By: S. Reeves

If you have been running with a basic website since the inception of your online presence, you may want to look into developing something a bit more dynamic. Today’s World Wide Web is full of competitors. Your competition is doing what you are doing on the web, but they may be doing it better. The key is to stay up on the latest technology and to not be afraid to try new things on your site. Obviously, you want to do a bit of market research before you plunge ahead with an entire new set up, but if you get together with any of the fine Denver flash development experts available, you can get some wonderful ideas for how to do a lot on your website with a few changes.

Flash design has been around for a while now, though most website owners who are not computer professionals do not really know what it is. You may have downloaded the Macromedia Flash Player for free in order to see movie previews, company presentations, or music videos, but you may not be familiar with flash technology beyond that daily use. Flash development, Denver web design, or systems development teams are all capable of telling you more about flash.

Basically, your website is probably written in HTML, a code that is used to tell the computer what to display on the screen. There are other codes gaining popularity now, but the older ones are still constructed with HTML. This code language allows the computer to display images and text in a static manner. In other words, you can display an article or a photograph, but not a cartoon or a moving title. HTML is limited to fixed positions.

If you want a more dynamic site, you need to move beyond this language and enter the world of flash. So many websites online include some form of flash today that it is unusual for a large company not to have something in motion somewhere in the site. You can make text, images, and animations move around on the screen. But this is just the beginning.

Before flash really took hold, programmers used GIF images or java applets to create movement on the screen. GIF images are simply loops of the same images played over and over, and they take forever to load. Java applets are very limited in how they can be used and tend to come with some inherent kinks, such as limited color variability.

But Denver flash development firms can now take you to the next level, by allowing you to play movies, virtual animation, and other dynamic elements on your site. That’s because flash is interactive. Your client can point the mouse at flash animation and make it stop or start, can click and drag it somewhere, or even add to it if the program allows for that. In fact, flash movies are actually easier to create than java applets but allow for much more interactivity.

Flash movies also work with up to 256 colors, the standard for online full-color images. And although the original movies seemed to take forever to load, now that almost all internet users are online with a high speed connection, the flash movies load faster than the old GIF animations.

So talk to a professional flash developer today about how you can make your customers’ online experience more dynamic.

This article was written by Sytsma Morris-Reeves. Mr. Morris-Reeves runs NewMediaDenver,an Internet technology company located in downtown Denver, Colorado (http://www.NewMediaDenver.com). Mr.Morris-Reeves is a highly respected Denver SEO Expert since 10 years, and he constantly develops and stays current with all the latest SEO and Link Building Techniques.

Keywords: flash, flash development, flash design, web design

Web-Design Article Source: http://www.eArticlesOnline.com

For more info please visit us at – Flash Design Services

By: Eddie Robortson

IT Service Call is a professional web design and database development company that is serving their clients of UK since 2004. Hence it’s been 3 years, we are providing our creative, effective, professional, user friendly & search engine friendly web sites to the infinite prospective customers all over the UK.

We are reliable web design company that will design your web site in such a way that it will result in producing the good outcome. When designing the web site, our web designers take cares that a web design is complementing the web content so as a result, it can please the targeted population.

With us, you will get the rest assurance of Standard Compliance. Our strategic & certified web designers will carry out the validation of work in an attempt to make certain that their code complies with W3C standards for HTML & CSS and for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Compatibility of the designed web sites in any of the web browser is the added advantage you will get with the IT Service Call.

Through our web design services, thousands of commercial and non-commercial organization’s web sites have successfully ranked high in the major search engines, thus maximizing their business in the online community of the world.

If you get the feeling that your site is looking too tired to be get rejuvenated, than do rely on IT Service Call for your web design requirements, whether it has to be formulated Simple, Dynamic, and Ecommerce, Expandable, Corporate or Flash Animated. Our well-experienced web designers will design elegant websites for you at the most affordable rates.

Besides, Web Designing, our designers also specializes in other areas including: Web Development, Web Hosting, and Search Engine Optimization, Computer Repairs/IT Support, Computer Leasing, Internet Services and much more.

Web-Design Article Source: http://www.eArticlesOnline.com

For more info please visit us at – web development services

By: Andrew Obidowsk

There are many reasons why a person may create a web page. Either for personal or professional needs, many people these days have a web site somewhere on the Internet. With advances in modern technology, web development has become much easier, so more people are delving in and making their own website. The web gives people an opportunity to have a special place all of their own that the whole world can see. They can build blogs, make videos and even just have a simple page telling all about themselves. The Internet is a place where everyone can be a star. This sudden increase in websites and increased use of the Internet is proof in the pudding the web development is continually on the rise.

Web development has come a long way since it’s early days. When the world wide web first started, it was primarily a way for intellectuals to share academic information. In a short matter of time though, the web started to see more of a public use, and sites started popping up that were more personal in nature. It almost seemed like anyone who had Internet access had their own little web page full of their personal information for the world to see. Then the businesses realized that web development was getting larger, and decided it was the perfect way for them to spread the word about their businesses. So they jumped on the web development band wagon and business web sites started popping up.

