Mango is a solid step for Windows Phone 7 -- but it's still not enough

By all accounts, Mango is a solid upgrade for Windows Phone 7. But it's still not a cure for what ails Microsoft's smartphone operating system.

There's plenty to like in the upgrade. The People hub has been improved because you can now set up groups, for example. Email now has a conversation view. There's finally multitasking...of a sort, that is. For now, it's really application switching, but that will change when apps are written to take advantage of the new multitasking capabilities. The new Bing Vision is essentially a copy of the remarkable Google Goggles app, and will give you information about products when you scan in their barcodes.

Overall, the interface has been cleaned up. There's now voice integration. Internet Explorer is upped to version 9. The list can go on, but it's pretty clear: With this upgrade, Windows Phone 7 is far more competitive with Android and the iPhone.

But it's still not enough, because "competitive" isn't enough. Given that Windows Phone 7 is so far behind both Android and the iPhone in market share, it needs to be better than both operating systems, and even with the Mango update, it simply isn't.

In addition, Mango doesn't solve one of Windows Phone 7's big shortcomings: A lack of apps. Microsoft might not like it, but apps sell phones. Until Windows Phone 7 has plenty more apps, people will continue to look to Android phones and the iPhone.

Microsoft has another problem with Windows Phone 7 as well --- salespeople don't push it. I've been to several stores where Windows Phone 7 devices are being sold, and the salespeople are uninformed about the devices' capabilities, and decidedly unenthusiastic about them. Talk to them about Android phones or the iPhone, though, and they're more than happy to give an enthusiastic sales pitch.

The upshot? When Mango hits this fall, Windows Phone 7 will be more competitive than it is today. But it'll still lag the competition.

State of the Gingerbread upgrade: June 2011

By JR Raphael (@jr_raphael)

Friends, Romans, Androidmen: A significant time approaches. The end of June marks the official halfway point of 2011 -- the conclusion of two full quarters of the calendar year. Given this noteworthy mark, I thought it'd be a good time to deliver a State of the Gingerbread report, looking at the big picture status of Google's Android 2.3 upgrade and its rollout to handsets around the world.

Android Gingerbread, as it's commonly known, launched last December with the Nexus S phone from Google. Its next appearance came about two months later, on February 22, when Google's flagship Nexus One received the upgrade.

Since then, Gingerbread has been slowly trickling down to other devices. By my count, 11 devices total have now been graced with the taste of Gingerbread, including -- most recently -- the Motorola Droid X, the HTC EVO 4G, and the HTC EVO Shift.

If promises and leaks hold true, several more devices should be receiving the software within the coming weeks of summer.

[STORY: Android Gingerbread: The complete FAQ]

State of the Gingerbread Upgrade: Who's Next?

So where does your phone fall in the Gingerbread waiting list? The device that should, by all counts, be at the head of the pack right now is T-Mobile's HTC G2. Back in April, an HTC spokesperson told me the G2 was scheduled to receive Gingerbread within the second quarter of the year. If that promise is to be fulfilled -- and we'll see -- the G2 would have to get its upgrade within the next week.

(Recent signs have suggested the G2's upgrade is indeed close to ready: Earlier this month, T-Mobile enthusiast site TmoNews.com reported that T-Mobile's G2 warranty replacement units had started to ship with Gingerbread preinstalled.)

We've heard that same second-quarter timing mentioned for a couple of other phones, though in less official contexts. A combination of unsubstantiated chats with customer service reps and published info from unnamed tipsters suggests the HTC Droid Incredible and HTC Thunderbolt will both be getting Android 2.3 in late June, too. In the case of the Thunderbolt, an alleged leaked document from Verizon's internal computer system has been floating around the blogosphere this week, leading to fresh speculation that the phone's upgrade is imminent. Thus far, neither HTC nor Verizon has officially commented on either device.

Then there's the Droid 2 Global. Last week, Verizon posted info about the phone's Gingerbread upgrade and openly discussed the start of a rollout on Twitter. In an odd twist, though, Motorola came forward to say the upgrade was not, in fact, ready. It isn't yet clear what caused the conflicting info, but one way or another, it certainly seems like something's cooking. Previously, Motorola has said the Droid 2 Global, the original Droid 2 and the Droid Pro would all be upgraded sometime "before the end of the third quarter or sooner."

[IN-DEPTH: Android upgrades: Which manufacturers can you trust?]

Other phones expected to see Gingerbread within the summer include T-Mobile's G2X and AT&T's Motorola Atrix; unofficial leaks point to a June or July rollout for both of those handsets. Sony's Xperia X10, meanwhile, is currently slated for an early August upgrade.

Plenty of other phones are on the Gingerbread upgrade list but with less certain time frames. Apparent test builds of the 2.3 software have popped up for the MyTouch 4G and for various U.S. models of the Galaxy S, for example, suggesting that work is underway -- but thus far, no firm info has surfaced as to when those rollouts could begin.

Remember, of course, all of these details -- particularly the unofficial and leak-based bits -- are not set in stone. You can keep tabs on the Gingerbread status for any device at my Android 2.3 upgrade list. It's always kept up-to-date with the latest info available for every Android phone, including many models not mentioned here.

JR Raphael writes about smartphones and other tasty technology. You can find him on both Facebook and Twitter.

Article copyright 2011 JR Raphael. All rights reserved.

5 Link bait ideas

There’s no doubt that link bait is one of the most formidable SEO strategies – and perhaps the best – out there, given that it demonstrates the original model and ecosystem of linking over the web (when Larry Page first formulated Pagerank), where people would link to a site or webpage because they have found authentic value from it.However, nowadays, anything that’s useful seems to be a perfect fit to be a link bait, especially when the content is published on a reputable website. We can find so many interesting materials through the Internet every day that are actually link-worthy, they vary in forms, but most have been standardized through what has been known to be effective, particularly when it comes to crafting a highly linkable content.

If almost everyone is doing it, then how can we compete? Creativity appears to be the perfect solution to this problem, as always, but it doesn’t stop there, because we will always need to move forward once others start to catch up with what we are up to. That’s what made me decide to create this post and share some of my crazy and semi-theoretical views and ideas. Let’s start out by identifying the types of approaches in performing a link bait:

Resource hookNews hookAttack hookContrary hookHumor hookTool hookWidgets hookIncentives hookEgo hook

You can learn more about these hooks on Zarko’s post about Link Baiting – here.

ConceptDurabilityContact listHeadlineVisualsBodyUnexpected hookSocially engagingCall to actionPrecision in launchingAnalyzing its results

You can read more about this list on my guest post at Single Grain – here.

Research and conception of contentGathering of contacts, which will be used for the email or Twitter outreachActual productionQuality assurancePublishing the contentMarketing the contentLink and traffic performance analysis

Many have questioned its real strength, most on niches that are unexciting, in which most thinks that link bait is only effective to tech-related subjects. Although, I personally believe that this technique is very applicable to any niche, you just have to know how to “really” do it.

The real secrets to launching a successful link bait that have the absolute capacity to acquire voluntary links – in any field – highly depends on these 2 areas:

The ability of the content’s body to exceed its headline’s promise, and eventually exceed the readers’ expectations and compel them to take action – or what we can call the “unexpected hook”.The persistence of the marketing end through continuous content outreach. Highly-linkable content cannot survive on its own, and its way to survival is unseen on its backend, wherein the content’s artificial prominence (right after publication – where people who were first to share it are really part of the process) is what really drives more links to it.

1. Crowdsourcing 2.0

Crowdsourcing is a type of content which aims to compile or gather answers from industry professionals to give solution to a certain question/problem. It’s basically a community survey that results to a content loaded with information.

With 2.0 (cant’ really think of any other cool terms to use actually), it could be a content about subjects that are still in progress, wherein users can continuously update the content by enabling them to contribute their answers (which should be moderated of course).

