Universal Music Group and Clear Channel Communications Onboard

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Vancouver, British Columbia, October 7, 2004 - Destiny Media Technologies, Inc. (OTCBB: DSNY; Berlin: DME 935 410) is pleased to announce the successful commercial launch of the Promo Only MPE™ system to US radio stations by the Universal Music Group. This technology allows record labels to securely move near CD quality tracks to radio and trusted users through the internet.

Over forty tracks have been added to the system since launch on September 23, including Eminem’s Just Lose It and U2’s Vertigo. A number of Universal Music Group (UMG) sub labels have adopted the system, including Interscope Geffen A&M Records and Island Def Jam Music Group. The system was officially announced at the National Association of Broadcasting Show in San Diego on October 6th.

Since the original announcement of the contract with Universal Music Group in June, the system has undergone extensive customization, including a complete remake of the user interface by Polychrome Design (http://www.polychrome.org). With their experience designing for UMG, Apple iTunes, Napster and Virgin Records, they were able to create a cleaner, more intuitive user interface for track recipients.

Comments Destiny CEO, Steve Vestergaard, “I’m extremely grateful for the feedback we’ve received from UMG, Clear Channel Communications, Polychrome and Promo Only during the customization phase. The extensive industry participation has resulted in a solution which meets the needs of both the labels and track recipients.”

As the largest radio network in the US, usability comments from Clear Channel Communications have been invaluable. “Clear Channel Radio is always striving to provide the best content to our listeners, and the most efficient methods of delivery to our stations”, said Rob Speicher, Director of Digital Audio Systems with Clear Channel. “Having been involved in the development of the Promo Only MPE™ delivery system, we know that its features, quality of tracks, and speed of delivery will be very attractive to our stations. We are very pleased to embrace this new technology.”

Dean Ernst, president of Promo Only Canada and director of the Promo Only MPE™ project says that Promo Only intends to make the system an industry standard. “With this launch, we can begin marketing in earnest to the rest of the industry. We have an interview in this month’s Billboard Magazine and articles and interviews are confirmed for twelve other industry publications. We’re also leading two other MPE™ projects which we anticipate announcing shortly.”

Clipstream™ and Promo Only MPE™ are products of Destiny, marketed to the music industry by strategic partner Promo Only. The MPE™ technology is unique in that the content is encoded at a much higher quality than a similar sized MP3 file and the content is locked to a digital fingerprint of the destination computer. It will only play on the computer that it is intended for. If the song is exported to a CD, a watermark is added to the song, so that if it is duplicated, the recipient can be identified. The Promo Only MPE™ system provides an end to end list management, delivery and reporting service to the labels.

About Universal Music Group

Universal Music Group is the world’s leading music company with wholly-owned record operations or licensees in 71 countries. Its businesses also include Universal Music Publishing Group, one of the industry’s largest global music publishing operations.

Universal Music Group consists of record labels Decca Record Company, Deutsche Grammophon, DreamWorks Records, Interscope Geffen A&M Records, Island Def Jam Music Group, Lost Highway Records, MCA Nashville, Mercury Nashville, Mercury Records, Philips, Polydor, Universal Music Latino, Universal Motown Records Group, and Verve Music Group as well as a multitude of record labels owned or distributed by its record company subsidiaries around the world. The Universal Music Group owns the most extensive catalog of music in the industry, which is marketed through two distinct divisions, Universal Music Enterprises (in the U.S.) and Strategic Marketing and Commercial Affairs (outside the U.S.). Universal Music Group also includes eLabs, a new media and technology division.

Universal Music Group is a unit of Vivendi Universal, a global media and communications company.

The music producer could in some cases be compared to the film director in that the producer’s job is to create, shape and mold a piece of music in accordance with their vision for the album.

With the advent of the computer web applications like Facebook, YouTube and MySpace, record producers can now serve in very non-traditional roles, using “social networking.” They can produce music via the internet by having their clients email .mp3 or .wav files to them. In this way the producer can be located in a different geographic location and still accomplish their goal.

