and then changes are committed. Tortoise integrates into Windows’ File Explorer. Folders show a green check mark if they are current, or a red X when they have been changed.

In 2007 Forrester Research called Subversion “the sole leader in standalone software configuration management (SCM)”. When something that good is free, you think most people would use it. However, most search marketing professionals I speak with have never heard of Subversion.

Jonathan Hochman has two computer science degrees from Yale. He runs an Internet marketing consultancy and a web development shop.

Article source - http://searchengineland.com/080408-084516.php

In developing the link analysis tool I’ve been thinking a lot about the tools I would like to be able to use but haven’t found yet. Some tools offer great features but are full of bugs and are therefore hard to use.

This thread from 2005 discusses the ultimate link analysis tool but 3 years later we don’t seem to have one (as far as I know). There are some excellent ones but ideally they would be combined into one big tool that you can just set going on 10 domains and then come back in 12 hours and see a massive report of all the data.

Here are the features I would like in the idea link tool:

What would you like to see?

Article source - http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/features-you-would-like-in-the-ultimate-seo-tool/

Pay-per-click marketing and web analytics – they go together like peas and carrots. Why you ask? Because the reports provided by the PPC search engines aren’t always enough! Services like Google Analytics provide advertisers with a wealth of knowledge for fine-tuning and perfecting their paid-search campaigns. This includes data like bounce rate, time on site or goal funnel visualizations. For advertisers who are using Analytics in tandem with their AdWords PPC account, the process for tracking data is a cinch. Google has an auto-tagging feature that will pull all of your PPC data into Analytics – including keyword level data. The question then becomes, “How do I track this data for my Yahoo! Search Marketing PPC campaigns?” Today I’m going to quickly explain how you can build custom tracking URLs to get the same comprehensive data for Yahoo!.

The first step is to head on over to the trusty Google Analytics URL Builder. This tool will let you input your landing page and variables including term (keyword), name (campaign), source (search engine), medium (cpc vs. email or organic) and content (ad version). After you manually input your data, the URL builder will provide you with a full tracking URL that you can copy/paste into your Yahoo! ads. Here’s a quick example:

This example would basically only work for a single keyword and a single ad text. If you have the time to create a separate URL for every keyword in your Yahoo! account, all I can say is go for it! If you’re like me, you need a much quicker process for capturing data. It just so happens that Yahoo! has an auto-tagging feature. In your account, go to the Administration tab and click on Tracking URLs. Select the option Tracking URLs On and save changes. This will tell Yahoo! to append your destination URLs with information ranging from the keyword you bid on, to the actual search query and account specific information like campaign and ad group IDs.

How do you pull this information into Analytics? It’s relatively easy. If you look at the custom tracking URL example above, you will need to make modifications to the term, content and campaign variables. You will need to insert Yahoo!’s identifiers into each of these variables to pull the auto-tagged information into Analytics. Some of the basics include {OVKEY} for the paid keyword, {OVRAW} for the actual search query, {OVADID} for the ad text ID number and {OVCAMPGID} for the campaign ID numer. Here’s another quick example:

Now you can use this customized destination URL for an entire campaign (if applicable) and you will still pull detailed information into Analytics. I should point out that using Yahoo!’s auto-tagging identifiers will only produce real data if you have turned auto-tagging ON in your account! Otherwise all of your Yahoo! PPC visitors will register keywords as {OVKEY}. And trust me when I say, that isn’t very helpful. Discovering this process and putting it to use in my Yahoo! Search Marketing accounts has proved to be an invaluable asset. I would recommend to everyone reading this blog to set this up for your accounts as soon as you get the chance! And check in next week – I’ll explain how to do this for your MSN adCenter PPC accounts, too!

Article source – http://www.ppchero.com/2008/04/03/the-secret-of-tracking-yahoo-keyword-data-in-google-analytics/

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Winners in FCC Auction Talk of More ‘Open’ Networks

By Cecilia Kang Washington Post Staff Writer  Saturday, April 5, 2008; Page D01

Verizon Wireless and AT&T said they plan to create faster and more robust networks with a new chunk of radio spectrum they won at a recent federal auction of airwaves. They also talked about moving toward more “open” networks, offering consumers the ability to use a greater number of devices and more applications over their handsets.