Once the businesses got involved, the world wide web started to grow by leaps and bounds. The Internet became a place where you could buy and sell anything you could imagine. It became a place where you could meet people and make friends from around the globe. As the web continued to grow, more and more people became skilled in the art of web development, and the process became much easier. In the beginning, web development was truly a specialized area of work that could be difficult for the average person to understand. However, with technological advancements that have been made, the process has become much more simple.

These days, it almost seems like everyone is adding their own little bit of web development to the Internet. Even young children seem to have a grasp on how web development works, and some of them have no problem in creating a website of their own. The Internet shows no sign of slowing down in usage, in fact, the Internet is pretty much taking over the world. As web development continues to grow everyday with new websites popping up every minute, there’s no end in site for the Internet. With more people getting online everyday, the web is just going to continue to develop and grow. The web has developed into the largest source of online media and information in the world. Anything that you desire to find can be found on the web, from any product imaginable to mail order brides!

Having started numerous businesses in Toronto web development is essential to stay competitive in any business. But to really stay on top of the game I use Toronto SEO services to keep my page ranked high in search engines.

Web-Design Article Source: http://www.eArticlesOnline.com

For more info please visit us at – web development services

Are you interested to indulge yourself in the field of e-commerce? It is true that e-commerce is the latest sensation in the field of business. Basically, e-commerce is a business technique, where the objects are bough or sold through various electronic media. The electronic media include Internet or the computer network and some other. The e-commerce is gaining some rapid popularity due to the increasing use of the Internet. On other hand, there is no maintenance cost required while you have to spend lots of money in maintenance of shop exist in real. Due to the low maintenance cost the e-commerce business groups are selling the products in low rates. This is another cause of its popularity. Now, to be successful in the field of e-commerce this is very much important to have a good website that reflects your business quality. In this article, we will discuss about the essential features of an E-commerce website.

First of all it is important to have a good template to create a good e-commerce website. It is always better to buy a ‘copyright web template’ for your own e-commerce website. Basically, this is to ensure that your website looks completely different if compared to some other competitive e-commerce websites. Now you may edit the web template that you bought as par your own necessity. But if you are enough confident about your skills, then you can design the web template yourself. Now the second important thing is regarding the website address. Try to have domain that ends with .com. Basically, it is important since .com is the most common and traditional extension of the websites. Now it is also very much important, to have a simple name as the web address. Don’t put any complex name, which is tough to pronounce in the web address filed. Try to avoid the special characters like ‘@’, ‘#’ or even ‘-‘ in the field of website address.

Ecommerce website design should feature the entire collection of your e-commerce business store. It is also important to put the details of each and every product in the website. It will be often better if you create a section where the user of the particular product can rate it and create a review. If possible, you can put 3 or 4 photos of every product snapped from different angles. It will be better option to feature the best selling products in the front page. Now, if you are selling the products of different categories then you have to sort out the products with respect to the categories. It will be better to include such tools so that two different products of same category can be compared with respect to different features. Promote the discount offers hugely and carefully. It is also essential to use a secured server for the website since the matters of payment and money transfer related to it.

Last but not least, it is important to perform the search engine optimization techniques to get the higher rank in different search engines. It is very much important for the website to be in the higher ranked side to be successful in the field of e-commerce.

Source From: http://www.articlecircle.com/internet/ecommerce-website-design.html

For more info please visit us at – offshore web designing services

Yahoo on Monday will launch a new Web site aimed at women. The site, called “Shine,” will feature original blogs and content from major publishing partners including Conde Nast, Hearst, and Time.

The site is Yahoo’s latest foray into vertical sites, which include the popular Yahoo News and Yahoo Finance, as well as Sports and Entertainment, and the much less popular Yahoo Tech and Yahoo Green. This site is Yahoo’s first targeting a specific audience and not just a topic.

Yahoo aims to be the top destination site in the lifestyles category, said Amy Iorio, general manager of Lifestyles at Yahoo. Women as a demographic is a good target, particularly given the number of women who use Yahoo (40 million women between the ages of 25 and 54 every month) and the fact that females tend to blog more than males.

“This is really a key audience for Yahoo,” she said. “We’ve been calling them ‘chief household officers’ internally.”

Yahoo’s efforts at doing original content haven’t all panned out, but this site is more of a hybrid. Articles and original blogs will come from a range of sources, including Glamour, Epicurious.com, Style.com, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, Women’s Health, and Good Housekeeping.

Eight editors are overseeing the various sections (such as home, parenting, fashion, culture, and career) and the editor in chief is Brandon Holley, former editor in chief of Jane magazine.

Shine readers will be able to start their own blogs and that content, if deemed worthy, can end up as some of the featured content in different sections on the site.

You will also be able to get to your Yahoo Mail on Shine, and there is integration with Yahoo Search, Food, Health, and Astrology. But there could be even more integration with things like Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Answers.