The catch: the page will give link attribution to contributors, and in turn can attract contributors to link to it and share it.

The outcome of the content is quite promising as people can watch how the content grow over time, and have high tendencies of naturally attracting links, seeing as it will contain large amount of information regarding a certain topic.

Example: Zarko and I are planning to build a user-generated content, which will be entitled “Top 100 Shocking Events in the History of Search” (more details below).

2. Infoanimation

Infographics have really made it far in the world of search marketing, and definitely one of the best guns in marketing your website through rich media (videos, webcasts, podcasts and slide presentations), but I haven’t really seen any who have tried to explore this avenue through animation (that would be really cool).

Flash-based web elements are known to be search-unfriendly, although there are many other alternative software – such as AjaxAnimator, OpenLaszlo and OpenOffice Impress – that you can use to create embeddable “infoanimation” and to be published on your site.

The catch: Same as infographic, it is certain to be informative but delivered in a more fashionable as well as visually appealing approach, which can extremely attract links as it very capable of engaging your target audience.

Example: The fact-filled credits of the film “The Other Guys”

3. Go-the-extra Mile List

Lists need no further introduction when it comes to content marketing, since it has proven its efficiency so many times, knowing that the numbers itself on the headline has its own mysterious ways of enticing readers to click on.

The catch: This type of content do come in different sizes, the shorter the list, the more it is prestigious, whereas the longer the list goes, the more it can acquire links (mostly bookmarked), especially if the content is really of high quality.

If the list will be linking out to other websites, then that might just increase the content’s linkability and shareability, particularly if you’ve notified each listed site. You can as well create an embeddable widget and offer it to sites that will be featured on your list. Building the list may take time to complete it (research, production and outreach), but I believe that it’s worth the time and effort.

Example: “Top 1,000 Dog Trainers in the World” or something like that – or this: 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.

4. Trend Widgets

There are always trending topics/events that relates to any industry and you can always translate them to links if you can just think and act faster on how you can take advantage of those events. Events that are related to society, politics and activism are the easiest ones to seek out, as you can get ideas just by watching the news.

Say if there’s a new bill that’s being debated by lawmakers (that’s somehow related to your business), you can just simply act on it by creating a widget for pro or anti that bill (depends on what you believe in). Create a landing page for the widget, where you can formally discuss and disclose the purpose of the widget (which is awareness), then start contacting organizations who are fighting for the same cause as you are and perhaps propose or collaborate with them in making the public aware of the issue by distributing the widget.

You can also seek for bloggers (via Google search) who have written about the issue, then gauge if they’ll be interested to have your widget embedded on their blogs to improve its visibility.

The catch: If you’ll be able to collaborate with non-profit organizations or educational institutions, you might just get the chance of earning a permanent link from them.

Crazy examples: Elections – My vote is for Derrick Rose widget (for Chicago-based Travel website), Society – Let’s help feed the homeless widget (Food Industry), Environmental – We hate air pollution widget (Automotive industry).

5. Secrets

If exposing magic tricks can get you on TV, then it could probably get you some links. In this age of online marketing, you’ll need to spill some of your most kept secrets to truly deserve the high value links you desire.

Whether it’s about your secret to success or anything that can be very useful to others is always a remarkable content, particularly if no one else is providing the same information that you can offer. Though with this method, you should keep in mind the 2 secrets that I have mentioned above.

Example: Wikileaks.org

7 Ways and reasons to win a Blog contest

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Note: This post is an entry for Jehzlau and Sherweb’s win an iPad contest. Share this entry on Twitter or Facebook and win an in-content link below for supporting Kaiserthesage (that’s sort of a bribe).

It’s in humans’ nature to compete with each other when it comes to proving their capabilities, particularly if there’s a prize or a prestigious title at stake. Whether it’s intellectual, physical or just through a random struck of luck, we all want to be on top of it.

Blogging contests are obviously not poles apart from other forms of contests, as it is a modern way of pushing skills and creativity to the limit, wherein participants get to showcase their craft in delivering their own perceptions through their own voice over the web – certainly a free space full of wealth and wisdom.

Given that this is an entry for a contest organized by Jehzlau Concepts and was sponsored by Sherweb – a leading hosted exchange provider – (I haven’t really thought of a great concept of entry to submit) I just decided to write about my own plans and/or instructions on how I could win it, to make the most out of the space, as the sponsor wouldn’t want me to waste some valuable space on the web, right?

The Mindset

A strong state of mind is the ultimate driving force that lets winners win. And always keep in mind that being in a contest is already winning it, seeing as it breathes out the best in you while you are competing with other talented individuals and it opens a door full of opportunities for you as a blogger such as:

Gets you closer to the prize.Brand exposure (if content is externally hosted).Absorb traffic, eventually leads (if content is externally hosted).More natural links (if content is externally hosted or if the contest’s organizer linked out to contest entries).Camaraderie.

Analyze your competitors

It’s best to know who you’ll be competing with before creating your content, as it will give you an idea on how you can take the lead. It’s also important that you over-estimate your competitors while you are tracking both their weak and strong points in aspects such as content delivery, marketing, visuals, and writing style.  A well-researched campaign always wins, whether on search, warring countries or a blogging contest (yes, I’m guilty of snooping around my competitors’ contest entries).

Focus on your craft

Writing about what you are really good at and passionate about can extremely leverage your chances of winning, seeing that it is already the edge of your entry.

Offer a useful and linkable content

Sometimes, it may not be a part of the contest’s criteria, but by offering a content that can be very useful will save enough space on the web, and you also get to help users who are really in need of the information that you’ll be providing. A useful content is a very linkable one, and a contest entry that has a lot of external pages linking to it is definitely a plus, given that the contest’s sponsors have links within your entry, which means that you’ll be passing a lot of link juice to them.

Unexpected hook

Exceed your possible readers’ expectations by offering more value than just the content. As for this entry, I’ve decided to link out to those who will be supporting me to win this contest; it’s not that unexpected, but I believe that it’s a good hook.

Use your anxieties to your advantage

Once you are done creating your content, put your final thoughts about your output on a list by skimming and proofreading it. List down all the aspects that you think you need to worry about to further improve your contest entry. Modify your entry after you have distinguished its weak points.

Bring traffic and engage

A socially engaging content can certainly enhance your chances of winning, since it’s a strong indication of an entry that your opponents should watch out and an entry that the contest sponsors and organizers will be receiving a lot of attention from the content. Encourage your readers to leave a comment or to share your content on social networking sites to build more traffic to it. Here are other ways to promote and consistently send traffic to your contest entry:

Through your personal networks.By employing on-page SEO (particularly with keyword targeting) and building links to it.Utilizing social signals to improve search rankings.By promoting your “useful” contest entry to other relevant web pages (forum threads, Q&A sites, blog discussions, social voting and bookmarking sites, etc…).

1.       This blog helps thousands of unique visitors every month through free information about online marketing and on how they can improve their businesses’ and websites’ online visibility, and I’m also starting to run other non-profit projects that aim to help individuals and local businesses build their livelihood and online presence. An iPad will certainly empower the reach of my personal projects’ cause, in providing more useful content and in touching more lives, hopefully.

2.       I travel a lot, and this device can extremely boost my productivity.

3.       I’m not a fan of Apple products, and I never had the chance to own one. Perhaps this can change everything.

4.       My entry will stay for a long time over the web and will be useful as well as visible to organic traffic any time soon as it garners its own rankings on search engines’ result pages (Will update this part in the next 12 hours), which means higher link value and long-term source of traffic for Sherweb. If ever I win the iPad, I might also do an in-depth review of the products/services that they are offering, as I have personally benefited from them and as I’ve seen a brand that portrays trust to their patronizers.

