Tryangled Dev

Web site marketing goes well beyond basic search engine optimization and SEO services. Your marketing campaign should include managing your company’s visibility through timely, useful media campaigns, advertising campaigns, and supplemental promotions. Achieving visibility through search engines should be just one of several goals. You’ll want to build your brand so that people think about your firm first when seeking products or services like your own. We help you develop a comprehensive Web site marketing strategy for your business.

Tue Jul 8

SAN FRANCISCO - Microsoft Corp. threw its weight behind investor Carl Icahn’s effort to dump Yahoo Inc.’s board, saying Monday that a successful shareholder rebellion would encourage the software maker to renew its bid to buy Yahoo’s Internet search engine or possibly the entire company.
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The unexpected endorsement gives Icahn a carrot to dangle before Yahoo shareholders as he wages an acrimonious campaign to replace Yahoo’s nine directors at the company’s annual meeting Aug. 1.

It marks the first time that Microsoft has publicly sided with Icahn since the billionaire investor launched his attempted coup nearly eight weeks ago.

The two sides decided they could work together after Icahn held “frequent” discussions with Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and some of his top lieutenants during the past week, according to a letter that Icahn sent Monday to Yahoo shareholders.

Industry analysts said Icahn now has more credibility with Yahoo shareholders because he has been arguing that a purge of Yahoo’s board is the only way to salvage a deal with Microsoft.

“This breathes new life into Icahn’s proposal,” said Stanford Group analyst Clayton Moran. “It really pushes the power to Icahn and his board (nominees).”

The prospect that a changing of the guard at Yahoo might pave the way to a friendly deal with Microsoft lifted Yahoo shares $2.56, or 12 percent, to finish Monday at $23.91.

Echoing previous remarks in its battle with Icahn, Yahoo questioned Microsoft’s interest in buying the entire company.

“If Microsoft and Mr. Ballmer really want to purchase Yahoo, we again invite them to make a proposal immediately,” Yahoo said.

But Icahn said Microsoft doesn’t want to risk making a bid under Yahoo’s current regime, because the software maker fears Yahoo’s management would make more poor decisions during an antitrust review that would take at least nine months.

“If the current board and management team of Yahoo mismanage the company (and their recent track record is far from reassuring), Microsoft would be putting its money at risk and a great deal could be lost,” Icahn wrote in his letter to shareholders.

Microsoft’s willingness to work with Icahn undermines one of Yahoo’s chief arguments for re-electing its board.

Yahoo has maintained that it would be foolhardy to back Icahn’s slate of alternate nominees because Icahn had no concrete ideas besides selling the company to Microsoft — something that Yahoo has been depicting as a pipe dream since Microsoft withdrew a $47.5 billion offer in early May.

Microsoft reinforced that perception by refusing to revive its bid last month even after Yahoo’s board signaled its willingness to accept the earlier offer.

With Microsoft in Icahn’s corner, “the dynamic has changed,” Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Jeffrey Lindsay said. “There is now a rationale for voting for Icahn’s board because there now seems to be a real possibility for a deal again.”

Monday’s turn of events amplifies the pressure on Yahoo co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang, whose handling of the earlier negotiations with Microsoft infuriated many shareholders.

Yahoo’s stock price had plunged by more than 30 percent to fall below $20 during Yang’s first six months as CEO. Then, in January, Microsoft raised hopes for a quick windfall with its unsolicited takeover bid, only to be repeatedly rebuffed.

If he seizes control of the board, Icahn has promised to fire the 39-year-old Yang as CEO and replace him with a more seasoned leader.

Yang has been meeting with Yahoo’s major stockholders during the past week, hoping to persuade them to give him a chance to prove the Sunnyvale-based company is worth more than the $33 per share that Microsoft previously offered.

Ballmer withdrew that bid after Yang sought $37 per share — a height the stock hasn’t reached in 2 1/2 years.

In its Monday statement, Microsoft didn’t mention how much it thinks Yahoo is worth now.

Industry analysts estimated Microsoft would likely pay anywhere from $28 to $33 per share if it takes another stab at swallowing Yahoo whole.

“Microsoft is still asking Yahoo shareholders to make a big decision with incomplete information,” said Standard & Poor’s Internet analyst Scott Kessler. “I could still see a scenario where the Yahoo board is replaced and Microsoft comes in with a bid that is lower than people want. Then what do you do?”

