The Apple, in its design of the iPhone 3GS, has gone to great lengths to put the power of mobile video into the hands of any user. The iPhone 3GS’s built in video functionality is impressive to say the least, and its ease of use has no doubt added to the popularity of this particular Smart Phone. The impact that the new iPhone 3GS has had on the rate of YouTube’s mobile uploads has been staggering to say the least, with uploads increasing over 400% in the first six days since its release.

This is, however, only the beginning, and as more and more people become familiar with the technologies and platforms available to share their videos with friends and family, YouTube’s numbers will continue to increase exponentially, a thought that has not gone unnoticed by other cell phone manufacturers who are scrambling to design and market competitive alternative options for consumers.

As more and more people become educated about mobile uploads, the impact on YouTube, though not completely known, will undoubtedly be staggering. Some are concerned that this mass uploading of random videos will lead to an increase in the amount of garbage shown on YouTube and other media outlets. That being said, there will assuredly be an equal increase in quality, thought-provoking contributions as well. Some have even speculated on the so-called “iReporter” movement, stating that the coming increase of mobile uploads might lead to more “news” being shared with the world first hand from viewers just like you, on the scene, as the event is occurring, without editing. The current examples of this are scattered everywhere, from the protests in Iran, to videos shot by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, to videos shot here in our own country, like those shared during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Posted by Lewis Van Tassel
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Lewis Van Tassel is a Education Manager for Omnistar Affiliate Software and Omnistar Email Marketing Software

The European Commission has been quite unhappy with Microsoft over the past several years, citing anti-trust issues regarding past releases of Windows OS Software. They have fined Microsoft nearly $1.7 billion as a result of their unhappiness and Microsoft, not surprisingly, is looking to avoid these fines in the future. Offering an alternative version of their upcoming OS software, one which the European Commission would be happy with, will delay the overall release of Windows 7, which is something that Microsoft is unwilling to live with.

The media, however, has somewhat distorted the facts regarding this issue, choosing to have the average European consumer believe that they will be unable to reach the internet with this new OS release. This could not be further from the truth. PC makers, such as Dell, HP, IBM, etc, plan to load the IE8 Software on their machines prior to shipping them to stores. Also, Microsoft will be presenting an “Internet Bundle” package that consumers will be able to purchase separately at the store. With large in-store displays and cashiers reminding customers at checkout, it will be virtually impossible to leave the store without IE8 software in hand. Microsoft believes also that the small percentage of users (roughly 5%) who will be purchasing Windows 7 to load on an existing machine will more than likely have the knowledge required to load a web browser of their choosing as well (Mozilla Firefox, IE8, etc). However, Microsoft has pledged that there will be a direct hotline for those who need help accomplishing that task.

There has been talk that Microsoft may yet need to seek out a different approach in order to appease the European Commission. One such approach would involve the use of a “Ballot Screen”. This would appear in front of the user at the first initial boot up of their machine. The user would then have a choice to make (presumably from a list) of which web browser they wish to use. Microsoft, however, believes that it has gone to great lengths in creating this new type of OS release and is hoping that the steps they have taken will be enough to satisfy both the European Commission and the European consumer.

Posted by Lewis Van Tassel
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Lewis Van Tassel is a Education Manager for Omnistar Affiliate Software and
Omnistar Email Marketing Software

Posted by Lewis Van Tassel
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Lewis Van Tassel is a Education Manager for Omnistar Affiliate Software and
Omnistar Email Marketing Software

In the spirit of entrepreneurial fair play, Google has decided to open this second challenge to the general public. Google is seeking fun and exciting applications that both make people smile, and are designed by people like you. Beginning in August of this year (final date to be announced), the first round of judging will commence. Individuals running the Android Platform on their mobile device will be able to vote for their favorite applications, of which the top 20 from each category will be selected to move on to the second and final round of judging. The general public will rank these applications from most to least favorite. The community vote will account for 45% of the final vote, with the remaining 55% going to a team of Google selected judges. For more specific information on eligibility and other criteria, please click here.