These producers now typically carried out most or all of these various tasks themselves, including selecting and arranging songs, overseeing sessions (and often engineering the recordings) and even writing the material. Independent music production companies rapidly gained a significant foothold in popular music and soon became the main intermediary between artist and record label, signing new artists to production contracts, producing the recordings and then licensing the finished product to record labels for pressing, promotion and sale. (This was a novel innovation in the popular music field, although a broadly similar system had long been in place in many countries for the production of content for broadcast radio.) The classic example of this transition is renowned British producer George Martin, who worked as a staff producer and A&R manager at EMI for many years, before branching out on his own and becoming a highly successful independent producer.

As a result of these changes, record producers began to exert a strong influence, not only on individual careers, but on the course of popular music. A key example of this is of Phil Spector who defined the gap between Elvis and the Beatles (1958–1964) with such acts as The Ronettes, The Crystals, Darlene Love, The Righteous Brothers and The Paris Sisters. Spector’s Wall of Sound production technique also persisted after that time with his select recordings of The Beatles, The Ramones, Leonard Cohen, George Harrison, Dion and Ike and Tina Turner.

Some producers also became de facto recording artists, often creating records with anonymous studio musicians and releasing them under a pseudonym. Examples of this phenomenon include the records by fictional groups The Archies and Josie & The Pussycats, produced by Don Kirshner and Danny Jansen respectively, who were contracted by TV production companies to produce these records to promote the animated children’s TV series of the same name. Similarly, Jeff Barry and Andy Kim recorded as The Archies.

Source: http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/07/29/0039201.shtml

Spurred by an e-mail from someone deep in the marketing ranks, Microsoft last week traveled to San Francisco, rounding up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a “new” operating system, code-named Mojave. More than 90 percent gave positive feedback on what they saw. Then they were told that “Mojave” was actually Windows Vista.

“Oh wow,” said one user, eliciting exactly the exclamation that Microsoft had hoped to garner when it first released the operating system more than 18 months ago. Instead, the operating system got mixed reviews and criticisms for its lack of compatibility and other headaches.

To be sure, the focus groups didn’t have to install Vista or hook it up to their existing home network. Still, the emotional appeal of the “everyman” trying Vista and liking it clearly packs an emotional punch, something the company has desperately needed. Microsoft is still trying to figure out just how it will use the Mojave footage in its marketing, though it will clearly have a place.

The Mojave project is likely to be just one of many efforts designed to resuscitate Vista’s image as well as lend strength to the Windows platform among stepped-up competition from Apple and Google. In an interview Wednesday, Windows unit business chief Bill Veghte told CNET News that he wants to see his unit try new things to get the message across.

“We have a huge perception opportunity,” he said, offering a glass half-full assessment of things. “We are going to try a bunch of stuff.”

The image improvement effort, known internally as FTP, has many components. Well-publicized are the hundreds of millions that Microsoft plans to spend on a broad campaign buttressed by edgy ads from Crispin Porter and Bogusky. But Veghte wants the company pushing on multiple marketing fronts.

With small businesses, for example, Microsoft earlier this month launched the “Assurance” campaign. In that effort, Microsoft is offering free Vista-related technical support, a move that will add millions of dollars to Microsoft’s telephone support costs. The point, Veghte said, is that businesses want to see Microsoft standing behind its product.

Veghte is convinced, like others at Microsoft, that despite early technical challenges, Vista’s problems are primarily ones of perception.

Much of that perception, Microsoft belatedly acknowledges, stems from Apple’s successful and unchallenged anti-Vista campaign. But, after stewing over the ads on many of his morning runs, Veghte decided that it was time to strike back, even without a new version of Windows to tout. Apple, he said, has “crossed a line” from fact into fiction.

Others at Microsoft have been sounding a similar note. Marketing vice president Brad Brooks told partners earlier this month that Microsoft was “drawing a line in the sand,” while Steve Ballmer promised in a memo to employees Wednesday that after doing some hard technical work on Vista that it was now time for Microsoft to “tell our story.”

“In the weeks ahead, we’ll launch a campaign to address any lingering doubts our customers may have about Windows Vista,” Ballmer wrote. “And later this year, you’ll see a more comprehensive effort to redefine the meaning and value of Windows for our customers.”