Microsoft more recently has been trying to pry away Yahoo’s search engine for $1 billion, plus an additional $8 billion investment for a 16 percent stake in Yahoo’s remaining operations.

Yahoo instead opted for an online advertising partnership with rival Google Inc. that is supposed to boost its annual revenue by $800 million. That alliance faces an antitrust review by the U.S. Justice Department because Google and Yahoo combined control more than 80 percent of the U.S. search advertising market.

In its Monday statement, Yahoo asserted Microsoft is trying to use Icahn to engineer a purchase of Yahoo’s search engine in a deal that would hurt the company in the long run, by hindering its ability to compete in the Internet’s rapidly growing ad market.

Google has acquired the search engine optimization Performics which is a subsidiary of the company Doubleclick that Google bought. You can’t help but wonder what Google is going to be doing with this company. What better company to have do your SEO work than a company that is owned by Google, right? Or not?

Would they make more money by implementing what they do with search? Or would they be secretive yet and not let the newly acquired company know it’s secrets? Or has there search algorithm grown to the point there simply is no secret to getting to the top of Google anymore?

My belief is that the last question is the true one and if it isn’t true now, it will be true in the near future. I’ve said it before and I will say it again. SEO (search engine optimization) is changing where it is becoming merged with SEM (search engine marketing) more and more everyday.

I’m really not sure how many SEO contests are being held each year because most of them have very bad advertising, but one fellow blogger found my website and invited me to participate in the eurodipity European SEO contest this summer.

Actually this SEO contest is not really well organized because the set of rules which each participant must follow are not strict enough and this makes the competition a bit dull. The biggest problem with it is that you can use aged high pr domains not like other SEO competitions where you must use brand new domain and build it up to the top. Also the only SEO rule they have is not to use SPAM, but their definition is a bit vague and I suppose Search Engine Cloaking can be used to stuff some good keywords in non-related pages.

The great thing about this contest is that there will be a lot of small value awards. There will be 6 groups of top 3 ranker’s which will receive one week free hotel stay for two at the Costa Blanka Villas in Spain. More about the prizes see here

NOTE: This contest is that is only for Europeans and the winners will have to show proof of citizenship.

I will be writing soon on our progress, for now that’s about it. If you have EU citizenship and you wish to enter the game, please feel free (don’t forget to email me your website so I can place it on my SEO Friends page….

July 08, 2008

In SEO it’s important to occasionally go back to the basics to cover some issues that can affect the inner architecture of your website. After all, a strong and complex optimization campaign starts with your site. Also, as Content Management Systems (CMS) become more powerful and more customizable, it’s important that you speak with your vendor about certain issues before you jump on board. It’s also important to consider some situations outside of the CMS and how they affect your site.

In this blog post I am going to look at servers, specifically IIS and Apache, and how they handle URL structures.

Because more content management systems are allowing webmasters to customize URL structure, many sites now are graced with static-appearing URLs that are good for everyone; search engines and users. Instead of having mile-long URLs with a bunch of dynamic parameters, many webmasters have the option of using title case, lower case, hyphens, underscores, etc (depending on their system) to customize URL structure.

Of course, the search engines are getting better at indexing dynamic URLs and are even offering tools to help with URL rewrites in their specific engine, but in the end it’s tough to argue that a parameter-rich URL is as beneficial as a clean and simple one. It’s also important to consider how servers handle URL structure. One specific area I would like to discuss is how IIS and Apache handle URL cases. It’s pretty simple, and can make a difference in how you decide to structure your URLs.

Simply put, IIS is not case-sensitive and Apache is.
This means that on IIS, the following URLs will render the exact same page in a browser:
http://www.yoursite.com/Product-Category-One
http://www.yoursite.com/product-Category-One
http://www.yoursite.com/product-category-One
http://www.yoursite.com/product-category-one
http://www.yoursite.com/Product-category-one
(you get the point)

On Apache, these many URLs will not render in a web browser. Depending on the Apache server setup, URLs with case inconsistencies will either return a 404 or will redirect to the correct version.

So What Does this Mean?

You can see that on IIS this may present some URL canonicalization issues, however I find that the real issue lies with the internal linking structure. On either server, IIS or Apache, linking to multiple versions of the same page can be very harmful to the internal architecture of your website. For example, instead of 5 links pointing to http://www.yoursite.com/Product-Category-One, you are dispersing the links to this very same page over multiple versions of the same URL, fracturing the internal link popularity of this page.