The companies disclosed plans for their purchase of 700-megahertz radio frequencies after rules restricting them from discussing the Federal Communications Commission’s auction were lifted Thursday night.

Carriers currently control the types of phones and services their wireless subscribers can use.

Even though the companies touted their new networks as open, some said they won’t offer the extent of consumer choice that some public-interest groups and Internet companies sought.

The carriers’ definitions of an open network vary. AT&T argues that its use of SIM, operating and memory cards already allows the use of any device with those technologies on its network. It said it invites developers to create technologies for its networks, but it must approve their use.

Verizon Wireless, meanwhile, refused to elaborate on how it defines “open access.” It purchased a segment of airwaves at the auction that came with a requirement that it must build a network open to all devices and software applications. The company said it would begin testing technologies on its existing network by June.

“We don’t want to get into definitions at the moment that are ‘regulatory-ese.’ We want to get people to close their eyes and imagine all the possibilities,” said Verizon Wireless spokesman Jeffrey Nelson.

Google, the Internet phone service provider Skype and some public-interest groups had hoped to push the FCC and carriers to offer more unfettered consumer access. They also sought clearer regulatory definitions from the FCC.

“Our objective is to bring the ethos of the Internet to the wireless world . . . gathering the world’s information, making it universally accessible and easy to use,” but carriers still can control what users can do over the wireless network, said Rick Whitt, telecom and media counsel for Google.

Google, which bid in the airwave auction but didn’t win, said it will continue to stay involved with the implementation of rules to ensure that Verizon Wireless carries out the openness principles.

Wireless carriers, meanwhile, said they are being friendly to consumers.

Verizon Wireless chief executive Lowell McAdam said yesterday that the company’s purchase “will make Verizon the preferred partner for developers of a new wave of consumer electronics and applications using this next-generation technology.”

Article source - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/04/AR2008040403508.html

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Yahoo! added voice-enabled mobile search and set a new course for its mobile approach. by Jamie Lendino

Las Vegas—At this week’s CTIA Wireless show, Yahoo! introduced oneSearch 2.0, a major upgrade to its existing mobile search initiative. The new version adds voice-enabled search for instant answers to any query. It will also return richer, more detailed search results, the company said, since it is opening the oneSearch platform to third-party publishers for content integration.

Yahoo! also plans to make oneSearch—and the Internet in general—accessible on more cell-phone home screens. Starting now, BlackBerry Pearl, Curve, and 8800-series owners can head to m.yahoo.com/voice to download the voice-enabled Yahoo! OneSearch. Over the coming months, Yahoo! will introduce support for additional devices, as well as international availability.

Adam Taggart, the senior director of product marketing for Yahoo! Mobile, said in an interview that the previous version of oneSearch already has 49 partnerships and 600 million subscribers. The new version will be just one part of a more sharply defined mobile strategy for the venerable Internet portal.

“If you look at forecasts by 2010, there are going to be four times as many people around the world with a mobile device than there are with a PC—that’s four billion people,” Taggart said. “Everybody agrees that some point in time, more users will access the Internet on a phone than compared with a PC. If you look at current conditions today, however, it’s lopsided on a 10 to 1 basis—most people are still accessing the Internet on a PC instead of on the phone. What’s it going to take to tip the opportunity so that we really begin to realize the full potential of the mobile Internet?”

Taggart said that the path to get there is threefold: dealing with the huge amount of fragmentation (including hundreds of different devices, browsers, and carriers); making sure that core essential services—notably, finding information, communicating with people you care about, and managing your media content—work as well as possible; and making it all a sustainable business with a real monetization engine.

Meanwhile, the previously announced oneConnect and onePlace will roll out throughout this summer, along with more device support for oneSearch 2.0. When asked about Yahoo Go 3.0 —Yahoo’s major smartphone announcement from CES back in January, along with its new open mobile platform—Taggart said that its aim is to give all handsets the ability to access Yahoo! products as comprehensively as possible.

“The question is, how good an experience can we offer you? Whenever you can run the Yahoo! Go client, you’ll always get a better experience. Think of it as an experience or environment. It’s essentially an environment in which all the services run at their optimal level, because we’ve got software on the phone. We’ve got a [native] client on the phone, we can cache with that client, and so on. But we’ll talk less to a user about Yahoo! Go, and talk more specifically about those key features I mentioned above.”