The site will compete with iVillage and fashion- and celebrity-news heavy Glam.com, but its content partners and editors will set it apart, Holley said. Shine will distinguish itself by having more of an editorial voice than the other sites and by interacting more with readers, she said.

On a quick glance, Shine looks more aesthetically appealing and less cluttered than the rival sites, despite the fact that Yahoo is not exactly known for simple site design. The site will be at http://shine.yahoo.com.

Article source- http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9905786-7.html?tag=nefd.top

For more info please visit us at – Offshore software Development Company

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

For more info please visit us at – Social Media Optimization Services & Photo editing services

Coming from an agency, there are often times when there is need to perform a competitive analysis for a client in order to better understand the client’s position in the competitive landscape. The main purpose of a competitive analysis should be to gain awareness of the competitive factors analyzed and to leverage the client’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) to their advantage. So what kind of factors should be included in an online competitive analysis? Below are a few that I feel should always make the competitive analysis list:

 Domain Age: The age of your domain can have an affect in the way search engine determine authoritativeness for your site. Theoretically, the longer the domain has been active, the more value it receives from search engines. Webconfs has a great tool for calculating the age of your domain and your competitors’ http://www.webconfs.com/domain-age.php.

Search Engine Visibility: Take your vertical’s main keyword basket and analyze how visible your site is compared to its competitors in Google, Yahoo, MSN, ASK and AOL. Comparing the number of top X rankings can give you a sense of your keyword market share.

Site Traffic: This one is difficult to compare unless you have access to your competitors’ analytics, however Compete.com’s search analytics does a fairly decent job of providing some insight.

In Bound Link Quality: Using a combination of Yahoo Site Explorer and a batch PageRank checker you can begin to determine the quality of back-links for a given domain. The quality of links is more important than the quantity.

In Bound Link Anchor Text: The quality of links is partially based on the theme of the linking site as well as the anchor text that is linking to you. Image or branded links aren’t as high quality as keyword rich links. http://www.webconfs.com/anchor-text-analysis.php

Meta Tags: This maybe considered simplistic and old school but meta description and title tags are still important in SEO. Analyzing description and title tags can help you determine which competing sites best differentiate themselves as well as the messaging the site is providing visitors.

Paid Search Campaigns: On the other side of the fence their is sponsored campaigns and a tool like SpyFu can give you some insight on PPC competitors and keyword costs.

Blogs: Got a blog? Check out Blog Juice from Text Link Ads, which looks at Bloglines, Alexa and Technorati to compute a “juice” score.

Obviously there are other online factors to consider and I would to hear about what other people think. 

Article source - http://www.searchengineguide.com/manoj-jasra/8-factors-cover-competitive-analysis.php

For more info please visit us at –Software Outsourcing & SEO services

The latest version of Apple’s browser adds some major enticements to switch.

By Seth Weintraub

Apple released Safari 3.1 on March 18 with an updated rendering engine that makes the fastest Internet browser even faster.

On top of that, Apple’s new browser includes some features that reflect the future of the HTML 5 specification: offline storage, media support, and CSS animations and Web fonts. It also adds some needed compatibility and bug fixes, as well as some other new features that really make it a great everyday browser.

For the uninitiated, Apple provides a great PDF overview of Safari. You can get the upgrade/installer from apple.com/safari/download/ (it’s about a 16MB download for both Mac and PC) or simply update from Software Update. The installation is easy but strangely requires a restart on Macs but not on Windows. By the way, Safari 3.1 is the first Windows version not to carry the “beta” tag.

The interface and the user experience are largely unchanged from those in Safari 3.0. Under the hood, however, Apple has made some significant changes that it has pulled from the latest builds of the open-source WebKit engine.

WebKit is the framework version of the engine that’s used by Safari. It is also the basis of the Web browsing engine in iPhone’s Mobile Safari, Symbian’s browser, the Google Android platform and Adobe’s new AIR platform.

Testing

To check out how well Safari 3.1 handles Web sites, I ran it through some popular standards testing — and found that it leads the pack. In the Acid3 Tests, which were created by the Web Standards Project to test dynamic browser capabilities, Safari 3.1 scored 75 out of 100, significantly higher than the previous version of Safari and other shipping browsers (Firefox 3 Beta 4 scored 68, while the most recent WebKit scored 92).

However, the big news is how fast the new version of Safari is. How fast? I tested Safari 3.1 on my first-generation 2-GHz MacBook Pro with 2GB of RAM. In MooTools’ SlickSpeed speed/validity test, Safari came out on top in almost every category on both Mac and PC.

It also did significantly better than any shipping browser on the SunSpider JavaScript speed tests (although since these tests are hosted at WebKit.org, they are perhaps biased). For example, on the Mac, Safari scored 4430ms, compared with 5048ms for Firefox 3 Beta 4.

While I spend 90% of my time on a Macintosh, I also installed Safari on my Windows XP box to see how it stacked up against Internet Explorer, Opera and Firefox. In short, it worked extremely well for everyday browsing, offering speed and efficiency, especially on a four- or five-year-old machine. It also performed really well with lots of tabs open.