Avoid URL Inconsistencies

A lot of responsibility of URL consistency lies in the hands of those adding links within the website. It’s best practice to have a consistent and pre-determined URL structure and to make sure everyone who has permissions to make changes to the site understands the importance of this consistency. Explain that even though the page renders (on IIS) or redirects (on Apache) that inconsistencies lead to link popularity dilution and fracturing, which can hurt the site’s search engine positioning potential.

In my experience, it helps to make the URL structure as simple as possible. I like lower case. It’s simple, it’s clean, and users tend to prefer this style when directly accessing or linking to the site.

Also, if you’re running into issues, take the time to research tools and other options to help you control the canonicalization problems you’re running into. There are various techniques and server add-ons to help you control the trouble you’re having with URL inconsistencies.

July 01, 2008

Flash website developers can breathe a sigh of relief this morning - a collaboration between Adobe, Google and Yahoo! will make it easier for the two search engines to index Flash files (SWF).

flash logoUntil now, search engine web crawlers have had lots of trouble accurately indexing text and links that appear in Flash files. For years this roadblock has been the cause of many headaches for web designers, website owners and online marketers alike. (Not to mention searchers who may be missing out on valuable content.) But the bottle of ibuprofen may be going back in the medicine cabinet.

Last night Google announced that it has launched its new Flash indexing algorithm. The new algorithm is a result of the Adobe collaboration.

Can Google now index every item in a Flash file? No. But it can index the useful parts.

According to Google software engineers Ron Adler and Janis Stipins:

Google can index text content within Flash

1) This Flash text can be used for the snippet that appears beneath your link in Google search results.

2) Flash text will be used to compare with keywords used in Google searches.

3) Indexable Flash content includes text within Flash buttons and menus.

Google can index links with Flash

1) Links within Flash files can be followed by Google’s web crawler.

Google cannot index non-textual Flash content

1) Google can’t index images within Flash files.

2) Google can’t index text that appears in Flash-based images.

3) Google will not generate anchor text for non-text, Flash-based links.

Mon Jun 23, 3:20 AM ET

The first laptops to make use of the SpursEngine, a multimedia co-processor derived from the Cell chip that powers the PlayStation 3, will go on sale in Japan in July.
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Toshiba will launch its Qosmio G50 and F40 machines with the chip, which contains four of the “Synergistic Processing Elements” from the Cell Broadband Engine processor. The Cell chip used in the PlayStation 3 has eight of the SPE cores plus a Power PC main processor. The SPE cores perform the heavy number-crunching that makes the console’s graphics so stunning.

The SpursEngine SE1000 will work in much the same way in the laptops.

The operating system will run on an Intel Core 2 Duo chip and the SpursEngine will be called on to handle processor-intensive tasks, such as processing of high-definition video. This arrangement means the laptop should be capable of some tricks that haven’t been seen on machines until now.

Among them, Toshiba said the two computers will be able to upscale standard-definition video to high definition; transcode in realtime digital TV to MPEG4 so that the resulting files are cut down in size by one-eighth and burn video to DVD in half the time of current machines.

A novel feature is face navigation. Faces that appear in video are recognized and displayed as thumbnail images to create a visual index to the video. Users can find the person or scene they want by glancing at the thumbnails and then click on the respective one to watch that portion of video. The computer can also divide up the scenes in user-shot video so they can be viewed one-by-one and analyze and display the volume or the clip across its entire length so, for example, excitement in a sports event can be more easily found.

Finally, by analyzing images from the computer’s built-in camera it’s possible to control video playback with hand gestures.

The Qosmio G50 is a multimedia laptop and has an 18.4-inch high-definition screen, 500G bytes of hard-disk space, NVidia GeForce 9600M graphics processor, dual digital TV tuners and wireless LAN including 802.11n. It weighs 4.9 kilograms and measures 45 centimeters by 31cms by 4.8cms. Battery life is about 4 hours.

The Qosmio G50 will be cost from ¥290,000 (US$2,700) and the F50, which has a 15-inch screen and 250G byte hard-disk drive, from ¥250,000. Toshiba plans to put the machines on sale overseas but has yet to announce launch details.