After 10 minutes of being published – via SEOmoz Rank Tracker

UPDATED: After 12 Hours

#1 “How to win a blog contest” – via SEOmoz Rank Tracker

#1 “win blog contest” – via SEOmoz Rank Tracker

5.       Letting me win an iPad is a strong signal of fate pushing me towards a much bigger picture and probably telling me to keep on pushing because I’m on the right path – to give back and contribute more to the community. This can also be a good momentum to drive me in striving harder to reach my goals this year.

6.       To actually win something that isn’t for me. Yeah, as I’ve mentioned above, I’m not a fan of Apple products, but giving it to me for free can sequentially help a lot of people (indirectly). Being equipped with my sole purpose and perceptions in life as a modern day visionary – spreading free and accessible knowledge – and gearing me up with this weapon, can definitely bring my selfless dreams to life, as I will be mainly using it for the benefit of others.

7.       A new avenue in exploring things differently. This could possibly be a channel that will consistently inspire me to do greater things in my profession and for my countrymen, since I draw my ideas from weird things, most of the time, and I heard that it has a lot of cool apps.

The contest is still open until April 30, 2011. Feel free to join here. You can also check out the main page of the contest’s sponsor – Sherweb – and see their various hosting plans, including hosted exchange, web-based work environment, instant messaging communication, web hosting, domain registration, CRM tool and many more.

Share this entry on Twitter or Facebook and win yourself an in-content link that will be placed just above this section.

Image Credit: Humanskin

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Tagged as: Blog Contest

Research enabling Vol. 2

Welcome to the second edition of my curated/round post series, where I featured and share the amazing articles, I have personally read these last few weeks/months.

To begin with, I first want to thank Black hat Source Goran for the interview, which you can all read here - interview with Jason Acidre. Then, uhm, there is no other news indeed, I was just busy recently working (try the new version of traffic Travis you should certainly check on this coming in May), more work, the conceptualization of future posts and writing good content.

Speaking of writing good content, I published these past two weeks which were well appreciated by other bloggers and online marketing specialists and have received much positive response - buy links ethically – 2 and get links to writing blog entries and I am delighted that two of them (and 1 older post) make to of Ontolo reference laboratories-Link Building Resources.

Garrett French - of the Link Building Experts elite I am waiting until just boosted my morale

So I guess that what is the next step is to take this opportunity to thank all those who have linked to it and she shared their faithful. Let's get down to the list:

What to expect next: I am currently preparing 2 post big and I hope that I can publish both by next week. If that you enjoyed my posts recent and these links, you may want to subscribe to my feed and follow me on my new twitter account @ jasonacidre or facebook Page.

Image credit: Limnides

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Empower research Vol. 1Tagged as: building a link, link development, Marketing, offbeat, research, Social

10 On page tactical SEO for 2011

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SEO is a consistently evolving field of modern marketing, given that search engines constantly improve their algorithms’ capabilities of returning high quality and highly relevant pages to their users’ queries. Search engines – especially Google – use hundreds of factors to estimate pages that deserve to show up on their top results.

There are two major processes in search engine optimization that enable websites and pages to rank for its targeted keywords on search results – and these are on-page and off-page optimization.

Off-page optimization is the part of SEO which involves anything that’s related to making a website and its pages popular (from external citations from other websites through link building and social media), while on-page optimization is the area where pages are able to obtain higher search rankings through the relevance of the page’s content to its targeted search term or keyword.

As I have mentioned above, there are hundreds of factors that search engines use to determine high quality pages, and that count just doesn’t stop there, as they are still finding more ways to improve their users’ search experience. So I have listed below some of the on-page optimization techniques that I believe worth exploring and testing this year.

Google, Bing and Yahoo recently introduced Schema.org, as the shared vocabulary that these 3 big search engines will be using to help them better understand web pages’ content – which uses Microdata as its structured data markup.

Schemas like Microdata are set of HTML tags that can be used to specify essential information about a webpage’s content, which include numerous types of markups (more than 100 as mentioned by Google) and new HTML elements (such as “itemscope, itemtype and itemprop”) that can make it much easier for search engines to determine and weigh page relevance.  You can check the full list of markup types here.

Here’s a sample of what your page’s codes will look like if you use this markup:

The more markups you make, the better search engines will understand your content, and the better your pages are presented on search results through rich snippets. Google is not yet considering usage of markups as a search ranking factor, but will eventually be, and thus affect/improve your pages’ SERP click-through rate and its ability to attract traffic as they appear outstanding with the way they are displayed on search results, like this one:

(looks tasty trustworthy to me)

Learn more about Microdata on Schema.org’s getting started page and Schema.org FAQ on Google.

The length of the document is a powerful indication of a webpage’s quality, knowing that changes that Google had employed with their Panda update are somehow strict when it comes to classifying quality and crappy content.

In my experience, longer content appears to perform well in search results, since most of my blog posts are composed of thousands of words. Given that they contain so much information, a single post/page is able to target multiple long-tail keywords that in turn allowed my blog to attract more organic visitors.

A page’s ability to send massive social signals to search engines also impacts the page’s chances of getting higher search rankings. Pages that are mostly capable of doing this are purposely created to act as a viral content, or basically a piece of work that’s made to draw attention or interest from specifically targeted audiences.

The visibility of social sharing buttons as well as the numbers of social shares is a good way to attract readers to sharing your content and in linking to it.

Landing pages, particularly sales pages, are kind of awkward and sometimes hard to be externally promoted through link building, especially if you are aiming to acquire editorial links. However, creating high quality pages (pages that are able to attract links and social shares naturally) in your site that can support your important landing pages through internal linking can extremely pass through huge amount of link value, which can improve your landing pages’ search rankings.

You can also choose to build support pages that can be hosted externally through guest blogs, wherein you can contextually link to your landing pages. It’s best to offer interesting content to be that can still be thematic to your landing pages (ex. if your site is offering a dog training course, you can build support pages like “Top 100 dog trainers in the world (widget)”, “Dog name generator (tool)”, “list of 100 dogs that can easily be trained” etc… and make these pages link to your dog training course sales’ page using highly descriptive or branded anchors).

This is perhaps the most significant ranking factor out of the hundreds that are on different search algorithms’ lists, as search engines are more to vouch for your site if it has proven its worth of being useful to visitors. If you are aiming to rank for highly competitive search terms, it’s imperative to study your important pages’ conversion factors to be able to distinguish areas of the page that needs to be improved.

Knowing your visitors’ activity and behavior once they are on your important pages can simply hint you with what to implement to make it perform better (by determining your site’s traffic performance through Analytics). Here are some of the things that you can do to improve your site’s traffic conversions.

Enhance site speed.Include translation features if your site is getting substantial visitors from non-English-speaking countries.Lessen visual distractions like ads and other irrelevant site elements.Invest on a visually attracting web design.Simplify the delivery of your landing pages’ content and reduce irrelevant linking.Accessibility of other thematically helpful pages.Presence of site search feature.Test your pages on different browsers.

Data to keep track of:

Top contentTop exit pagesTop landing pagesLanguages

Yeah, this may seem off topic, since improving a domain’s trust and authority scores is mostly done externally through link building. However, domain level metrics such as domain authority and domain trust are strong factors that can really impact and influence your web pages’ search rankings, especially with highly competitive keywords.