Although Safari 3.1 does perform much better than the shipping version of Firefox, the speed improvements in Firefox 3 Beta 4 are catching up with Safari 3.1 — though Firefox 3 did consume more CPU cycles during my tests.

One of the drawbacks of Safari has been the perceived “over-smoothing” or softening of fonts on the PC. While this hasn’t been completely fixed, Apple’s Safari 3.1 allows Web sites to specify fonts outside the seven Web-safe font families; these new fonts can be downloaded by the browser as needed.

Unfortunately, there are still prominent features that are part of rival browsers that Safari simply can’t match. For example, Safari doesn’t have all of the add-ons that Firefox enjoys, such as the Google toolbar.

Furthermore, if you need to use a site that employs Microsoft’s proprietary DirectX technology — like Microsoft Exchange’s Outlook Web Access, for example — you’ll find that the experience on Safari leaves much to be desired. In this case, you’re better off using Internet Explorer.

Finally, Opera offers features, such as direct BitTorrent downloads, that aren’t offered in Safari.

With the 3.1 release, Safari has become the fastest browser you can use. If that isn’t enough reason to make a switch, its strong adherence to Web standards and rapid adoption of new technologies might make you think again.

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Virtually all marketers have realized that blogs can be a powerful part of an overall search marketing campaign. This is especially true in the B2C marketplace, but what about for B2B focused companies? What do successful B2B blogs have in common? In looking at hundreds of B2B blogs, eight common characteristics were apparent to me. Here are some tips for creating B2B blogs that drive loyalty (and links).

Post regularly…and only when you have something meaningful to offer. Often B2B companies are concerned with being able regularly publish good content. The standard advice is blog regularly, and you can decide what that schedule will be. However, unless you set and keep a schedule, your fears about lack of content will be self-fulfilling. Yet, don’t simply throw something together to meet the deadline. B2B blog readers are looking for insight, information, things to help them with their career, and how to do things better. Make sure each post has something of value.

Incorporate images and other media. Presently, the vast majority of B2B blogs are text-only blogs. Make the blog more visually interesting by adding photos, illustrations, graphs, and video. It will make the blog more enjoyable to read and increase the likelihood that readers will return to the blog and link to it.

Incorporate humor. Humor can create great affinity. Everyone likes to laugh or smile, to find something clever or smart. Regularly write something funny, post a cartoon on a relevant issue, or point to something humorous elsewhere. People don’t expect to find that in a B2B blog. If they find humor when they visit, they’ll associate a smile with your blog, keep coming back, and promote the blog via conversations and links.

Be authentic. Speak conversationally. Express your personality. Let readers sense the person behind the words. When we like an author, it’s seldom about the words the author uses; it’s about the style of the author. Have a style and let it show through. That’s where a personal connection will be made.

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Users can access an English-language beta version of Microsoft Office Live Workspace from the company’s Web site at no charge.

By Paul McDougall
InformationWeek

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) said Tuesday it has made available for worldwide public testing a hosted version of its widely used Microsoft Office productivity software.

As part of the trial, users can access an English-language beta version of Microsoft Office Live Workspace, as the offering is called, from the company’s Web site at no charge. Microsoft for the past several months has conducted a private beta program for Office Live that’s drawn more than 100,000 participants, according to the company.

Office Live Workspace lets users store and access Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Office applications on the Web through any computer with an Internet connection — even if the PC isn’t running Office on its hard drive.

That means a mobile worker could, say, create a Word document at his or her office, upload it to the service, and then access it later from virtually any PC.

Without Office Live, that same worker would have to carry the file around on a flash device or e-mail it to himself. Still, the document could only be downloaded and opened on a computer running a Word-compatible application.

Office Live could also eliminate the insecure practice — often used by executives on the go — of downloading files to a public computer. Office Live users can store more than 1,000 documents on the service and also grant access authorization to their files to business colleagues and other third parties.

Office Live Workspace is part of the software-plus-services strategy that Microsoft unveiled last year. The campaign is meant to bolster the company’s presence in the booming Web services market while protecting its multibillion-dollar packaged software franchise.

The effort has seen Microsoft roll out a number of Web services under its Windows Live brand, including an online storage site called SkyDrive and a social networking site called Spaces.

Microsoft’s assault on the Web is in no small part a response to advances by archrival Google. In recent months, the search engine company has introduced a host of new online services. Of those, the biggest threat to Microsoft is Google Apps. The offering features free or low-cost versions of Office-style productivity applications that are hosted on the Web.

The advantage of Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s approach is that, unlike Office Live, users don’t need to purchase any pricey boxed software for the service to work. The downside is that users for the most part can’t get to the applications without an Internet connection.

Microsoft said it plans to roll out Office Live beta programs in languages other than English in the coming weeks.

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By David Sims

TMCnet Contributing Editor

Opera Software (News - Alert), a vendor of Web browsing products, has announced that Ten by Orange has launched its unlimited mobile Internet service, Easy Web, powered by Opera Mini.