Posted by Lewis Van Tassel
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Lewis Van Tassel is a Education Manager for Omnistar Affiliate Software and
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Domain squatting has become a serious problem, it reared its head recently when President Bush’s library had to re-purchase its domain after failing to renew it. The legal issues at hand are complicated, because while part of the issue is certainly related to intellectual property and trademark protection, thats only half the problem. Companies are not diligent about renewing their domains, and if one expires, it really is their own fault. Either way, the fear, as it relates to these new domains, is that companies will now have to secure dozens, even hundreds of domains in order to protect themselves from sites that use their name and a different extension. This is based on the current model for web traffic, one which is already almost gone. The fact is, while people still type in some domains, search engines are a dominant force in traffic. Because Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! have a vested interest in taking you to legitimate sites, they will be sure to deliver the correct results, rather than squatted sites.

Of course, some large companies will take the initiative to prevent this, but if you are a smaller site, you will have to think of your domain as less important than your name. Indeed, the ability to create new domains actually allows for more companies to choose a site name that is close to their company name. This expansion might actually be good for intellectual property because sites won’t have to invest a great deal of effort in finding a domain they like, they’ll be able to use one of the many new extensions made available to them by the ICANN decision.

This really is the only acceptable path forward for the internet, as the number of available domains has shrunk and the internet has simply grown too large for straight domain browsing to be the dominant source of traffic. In the long run, with the number of sites growing at the rate it has, there will be no reason to worry about a site on a parallel domain, as their traffic will come in from their keywords, not yours, and will therefore be based on that sites individual search engine performance. This decision is good news for everyone and should help provide room for growth and innovation going forward.

Posted by Ian Logsdon.
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The first choice you should make is the amount of advertising you would like to use. It is important to maintain a large amount of content per ad, as your customers are unlikely to want to read through a large amount of advertising. How much is, of course, dependant on how you advertise. For text ads, you can use ads both on the sidebar of your site, the bottom of your site, and within the content of your article. If you use ads both on the side and bottom, you can use a minimal amount within the text of your page itself. As a rule, try to stick to about 20% of a page’s content being ads, this prevents your readers from being overwhelmed.

Using affiliate programs allows you to forward users to purchases they might want to make. Often these come with some sort of syndicated ad, and give you the opportunity to write a review. This means you can have both content and ad revenue generated by such a page. This strategy is also useful for combining different advertising strategies on your site. You can use text ads as well as an affiliate ad on a specific page.

Varying the ads you offer is also important, because if your site is full of identical advertising you will not benefit by spreading advertising around. By using multiple dfferent ads, even through the same service, you will be much more likely to build a more effective advertising system. Along with this, you must make the choice between text based and image based advertising. This decision really has to do with where the ads will be placed. In line advertising is more effective if the ad is text based, but sidebar and footer ads are often better when they are a graphic. Of course, a clever webmaster will find a way to use both on their site. It is not adviseable, however, to use flash based ads that will distract from your sites content.

Finding the right location for your ads is essential, so try different strategies for advertising. Pop-up ads should be avoided, because the spread of pop-up blockers, and the fact that many visitors are offended by pop-up ads. As you try out different ads and services, keep track of what approaches make you money and what works most effectively. As your advertising develops, you will have the capacity to build an excellent revenue system.

Posted by Ian Logsdon.
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Yahoo!’s offering is known as SearchScan, and it provides anyone making a search on yahoo.com with warnings about sites. This is an extension of McAfee’s SiteAdvisor system, allowing Yahoo! to detect malware while spydering a site. There are 3 different classification for sites, Browser Exploints, which result in a site being banned from the search engine, Dangerous Downloads, ranging from viruses to trojans, and Unsolicted email, where sites scanned are known to practice spamming. If your site appears with either of the two later warnings, and if it is banned from Yahoo! do to browser exploits, you need to do a full scan of your site for malware, because otherwise you will risk losing a great deal of traffic. The service does not provide any corrective tools of its own.