Websites that have high domain authority and trust (can be approximately measured through Open Site Explorer’s full link metrics) are also able to make their newly published pages earn higher positions on SERPs in just a few days – and sometimes in a few hours. Improving your site’s trustrank and authority may take some time, seeing as its development mostly requires long and enduring processes such as:

Link diversity – this pertains to the variation of your incoming link’s anchor texts, velocity of the site’s link growth over time, ratio of links pointing to your site’s inner pages to site’s homepage and diversity of the methods used to acquire links, which are assessed through the links’ placements (sidebar, footer, comment, editorial, etc…).Quantity of backlinks that have good placements – number of high value links that the entire site was able to acquire from other authority sites that are topically relevant, have high visibility (within the body) and have high click-through rates.Internal linking – staging a good internal linking structure that helps web crawlers find deep pages in your website. Also, supporting your important pages through internal links from other prominent pages in your site that have high amount of link juice (strong MozRank, PageRank, Page Authortity, high percentage of traffic entrance, etc…)Quantity of strong pages hosted by the site – number of popular pages in the site that have acquired good amount of high quality links from other websites through social shares, editorial citations and may also be authoritative in terms of PageRank, MozRank, Page Authority, PostRank (which is now owned by Google), and have good search rankings.Domain age – uhm… the years the site has been live?

John Doherty of Distilled wrote a good post about this subject recently and you might want to check it out.

It has been a myth that linking out to other websites/web pages within your content reduces that certain page’s PageRank, however, linking out to high quality external pages do establish trust through link relation, given that you may possibly be referencing back to a trusted source.

The point is, having links to reputable websites can build trust, and trust does eventually result to good ranking positions. With appropriate usage, these external links might just help your site obtain good search rankings as search engines are more to trust your content.

Traffic data that search engines are able to gather through their search engine result pages such as web pages’ click-through rates do seem to have effect on search rankings, for competitive search queries in particular.  Most experts also believe that CTR from search engines to the page for the targeted search term improves the page’s ranking position, as mentioned on SEOmoz’s survey results of search ranking factors for 2011 (Page-level traffic data).

Improving your pages’ SERP click-through rates can be performed in ways such as:

Use of strong and actionable words on the page’s title and meta description.Titles that use numbers seem to work well on SERPs, in terms of click through.Good web design, as it might be displayed by users through Google Instant Previews.Aiming for your pages to be displayed with rich snippets on Google through marking up your page with Microdata, testing your pages’ snippets through Google rich snippet tool and by submitting your snippets to Google.

Geotagging is a geographical identification metadata – as described on Wikipedia – that allows users and search engines see your business’ actual geographic location through latitude and longitude coordinates, which is certainly a good way to establish trust to both users and search engines. This method may also benefit you through other means of search (GPS tracking), given that mapping services are able to track your location and be included on their listings.

There are several formats used in Geotagging a website, but the most utilized is Google Earth’s Geo.kml. Luckily, I found Geo Sitemap Generator, a free web-based application that can automate the process of generating a KML file and a Geo Sitemap, which you can upload to your site’s root directory after having those files downloaded from the free application.

Google recently announced that they’ll be supporting authorship markups and Matt Cutts also mentioned AuthorRank as a new way to measure websites’ importance on an interview by Danny Sullivan on SMX Advanced Seattle.

Humans.txt is HTML 5’s approach to authorship markup (rel=”author”). This text file is pretty much similar to Robots.txt, but intended for both users and web crawlers for them to know the author of the content or a website, which is also a good way to establish trust as well as to credit the creator of the content/site. Below is a sample of what a humans.txt file looks like:

Once you have created a humans.txt file for your site and have uploaded it on your site’s root directory, you can then include an author tag through your site’s section to enable web crawlers in accessing the page; like this:

Google: We know that great content comes from great authors, and we’re looking closely at ways this markup could help us highlight authors and rank search results.

If you enjoyed this post, you may subscribe to my feed or follow me on my new Twitter account.

Image Credit: DpressedSoul

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Top 10 emerging influential Blogs for 2011 - online edition of Marketing

 

Earlier today, while writing a blog post for Affilorama, I came across a local site that really caught my attention. It is a blog that supports a movement – Janette Toral’s  Influential Blogger – which I think what our country somehow needs at this point of information age.

What I really liked about this project was that they (Janette and the sponsors) are encouraging local bloggers to step up in hopes of uplifting Philippines’ blogosphere by letting participants share and nominate the blogs that they think are influential as based on the award’s requirements:

Blogs that started anytime from April 1, 2010 – present.Can be from any part of the globe.Uhm, influential?

After reading the week 2 update and the writing project’s page, I checked most of the participants’ entries through the comments. Honestly, I was excited, at first, knowing that my evil side is sensing heaps of link opportunities. Though later on I realized that some of the nominated blogs from different entries seem to be questionable (I mean, what the hell, it’s my job to identify quality sites, quality content and almost anything about quality on the web).

No offense meant to all the nominated sites, since I did see some that are really excellent in delivering the cause that their blog lay emphasis on (it seems that they are really passionate about what they are preaching), particularly those that really aim to educate (medical, education and culture related blogs).

Well, unfortunately, some may have seen this as an opportunity for their blogs to be more prominent by scheming through their nominations, and if you’re not a member of the circle, you’ll may just have to form your own circle to generate a manipulated winning list of top emerging influential blogs for 2012, which I think is contradicting to what the awards’ impact and influence should be.

That is not true influence, that’s syndication.

How do you measure influence as a blogger? Authentic influence I mean.

Influence is something that you will use and think about for days, weeks or even years after you have procured, absorbed and internalized the concepts from what you have read.

Influential content is something that you will willingly and voluntarily share, because you have found true value from it, and that’s one good reason why I’m linking out to Influential Blogger, because I believe that their movement is going to be valuable to the community – not just with links and prestige, but with its after effects (you win = you continue, you lose = you hustle to improve, you see the winners = you get inspired).

It’s not just about winning, it’s also about giving your readers what they can really say a good recommendation, that’s why we read blogs in the first place, because we know that we deserve better information when we are seeking for one.

Selling or upselling something does not generate influence, but giving your ideologies that can be beneficial and useful to your readers/visitors for free does. Below is a list of what I can really call “emerging influential blogs”.

Ross Hudgens

Ross’ ability to captivate his readers through his wickedly sick writing style and with the depth of his content is definitely an impressive feature worth noting. His blog is one of those that I thoroughly read and his works have influenced my own views and principles on Search (particularly this post). I’ve even mentioned his blog when I was asked on an interview of what blogs do I habitually follow, talk about INFLUENCE.

John Doherty

Country: USAIndustry: Search Engine OptimizationTwitter: @dohertyjfRSS: John’s feedLaunched: February 2011

This guy just started his blog 4 months ago, and the speed of his blog’s growth is tremendously solid. This blog is really worth noting because of that kind of speed – that is some sick marketing skills I must say. He provides highly engaging content on his blog that are well accommodating to those who are just starting with SEO and most of his posts are about practical and actionable methods that his readers can implement to learn more about how they can efficiently improve their sites/blogs in terms of search engine visibility.

Ana Hoffman

Ana has displayed her expertise in online marketing through her own blog’s results. Traffic Generation Café is one of the most visited and successful rookie blogs that I know, which was able to achieve strong readership and following in just a few months of being launched.

Onibalusi Bamidele

Oni’s Youngprepro has helped hundreds of online business aspirants in just a short period of time, where he has shared most of his knowledge and experience through his blog posts and information product. He’s a very approachable guy and he personally helps and answers his visitors’ queries whenever it’s possible – surely a characteristic of an influential blogger.

SEO-Hacker

Sean Si, the founder of SEO-Hacker, provides all the basic things that you’ll ever need to know in terms of marketing your website/blog, as his brand is more focal on helping beginners as well as intermediate practitioners and bloggers not just through easy-to-digest blog posts, but also through other channels such as the site’s very accommodating Facebook community and a free basic SEO course that we have launched late last year.

Though our team at SEO-Hacker (yes, I do SEO with them) might be busy working with clients’ websites at this time, we still made sure that we are still able to genuinely contribute to our local community of SEOs, as we are continuously shaping young SEOs’ minds through our Facebook Group.

