AfterTheDotNet

Google/Yahoo Search Partnership Announcement At 1:30 This Afternoon

More on this tomorrow. Seems like a partnership is brewing between the two giants and it is in the search arena. This is a big surprise and techcrunch seems to have got it first. Read the story in the link below.

Google/Yahoo Search Partnership Announcement At 1:30 This Afternoon

A new Google logo has been sited. Read about it here

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/12/googleyahoo-announcement-at-130-this-afternoon/

Tags: Google, Yahoo

Maximizing the exposure of your website or your blog

If you are designing a new website/blog, own a website/blog or launching a new website you would want maximum number of visitors. For that you would need to advertise your website. Of course you business links are the first target and the best way to advertise is to add your website URL to your signatures to your email and other business communication formats. It might involve printing some new stationary but it is worth it.

 

Email signature can be incorporated using different methods. The idea is to be unique and eye catching. Pimp your work has a good post that gives you options and best practices for email signature development. If you have a blog that is associated with your website then blogsis is an excellent service. You need to download the software (which is a freeware) and once installed and configured it blogsis would add a signature to all the mail you send with

a link to the latest post on your blog. BlogSigs works with Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Hotmail. Blogsis also has a Firefox extension. Do not overdo your email signatures or your website address on your stationary to the extent that they become obtrusive and do not look esthetically good.

 

The second option for popularizing your website or the blog, which is not practiced by users, is to write press releases to be submitted to different services. The reason why people do not tend to do the press releases is because it is time consuming but then they miss out on a great opportunity. If you have not written a press release before then it is best to read two great resources on the Internet to write press releases. The first is Wikipedia. A detailed page on press releases breaks a press release into different areas making it very easy to write one for the first time users. Another article on Wikipedia contains information on Electronic Press Kit which can be used in case you are inclined to do a detailed press release. The second resource is at the Press Release Writing website which contains 10 essentials of a press release.

Tomorrow I will touch on how and where to submit your press releases for the blog or a website.

Tags: blog, blogs, email, engine, IM, Internet, marketing, online, optimization, search, search engine, SEO, style, web, Yahoo

Yahoo Kickstart: Social Job Networks

A lot of observers have commented that Yahoo seems to have been left behind in terms of adding more services to their bouquet of services that are provided by them. Recently Yahoo launched Mash which is not open to public but membership is through invites.

Now Yahoo! has introduced a new service called Yahoo! Kickstart which is a networking tool to connect college students, recent grads, professionals and alumni to discover internships and jobs. Yahoo Kickstart! is billed to be a great place for mentoring and guidance of students.

Yahoo plans to sell Kickstart to businesses by highlighting the fact that Kickstart can be a great way to give back to your school or previous employees. Yahoo has a competition in place for the alumni associations under which Yahoo would donate $25,000 to the alumni association of the college which has the most profiles by the end of the year. If you are interested then please all the details at http://kickstart.yahoo.com/docs/promo-one.php.

It has been observed by some, Mashable being one, that Yahoo! Kickstart may never see the light of the day as the concept is being tested right now with the student profile and if it is a success then it would be officially launched. Therefore it seems that Yahoo is not taking any chances.

As is the norm these days Yahoo Kickstart! is supposed to be a beta release and more features and services would be added to the service in the coming months by the Yahoo’s Advanced Products team.

Though the management at Yahoo! vehemently denies that adding the new services is not in response to other applications or services like Facebook clearly Yahoo! has woken up to the challenges and is fighting hard which it should. Let us see what web 2.0 has in store for Yahoo and its competitors.

Tags: IM, manage, social, social networking, style, web, web 2.0, Yahoo

links for 2007-08-31

• Gizmo SMS - Send FREE messages to any Mobile Phone

  (tags: sms free mobile phone gizmo tools service)

• Blink Interactive: a user experience consulting firm: Essays - Minimizing Usability Risks in Web Applications

  (tags: usability apps web webdesign)

• Website Structural Navigation, SHORE 2000

  The ’structural navigation bar’ is becoming a ubiquitous element on many websites. It not only shows users where they are currently located in the site’s architecture, but it allows them to back up levels—one at a time. To find the University of Florida

  (tags: breadcrumbs Navigation uability web)

• SHORE 2000

  During the Spring 2000 semester, 13 student teams conducted empirical studies of user interfaces as their term-length project in Computer Science 434: Human Factors in Computer and Information Systems taught by Dr. Ben Shneiderman, Director, Human-Compute

  (tags: usability web design principles)

• Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)

  (tags: usability blog blogging webdesign design blogs web)

• Usability Reports, User Research, and Design Guidelines by Nielsen Norman Group

  (tags: usability design webdesign Web reference ui gui Guidelines guides Internet research webdev website)

• Usability and Information Architecture

  Usability of a website or web applications discussed. Free samples from some great books on usability.