Using Opera’s compression technology to process and compress Web pages by up to 90 percent before sending them to mobile phones, the Easy Web service is billed as letting Ten by Orange customers access the full Web, surf sites, mobile blog and social network on the go. Easy Web, powered by Opera Mini, will be made available on the HTC (News - Alert) Touch, Samsung SGH-F330 and fifteen other handsets in France.

A subsidiary of the Orange Group, Ten by Orange develops offers and services designed to bring mobile Internet products to the French marketplace.

“By partnering with Opera, we are able to provide our customers with a true Web browser which is fast, robust and keeps our delivery costs under control,” said Thierry Coilhac, COO of Ten by Orange.

Opera Mini officials claim over 39 million cumulative users. The tailor-made Opera Mini product for Ten by Orange uses a customized home page with full brand integration of the User Interface, home page control including search, modification of menu items, pre-installation, bookmarks and more.

Bringing the desktop experience to mobile, Opera Mini’s Small Screen Rendering reformats the Web page to fit inside the screen width, eliminating the need for horizontal scrolling. Alternatively, a new “Desktop mode” gives users a wider view of the page.

Orange is the key brand of France Telecom (News - Alert). FT serves more than 170 million customers in five continents as of December 31, 2007, of which two thirds are Orange customers. The Group had consolidated sales of 52.9 billion euros in 2007. As of December 31, 2007, the Group had 109.6 million mobile customers and 11.6 million broadband internet (ADSL) customers.

Last week Oslo, Norway-based Opera made Google (News - Alert) the default search engine in Opera’s mobile Web browsers. Opera Mobile or Opera Mini users can access Google’s mobile search directly from the browser start page.

Because Opera Mini targets feature phones that have traditionally possessed limited browsing capabilities, company officials say, users choose to download and install Opera Mini to their phones. These consumers tend to use the mobile Web more frequently and actively than consumers with more static, less dynamic mobile Web browsers.

Every month, Opera Mini users browse more than 1.7 billion pages, with much of that traffic generated through the search function in the browser.

Google has been the default search option on Opera’s desktop browser for seven years. This new mobile collaboration covers all global territories except Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, and includes all of Opera’s standard mobile Web browsers.

Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera, said 2008 is “poised to be the year the mobile Web goes mainstream.” He noted that Opera Mobile has shipped on more than 100 million mobile phones so far, and that in 2007, more than 55 new phone models were launched with Opera Mobile pre-installed as the default Web browser.

Opera Mini is available completely free from http://www.operamini.com/. Opera Mobile is also available from http://www.opera.com/ in a free trial on select platforms. Google will appear as the default search engine for new and current users of Opera Mini as of March 1, 2008.

Earlier in February Opera Software announced the commercial release of Opera Mobile 9.5, its Web browser for phones.

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Microsoft has launched a bid to capture a segment of the growing market for rich web content on mobile phones.

The software firm has signed a deal with handset manufacturer Nokia to bring its Silverlight platform to millions of mobile phones.

Silverlight is seen as a competitor to Adobe’s Flash, which is already used by popular websites such as YouTube.

The software will first be available on Nokia’s high end smart phones running a Symbian operating system.

Flash phone

Nokia’s S60 platform, which uses Symbian, will be the first to take advantage of Silverlight.

S60 is used in handsets built by LG and Samsung as well as Nokia and is the most popular smart phone software platform with more than 53% market share.

It is used in Nokia’s latest N96 phone, the successor to its popular N95.

Other handsets and internet tablets running different software will follow at a later date, according to the firm.

Silverlight allows designers and developers to produce rich web applications that are independent of browser, operating system and handset.

Microsoft has stressed its value for developing Web 2.0 applications that would work on a computer, but also on any other device including mobile phones.

The software enters a marketplace already dominated by Adobe’s Flash, and its recently launched Air product.

Flash is already on millions of mobile phones.

Adobe has agreements with 18 of the top 20 device manufacturers worldwide including Nokia.

And, according to Adobe, 450 million devices have been shipped with the cut-down version of Flash, known as Flash Lite.

Microsoft will hope to compete with this presence.

The firm is currently working on a version of Sliverlight for its own Windows Mobile software.

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With Google’s financial backing, Steve Chen is optimistic about offering real-time streaming on the Web.

By Antone Gonsalves
InformationWeek

YouTube co-founder Steve Chen says the site plans to launch a live video service this year.

In a brief interview videotaped at a New York party thrown by YouTube, Chen told Sarah Meyers of Pop17.com that YouTube had always wanted to offer live video but lacked the resources. That, however, has changed, since Google’s acquisition of YouTube in 2006.

The video and transcript of the interview were posted by TechCrunch. In the interview, Meyers asks, “When are you guys gonna do live video on YouTube?”

Chen responds: “2008. We’ll do it this year.” He goes on to say, “Live video is just something that we’ve always wanted to do. We’ve never had the resources to do it correctly, but now with Google, we hope to actually launch something this year.”