What gives the Mojave project its power, though, is the fact that it isn’t Ballmer or someone else at Microsoft saying that Vista has gotten a bad rap. It’s everyday people.

With scenes reminiscent of both Apple’s “real people” campaign of a few years back as well as classic commercials from Folgers and others, the Mojave project could prove a formidable weapon.

The Mojave project is remarkable both for its humble origin as well as the speed with which it was pulled off. The idea started barely two weeks ago in an e-mail from Microsoft’s David Webster to several superiors, including Veghte. Given the green light, Microsoft started videotaping responses just last week, in San Francisco. The preview Veghte gave to CNET News on Wednesday was the first time the footage had been shown outside the company and its contractors.

The footage could get a public airing as soon as next week or even at Thursday’s financial analyst meeting, although plans were still in flux as of late Wednesday night. Veghte will come under increased scrutiny now that his boss, division president Kevin Johnson, is leaving the company. For the time being, Veghte and Windows engineering chief Steven Sinofsky will both report to Ballmer, who has called the work on Windows the company’s top priority.

The need for the campaign is clear. Apple has been making inroads, as well as headlines with its anti-Vista push. Although Microsoft dominates in corporations and in overseas markets, Apple has been grabbing a significant share of the consumer market in the U.S., pushing its overall domestic share as high as 8.5 percent last quarter, a significant rise from even a year ago.

Microsoft is already at work on Windows 7, the next version of the operating system. But Veghte said the company can’t wait for a new product to start firing back.

“I’ve got to start having that discussion in the marketplace,” Veghte said. “I’ve got to start driving that now. People feel guilty (about Vista). It’s wrong.”

Microsoft hasn’t said a ton about Windows 7, but it has talked about both a new multitouch interface as well as reassuring customers, particularly businesses, that it won’t be making the kinds of dramatic changes under the hood that were made with Vista.

That means that this project is not made by a amateur developer but by someone who got certain cred and experience already as some other bloggers stated. but Lifestream.fm looks to be Juan Xavier way to step up his game and get head on into his biggest project yet. one of things i noted is that he bailed on his blog and now his previous blog domain redirects to his Lifestream.fm profile. i hope that is a notice that he means business and plans to go the long haul with it and make it his main project.

Lifestream.fm takes bits of other Life Streaming solutions and Social Aggregators like Profilactic (the unrecognized master aggregator) , Web 2.0 darling FriendFeed and the Snobbish and yet unopened SocialThing! and combines them in a familar Twitter-like profile form.

It becomes very clear that Juan Xavier knows that Form and Style are essential and Lifestream.fm proves it with a very clean layout and a pleasant to look design something that Profilactic ugly design and Firendfeed  extremely twitter/google inspired should take notice. i would talk about SocialThing!. but the biggest problem with SocialThing! right now is the utter snobbishness of the service and very limited supported services even if they do count with a good design and good features.

Lifestreamfm juanxavier

If you decide to give Lifestream.fm a chance after what i have written, then you will be happy to know that it got a widget badge for your blog sidebar and that it sports pretty much the same default look of the site.

Lifestreamfm Badges

This badge is exactly the same kind of widget than the one by others and it will only be a matter of taste and choice for you to choose it. but there is one already and it works well.

Some of the things i want to see on future versions of the badge would be better customization options. a flash or silverlight version, a full page version like the one being offered by MyBloglog so it can result more convenient and more palatable to users.

That is all. so if you want to try Lifestream.fm out you can, no need of invites or slow registration, it works on all browsers and from what i know it will continue to evolve and add features pretty quickly.

Right now it supports 39 services and 42 status choices to add.

Lifestream.fm

Up until now, search engines have largely used text content as the main way of determining where to rank websites in results.

However, software developer Adobe is working out how Flash media might incorporated into search results with the internet search giants Google and Yahoo.

Although despite the potential of this technological breakthrough, some experts remain sceptical.

Commenting in Info World, Vanessa Fox, editor of the Search Engine Land journal explains that it is not yet clear whether this change in search function will be a success.

She said: “It could be a large impact or it also could be really small.

“I do think developers who are implementing Flash on their site probably still need to pay attention to search engine optimisation.”