  (tags: usability webdesign articles IA information architecture resource)

• Register your application on the Yahoo! Developer Network

  (tags: yahoo api development developer webdev maps yahoo-api)

• Mobio Networks, Inc. | confirm quickreg_sms_nonmodal

  (tags: mobile cell phone application)

• 30+ Mobile Photo Sharing Tools

  What do you do with all of those pictures on your camera phone? First you have to get the pictures off of your phone; Take out the card? Email it to yourself? Got bluetooth? USB? IR? You’re probably already annoyed just thinking about it. Here are resou

  (tags: mobile photo sharing tools photography internet applications)

• Photo & Video Sharing

  About PickleWith over 500 million cameraphones sold last year, and almost all new digital cameras supporting a video mode, more and more of us are taking videos and photos back-to-back and sharing shots straight from our phones. A new generation of pe

  (tags: video photo sharing web2.0 photos hosting email)

• Xanco

  Xanco is a free mobile weblog, or lifelog. You can take photos or shoot videos with your camera phone and share them with your friends or family anywhere in the world using a lifelog.
  Add a subject and description and simply upload them to Xanco using em

  (tags: mobile blog)

Tags: blog, blogging, blogs, delicious, email, IM, Internet, message, mobile, research, search, sms, video, web, webdesign, Yahoo

SEO optimized Blog - Listpipe.com

ListPipe is a search engine optimization service and a blog website service that provides Powerful Custom Content™ into a provided blog website each week. ListPipe provides regular and frequent content that is researched, optimized and customized for your local search terms and since the content generated is relevant over a period the search engine optimization is automatic. Listpipe pulls in content from Google, Yahoo, MSN and the others each week which is fresh and relevant. Subscribers get a blog, hosting, and Powerful Custom Content each week, posted directly into their blog. ListPipe web technology helps improve your rank in the search engines by establishing your Web presences with regular, fresh, and Powerful Custom Content™.

Listpipe has built powerful tools that allow them to deliver powerful custom content on a regular schedule. When someone signs up for the service they are required to provide to Listpipe keywords, business type, and location of the business. This is done via an interactive survey questions which one has to take.

Only a selected group of verticals.which helps them to remain current with the latest trends, news, and happenings. We research and develop content with three objectives in mind and they are Relevance to your industry, optimization for keywords and search results and interesting for your consumers.

Once the content is pulled out the user has to approve the content before it is published. Tools like videos and newsletter are there to help users in blogging. Overall it is a great service for beginners to blogging or for those who do not have the time to post regularly to their blogs

Tags: blog, blogging, blogs, customize, engine, Google, IM, optimization, research, search, search engine, SEO, trend, trends, video, web, Yahoo

Mobile chat for multiple protocol

Mabber is a product from a team based in Germany. The software allows you to chat across multiple protocols – so what is the big deal as that is allowed by other applications – but here is the beauty of it, Mabber allows you to chat on your mobile phone as well. Your phone needs to have GPRS. Mabber has been developed on the Jabber protocol but also supports MSN, Yahoo, AIM and ofcource GTalk.

There are two parts to the mabber application. The first is the web interface where clearly a lot of effort has been made to enhance the user experience. The web application works smoothly and works smoothly as there are no delays when windows are changed. Also included are all the facilities that a typical IM would have like history, grouping etc. 

The second part of the application is the mobile application which you can download by receiving a SMS from Mabber (with the link). For getting the SMS one has to submit their mobile number. Once you have downloaded and installed the application you need to login using your login on the Mabber website. From that point you are able to access all your IM contacts and communicate with them using a standard mobile keypad. Depending on the costs of your Mobile service provider you can send messages from you mobile. The application can now be downloaded directly from the website.

Another feature that has been added to Mabber is that you can put it on your website or your blog and you can chat with the visitors to your website or your blog. Try mabber as you would find it interesting.

Tags: blog, IM, message, mobile, sms, web, Yahoo

links for 2007-07-15

• Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection: Top 10 Hacks on Flickr

  One of the nice things about Flickr is that because of their open API a whole host of developers have built more and more interesting things to do with the site. It’s interesting to me today that so many of the ways that I use Flickr are not even through

  (tags: flickr hacks photography tools tips photos hack)

• Flickr: Explore interesting photos from March 2007

  Explore itself. Pretty basic stuff here. Flickr has a magic donkey down at Yahoo! headquarters that each day picks the 500 best photos of the day. While some might try and convince you that there is some type of algorithm method to all this, more that a f

  (tags: Photos flickr toys tools)

• juploadr

  Explore itself. Pretty basic stuff here. Flickr has a magic donkey down at Yahoo! headquarters that each day picks the 500 best photos of the day. While some might try and convince you that there is some type of algorithm method to all this, more that a f

