SEO Concepts Blog

T-Mobile Announces Official Samsung Vibrant Release

2010-06-27T21:40:44-07:00

It seems as though all the rumors going are true. As of about 40 minutes ago T-Mobile officially released the launch date for the Samsung Vibrant / Galaxy S. This super slim and sleek phone has awesome features like an amazingly large and bright AMOLED 4″ screen for viewing things like the pre-installed Avatar movie and On-Demand TV brought to you by MobiTV. In addition to that, the phone is powered by a Hummingbird processor which is currently the fastest processor on the market for Android phones. It also has an awesome in flight internet browsing feature to occupy your time during those long, boring flights and if you’re a game junkie it comes pre-loaded with The Sims 3 collector edition not to mention you have access to the thousands of downloads from the Android Market. For those people who love to read, it also comes preloaded with the Kindle for Android so you can keep on reading to your hearts content.

With a phone like this that has something for everyone from movies, to books, and games that is all for a mere $199.99, what more could you ask for in ever so essential life line?? Get your hands on it July 21st, I know I will be!!

Android Gets Firefox

2010-04-28T14:35:43-07:00

Yesterday, Firefox decided to make it’s first step into the Android world (finally!) According to Co-Founder of RocketHub and Firefox engineer, Vladimir Vukićević’s blog; Firefox released a pre-alpha version of its Android powered browser which is being called Fennec. While the mobile version is available please keep in mind that because this is a pre-alpha version of Fennec

Firefox's Mobile Web Browser "Fennec" Comes to Android

there is a very likely chance you will come across plenty of bugs, including but not limited to: your phone freezing, or your phone completely crashing due to the fact that memory handling hasn’t been fully optimized yet so loading a large page might have that affect. If you do encounter any of these problems rebooting your phone should get you back up and running.

Also, Fennec has only been tested on the Motorola Droid and Nexxus One which naturally carries more internal memory (considering they’re running Android 2.0+) than the MyTouch 3G (which I already have memory problems with) or of course the G1 which may not have the ability to run it at all. But even with all the kinks it’s still pretty exciting to see that Firefox is coming over to Google’s open source platform. Fennec has already been shipped out on Nokia’s high-end phones after only a couple months of development, which I’m undecided on if that’s a good or bad thing with it being so new and having the possibility of so many errors.

Wired got the opportunity to test it out on the Nokia Maemo OS, saying “It replicated the experience of using the desktop version of Firefox extremely well, even on a much smaller screen.” Based on my findings Firefox for Android will be very similar to that of the Nokia/Maemo version of the browser. One huge plus is that an experimental version of Weave – which allows you to import all of your Android bookmarks, has already been put together for Fennec so your bookmarks can be added from the very beginning.

Mozilla says that the final version will be ready later this year and that this version will allow Firefox to be implemented into future Android platforms including larger versions for any Android tablets, which is already being developed.

Vukićević has more information on his blog about system requirements, installation, troubleshooting, and where to send feedback. There’s also a Google Group dedicated to the pre-alpha release Fennec.

Little Fun Fact (FF): Fennec was Named After This Adorable Little Thing!

Kevin Rose of Digg Kills DiggBar

2010-04-08T12:21:55-07:00

Without being in office more than one day, Digg’s new acting CEO Kevin Rose takes charge and removes the DiggBar. The original Digg founder announced that Digg is undergoing some major changes for the good. First one being the removal of the DiggBar which Rose has said “Framing content with an iFrame is bad for the Internet.” He continues, “It causes confusion when bookmarking, breaks w/iFrame busters, and has no ability to communicate with the lower frame (if you browse away from a story, the old digg count still persists). It’s an inconsistent/wonky user experience, and I’m happy to say we are killing it when we launch the new Digg. That said, we will continue to iterate on our browser extensions for Firefox, Chrome, and IE.” Aside from the death of the DiggBar, Rose says that Digg will also do some major changes for the browser extensions.

With that said… How do you feel about there being no more DiggBar??

SEO Concepts @ SES New York 2010

2010-03-30T14:27:43-07:00

After a week long hiatus in New York City for the ever popular SES New York 2010, I’m back! I have so much catching up to do and I hope everyone is ready for a lot more posting action. =)

First off, I’d like to say that SES New York was an awesome event, with some great guest speakers including David Scott, and Avinash Kaushik. For those of you who have no idea what SES is, its the top internet marketing/news conference with all the newest and best information for Social Media, PPC, and SEO.