“Our role is to be a critical enabler, and a leader, within the mobile ecosystem, in order to help it grow and service billions of consumers,” Taggart said.

Article source - http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2281495,00.asp

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Advertiser concerns about search engine companies’ commitment to battle click-fraud may be justified, and the industry should consider creating third-party verification groups to quell those concerns, according to a new study by two University of Southern California researchers.

“There’s evidence this is a problem of more than $1 billion in scope and nobody has taken an impartial look at it before,” Kenneth Wilbur, an assistant professor of marketing at the USC Marshall School of Business, said in a statement. Wilbur collaborated with economics doctoral student Yi Zhu on the study. “The industry may want to consider creating third-party organizations, as other ad-supported media have, to certify the quality of their efforts to combat click-fraud.”

When a keyword auction is very competitive, click-fraud depresses search-engine revenues, the study found. But in less-competitive auctions, click-fraud can increase search-engine revenues, reducing their incentive to prevent click fraud.

Oversight Needed for Search Ad Industry
The study says that the search-advertising industry would benefit by creating a neutral third party to authenticate click-fraud detection efforts.

Search advertising has exploded in the past decade to more than $8 billion in revenues in 2007, according to the researchers. Advertisers are increasingly looking to keyword search advertising because it reaches consumers who are looking to buy, and because all their actions online can be tracked and measured.

The downside of keyword search is that it can be manipulated and exploited by competitors. Click-fraud is a catch-all term that applies to online actions that increase a Web site’s search-advertising revenues or exhaust a search advertiser’s budget.

The Click-Fraud Network, an industry watchdog organization supported by software company ClickForensics, estimates that in the third quarter of 2007 about one in every six clicks on search engines sites was at high risk of being fraudulent. More than a quarter (28.1 percent) of all clicks on search engines’ content network Web sites were considered high risk.

Naturally, Google and other search engine sites refute these numbers, and the debate continues over exactly how much click-fraud exists, how to measure it and what to do about it. However, in a rather surprising move, Yahoo and ClickForensics just partnered up to try to stem click-fraud for Yahoo users.

Meanwhile, the paper by Wilbur and Zhu, Click Fraud, applies economic theory to build a model of the search advertising market. It mathematically proves that click-fraud can increase search-engine revenues under a variety of scenarios, according to the authors, and has been accepted for publication in Marketing Science, the top journal in the field of quantitative marketing.

Widespread click-fraud has huge implications for the booming online advertising industry, the report states. And efforts to quell concerns about click-fraud face a difficult Catch-22: If search engines reveal too much about how they prevent click-fraud, they may reveal how those measures can be beaten. So they reveal little, forcing advertisers to trust what the search engines are doing, even as they have to pay for every fraudulent click that goes undetected.

In 2006, Google CEO Eric Schmidt sparked controversy when he said that eventually, advertiser distrust would depress keyword prices, self-correcting the problem. “In fact, there is a perfect economic solution, which is to let it happen,” said Schmidt.

Fraud for Profits?
The new study confirms the impact of click-fraud on keyword prices. Advertisers, however,are more concerned about total spending, not just prices for a specific keyword. Click-fraud automatically increases expenditures by increasing the number of paid clicks. The question is, when do depressed prices offset the rising expenditures from more clicks?

Because the report suggests that click-fraud can increase profits for search engine companies in some cases, the authors call for the search-advertising industry would benefit by creating a neutral third party to authenticate click-fraud detection efforts.

Such an entity could maintain confidentiality, while providing impartial verification of detection methods, an approach common in other advertising-fueled media. Nielsen Media Research measures TV audiences, Arbitron measures radio, and the Audit Bureau of Circulation authenticates newspapers. Even online banner advertising contracts are usually sold on the basis of third-party audience figures from comScore or Nielsen/NetRatings.

“We hope to call attention to the issue of click-fraud,” said Wilbur. “We do not doubt search engines’ good intentions, but their networks are so wide open that it is difficult to police all the network’s users. We have suggested several mechanisms the industry can adopt to build advertiser confidence in the click figures they are getting.”

About the study and its writers: visit the author page; the complete click-fraud study is available here.

Michelle Megna is managing editor of ECommerce-Guide.com.

Article source - http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/news/news/article.php/3738776

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The three major search engines—Google, Yahoo and MSN—react very differently to the main search engine optimization techniques, according to a new study from Covario Inc., a provider of search marketing analytics software.