Hugo Guzman

Hugo is certainly one of the influential people and thought-leaders in the Search industry today, given that he is well-versed when it comes to corporate and large-scale web marketing campaigns. I mostly agree with his views, except for him being a fan of the Miami Heat.

Zarko Zivkovic

I have been featuring Zarko’s Practical SEO blog here several times before, which I think is already a good signal that his works have pretty much influenced mine in some ways. He is really good in conveying his message to his readers, knowing that most of his posts are about comprehensive tutorials on how to implement many SEO processes. He’s a good SEO friend of mine, and that relationship has no influence on my decision to include him on this list, because he definitely deserves this slot (and this is not an engagement gift to him and his fiancé, congrats man!).

Jason Acidre

As I’ve been nominated by two commentators below (Gary of Lawmacs and Jason Gardose).

My list still has 3 more 2 more (updated) slots available to be completed, so if you know any blog that fits this list feel free to drop me a line. Here are the requirements again:

Blogs that have been live since April 2010 – present.Can be on any industry as long as it has a solid readership and fanbase.Can be in any part of the world.

These blogs, you don’t need to follow them or to link out to them, but I do believe that they all deserve to be rewarded for all the hard work that they have done just to help people make better websites.

Proven Ways to Give Your Website Ads More Profit Power

Increasing your website’s ad revenue isn’t rocket science; it just takes a bit of effort on your part and constant testing. Besides this, you’ll have to focus on certain factors to make sure that you’re getting the most out of your ads – some of these are listed below.

All websites and blogs run on traffic, and naturally you have to do all you can to get the best quality traffic to your website. There are plenty of ways to drive traffic, but we want you to consider using social media marketing as just one method for traffic generation. Leverage social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to grow more awareness about your website, and to get more targeted traffic through them. With the exception of YouTube, at the other two you have to get involved and let people know you a little bit – then you can market to them. There are lots of people with sites ranked #1, but they get no traffic – or very little, and they do not make hardly any money. Again, for SEO purposes, be sure you are doing your on page optimization correctly and using your chosen keywords. This doesn’t mean you write the content for the search engines, but it rather means that your keywords should be tactfully weaved into your content so that it doesn’t lose its meaning. Just write totally normally and do mention your primary keyword phrase, but just do not go crazy with it.

Ads typically go above the fold and either on the right column or higher but below the header. If you use too many ads, then that will definitely cause a problem with your visitors. With ads on your site, more is definitely not better; you can make money with just a few of the right ads. The only way you can optimize your ads is by tracking them with some kind of solution. Do you see your visitors staying longer than before? Any time you make a chance to anything related to your ads, measure the results. That is the only smart and effective way to assess your performance. But remember that once you have done this, then you will be more familiar and it will get much easier.

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Increasing the Number of Good Comments on Your Blog Posts

Every blogger knows the value of loyal readers that comment on their blog on a regular basis. If a blog isn’t very interactive and doesn’t encourage commenting, it won’t generate much interest. The question is, how exactly can you make your blog the kind that attracts lots of comments? What steps should you take to make your blog more interesting and inviting to visitors? Giving your blog these qualities isn’t that hard if you keep the following factors in mind.

Focus on being Candid: Readers love it when you offer information in your own unique style that is not timid or guarded. Avoid putting yourself on a high pedestal by never admitting to making mistakes occasionally, readers appreciate you more when you are truthful. Being guarded about who you are will only put a barrier between you and your readers which may cause them to lose interest in your writing. Most readers will identify with you through your mistakes, and this will make them want to comment about their own. When admitting to being wrong, choose only mistakes that resonate with your readers and are likely to generate helpful comments from other readers. If you strongly feel that admitting something on your blog will cause more harm than good to your reputation, then it is best if you do not write about it.

The No-Follow Tag Should be Deactivated: This is a simple way to start getting more comments to your blog right away. Lots of internet users, especially those who have their own blogs or websites, simply won’t leave a comment if they see that your blog is “no follow.” You can download the “Nofollow Case by Case” plugin if you’re using WordPress and install it.

This plugin basically removes the default “no follow” ref from each of the external links in the comments, which gets people to make posts and get some link juice.

Reply to Comments: An easy way to get your readers engaged in your blog is to reply to their comments when they ask you questions or make a good point. It’s a good way to begin a discussion and will certainly help attract more comments to the post. You need to first be aware of the types of comments you want to reply to so you can take full advantage of this approach. It is impossible for anyone to answer every comment posted on their blog, which is why you need to be choosy and select only the best ones to respond to.

The above are all effective ways to generate more comments to your blog, but if you have almost no comments now, you’ll have to build them up over time. One way to look at it is that if you make your blog informative, original and appealing, the rest will follow naturally. Keep in mind, the more value your readers derive from your blog post, the higher will be the chance that they post a comment.

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Proven Ways to Keep Your Blog Fresh and Unique

One of the characteristics of popular blogs is that they’re frequently updated; you don’t want long gaps in between blog posts. The way to ensure that your blog stays current is to remember to add content regularly and to also recruit your blog visitors to add their own content. In this article we’ll be covering some helpful tips for keeping your blog as current and fresh as possible.

Ask for Feedback: If you want an immediate response to your blogs then ask people to provide you with their thoughts. You need to have content that is convincing to your readers, which is why you have a blog in the first place. You can get ideas from just about anyone, but why not go to your readers first? New topics can be submitted by your readers, which help you keep content on your blog and keeps readers invested.

People will feel that you are valuing their opinion when you post articles with interactive questions and allow them to post their answers in the comments section. Another way to see the interests of your readers is to post a poll and have them vote. This step will help your blog stay fresh because you are both reaching your readers and their interests while keeping it relevant with new ideas.

Hold a Contest: If you want to make your blog more active and compelling, you sometimes have to think of new ideas to get people’s attention. You can reward the person who writes the best post, submits the most interesting picture or gives the best solution to a problem. While a good contest has to have a prize that’s desirable, you don’t have to make it anything over the top; many people like to participate in contests just for the fun of it. Remember, your blog’s interactivity goes hand in hand with its freshness, so do whatever you can to get your readers involved.

Breaks Won’t Kill You: Updating your blog is important, but you will lose readers if you always feel the need to just get something out there for them to read, and not something that’s high quality. Many sites allow you to schedule a post, which allows you to start saving those that you write but want to post at a later date. If you have a spark of creativity, get it all out first, and then break it up into multiple posts to use for a later date. There are blogs that you can write out ahead of time and schedule them for a continuous release, or try keep some that are unpublished and use as a backup. It’s great to get ahead and create all of your posts in advance of when you want them to be on your site. The pressure will be minimal on you if you can feel productive and ahead of schedule.

In order to have a successful blog, you have to make a lasting impression on your visitors. If your blog looks the same every time someone visits it, they’ll have no reason to keep coming back, which is why it’s so important to constantly update it.

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What You Can Do For Limping Membership Site Sales

If you understand what your market wants, then building a thriving membership site should not present a problem. We will now outline proven steps you can begin taking immediately for boosting your membership site conversions and sales.

There are a lot of ways to show people why buying from you will be a good investment. So what kind of testimonials do you have for your site? That’s right; people are more comfortable buying a product when they see other happy customers – it’s basic human psychology. Your current subscribers are a potential hotbed of raving, maniacal testimonials. Once you do get testimonials, then merely work them into your sales copy and see what happens. Do not overlook your sales funnel and various copy elements because the problem could very well be there. Nothing can beat testing copy as well as other parts of our site and sales process.