Live video, which is the ability to use a Web cam to record events and then stream the results in real time to the Web is not new to the Internet. Yahoo launched such a service as an “experimental release” this month.

Along with showing Web cam-generated video streams from people’s computers, Yahoo Live also offers developers an application programming interface for mashing up live video streams on a Web site or client application. The API uses REST, or Representational State Transfer, an XML-based protocol for invoking Web services over HTTP.

A unique feature in the service is the ability to see people watching the same video, assuming their Web cams are linked to the service. In addition, there’s live chat while the video is playing.

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This is the most important acquisition in Sun’s history,” said CEO Jonathan Schwartz.

By Charles Babcock
InformationWeek
February 26, 2008 05:20 PM

Sun Microsystems (NSDQ: JAVA) has completed its acquisition of MySQL six weeks after announcing its intent to do so. As of today, Marten Mickos, MySQL’s former CEO, is now senior VP of a new software database group, reporting to Rich Green, executive VP for software. Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz said Mickos also will report directly to him as part of Sun’s senior management team.

The $1 billion cost of acquiring MySQL was worth the price, said Schwartz. MySQL “was the crown jewel of the open source marketplace,” with 11 million customers and “the strategic value of opening new markets to Sun,” he said in a teleconference announcing the closure of the deal on Tuesday.

MySQL is the speedy, open source, Web-page-serving database that’s used by Facebook, Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Slashdot, and other giants of the Web. With Sun’s help, MySQL can now overcome what Schwartz termed “the chief liability of open source companies,” supplying 24/7 global technical support.

The acquisition “marks the end of a remarkable era for MySQL and the beginning of another remarkable one,” Mickos said at the teleconference. “As part of Sun, we will grow to serve more customers with bigger deployments and bigger scalability.”

The announcement was filled with superlatives. “This is the most important acquisition in Sun’s history,” said Schwartz, even though Sun’s $4.1 billion acquisition of Storage Technologies in June 2005 was much larger. Reminded of StorageTek, Schwartz said, “We don’t have any second thoughts about history. MySQL as a database is as much about storage as StorageTek. We’re gathering together the most compelling open source storage platform in the industry.”

Sun is counting on MySQL’s continued growth in the $15 billion-a-year database industry to fuel additional software sales out of the Sun portfolio, although analysts put MySQL’s share of that at somewhere less than $100 million a year in revenue. Both Mickos and Schwartz took pains to say that Linux, not Sun’s Solaris, will remain MySQL’s primary operating system. In fact, MySQL runs on Linux as its most popular platform, with Windows second, and Solaris coming in a distant third. Nevertheless, MySQL was developed on Solaris, said Simon Phipps, chief open source officer at Sun.

At a media summit Feb. 13, Schwartz raised some eyebrows when he said the popular LAMP stack, which includes Linux and MySQL, doesn’t have to be taken literally. Sun will encourage developers to use Solaris, instead of Linux, with the stack.

Regardless of operating system choice, Schwartz asserted that with MySQL, Sun has a set of software that more directly competes withMicrosoft (NSDQ: MSFT)’s Windows Server and SQL Server database. “I couldn’t agree more strongly,” he told a questioner, when asked if the acquisition brings Sun closer to head-to-head competition. But Sun will compete on building out the next generation of Web applications for the Internet, not dominance of the desktop.

Sun’s Green said it wasn’t the right time to talk about future possibilities stemming from the acquisition, but it wasn’t unreasonable to expect Sun to more closely integrate MySQL with Sun middleware, such as its GlassFish application server project.

As developers build out Web applications that interact with individual site visitors, answer questions with fresh product information and data, and conduct transactions, Sun wants to be the supplier to the enterprise for the network’s next phase. Sun plans to buy additional open source companies, but it clearly views MySQL as the cornerstone of its campaign. It gives Sun an open door to the builders of the next generation of applications.

That acquisition wasn’t only big for Sun, said Schwartz. “It was the most important acquisition in the industry,” he said during the teleconference.

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Almost every blogger aims to grow their blog and reach a larger audience. Unfortunately, most new bloggers don’t know much about promoting a blog when they are just getting started. The good news is you will learn pretty quickly if you are consistently involved and working at promoting your blog. Here are ten things that I have learned to be true from my experience.

1. Building Significant Search Engine Traffic Will Take Time

New blogs generally take several months, at least, before they gain enough trust from search engines to produce any type of significant flow of traffic. If you are planning to focus on search engines as your primary source of traffic, you would be well advised to also focus on some other sources of traffic, especially in the early months.

Building a blog that is search engine-friendly is critical if you want to maximize search traffic, so take care of that from the start and focus on creating great content that others will talk about and link to.

2. Not All Traffic Is Equal

No two sources of traffic are quite the same. I get a good percentage of the traffic at my blog through social media, and I can attest to the fact that social media traffic is generally less responsive and less likely to stick around than visitors from most other sources. Focusing on stats without looking at the true results can cause a bit of an illusion. Sure, visitors are great, but are they leaving after being on the blog for 30 seconds and never returning?