In a seven-month study released late last month, Covario found that Google is 15 times as sensitive to technical issues (i.e., tags and web page addresses) than Yahoo and twice as sensitive as MSN. Google also is 50% more sensitive to link strategy—the context in which the site is viewed by the engines—than MSN. However, Google is approximately 25% less sensitive to content issues than the other engines.

There are two rules to remember in managing natural search programs, according to the Covario study. First, placing key terms in specific strategic locations on a web site or page makes a large difference in rank performance. Second, there is no correlation between the raw number of links to a site or page, but there is a highly significant correlation between the quality of links and rank.

Covario conducted the study using its Organic Search Insight solution on 300 large brand web sites belonging to 25 large advertisers. The automated software crawled each of the major brand sites two times per month, performing 46 checks on each page on the site.

Covario, formerly known as SEMDirector, conducted the study between March 1 and Oct. 15, 2007.

Article source - http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=25937

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Posted by Charles Humble on Mar 31, 2008 11:59 PM

Within 24 hours of Apple unveiling the iPhone SDK, Sun Microsystems announced their intention to port the Java ME JVM to Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch devices. In a video announcement Eric Klein states that he sees no reason why the JVM would not work on the iPhone:

“We’ve spent the last 24 hours feverishly pouring through all the information that Apple made available about this SDK and we’re really excited that Apple has decided to open the iPhone and iTouch (iPod Touch) to third party development. One of our original visions for Java was to allow the developer community to create amazing content and applications for as many devices across the world as possible and the iPhone is an important platform in that regard.”

When Sun made its announcement a number of astute bloggers and forum posters pointed out two major issues that seem to preclude Sun’s Java port. The first is a clause in the license agreement:

“An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).”

The second appears at first glance to be a technical limitation in the SDK. According to Apple’s official iPhone Human Interface Guidelines (available from the Apple iPhone Dev Center, login required) only one iPhone application may run at a time, and third-party iPhone applications will not be able to run in the background:

“This means that when users switch to another application, answer the phone, or check their email, the application they were using quits. It’s important to make sure that users do not experience any negative effects because of this reality. In other words, users should not feel that leaving your iPhone application and returning to it later is any more difficult than switching among applications on a computer.”

This is presumably not strictly a technical limitation - the iPhone runs the same kernal as Mac OS X which supports multiple concurrent processes. The iPhone itself can clearly multitask (otherwise it couldn’t, for example, ring when you were using Safari with it) so this restriction is most probably imposed to limit the amount of RAM consumed by third party background processes. It seems reasonable to speculate that Apple could therefore allow chosen third party developers the ability to run their applications in the background. However it seems quite unlikely that Apple would provide Sun such access. For one thing being able to install and Run Java ME applications on the iPhone and iPod Touch would make it harder for Apple to restrict distribution to their store as they intend, and for another Apple’s relationship with Java seems to have become increasingly negative over the last few years. Contrast Steve Job’s comments at a keynote at JavaOne 2000 in which he said:

“We want to bring Java back to the desktop in a really big way. I’m here today to personally tell you we are working hard to make Mac the best Java delivery vehicle on the planet. The biggest thing we are doing is we are going to bundle Java 2 SE into every single copy of Mac OS X [the upcoming Macintosh operating system] that we ship later on this year.”

with remarks he made last year to the New York Times:

“Java’s not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It’s this big heavyweight ball and chain.”

Eric Klein issued a further statement last week stating that Sun would like to talk to Apple if there are conditions blocking Sun’s intentions:

“Our announcement was based on our excitement to build a JVM for the iPhone and the iPod Touch, as well as our assessment of Apple’s publicly available information on the SDK and related business terms. If there are clauses in the iPhone beta SDK license agreement that potentially limit third party application distribution, then these are items that we want to have a positive discussion with Apple about. Sun and Apple have an ongoing relationship around Java SE on Mac OS X and we look forward to further discussions with Apple about a JVM for iPhone and iPod Touch. Sun definitely plans to deliver a JVM for iPhone and iPod Touch if at all possible!”

It will be interesting to see if Sun provide any more details during JavaOne.

Article source - http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/03/jme_iphone

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Despite a new owner and the potential for more competition in the future, MySQL and Oracle will continue to work together.