You can open up many more options by developing a blog that works in conjunction with your site. Nowadays, having a blog can prove to be a powerful way to generate interest from your target market by offering them valuable content. All that terrific content you can place on your associated blog will just be a teaser. If you engage your readers on your blog, then they will get to know you and become warm prospects for your membership site. What’s more, with the advent of social media and its integration with blogging, you can expect to have the strongest impact on your readers and grow your blog readers/subscribers by leveraging these social platforms. Remember the key to success with this approach lays entirely on your blog and your efforts with it.

If you have a strong and solid membership site, then gaining competent affiliates can be very lucrative. If this is an avenue you believe will work for your site, then you will need to get everything in place and begin. There are so many positive benefits associated with having your own affiliates, and you should not overlook this fact. Once you have all of this in place, then that will free you to work on new projects.Take action on what you have discovered for boosting membership site sales because these are powerful methods. You know what the formula is, and now it is up to you to put it into effect.

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Increasing the Number of Good Comments on Your Blog Posts

Every blogger knows the value of loyal readers that comment on their blog on a regular basis. If a blog isn’t very interactive and doesn’t encourage commenting, it won’t generate much interest. The question is, how exactly can you make your blog the kind that attracts lots of comments? What steps should you take to make your blog more interesting and inviting to visitors? Giving your blog these qualities isn’t that hard if you keep the following factors in mind.

Focus on being Candid: Readers love it when you offer information in your own unique style that is not timid or guarded. Avoid putting yourself on a high pedestal by never admitting to making mistakes occasionally, readers appreciate you more when you are truthful. Being guarded about who you are will only put a barrier between you and your readers which may cause them to lose interest in your writing. Most readers will identify with you through your mistakes, and this will make them want to comment about their own. When admitting to being wrong, choose only mistakes that resonate with your readers and are likely to generate helpful comments from other readers. If you strongly feel that admitting something on your blog will cause more harm than good to your reputation, then it is best if you do not write about it.

The No-Follow Tag Should be Deactivated: This is a simple way to start getting more comments to your blog right away. Lots of internet users, especially those who have their own blogs or websites, simply won’t leave a comment if they see that your blog is “no follow.” You can download the “Nofollow Case by Case” plugin if you’re using WordPress and install it.

This plugin basically removes the default “no follow” ref from each of the external links in the comments, which gets people to make posts and get some link juice.

Reply to Comments: An easy way to get your readers engaged in your blog is to reply to their comments when they ask you questions or make a good point. It’s a good way to begin a discussion and will certainly help attract more comments to the post. You need to first be aware of the types of comments you want to reply to so you can take full advantage of this approach. It is impossible for anyone to answer every comment posted on their blog, which is why you need to be choosy and select only the best ones to respond to.

The above are all effective ways to generate more comments to your blog, but if you have almost no comments now, you’ll have to build them up over time. One way to look at it is that if you make your blog informative, original and appealing, the rest will follow naturally. Keep in mind, the more value your readers derive from your blog post, the higher will be the chance that they post a comment.

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How Can You Get Accepted into Affiliate Networks?

There are just tons of new people coming into both affiliate marketing as well as the related area of CPA offers, and there seems to be no end in sight. If you have tried to get into a CPA network house and were turned away, then join the club – however we are here to help you out with in that regard.

Apply As a Company: You’ll look more professional to the affiliate network if they perceive you as a company rather than an individual. When an affiliate network looks at an application and sees it’s from an individual, they’re more likely to suspect that it’s someone who’s new or who may promote using less than honest techniques. However, keep in mind that by applying this way your application won’t go through for sure; you still have to convince the affiliate manager that you are the real deal. This is just one way to make yourself seem like a better candidate. Using a company name gives you another chance to re-apply to any networks who may not have accepted you when you applied as an individual. Don’t Get Discouraged: Affiliates who achieve the most success promoting offers are those who keep applying to networks until they get accepted. You will probably not get accepted by every affiliate network that you apply to. This is just the reality of the situation. Like it or not, that’s the way it is! You need to be focused and determined, without giving up. If one network rejects you, forget about them and look for the next one. Rather than worry about not getting accepted, make it a point to understand why it happened; don’t be afraid to ask them, as you can learn from this. Since you’ll make the most money by promoting lots of offers, you’ll want to gradually increase the number of networks you belong to. As you find success with one network, it will be easier to get accepted by others.

An Important Question About Traffic: There are several questions that affiliate networks are likely to ask you about traffic, and these can be very important when it comes to getting approved. They will want to know the source of your traffic and at the same time if your traffic incentivized or not. You must clearly deny that you ever use incentivized traffic if you want to be accepted into any affiliate networks. Traffic that’s based on incentives doesn’t convert well, so affiliate networks don’t want this type of traffic at all. This is something that only comes up with CPA based networks, as they’re looking for leads rather than direct sales. These networks don’t want people opting for a lead in exchange of a bribe. A lead is only valuable to this kind of company if he or she is true prospect and not someone just looking for a freebie. You therefore have to convince the affiliate network that you’re only going to be driving traffic of the best quality to their offers.

If you want to be successful as an affiliate, you have to start by getting accepted into an affiliate network; this is how everyone begins. Getting your application approved by a network is a matter of staying focused on the points we’ve covered above.

For more information, check out these resources:

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Now THAT'S an answer!

This company uses an application that sends e-mail notifications to users -- but one (and only one) user isn't getting the messages, reports a pilot fish tasked with solving the problem.

"I did a little checking, and it turned out the e-mail address was misspelled in the database," fish says. "No big deal. We corrected it, and the messages went through as appropriate.

"An hour later, the user's manager called to ask if I'd figured out the bug in the system. I told him it was a typo and that it was fixed. He said that was impossible, and that he expected us to take more responsibility for our design flaws.

"Then he called up again, saying he asked his staff, and no one remembers mistyping any addresses, so could I kindly get him a real answer.

"Then he called up again, insisting that I resolve this promptly or he'd escalate it.

"So I put him on hold and answered a few e-mails. After about twenty minutes I picked up the line, went onto the desktop and randomly clicked keys, so he'd hear me typing.

"I told him what his system had experienced was a standard PEBKAC issue with no i-d-ten-t complications, and that it had compromised the integrity of the database. I told him it was fixed, and to call me if he saw any further issues.

"He was thrilled that he 'got to the bottom of it.'"

Feed the Shark! Send me your true tale of IT life at sharky@computerworld.com. You'll score a sharp Shark shirt if I use it. Add your comments below, and read some great old tales in the Sharkives.

The Best of Shark Tank includes more than 70 tales of IT woe submitted by you, our readers, since 1999. Which all goes to prove, conclusively, that hapless users and idiotic bosses are indeed worldwide phenomena. Free registration is all that's needed to download The Best of Shark Tank (PDF).

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7 days with Samsung's Google Chromebook

By JR Raphael (@jr_raphael)

Typing a document on my Windows 7 desktop feels a bit foreign right now. I've spent much of the past week, you see, testing Google's latest mobile computing product: the Chrome OS Chromebook, which officially enters the world today.

We've been hearing about Chrome OS for some time now; some of us even had a chance to check it out firsthand with Google's Cr-48, a test system shipped to select beta users last year. With the first commercial Chrome OS products now out in the wild, Google hopes to get the platform into many more hands.

Chrome OS, if you aren't familiar with it, is all about the Web. The basic idea is that you ditch your bulky PC operating system and instead use a notebook focused completely on the Internet. You boot up and, within seconds, find yourself at Google's Chrome browser. That browser is your desktop, and everything you do -- running applications, accessing files, you name it -- takes place within those windows and tabs. Your data lives in the cloud, your settings are synchronized, and everything looks the same on any notebook you sign into.

I've been following Google's development of Chrome OS closely for months now, so I was more than ready to get my hands on the first finished Chromebook to see how the platform had evolved. As any of my regular followers on Facebook and Twitter know, testing the device has taken over my life at times (this photo pretty much sums it up) -- and, needless to say, has been a very interesting journey.