Search engine traffic is highly sought after because these visitors are actively looking for what you have to offer. But other types of traffic have strong points too. Visitors who are referred from another blog will generally be more responsive since they have been recommended by someone they trust. Every source of traffic has pros and cons, so try to take these things into consideration when you are promoting your blog and analyzing the results.

3. Consistent Posting Is Key

Most bloggers need to keep publishing new posts in order to keep traffic at a certain level. Some bloggers are able to generate large amounts of search engine traffic to older posts to the point that traffic will be fairly sustained without new posts, but this is pretty rare. New posts keep subscribers coming back, they keep social media votes coming, and they keep adding new pages to search engine indexes.

Posting consistently doesn’t mean that you have to post every day, it simply means that you need to publish content on a regular basis, whatever that may be. Almost every blog that successfully draws traffic is publishing new posts with some consistency.

4. Consistent Traffic Is Almost Impossible

Although posting needs to be consistent to keep traffic levels up, that doesn’t mean that it will keep traffic levels consistent. Every blog has ups and downs and two days are rarely the same. This is a natural occurrence and it should be embraced or else it can become very frustrating. Make sure that you enjoy the times when traffic is high, and keep on plugging away to get through the slower times. Blogging would almost be boring is traffic levels didn’t fluctuate like they do.

5. Repeat Visitors Should Be the Goal

Yes, it’s great to see an impressive number of unique visitors arriving at your blog, but how many of them will be back? Repeat visitors are the lifeblood of blogs. Subscribers, of course, are most likely to keep coming back, so focusing on subscribers is typically a good thing.

Repeat visitors will not only help to improve your overall traffic flow and stats, more importantly they will be your most responsive visitors in terms of comments, social media votes, sales, and just about anything else. As they keep coming back and reading your blog, you will be earning more of their trust and your network will grow.

6. Links Help In Several Ways

Building inbound links is a priority for most bloggers, and for good reason. They drive click-through traffic from other blogs, they increase your exposure around the blogosphere, and they help to boost your search engine rankings. Link building is often prioritized because of search engine rankings, but the other factors should not be overlooked. If you blog in a competitive niche, recognition and exposure will be critical in convincing visitors that they should pay attention to you. Getting a few links from respected blogs can help with search engine traffic, but the added credibility that you get can be just as important, especially for newer bloggers.

7. Balance Is Important

Diversity in traffic will help you to avoid losing a huge percentage of your visitors if something unforeseen happens. Search engine rankings are not permanent, especially with Google being so ready and willing to penalize blogs who they feel have violated their guidelines. If you rely too heavily on search engine traffic you could find yourself losing a big portion of your traffic at any given time.

Also, social media traffic is extremely inconsistent, so just because you have been getting decent traffic doesn’t mean it will continue. The best approach is to spread things out and focus on growing traffic from several sources rather than just one. That way you will always be safe and you won’t depend on a particular source for your livelihood.

8. Smaller Sources of Traffic Shouldn’t Necessarily Be Ignored

Not all sources of traffic will send thousands of visitors, but that doesn’t mean that they are not valuable. For example, participating in forums is likely to drive some traffic to your blog, but not tons. However, those visitors can be very valuable because they have met you or learned from you through the forum and they’ll be more likely to subscribe and become a loyal reader.

Likewise, leaving comments on other blogs will bring some traffic, but it is rare that any one comment will bring a lot of visitors. Still, this traffic is valuable because many times they have clicked through due to something that you said catching their attention.

Don’t simply assume that traffic is measured only in terms of numbers. Smaller sources of traffic have been instrumental in building many successful blogs.

9. Networking Is Critical

All successful bloggers are surrounded by a strong network of other successful bloggers. This is something that I didn’t really think much about before I started blogging, but I quickly came to realize the importance of networking.

A strong network will provide you with friends and colleagues that can be a help when you need some advice, they can provide links to your blog, they can give you social media votes, they can be an inspiration and encouragement to you, and they can even wind up being your partners in future projects. Being a strong networker is all about being willing to help others and being proactive in meeting others.

10. Blog Traffic Can Be Bought for Relatively Little Money

If you are interested in getting some extra promotion or growing your blog quickly, there are a number of affordable advertising options that will drive real traffic to your blog. Pay Per Click ads can be very effective and inexpensive (depending on what words and phrases you bid on). StumbleUpon advertising is another option. You can purchase their traffic for just $0.05 per visitor. Even banner advertisements on other blogs can be relatively cheap. Running an ad for a month or more will give you exposure to a new audience and if you were to calculate a cost-per-click it is usually pretty low.

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I’m going to ask you to use your imagination for a moment.

Think of a topic that interests you. Maybe it’s your favorite sport or hobby, for example. Now imagine that you’re searching the Internet for information on that topic.