Last month E-consultancy claimed that the jury is still out over whether adding an ‘alt tag’ to HTML images has any beneficial impact on SEO.

What’s all the fuss about Flash search?

Business Feet deliver targeted results through internet marketing and SEO web design

SAN JOSE, Calif. — July 1, 2008 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the company is teaming up with search industry leaders to dramatically improve search results of dynamic Web content and rich Internet applications (RIAs). Adobe is providing optimized Adobe® Flash® Player technology to Google and Yahoo! to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format (SWF) and uncover information that is currently undiscoverable by search engines. This will provide more relevant automatic search rankings of the millions of RIAs and other dynamic content that run in Adobe Flash Player. Moving forward, RIA developers and rich Web content producers won’t need to amend existing and future content to make it searchable — they can now be confident it can be found by users around the globe.

The openly published SWF specification describes the file format used to deliver rich applications and interactive content via Adobe Flash Player, which is installed on more than 98 percent of Internet-connected computers. Although search engines already index static text and links within SWF files, RIAs and dynamic Web content have been generally difficult to fully expose to search engines because of their changing states — a problem also inherent in other RIA technologies.

“Until now it has been extremely challenging to search the millions of RIAs and dynamic content on the Web, so we are leading the charge in improving search of content that runs in Adobe Flash Player,” said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe. “We are initially working with Google and Yahoo! to significantly improve search of this rich content on the Web, and we intend to broaden the availability of this capability to benefit all content publishers, developers and end users.”

Google has already begun to roll out Adobe Flash Player technology incorporated into its search engine. With Adobe’s help, Google can now better read the content on sites that use Adobe Flash technology, helping users find more relevant information when conducting searches. As a result, millions of pre-existing RIAs and dynamic Web experiences that utilize Adobe Flash technology, including content that loads at runtime, are immediately searchable without the need for companies and developers to alter them.

“Google has been working hard to improve how we can read and discover SWF files,” said Bill Coughran, senior vice president of engineering at Google. “Through our recent collaboration with Adobe, we now help Web site owners that choose to design sites with Adobe Flash software by indexing this content better. Improving how we crawl dynamic content will ultimately enhance the search experience for our users.”

Yahoo! also expects to deliver improved Web search capabilities for SWF applications in a future update to Yahoo! Search. “Yahoo! is committed to supporting webmaster needs with plans to support searchable SWF and is working with Adobe to determine the best possible implementation,” said Sean Suchter, vice president Yahoo! Search Technology Engineering.

“Designers and Web developers have long been frustrated that search engines couldn’t better access the information within their content created with Flash technology. It’s great to see Adobe and the search engines working directly together to improve the situation,” said Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief, SearchEngineLand.com. “The changes should help unlock information that’s previously been ‘invisible’ and will likely result in a better experience for searchers.”

Adobe Flash Player is the world’s most pervasive client runtime that delivers unparalleled creative options, highly engaging user experiences, stunning audio/video playback, and nearly universal reach. To download and learn more about Adobe Flash Player, please visit www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/ .
About Adobe Systems Incorporated

Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information - anytime, anywhere and through any medium.

Brain Toniq is the world’s first organic, botanical-based, non-caffeinated think drink specifically designed for those who need more mental focus and clarity. Formulated out of plant extracts and natural compounds, the ingredients in Brain Toniq have a long, proven history for their effects on increasing brain power and cognition. We add no chemical preservatives, no caffeine, no sugar, no fake anything. Just fuel for the cranium.

Brain Toniq is no marketing gimmick. With 5 to 36 times the amount of active ingredients of any functional beverage on the market, Brain Toniq is the real deal. It provides simple access to the world’s most powerful brain-enhancing botanicals. Think coffee without the gut-ripping side effects of caffeine. Mixed together with gentle organic agave syrup and natural citrus extracts, you get a delicious nootropic drink that not only works, it’s actually good for you.
Given your goals, are you drinking what’s needed?

We live in a time when an increasing number of us have livelihoods that depend on our ability to focus and maximize the use of our brain power. Every day, we are required to come up with new ideas, be experts at multitasking, and have the ability to rapidly refocus on multiple levels of attention. We need the skills of analyzing, organizing, innovation and brainstorming. All of this requires intense mental focus.