June 10th, 2008

All systems are go for the market launch of Firefox 3 for Windows and Linux but Mozilla plans another minor release candidate for the Mac OSX version due to plug-in problems introduced by Apple’s 10.5.3 update.
That’s the word from Mozilla’s Firefox group, which held today what may be the final pre-release meeting for the much anticipated Firefox 3. Apparently, the Apple update causes the browser to hang. RC3 for Mac OSX  is being built and the update is expected to go live tomorrow, according to Mozilla.
It does not appear likely that the glitch will hold up the mid month launch of Firefox 3. The open source product is the second leading web browser on the market next to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer with roughly 18 percent market share.
“QA will re do tests on OSX builds,” according to meeting notes posted on the site today. “Windows and Linux RC2 builds will be copied over into RC3 folders.”
Overall, Firefox 3 is in good shape and will soon be released, said one of the project’s lead developers. The remaining 17 issues in the web browser update “are pretty well contained,” said Mozilla phenomenologist and lead developer Mike Beltzner. “We’re pretty confident we’ll have them all resolved by the end of the week.”
Last week, the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg said Firefox 3 has recaptured the performance title and gave the browser a solid review.

June 19th, 2008

Now that Firefox 3 has launched, the Mozilla team is at work on the next updates, including a major mobile version.
Mozilla’s mobile web browser, which is under development as part of Firefox 4 platform and code named Fennec, won’t launch until 2009. Still, the team is planning to release the first alpha version by the end of August and a viable beta by year’s end, according to Mozilla.org. Fennec is expected to reach another milestone on June 20 with the release of M4.
Fennec is a very important release for the Firefox team, given the increasing use of mobile devices as computing platforms. The big question: will leading web browsers retain their installed base on mobile devices or lose out to emerging platforms such as Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone?
It’s not clear where the two leading web browsers will end up in the mobile space. Microsoft owns more than 75 percent share of the desktop browser market but has plodded along with Windows Mobile and its mobile version of Internet Explorer for years with limited success.
With Firefox 3 now behind them, the big push for Firefox 4 – including the mobile version dubbed Fennec – is on. According to current estimates based on Net Applications’ assertion that Firefox 3 has garnered four percent market share in its first two days on the market, Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 combined now have more than 20 percent market share. Still, Mozilla has not yet shipped a mobile version in the marketplace.
Enter Fennec. Introduced at the Web 2.0 conference in April, Mozilla’s ”Fennec” is getting closer to release. Much of the heavy platform work including footprint, memory management and performance optimization has been done over the last 10 months and while at the very early stages, a preview will be in the public’s hands by the end of the year.
What will it look like? According to information on Mozilla.org site, Fennec will offer a new mobile user interface, of course, along with blazing fast startup, extensive offline support, bookmark synchronization across multiple devices (ie desktop and mobile device), spatial navigation, fish lens zoom, electronic wallet support, awesome bar URL entry, mobile firebug, soft keyboard and spellcheck.
And tons more. In a recent meeting in Boston, two key Firefox developers said there is a huge emphasis on mobile use in the next Firefox release and for Fennec and that Mozilla is making the rounds talking to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of mobile devices and carriers to push the idea of web surfing on mobile devices. Mozilla has even chatted with the RIM folks in Canada about porting Fennec to the Blackberry. What a joy that would be: checking e-mail on smartphones is a breeze but surfing the web is still a core.
With more than 8.4 million downloads of Firefox 3 in its first 24 hours on market, Mozilla has much to celebrate. Prior to its launch, Mozilla had garnered more than 18 percent market share, a whopping sum considering pundits’ early predictions that no browser would amass sizable share against Microsoft Internet Explorer. I’m guessing Firefox 3 — with its top performance and awesome bar search and bookmarking features — will help Mozilla reach 25 percent market share in no time at all. And 30 percent? By year’s end.
But mobile is still a big void and one that needs to be quickly addressed by Mozilla in order to keep the Firefox train chugging along.
“Throughout 2009, you’ll see Fennec being improved with a lot of innovations and new ideas and experiences,” Mitchell Baker said at Web 2.0 speech on Fennec.

April 10th, 2008
Viruses, worms and Trojans that have circulated across the net have reached an all time high of one million, the highest number of malicious programme to date. Security firm Symantec revealed in its bi-annual report, that most of these malicious programmes have been created in the last 12 months. The Latest Symantec reportedly detected approximately 499,811 malicious code threats during the second half of 2007. This had increased in the first half of 2007 by 136%.

However, 2007 was a year that Symantec had detected over 711,912 new threats amounting to 1,122,311 of malicious programs. The report stated, “…almost two thirds of all malicious code threats currently detected were created during 2007.” Many of the cyber criminals have created programs that fool anti-virus software to look for characteristics already seen by them.