Google's Booth at SES New York 2010

Day 1

Monday March 22, 2010

Monday was the start of SES but not officially, it’s official start was Tuesday. For everyone that came early there was a meet and greet located at the Bridges Bar in the Hilton hotel where the conference was being held. There wasn’t that many people at the meet and greet but then again we were in New York City, I’m sure they were partying elsewhere!

Day 2

Tuesday March 23, 2010

SES New York 2010 started off with a bang. With a morning keynote speech by David Meerman Scott followed by the official opening of the Expo and later with David Scott giving away (and signing!) his new book “World Wide Rave,” which you know I stood in line to get a copy of! I’ll let you all know how it was after I get done reading it considering I came back with a bunch of goodies (including a $200 gift card for Apple!) and even more unpacking that has yet to be done considering the fact that I didn’t get home until 7am yesterday morning and didn’t sleep the night before due to flight delays. There was plenty to see and do including getting some coffee

Yahoo's Booth and Coffee Maker at SES New York 2010

that Yahoo! was giving away in their very sleek and awesome black (and biodegradable!) tumblers. Then lunch had another keynote panel with Analyze This about Search Marketing. Finally, the day came to a close with the Bing Cocktail Reception held at the Expo floor where they gave out really neat little Bing coasters that flashed, although it would’ve been nice if the flashing (really bright) LED light turned off considering when I went to bed I had to shove it under a book inside my carry on bag in order to not see it flashing constantly.

Day 3

Wednesday March 24, 2010

Day 3 started off with an awesome keynote by Avinash Kaushik the super blogger and Google Analytics Evangelist everyone knows and loves. The keynote that I must admit was very entertaining considering the topics. Avinash kept everything short and to the point with plenty of jokes that got everyone laughing even though I’m sure we all felt Bing’s cocktails from the night before and all the sleep deprivation. Although this was the last day

Facebook's Booth at SES New York 2010

of the Expo there were still technically two more days of the conference but I still didn’t see the point of closing the expo hall so early. I must say I was pretty disappointed with Google’s give aways considering their shirts were lame compared to the ones given out at SES San Jose last year they were at least worthy of wearing out unlike the ones from this year which are simply blue or green with pretty much a screen shot about AdWords on the back. However, I do love the pens and notebooks from Google DoubleClick Search. Bing really didn’t give anything away other than those coasters, some cheap looking pens and a free drink at the cocktail reception for people attending all of the paid sessions at the conference.

Day 4

Thursday March 25, 2010

My final day at the conference was all about Affiliate Marketing. I attended one session considering I got sick and ended up sleeping through my first one by accident. I went to the Affiliate Marketing and Social Media session which had a panel of important people including Sarah Smith from Facebook, Zac Johnson from Money Reign and Jordan Blum from BeautyChoice.com. All of whom, had some helpful information even considering I don’t have much involvement in affiliate marketing. Once I get all of my notes together I’ll post the helpful stuff for everyone.

The Super Pages Girls at SES New York 2010

All in all, SES New York 2010 was a complete success and there were some great guest speakers who had even better information about the industry.

Update: Google Drops China By April

2010-03-19T13:05:20-07:00

The rumors that were mentioned in our earlier post about Google leaving China for good, appear to be true. According to Bloomberg news report that references a China Business Newspaper, Google is said to officially announce its removal from China On March 22, this Monday. In that announcement will most likely be that they intend to be completely out of China by April 10th.

Google’s former financial controller for the Asia Pacific region has said that if they do pull out, it would be an irreparable ”burnt bridge” and there will be no chance of Google ever returning to China.

Google Launches Buzz Widget For Android

2010-03-18T14:39:50-07:00

Google’s Blog announced not too long ago that they just released the new Google Buzz Widget in the Android Market. The widget allows you to post with just a single touch of a button. You can also choose to attach your location and a photo, then simply tap post and the photo will upload in the background. Google says that currently it’s only available in English but will come out with additional languages in the future.

Motorola Delays Droid 2.1 Update

2010-03-18T11:21:53-07:00

Verizon confirmed that the long-awaited Droid 2.1 OS update will be delayed until further notice. Apparently, a bug was found in the system during testing late last night.

The update that was due to be released today to Droid users includes Yahoo! Mail support, Pinch to Zoom on Maps, Browsers, and Galleries, Speech-to-Text, Preloaded Google Goggles, and a 3D Gallery application that shows both images taken and images in Picasa web albums.

Google Drops Censorship In China

2010-03-16T13:31:24-07:00

Sensitive websites such as the Tiananmen Square democracy, Tibet, and regional independence movement which are normally filtered, were able to be viewed through Google China on Tuesday in Beijing. This following a statement made by Google saying they would no longer abide by Beijing’s censorship regulations.