Brain Toniq was built for software engineers, programmers, designers, systems analysts, anyone who uses author David Allen’s Getting Things Done system, technical writers, academic professionals and researchers. But as you’ll experience, Brain Toniq works equally well for those often outside of the geek world that daily need to be clear and to create. These include teachers, parents, artists and —because there are no harmful sugars or caffeine—students of all ages. If you have a dream, Brain Toniq helps you get there.
The smart antidote to head fog

Most people will tell you that there is a lull in cognitive power during some part of their day. They intuitively know that adding more caffeine isn’t the answer; in fact that’s probably a recipe for digestive and skin problems, as well as adrenal burnout. Instead, they are looking for a healthy way to get their brain circulation and mental capacities back on line. They’re not going to choose steamed kale and brown rice, but they’re smart enough to know that a Snickers bar is not the answer.

Ask any herbalist or scientific drink formulator about so-called functional beverages, and they’ll roll their eyes. Because they know that the amounts of active ingredients in most drinks are so far below effective levels as to be little more than window dressing, to fool the public with hip language and gimmicks. Brain Toniq is stuffed with over 1800mg of five active ingredients, each having an effect profile that helps humans get things done.
Stop drinking junk™

If you have a long-range vision for your life, you can no longer afford to daily drink beverages that are bad for you. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that adding more and more processed sugar (or worse, fake “diet” sugar) and caffeine to your blood stream is not a recipe for longevity or better brain function. Brain Toniq was made by and for people who understand the role that health plays in accomplishing ones dreams. If you have a vision for your life, Brain Toniq can help you get there. You get a formula made from effective doses of Rhodiola root, Choline and DMAE (two natural compounds), Eleuthero root (”Siberian Ginseng”) and wild-harvested Blue Green Algae extract. We add a mix of natural citrus extracts, use only organic agave nectar for sweetness, and add a light carbonation. It’s a delicious flavor, one that even kids enjoy. No caffeine. No processed sugars. No fake anything. Just fuel for intelligent decision making.

braintoniqs.com

So all in all, I’m happy with the service.

Comcast logo(Credit: Comcast)

But I just found out about something that really bugs me–and may explain why I’ve received occasional reports over the years that an e-mail I sent didn’t get through at all–or was marked as spam when it did arrive.

This came up about a week ago, when I noticed that some (but not all) outbound e-mails sent through Apple’s .Mac service (now known as MobileMe) were not going out. After waiting about an hour for the messages to go through, I reported the problem to the service’s support desk.

It turned out that the messages were being delayed within the .Mac servers by a couple of hours, and I never did get an explanation of why that happened, but the .Mac support specialist who replied to my initial report told me something that surprised me a lot.

It turns out that the IP address of my Comcast cable modem–which had been the same for several months–is in a range of addresses that is listed on several major e-mail blacklists. That is, some e-mail services regard e-mail from many (or most?) Comcast customers as more likely to be spam. This may be old news to many of you, but as I said, I found it very surprising, and I bet a lot of other Comcast customers aren’t aware of it.

(This problem turns out to be unrelated to the message delays I was seeing, but it’s a pretty serious problem on its own.)

As it happens, I had a brief service interruption yesterday, and in case the problem was a glitch at my end, I reset my cable modem and router. When it came back up (several minutes later, actually) I discovered I had a different IP address, one that is substantially different than the previous one.

I checked the new address against the same e-mail blacklists and found that it’s on all the same lists.

You can check for yourself. The service I used to check multiple blacklists is hosted by MXToolBox; just enter any IP address–such as the address of your home Internet connection, or the address of your e-mail server–and in a few seconds, you’ll get a report summarizing the responses from 123 different blacklists. (If you don’t know your own IP address, try a service such as WhatIsMyIP.com.)

While the cable modem service was down, I connected via the Option 3G wireless card I use when I’m traveling. I also checked that IP address–no blacklist entries at all.

So at least I have a way to avoid this problem when I’m sending a really critical e-mail to people who aren’t expecting my message and thus haven’t whitelisted my e-mail address or personal domain within their antispam software.

But I don’t want to have to use the Option card all the time, either.