Using Samsung's new Series 5 Chromebook, there's no question the Chrome OS experience has matured. The software has improved and become more user-friendly, and the hardware -- as you might expect -- is noticeably more powerful and polished than what we'd seen before. 

But the concept of Chrome OS, in many ways, is as much about what isn't there as what is. Converting to a cloud-based operating means saying so long to the fully featured desktop-driven environment you've long known. It means, for the most part, tossing away your reliance on local storage and trusting your bits and bytes to the cloud instead. And it means bidding adieu to things like cumbersome OS updates, device driver conflicts, and clogged up systems that always seem to get slower over time. 

Moving into one of Google's Chrome OS Chromebooks certainly has its advantages -- but it has its fair share of problems, too. And life in the cloud is not for everyone.

Join me for a deep dive into the strange new world of Chrome OS in my full Chromebook review:

In-depth: Google's Chrome OS Chromebooks

Article copyright 2011 JR Raphael. All rights reserved.

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Help us organize the next Stack Overflow conference

We’re working on a series of two-day Stack Overflow conferences for the fall:

“What’s this conference about? The idea for the original DevDays was to have high-bandwidth, intensive introductions to a wide variety of new technologies… the kinds of technologies that everybody wants to learn but doesn’t necessarily need to use on a project right now. Last time, it was things like iPhone development, Python, jQuery, Google AppEngine, etc. This year, we’re asking you. So far, there’s a lot of interest in DVCS, HTML5, and Node.js.”

Have you been wondering about Distributed Version Control? It has been a huge productivity boon for us, so I wrote Hg Init, a Mercurial tutorial—check it out!

You’re reading Joel on Software, stuffed with years and years of completely raving mad articles about software development, managing software teams, designing user interfaces, running successful software companies, and rubber duckies.

I’m Joel Spolsky, co-founder of Fog Creek Software, a New York company that proves that you can treat programmers well and still be highly profitable. Programmers get private offices, free lunch, and work 40 hours a week. Customers only pay for software if they’re delighted. We make FogBugz, enlightened project management software for bug tracking, Kiln, which provides distributed version control and code reviews, and Fog Creek Copilot, which makes remote desktop support easy. I’m also the co-founder of Stack Overflow.

Why do computer screens on TV never look real?

I am already an admitted geek, so let me also admit to the fact that every few years or so, whether I need it or not, I will watch what I consider to be one of the best (if not THE best) science fiction films ever made ... 2001: A Space Odyssey. As a specific ‘computer geek', who once worked for the European Space Agency, I have a long term and continuing amazement at how this 1968 film, and Arthur C Clarke's novel, predicted a great number of our 21st century, high-tech innovations. The displays on the computer screens in the movie always particularly interested me, with their bold, three-letter displays and subsequent images which proved remarkably realistic in light of latter-day developments. Additionally, which of us old-timers can resist the screen displays of The Matrix, where the ‘dripping' green symbols intimately resemble the old-time ‘green' cathode tubes attached to a 1970s mainframe?

Given this inspiring start to the display of computer screens in a movie from the 1960s, and a latter-day, memory-inducing scene or two from the turn-of-the-century efforts, why is it that TV shows seem to make some horrendous errors in their depicition of computer application displays. Perhaps because their budgets are smaller than the movies?  Perhaps because the TV screens aren't as big as the moivie screens? I have three examples that I would like to rage against, but would be glad to hear of any others that might be appropriate.

First, let's take the example often used on the whole CSI series. While I like the series as a whole, and always wonder at the vivid colors on the CSI: Miami one in particular, what the heck happened when they programmed the system to search for fingerprint matches? I like to call this type of display the ‘fingerprint syndrome'. They scan in a fingerprint and the computer displays that image on the screen in enlarged format ... so far so good, but then they initiate the ‘comparison process' with a click of the mouse. I admit to not knowing the details of the scanning algorithms, but I DO know that the system most used in English speaking countries is the Henry System of Classification, which involves some fairly heavy processing needs as it compares whorls, loops and arches. Remember now, the fingerprint database being scanned is huge, containing tens of thousands of images, so why would ANY system waste REAL time to display flashing images of the ones that fail to match? Well, the CSI systems do, and usually once each episode, we are presented with this mindless and unnecessary display of flashing black-and-white imagery. Am I wrong here? Anyone out there know if this is how the REAL systems work, and if so, WHY?

Second, what's with all the waste of screen ‘real estate'? I have designed MANY computer screen layouts and have always been acutely aware that there is only so much display space on which one can cleanly and clearly present information, or accept input. However, on TV, it seems like it is perfectly OK to use up half of the screen with a useless display of the LA Police Department badge, or the Presidential Seal. People, we all know that THIS type of display does NOT happen in real life. Agreed, the screen-saver may well be such a display, but NOT the actual data manipulation screens.

Finally, whose idea was all the giant fonts that are sometimes displayed at the most inappropriate times? I know all my examples are from ‘cop shows', so forgive that since they are so blatant in their errors, but when Detective Dippo types in the suspect's name and Ronnie ‘Ratso' Denino appears on the screen in 2 inch high letters, one has to wonder which self-respecting computer programmer would ever write such a piece of code in real life? Of course, I know why they do it, so that your 'average Joe', sitting at home with a beer, doesn't have to think too much at all, but that does not excuse this assault to the professional pride of all computer programmers. Dear god, the hoi polloi must think that we are all numbnuts to take up that much screen ‘real estate' with just a damned name display. Detective Dippo clicks the mouse again, and the next thing you know, we have the ‘fingerprint syndrome' again as a series of mug-shots and criminal record details, for everyone who is NOT Ratso, are displayed in processor and time-wasting sequence. And while I am on the subject of the ‘fingerprint syndrome', why are all the non-matching names displayed in alphabetical sequence? Surely, by now, with all the benefits of our superb education system (like, whatever, let's go to the mall), everyone knows that most searches are driven by a Fibonacci search algorithm, and that does NOT produce an orderly, alphabetical sequence for display!

I realize the need for ‘artistic latitude', but can we not have the computer displays on TV look just a little more realistic?

Glyn Meek, with 40 years of experience in the technology industry, has earned his curmudgeonly outlook.

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Business is going mobile (and global)

I go to many conferences each year across many different industries, and aside from almost everyone giving away some sort of Apple product at their booths, the consistent theme is that mobile is the future.  There are almost twice as many mobile users as Internet users (roughly 5 billion versus 2 billion, respectively), and what are these 5 billion people doing on their phones, aside from playing Angry Birds and updating their Twitter accounts?  A whole lot more than just talking. 

ABI Research's prediction is that mobile commerce worldwide will be almost $120 billion in 2015.  In Japan alone, the mobile commerce market was more than $10 billion in 2009.

So what does this mean for localization? It means that you need to have a strategy in place to embrace this growing market.   Effectively, you need to move from a Web strategy to an online strategy that encompasses mobile sites, as well.

The key consideration in localizing mobile websites is related to testing.  In most cases, businesses have already localized their Web content, so moving that content to a mobile site is a relatively straightforward process.  You have already established a translation memory (which is a repository of previously translated content), so you can re-use most of that work and avoid making new investments in translation, unless of course your mobile site experience is completely separate from your main website.  The content challenge will be more related to economy of words, so there may just be some editing of your existing content required.  Functional testing is where the big challenge is to get things right.

To ensure an effective mobile localization strategy, make sure that you are testing on all of the main mobile browsers AND the main mobile platforms, as these will impact how your site displays on various handsets and the mobile operating systems.