Is it possible Google has dropped censorship for their Chinese search engine?

According to Google China filtering is still active on the search engine and they insist their policies have not changed. But for the people of Beijing, I’m sure that doesn’t seem to be the case.

NBC did a public search through Google.cn for a couple commonly censored searches to test the theory. One search being “Xinjiang independence” which pulled a Wikipedia entry for the top result about the East Turkestan independence movement. Another search was made for the non-profit group the “Tibet Information Network” whom never really agreed with China’s policies. A third search was done on the ever popular, but I’m sure very controversial image of the “Tank Man” (shown below) which did in fact show the one image that was formerly censored. But only a single image, not several like our US based image searches.

A few more final searches were made; “June 4″ typed in Chinese characters; the term used for the Tiananmen protests in China which also brought up a single image of the Tank Man. And a final search for “Tiananmen Square Massacre” was made, intentionally using “massacre” as opposed to “incident” for obvious reasons; which listed hundreds of results regarding military crack downs on protesters on June 4, 1989. Along with the other search results, popped up the “Unknown Rebel” that stood blocking a line of tanks.

These search results were all just a click away from being viewed.

Jeremy Goldkorn, founder of the Beijing based media tracking website danwei.org says that indeed the search filters, do not seem to be fully working but also adds that no one knows exactly what’s going on.

While occasional searches did seem to deny access to the controversial websites that were once completely denied, it’s definitely a noticeable difference compared to six months ago.

Even after all of this, Google US spokesman, Scott Rubin said that the censorship has not ceased, and their operations have not changed but he still did not confirm (or deny) whether the Google.cn site is being shut down or not, regardless of rumors on the Chinese news networks.

Eric Shmidt, CEO, commented last week that something will happen soon, while Rubin had no further details and another Google spokesman put the blame on the Chinese government, saying the change may have occurred when they altered the site. None the less, Google says they are trying to compromise with Beijing and their extensive web controls even after their previous January 12th announcement saying the company would no longer comply.

China’s industry minister did say that the company does have to obey the laws and that there are no other options short of shutting the search engine down, which consumes about 35 percent of China’s search market. However, the only people that will likely feel the burn on this situation are the Chinese companies and local web surfers who rely on Google for search, maps, and other services.

While the extent of what may happen if Google Inc. does in fact bail on China due to the censorship and hacking conflict, is unclear. I think we’re all pretty sure Google won’t go under if they do decide not to work with China.

Facebook Takes #1 Spot In Most Visited

2010-03-15T14:42:03-07:00

According to Hitwise Facebook took the number one spot as the most visited site last week, taking away Google’s title of Most Visited site in the US. Facebook, which increased visits by 185% in comparison to the same week in 2009 as opposed to the mere 9% increase of visitors to Google. Facebook has previously held the top spot on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years Day as well as the weekend of March 6th and 7th. Both sites accounted for 14% of all US internet visits last week.

Twitter Officially Enables Geolocation

2010-03-12T21:49:35-08:00

This morning Twitter co-founder and CEO, Biz Stone officially announced its newest Geolocation feature. While this feature has been available on Twitter’s API since last November, it was introduced to the site late last night to all of those individuals who don’t happen to use the API. As with most features similar to the geolocation, it is optional; so if you want your location to be posted along with your tweets, you have to opt-in through your Account Settings. Once you’ve enabled the feature you can choose to always show your location or to only attach it to individual tweets you share. Geolocation also allows you to either share you’re exact coordinates, neighborhood or town.

The feature, which doesn’t seem to show up on TweetDeck or Seesmic (or any other third-party clients, presumably) currently only works on Firefox 3.5 and Chrome for Windows. And it doesn’t work from Twitter’s mobile site on the MyTouch 3G or the iPhone (from any phone?) which doesn’t make sense considering most people post from their phones. Of course, if there’s any occasion where you decide you don’t want to post your location you can simply hit the “x” next your location to disable it.

The timing of the feature was anything but accidental with the SXSW Conference in Austin, TX starting today, the location wars are definitely heating up. The New York Times reported earlier this week that Facebook will unveil its answer to location at its f8 conference on April 21 in San Francisco. Meanwhile, Google remains in the game with Latitude and Buzz (somewhat.) Of course, other location based apps including Foursquare, and Gowalla are rolling out additional functionality; which many of them use Twitter’s geolocation API to pass the data back to Twitter anyway, so it would make sense to have the added functionality turned on for the website.