I discussed the situation with a friend of mine who works in the network security industry, and he says the problem may be related to the proliferation of botnets on home PCs. Users click on malicious Web sites, their PCs get infected, and they start sending spam at the direction of the botnet organizers.

My friend says these infected PCs can be difficult for ISPs such as Comcast to detect. His company makes a server appliance that is designed to detect such things, so I believe it.

The bottom line here is that I have a problem I don’t know how to solve. I’m sure Comcast can’t solve it; it isn’t in control of these blacklists, and if it could control the botnets, it would already be doing that.

I could get a different Internet service, but there aren’t many choices around here, and it’s quite possible that any service that has a large number of home users is going to be blacklisted for the same reasons as Comcast.

Any suggestions?

So when it comes to inadvertently killing off one of the most popular Half-Life mod collections ever created, gamers are even now looking on the bright side.

Adam Foster is the maker of the ‘Minerva’ mod for Half-Life 2, a series of levels which charts an alternate storyline through Valve’s epic universe. Available to download through Steam, it’s won critical acclaim for its high production values and innovative gameplay.

But that work is now on hold because Valve has hired Adam to work on the next installment of the commercial Half-Life franchise, ‘Episode 3′, due out next year. He’ll be designing fiendish maps, it seems, for the boys in Seattle.

Valve has a history of hiring talented developers from its community. Counter Strike, Day of Defeat and Left 4 Dead have all become Valve properties off the back of successful independent mod releases.

Adam says, “I seriously suspect this isn’t the end for this particular chain of experiments in designing single-player Half-Life 2 maps”, but that “Who knows ” when Minerva would actually return.

With a nice fat cheque signing from Valve and a very tidy programmer’s salary - Gabe Newell’s company is one of the most lucratively run development houses around - we suspect the answer for Adam is really “Who cares?” µ

What have comic books and movies told us about Batman’s physical abilities?
There’s a quote from Neal Adams, the great Batman illustrator, who said Batman would win, place or show in every event in the Olympics. Probably if I were Batman’s handler, I’d put him in the decathlon. Although Batman is shown in the comics as being the fastest and the strongest and all these other things, in reality you can’t actually be all of that at once. To be Batman properly, what you really need to do is be exceptionally good at many different things. It’s when you take all the pieces and put them together that you get the Batman.

What’s most plausible about portrayals of Batman’s skills?
You could train somebody to be a tremendous athlete  and to have a significant martial arts background, and also to use some of the gear that he has, which requires a lot of physical prowess. Most of what you see there is feasible to the extent that somebody could be trained to that extreme. We’re seeing that kind of thing in less than a month in the Olympics.

What’s less realistic?
A great example is in the movies where Batman is fighting multiple opponents and all of a sudden he’s taking on 10 people. If you just estimate how fast somebody could punch and kick, and how many times you could hit one person in a second, you wind up with numbers like five or six. This doesn’t mean you could fight four or five people. But it’s also hard for four or five people to simultaneously attack somebody, because they get in each other’s way. More realistic is a couple of attackers.

How long would Bruce Wayne have to train to become Batman?
In some of the timelines you see in the comics, the backstory is he goes away for five years—some it’s three to five years, or eight years, or 12 years. In terms of the physical changes (strength and conditioning), that’s happening fairly quickly. We’re talking three to five years. In terms of the physical skills to be able to defend himself against all these opponents all the time, I would benchmark that at 10 to 12 years. Probably the most reality-based representation of Batman and his training was in Batman Begins.

That statement is about like challenging your 2 year old to finish college by the time she is 12. Not exactly practical, more than a little crazy, and likely to be either ignored, or if you push it, to cause lots of therapy sessions by the time she is 8. I will, however, credit him with getting almost every renewable energy platitude I’ve ever heard into one succinct speech.

He does raise lots of good points about the need for a new energy policy not built around shipping dollars to the MidEast for oil (a definite must), for long term support for renewables (it is critical for us to get off our fits and starts mish mash idea of renewable energy policy), and for moving faster and larger to fight climate change (a topic near and dear to my heart, and one that is only partially helped by making broad statements about how fast the sky is falling, I mean, the glaciers are melting). In fact, there is no better way to give anti renewable energy and climate change naysayers fuel and ammunition than to make statements like these. Any path we go down, I’d still rather challenge that two year old to do something they can achieve, not try and make it through college by age 12 - especially if I’m asking her to pay for it. Slow and steady wins the race.