We also recommend having the mobile version of your site less graphic and media intensive.  You want your pages to load quickly on any network, regardless of whether users are on 3G or 4G networks.  So, until the mobile bandwidth is consistently on par with what you would expect from a wired or Wi-Fi connection, it is a good idea to build your mobile sites for speed and ease of use versus a full-featured, media rich experience if you want to grab a piece of that mobile market.

The use of apps in the mobile space is obviously a huge driver for sales, as well.  And since apps contain relatively small amounts of content (these are typically designed to drive a process versus build brand affinity), the localization of these components can be relatively cost effective.  Again, the main consideration here if you are going to provide a localized mobile app is the testing component.  How does it work on Apple's OS versus Android versus Windows Mobile versus Blackberry?  And in the case of Android and Windows Mobile (at least today), you need to do testing based on the hardware, as well, since different handsets may only support certain flavors of an OS.

The good news is that while this market is top of mind for almost every business in every industry, it is still emerging.  But given the predictions, it will not take long for mobile devices and smartphones to become a huge part of online commerce and an integral part of how companies connect with their customers. 

It's hard to believe we used to just use these things for conversation.

Matt Hauser is VP of Technology for TransPerfect Translations.

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Microsoft Kinect in the enterprise: Not just for gaming

By Richi Jennings. June 16, 2011.

Today, Microsoft is releasing its Windows SDK for Kinect -- its webcam-style, 3D, motion-sensing input gizmo. Originally sold as an Xbox 360 peripheral, Kinect is now getting people excited by its potential to change the way business users interact with PCs. Seriously, Richi? A gaming peripheral? Yes, I'm serious; take a look, in The Long View...

Almost as soon as Microsoft unveiled what was first known as Project Natal, user interface researchers have been drooling over the potential of Kinect. When they first got their hands on the finished device, they quickly realized that, despite Microsoft's reputation, it was surprisingly easy to reverse engineer the protocol. It plugs into a PC via USB; the commands and responses were fairly simple to work out.

It was inexpensive and had some very sophisticated capabilities. Since then, imaginations have run riot all over the world. Some of these ideas point to new and exciting ways to work with PCs -- not for gaming, but for business. Read on...

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Careers 2.0 (by Stack Overflow)

One day, you’ll be telling your grandchildren about getting a programming job, version 1.0. You would send a “resume” to a “recruiter.” It included all kinds of silly information required by the esoteric resume ritual (foreign languages spoken, whether or not you play ultimate Frisbee, Microsoft-veteran status). This so-called “information” was utterly useless at determining whether you could program or not, but if you spelled everything right and used suitable fonts, you could come in for a day of interviews at which you would be asked to perform mundane programming tasks on a whiteboard.

Careers 2.0 is here!

Have you been wondering about Distributed Version Control? It has been a huge productivity boon for us, so I wrote Hg Init, a Mercurial tutorial—check it out!

You’re reading Joel on Software, stuffed with years and years of completely raving mad articles about software development, managing software teams, designing user interfaces, running successful software companies, and rubber duckies.

I’m Joel Spolsky, co-founder of Fog Creek Software, a New York company that proves that you can treat programmers well and still be highly profitable. Programmers get private offices, free lunch, and work 40 hours a week. Customers only pay for software if they’re delighted. We make FogBugz, an enlightened bug tracking and software development tool, Kiln, a distributed source control system that will blow your socks off if you’re stuck on Subversion, and Fog Creek Copilot, which makes remote desktop access easy. I’m also the co-founder of Stack Overflow.

The podcast is back!

Jeff Atwood and I have resumed our weekly podcast, formerly known as the Stack Overflow Podcast, now known as the Stack Exchange Podcast!

Here are some ways to find us:

Special thanks to Special Agent Alex Miller, who is, in his spare time, the new producer of the podcast. We’ll be making lots of technical improvements to the podcast over the next couple of months, so stay tuned... it’ll be really fun.

Have you been wondering about Distributed Version Control? It has been a huge productivity boon for us, so I wrote Hg Init, a Mercurial tutorial—check it out!

You’re reading Joel on Software, stuffed with years and years of completely raving mad articles about software development, managing software teams, designing user interfaces, running successful software companies, and rubber duckies.

I’m Joel Spolsky, co-founder of Fog Creek Software, a New York company that proves that you can treat programmers well and still be highly profitable. Programmers get private offices, free lunch, and work 40 hours a week. Customers only pay for software if they’re delighted. We make FogBugz, an enlightened bug tracking and software development tool, Kiln, a distributed source control system that will blow your socks off if you’re stuck on Subversion, and Fog Creek Copilot, which makes remote desktop access easy. I’m also the co-founder of Stack Overflow.

Confirmed: Acer Chromebook is delayed

By JR Raphael (@jr_raphael)

Today was supposed to be the day Google's first two Chrome OS Chromebooks entered the world. That scheduled launch, however, is only coming half true.

Back at Google's I/O conference in May, as you may recall, executives said a model from Samsung and a model from Acer would both go on sale on June 15. The Samsung Chromebook is out and available, as scheduled -- but the Acer Chromebook is mysteriously missing in action.

The Acer Chromebook

There's a reason for the absence: I've just confirmed with Acer that its Chromebook will not ship as scheduled today. A spokesperson for the company tells me the device will launch sometime this month, though no formal date has been determined.

Behind the scenes, the Acer Chromebook situation had been looking iffy for a while now. Both Acer and Samsung were supposed to provide demo units for my Chrome OS and Chromebook review, but while Samsung shipped its model to me early last week, Acer stayed vague as to when its unit would be ready.

Stranger yet, when seeking out firm pricing info on the Acer Chromebook, I discovered those details were conspicuously absent from all press materials. Even Best Buy's website, where a presale was underway, listed only information about Samsung's model. Amazon listed both companies' computers in its presale but, with Acer's model, had pricing that didn't match the figures we'd heard in Google's original announcement: Amazon had the Acer Chromebook listed at $379.99 for a Wi-Fi-only edition and $449.99 for a 3G-ready system; the original announcement quoted the notebook as being available for "$349 and up."

An Acer spokesperson told me the "anticipated MSRP" was $349.99 for Wi-Fi and $429.99 for 3G. When I asked about the odd discrepancy with Amazon's listings, she said she expected Amazon to update its price "in the next day or so." (That was on Monday; as of the time of this publication, Amazon's price -- still listed as pre-order-only -- remains unchanged.)

Perhaps oddest of all, when trying to confirm the name of Acer's Chromebook, I discovered that Amazon had it listed as the "Acer Cromia Chromebook." My sharp-eyed editor, Barbara Krasnoff, noticed that name had not been used anywhere else -- so I reached out to Acer again to confirm what the product was going to be called. 

The answer: Acer was "still confirming" the official name. This was yesterday -- the day before the product was scheduled to launch. As you might imagine, we started to get quite skeptical at that point as to whether the product would meet its deadline.

So now it's official: Acer's Chromebook won't arrive today. I've asked the company for additional info about what's causing the delay and am awaiting a response. Representatives from Google were not immediately available to comment.

If and when I hear anything more, I'll update this page with the info.

UPDATE #1 [6/15/11 3:20 p.m. ET]: A Google spokesperson could only tell me that the Acer units were now available for presale. Any more specific details, she said, would have to come from Acer.

UPDATE #2 [6/15/11 6:20 p.m. ET]: Acer has just informed me that its Chromebook will now be called the "Acer AC700." A spokesperson also notes that Amazon has adjusted its pricing to reflect the lower ($349.99/$429.99) figures. As for timing, Acer maintains that the presale is underway but can only say that the device will ship sometime this month.

[In-depth: Google's Chrome OS and Samsung's Chromebook]

JR Raphael writes about smartphones and other tasty technology. You can find him on both Facebook and Twitter.

Article copyright 2011 JR Raphael. All rights reserved.

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