By Charles Babcock InformationWeek  March 31, 2008 10:00 AM

When MySQL AB was bought by Sun Microsystems, some knowledgeable observers said the first thing Sun would do is make MySQL free of its dependence on Oracle.

MySQL incorporated the InnoDB transaction storage system as part of its database system, then Oracle acquired its Finnish parent company, Innobase Oy, in October 2005. “Look for Sun to do more and more to make MySQL free of any third parties,” said Raven Zachary, open source analyst with the 451 Group, in an interview at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco.

But Zack Urlocker, the executive VP of products, who supervises both engineering and marketing at MySQL, says such independence is still viewed as unnecessary inside Sun. Urlocker appeared on a panel on the state of the open source database market. Seated nearby was Ken Jacobs, VP of product strategy at Oracle.

MySQL’s strength has been in its ability to serve Web pages, and many Web applications are built with MySQL as the database of choice in the background. Oracle aspires to be the database of future applications as well, including Web applications, and it’s conceivable the two eventually will come into more direct competition.

But Urlocker says that doesn’t mean MySQL can’t keep using InnoDB. “We’ve always had a very good relationship with Oracle,” he said after the panel concluded.

“It’s absolutely a fact. We’ve always had a very good relationship,” affirmed Jacobs, one of the original employees of Oracle, who helped establish Oracle with the federal government from its new Washington office in 1981.

MySQL isn’t ready to announce anything yet, but the way Urlocker and Jacobs exchanged meaningful glances, it was as if to say they’re ready to sign a multiyear continuation of their agreement.

Meanwhile, another third-party piece of software on which MySQL used to depend, the SolidDB for MySQL that was under the sponsorship of IBM, has been pushed off to SourceForge. Dhiren Patel, IBM’s community relations manager for the overall SolidDB project, announced that IBM had acquired SolidDB in December for its in-memory database, technology that will help it compete with Oracle TimesTen.

“This in-memory technology, and not Solid’s open source offering, was the key driver behind IBM’s acquisition. As a result, I regret to inform you that, effectively immediately, we will not be continuing further development on SolidDB for MySQL,” he wrote March 3, six days after Sun completed the MySQL deal.

The open source community around SolidDB for MySQL will be free to continue work on the project, and the developer forums and bug tracking have been migrated to SourceForge as well, Patel noted.

Urlocker said both Jacobs and Charles Phillips, Oracle’s president, have assured him of continued, unfettered access to InnoDB. MySQL, initially developed as a read-only database, gets its key transaction handling characteristics from InnoDB and SolidDB for MySQL.

Article source - http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207000559

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Adobe Systems’ new Photoshop Express website hosts a basic version of its ubiquitous software that lets users edit and share digital images.

Adobe Systems launched a new photo-editing website Thursday that blends its popular Photoshop software with the ease and community of social networks.

Photoshop Express which is now open to everyone as a “beta” test version, strips away both the complexity and the price tag of the original Photoshop. This free web-based editor offers tools for one-click cropping, color adjusting, and sharing.

Express comes from an impressive software pedigree. After years of being the industry standard, Photoshop is already the colloquial verb for manipulating images. But Photoshop Express is a far cry from the $649 professional Photoshop CS3. And that’s the point.

“It’s not trying to be ‘Photoshop Online,’ ” says Geoff Baum, Adobe’s director of Express products. Express targets the casual consumer – those who love taking pictures, but probably don’t know what SLR stands for (it’s single-lens reflex, in case you were wondering).

This point-and-shoot crowd has posted billions of images to online photo-sharing and social-networking sites such as Flickr and Facebook. Adobe hopes to reel in these millions of users with easy photo-editing tools and ways to connect all their photo-sharing favorites.

Users can upload images from their computer or grab pictures they’ve already posted to Photobucket, Facebook, or Picasa. Pictures can then be sorted into albums, arranged as slideshows, lightly polished, and shared with the world.

Photoshop Express gives every user a unique URL for their portfolio and room for up to 2 gigabytes of images.

Adobe hopes to tweak the software and roll out a for-pay premium version in the next six to 12 months. The free edition will remain available, says Mr. Baum, but the premium pass could offer better tools and additional storage space.

Adobe plans to connect Photoshop Express to other photo-sharing sites. Baum says they are already working to let users plug into Flickr accounts – allowing for an easy flow of images to and from the popular photo site. That option should be available in a few weeks, he says.