The core of Al Gore’s argument in his speech on the practicality of a 10 year all renewable energy goal boils down to this quote from his speech on fuels:

“What if we could use fuels that are not expensive, don’t cause pollution and are abundantly available right here at home?

We have such fuels. Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world’s energy needs for a full year. Tapping just a small portion of this solar energy could provide all of the electricity America uses.

And enough wind power blows through the Midwest corridor every day to also meet 100 percent of US electricity demand. Geothermal energy, similarly, is capable of providing enormous supplies of electricity for America.”

And this one on costs and technology:

“To those who argue that we do not yet have the technology to accomplish these results with renewable energy: I ask them to come with me to meet the entrepreneurs who will drive this revolution. I’ve seen what they are doing and I have no doubt that we can meet this challenge.

To those who say the costs are still too high: I ask them to consider whether the costs of oil and coal will ever stop increasing if we keep relying on quickly depleting energy sources to feed a rapidly growing demand all around the world. When demand for oil and coal increases, their price goes up. When demand for solar cells increases, the price often comes down.”

These quotations, while partially true and very seductive, are highly misleading in this context. The effective conversion rates of that energy to usable electric power or liquid fuel is still horrendously low, and requires lots and lots of capital expenditures, and thousands of miles of new transmission lines to implement. And that’s not taking into account the state of technology - as an industry we really are the two year old in my analogy.

So given those conversion rates and the current high capital expenditures per unit of energy, the cost is still 5-20x (depending on what you count) the cost of conventional electric power generation (yes I know, unless you add in the carbon price and environmental externalities, but that’s still extra cost any way you slice it . . . unless you’d like to subsidize mine). Frankly no serious analyst is suggesting that within 10 years, given the state of technology and the best case forecast capacity, that solar can make up more than a small single digit fraction of even electricity needs or that wind can make up more than a meaningful minority share (let alone after doubling the global power demand by replacing liquid fuels in cars with electricity, which Al Gore also suggests), especially given lead times on power plants and transmission lines.

Most likely even if the technologies were already cost comparative, which they are not - if you need evidence, just look at our wind and solar industries in their current tizzy because their biggest subsidy programs are up for renewal this year - most analysts wouldn’t project a fabled grid parity on cost for renewables for at least the next decade, and certainly not at scale. So Mr. Gore’s statements on cost and technology are in part true, but imply a maturity level in these industries that just doesn’t exist yet. Given manufacturing scale up issues on the technology, transmission infrastructure requirements at least as large as the new generation requirements, and long lead times on building projects of this size (industry executives point to seven year time frames just to build a single transmission line), probably reaching even significant low double digit percentages of carbon free power within ten years is a stretch (excluding large hydro and nuclear which we already have but are hesitating to expand) across the whole nation. Notwithstanding that California has managed to come close to its target 20% number over the last decade, that’s one state leaning on the resources of many states, using the best available sites, federal subsidies paid for from all of our pockets, and that took a decade. When it comes to carbon capture and storage for coal fired generation, a concept with lots of legs - if it works - 10 years just isn’t enough time to achieve scale. The first big pilots are scheduled over the next several years, and there are too many unknowns to bet the farm on, without the lead time and capital cost issue. Though still definitely worth trying.

And as far as paying for it, there was an article in the San Francisco Chronicle today calculating our Federal government long term liabilities at $450,000 per American already mainly for Medicare and Social Security. Actually trying to replace our entire fossil fuel infrastructure within 10 years would push that to how much? Somebody please do the math before we launch a government funded mission to the moon, or legislate that our citizens pay for it instead. On costs, Mr. Gore made the statement in his speech “Our families cannot stand 10 more years of gas price increases.” I agree, but Mr. Gore, your 10 year, hell for leather, man to moon race for 100% renewable energy would guarantee just that.