The first article you come across is related to the topic you’re researching, but it doesn’t offer much in the way of value. It’s too general and full of pointless “fluff.” It makes obvious points that a third-grader could grasp. And it fails to offer any related information or resources.

The second article you come across is much more in-depth. It explains several aspects of your topic with refreshing insight. It is helpful and useful, and it links out to many related articles and resources on the subject.

If you could only bookmark one of these pages for future reference, which one would it be? It would be the second page, right?

You, like most people, would probably prefer the second page to the first. It’s an easy choice, and that’s because the author of the second article understood (and delivered) the most important concept of website content development — the value factor.

5 Benefits of High-Value Web Content

This kind of content has value for the reader, obviously. But it also benefits the author / publisher. Here are the top five benefits of creating high-value website content for your small business website:

1. It keeps people on your website longer.

2. It makes people more inclined to trust you.

3. It encourages readers to recommend the site to others.

4. It encourages other webmasters to link to your content.

5. It helps you improve your search engine ranking and visibility.

All of this sounds great, you say. But how do I create that kind of small business website content? Here are the top five guidelines for creating high-value website content.

 5 Steps to High-Value Web Content

1. Choose the right author.

2. Choose the right topic.

3. Address all sides of the topic.

4. Add supporting graphics, pictures, etc.

5. Link to related resources, both on your site and elsewhere.

Let’s look at each of these steps in greater detail.

1. Choose the Right Author

I once worked for a company who let their web programmers write the instructions for their online ordering process. Big mistake. If their audience were programmers as well, this might be okay. But most of their customers had limited technical skills. So when these people encountered online instructions such as “Validate parameters before advancing” … the customers would often become dead in the water.

This is a prime example of choosing the wrong author for web writing. Sure, the programmers’ input is important. After all, they built the thing. But they should not be the voice of customer guidance. A skilled web writer (someone with usability experience) would have “translated” these instructions to say something like “Please fill in all required information before moving to the next screen.”

Here’s the key to this. The best author for your small business website content is not always the person who knows the most about the product or service from a technical standpoint. Often, it’s best to have an in-house writer who plays the go-between role of “consumer advocate,” getting the information from one group and translating it for another group.

 2. Choose the Right Topic

If your small business only offers one product or service, then that will likely be the topic of your web content. In this case, I would focus on choosing the right angle as well. Don’t tell people what you want them to know — this is an outdated way of thinking about public information, especially when it comes to small business website content. Instead, find out what people want to know about the types of products you offer, and use your web content to address those questions or concerns.

If you are writing web content for a company that has many products or services, you will have to spend more time choosing topics first and choosing your angle second. In this case, it becomes more about topic organization than anything. Large websites with many topics are ideally suited for a category and sub-category system: These are our products >> And this is product ‘A’ >> And this is a web page that explains product ‘A’ in detail.

3. Address All Sides of the Topic

Whether you’re writing about one of your products, or you’re creating a tutorial of some kind, you need to cover all the angles. There’s nothing worse than website content that leaves the job only half-done, telling you why a certain thing is important but not pursuing that lead.

When you are close to a certain topic — as is the case with people who create a product or service — it’s easy to assume everyone else understands it as well as you do. But the opposite is usually true, so you need to explain all sides of a topic when you write content for your small business website.

Want to keep your pages relatively short for easy reading? You can do that while still offering complete information. That’s what hyperlinks are for!

4. Link to Related Resources

Here’s the key to developing great content for your small business website. Try to create authority documents that others in your field would link to and recommend to others. One of the key criteria for a resource document is that it links to plenty of supporting information, both on the same website and elsewhere on the web.

In addition to being good for your readers, this kind of useful content will make other webmasters more inclined to link to your website. This adds to your link “popularity” and can further improve the search engine ranking of your small business website.

When writing a particular web page, try to think of it as “the ultimate guide to [blank].” This is the first step to creating the kind of authority documents that eventually dominate the search engines and drive endless web traffic for the authors. But it’s rarely possible to create an “ultimate guide” to anything in just one page, so be liberal about linking to other sources on your own website and elsewhere (as long as they are not direct competitors).

5. Add Supporting Graphics, Pictures, Etc.

Reading online can be hard on the eyeballs. You can make the reader’s job easier in two ways. First, you can format your content appropriately for web reading (short paragraphs, narrow text columns, lots of bullet points, headers, sub-headers, etc.). Secondly, you can add supporting images and helpful graphics.

Well-placed graphics can improve website content in a number of ways. Images are more enticing than text upon first glance, so they can help attract and retain readers. They also help you clarify your message with visual reinforcement.

Conclusion

I have a motto I use regarding website content. “If it’s not worth putting online, don’t put it online.” This is my reminder to myself that I need to use the techniques outlined above to create superior website content. Because that’s the kind of content that leads to online success. Apply these lessons to your small business website and watch your own success increase!

About The Author
Brandon Cornett operates a web marketing firm in Austin, Texas and is a web writer at large for dozens of websites and blogs. Learn more by visiting http://www.austinseoguy.com.