Google provides users with a similar service, Safe Browsing Diagnostic. To use this tool, simply check your URL in the following format: http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://yoururl.com. This allows you to get a report on your site, whether it is suspicious, how recently it was flagged, and when the last malicious code was seen. This provides you with the opportunity to learn more about what could have flagged Google, providing you with more details than the Yahoo! system. The software also knows whether you have simply executed malicious code or whether you hosted malware, allowing you to know whether a user uploaded a virus or you hosted one by accident. These details are useful because they tell you whether your site is currently a risk to browsers, whether you should put tighter controls on how users interact with your site, etc. Unfortunately the system doesn’t give you any more detail, so if you want to remove infected files, you will need a standalone, server class anti virus application.

Finally, the most recent addition to this field has been Microsoft’s Live Search webmaster tool. This application provides you with the ability to search URLs for malware and links to malware. This is important because it means it will detect if somewhere you send your customers to contains viruses. This additonal layer of security is extremely useful, and its couple with a detailed reporting system, letting you know what pages contain malicious code and download these reports to your computer. While this system is perhaps the most detailed, they do not integrate it with the actual Live Search service, and as such this means you will not be flagged for having such content. And, while the report may tell you what files are infected, only antivirus software can reliably purge malicious code from your site.

In the end, it is a combination of these search engines that will reap you the greatest benefit while looking into the security and safety of data and visitors on your site. By using all three options, you will have a good idea what is wrong, where it is located, and that will help you determine what tool you use to solve the problem. Diligence in protecting your customers is important because if you get a reputation for being dangerous, you will drive away site visitors quickly.

Posted by Ian Logsdon.
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First, when creating a document you will turn into a pdf, you should include the heading tags you would usually use on your website. This is because this data will be carried over, giving these phrases and sentences preference and helping to saturate your keywords. Once you have the content created, assemble the rest of the PDF and export it. You can now edit the metadata within the file using Adobe Acrobat.

Acrobat actually stores metadata in two differen places, so it is important to use both. Within the software, you should enter pertinent seo data in the Document Metadata menu, as well as the Document Properties section. Both of these areas include the basic fields, an HTML title, a field for author, subject, and keywords. It is important to include data in both, but you should avoid using the same information, as duplicate content is often penalized by search engines. The document metadata section includes a number of additional fields that are less important due to the fact that they are not looked at by search engines. So, once you have your PDF equipped with the important keywords, a keyword in its title, and a good description, youre ready to save it and upload it to your site. Optimizing everything may seem like a lot of work, but pagerank is key to becoming successful, and every little bit helps.

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Obama’s website started out fairly standard, as far as political sites go, it was modeled after Howard Dean’s success in small donor, web-based fundraising. Soon after, the team introduced a social networking style site, offering the ability to connect to other Obama supporters, and introduced the ability to easily and quickly communicate. Access to volunteers was important, allowing the ground organization to reach out to Obama supporters in every state during the primary. With fundraising came greater resources, and it was through this the Obama campaign expanded their efforts.

By the end of the election, they were regularly using text-messaging to motivate voters, and the campaign had introduced an application for the iPhone that included a number of tools to help voters canvas for Obama. In each precinct, volunteers and paid staffers worked with software provided by Central Desktop, giving them professional quality organization. The usage of social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace helped build enthusiasm among young voters, something that turned out to be a good investment of time, considering Obama won young 68% of young voters. The campaign regularly posted videos to sites like youtube, and generally harnessed the power of its supporters creating media online.

The convergence of social networking tools, making resources available to supporters, and raising money online, all helped Obama win, creating a formula for electoral success that many politicians will replicate in the future. Truly, one of the most important parts of future political campaigns will be information technology and how it can motivate voters.

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