  (tags: flickr software upload photo Java opensource tools)

• One SIM and multiple phone networks « Raji’s Blog

  http://duosim.com/supersim.html

  (tags: multiple sim one GSM phone mobile)

• DuoSIM, Dual SIM Card Adapter, Twin SIM Holder Manufacturer

  With 16 in1 Card are MultiSIM Reader/Writer with advanced system STK which can combine 16 most frequently used mobile numbers (SIM Cards) from different areas, countries or different network numbers in just one SuperSIM card. A smart design of this SuperS

  (tags: sim gsm multiple)

• 3 SIM Cards in One Phone with Huatian K998 - When a 2 SIM phone is not enough, what do you do? Get one with 3 SIM slots - Softpedia

  One SIM is definitely not enough for some phone users. Even two SIM card slots might be insufficient for others. In such cases, an exceptional solution comes from the Huatian K998 mobile phone, which manages to pack an impressive
  number of 3 SIM cards.

  (tags: multiple sim cards gsm mobile phone)

• Posts tagged Dual+sim at Engadget Mobile

  We saw a few “Qool” (sorry, we were mandated to get that in) products at CeBIT this year: the QDA “Glider,” QDA “Icon,” and the Qool “Twins.” The Twins come in two different flavors; the Twins 168 is a tri-band dual SIM handset that allows both SIMs to be

  (tags: dual sim cards same time)

• Doubao 728 with 2 GSM SIM Cards : Specs, reviews and prices.

  This has to be one of the neatest innovations in cell phones that I’ve seen in awhile. The new Doubao 728 mobile phone has the ability to take 2 GSM SIM cards, which means you can use one phone for two seperate mobile numbers.

  (tags: two sim card mobile GSM phone)

• Engadget

  Dual sim card windows mobile phone from Qool Labs

  (tags: mobile multiple SIM)

• DuoSIM, Dual SIM Card Adapter, Twin SIM Holder Manufacturer

  Tools to clone a sim card

  (tags: sim card clone)

• QoolLabs

  Manufacturers of dual sim phones in Singapore

  (tags: Mobile PDA phones)

• Product News: Kwikset’s SmartScan Reads Your Fingerprint to Open Doors, by Arlen Schweiger - Electronic House Product News

  Using keys to enter your home is so last century, right? The latest in 21st century keyless entry technology comes from Kwikset with its introduction of SmartScan, a residential biometric keyless entry system.The SmartScan uses only a fingerprint sca

  (tags: hardware locks)

• DiscoLitez

  DiscoLitez is a Winamp plugin that allows you to control lighting equipment from your computer. This is done using the printer port and some external switching/driving circuitry. At the moment, you’ll have to build the circuits yourself, but they are not

  (tags: electronics hardware music hacks diy hack winamp)

Tags: blog, delicious, icon, IM, manage, mobile, Yahoo

Youtube goes to the mobile for everyone.

Using the mobile to access the Internet is increasing all across the world. All the web services providers are exploring the possibilities to give access to their services via the mobile which is fortunately possible in most cases. There is a lot of activity in the development centers of the industry leaders Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to take their services online and I must say that at this point of time Yahoo has been able to do much better than their competition in fact this is the only positive that has happened for them in the recent past.

Accessing video online and online TV was something that could not be imagined a couple of years back but today we see a whole lot of services that offer video sharing and hosting (and they are free) and also there has been a spurt of growth of online television as well which, it seems, has a great future. All this also means that bandwidth costs to the customer have gone down and more bandwidth is available.

Slowly the technology is moving to the next stage and that is mobile access to videos. YouTube who is an industry leader as far as video sharing and hosting is concerned, is one of the first to step into this field. Until recently, YouTube Mobile was available only for Verizon subscribers — but now, it’s free for anyone who can afford a GPRS plan which allows a lot of data download anywhere in the world! The content that is provided under this service is optimized for mobile devices and the users can also upload videos through MMS. There has been a lot of complaints from US users where the most user friendly mobile carrier as far as charges are concerned, Helious, is charging $6 per month for accessing Youtube. Personally I think it is fair because the service allows you to connect to other video sharing services, in the near future the subscribers will have access to an application which will allow additional functionality when watching videos online and also full protection against viruses. The traffic on the GPRS pipes would surely increase and therefore users in other countries should expect something similar as well.

Apple has also made the announcement that their Iphones which are due to be launched on June 29th will support Youtube. Further YouTube is now available as a channel on AppleTV. Those who thought that video sharing and hosting was a fad and would die soon would realize from this that the fad is here to stay.

Tags: future, Google, IM, Internet, mobile, online, video, web, Yahoo