Photoshop Express runs as a website, not an application. Therefore, it will work in any web browser and on every operating system. (It does require Flash 9 software, which is free.)

This is one of Adobe’s first steps into the world of “cloud computing” – the idea of putting software and files on a distant server that users then access through the Internet. There are downsides to this new frontier. For example, Photoshop Express doesn’t work without an Internet connection. So if a user is knocked offline, she losses access to her pictures.

On the flip side, since the images are stored remotely, they can be seen from any computer in the world (depending on user-privacy settings).

Since the program is hyped as both a photo-sharing and photo-editing site, Photoshop Express faces competition from two sides, says Amit Gupta, founder of the do-it-yourself enthusiast site Photojojo.com.

He says the two big editing contenders are Aviary, a suite of web-based image applications that are in private testing, and Picnik, which has already teamed up with Facebook, Flickr, and other popular photo-sharing sites.

“I kinda want to see the little guys win out,” Mr. Gupta jokes. “But Express has a very professional and slick look to it. And the tools are possibly better than any of the others that I’ve seen.”

As for the photo-sharing side, Adobe has cleared one major hurdle by letting users tap directly into their supposed competitors, says Ron Glaz, a research analyst for IDC, the technology-intelligence firm based in Framingham, Mass.

But hard-core Flickr users, for example, spend hours identifying their photos with captions, tags, even map coordinates. All of this investment makes switching services a potential nightmare, says Mr. Glaz. If Adobe wants to attract the millions of devoted Flickr fans, they’ll need to make sure that this information stays intact as a picture slides to and from Photoshop Express.

Adobe also hopes that happy Photoshop Express users will become happy Adobe customers in the future. The company has won over professionals with the full Photoshop package and snatched hobbyists with its $99 Photoshop Elements, which is more powerful than Express. Now Adobe is vying for that last consumer segment – the snapshot set.

Article source - http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0328/p25s04-stct.html

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Yahoo agreed to join rival Google’s OpenSocial platform, which aims at building an infrastructure for the social web, as Google described it. Through the OpenSocial, platform, developers will be able to create applications for social-networking sites. The platform was launched last November, and MySpace is already a member.

“OpenSocial has been a community-driven specification from the beginning,” said Joe Krauss, Director of Product Management with Google. “The formation of this foundation will ensure that it remains so in perpetuity. Developers and websites should feel secure that OpenSocial will be forever free and open,” Krauss added.

This association appeared as a surprise considering the known rivalry between Google and Yahoo, but, together with MySpace, the three said they were planning to ensure neutrality and longevity for OpenSocial and as founding members to offer developers the potential to connect with over 500 million people worldwide.

“Yahoo! believes in supporting community-driven industry specifications and expects that OpenSocial will fuel innovation and make the web more relevant and more enjoyable to millions of users,” said Wade Chambers, Vice President Yahoo! Platforms. “Our support builds on similar efforts with the OpenID community and will expand the opportunity for developers and publishers to benefit from an open and increasingly social web.”

MySpace also welcomed Yahoo! as an important addition to the OpenSocial network, stating that this alliance will provide developers with the necessary tools to make the Internet faster and ‘foster more innovation and creativity.” The organization will be created within the next three months.

With the help of OpenSocial, developers will be able to create applications to access social networks and update feeds, and with the help of a common API, they will also be able to make them available to users. This movement looks as a response to Facebook’s own open system that allows developers to create applications on the Web.

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by James “Dela” Delahunty

Digg founder Kevin Rose says that Apple’s 3G version of the iPhone will have video chat capabilities. His past predictions about the first generation iPhone turned out to be largely false but he is citing different sources for this information. In a recent “Diggnation” podcast, Rose told viewers that Apple is restricting third parties from authoring applications that run in both the foreground and background partly because it doesn’t want rivals to its own upcoming iChat software.

He claims the newer iPhone will have two digital cameras; one on the back of the handset and one behind the transparent touch-screen. The camera will allow video-conferencing over high-speed 3G data networks and according to Rose, users will be able to chat with iChat users on other iPhones or using software on their computer.

While Rose did get a lot of details wrong before the iPhone was released (reported a slide-out keyboard and CDMA support), he has made many good predictions in the past; the most relevant to this article being his last minute report of an iPod Nano before it was unveiled in 2005.

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