So while extolling stretch goals for a two year old is probably a good idea, let’s keep it within the realm of possibility, and not just make grandiose statements for media effect. Now if Al Gore’s silly challenge on renewable energy was simply a trojan horse to get people talking about how to move forward on fighting climate change and addressing our long standing energy policy issues, I’m all for that and am happy to help. After all, the words Al Gore and climate change make for very searchble blog articles! But personally when I make outlandish statements, I do like to bring an modicum of practicality to the discussion.

I will leave you with one final note, and please remember, I am actually a proponent of the ideals in Al Gore’s speech, I just prefer to get there in one piece. One theory on the effect of the history of the man on the moon driven space race that Mr. Gore challenges us to copy basically says that we pushed for a single high profile goal so fast and furious that we effectively skipped ahead and outran our infrastructure and capabilities to get a nonscalable shot at the moon in the target time frame. The theory goes on to suggest that’s why after reaching the moon so fast we haven’t progressed at the same rate in space since, and had we taken it slower, we would have gotten there a few years behind, but might be on Mars by know. Akin in a military campaign to outrunning your supply chain, and then getting your army surrounded and destroyed - or perhaps invading a country half way around the world, winning the war in weeks and forgetting to prepare for the peace. And just to show that I can deliver as many platitudes in one article as Mr. Gore, that’s why you never get involved in a land war in Asia.

Energy and environment are the two pillars of everything in our lives. Mr. Gore and I want the same thing, but he thinks we can’t afford not to swing for the fences - I think we can’t afford to mess it up.

According to my email, I signed up on March 30, 2008 - 14 days ago. At the time, I was unable to configure a site because although I could register for the service, setting up a site required an invitation - which I didn’t have and there were no instructions for getting one. The next day, the invitation was made ‘optional’ so I was able to add this site. However, adding the site just sent me into a queue and I received the message that I would hear back regarding site approval within 7 days - this was 13 days ago.

Two or three days ago (don’t remember which since it was a form on woopra.com and I didn’t receive even an automated recognition of the submission) I sent a support request via the woopra website asking for a status on the site approval. Nope, haven’t heard a word.

I was just cruising the forums over at woopra and there’s a whole topic dedicated to the approval timeline. According to CEO John Pozadzides, Woopra is too busy with other things like a site redesign, bug fixes and infrastructure scaling to take care of approvals - or customer service apparently.

I’m a web analyst and I like to evaluate web analytics packages when I can, I’ve had as many as six running on this site concurrently (don’t try that at home - it’s like going down the rabbit hole not to mention the impact to load times) seeing how things work and blogging about them from time to time.

Of course, with Woopra so far behind the customer service curve I’m just peeved enough to write a review with the information I have at hand.

Woopra had set my expectation for one week, in one week after sign up I was to know the status of my approval. Seven days came and went and there has been no communication. No resetting of my expectations no “Woops! We’re sorry” - not a peep.

So, it would seem that the folks at Woopra weren’t prepared for their launch and are managing poorly. Instead of focusing - at least a little - on managing mine, and others’ expectations as well as other aspects of customer service they are busy launching a redesign a couple of weeks after their launch.

How would I rate Woopra so far?

* Technology: UNK
* Core Reporting: UNK
* Segmentation: UNK
* Campaign Analysis: UNK
* Intra-Page Event Analysis: UNK
* ECommerce Analysis: UNK
* Multimedia Analysis: UNK
* Data Visualization & Exploration: UNK
* Customer Service: Non Existent

I also checked their official blog and there’s no discussion of the approval process or problems nor is it discussed in the FAQ so it would seem that the only place to talk about it is in the forum since support requests seem to be in an endless queue.

I found one of the co-founders on Twitter and there’s no discussion there about how the flood of sign-ups has derailed their customer service. I wonder what @jowyang would say about their apparent lack of social media strategy and management?

I guess my point is this: Even if you (or Woopra) think of yourselves as a technology company, at the end of the day people use the technology and you need to spend at least the same amount of time on us, your customers (or potential customers), as you do on your technology and service and I’m not feeling that at the moment.
Has anyone else signed up for Woopra and gotten a site approved (since the launch at WordCamp)?

Anyone in on the private beta beforehand that would like to tell us about the service?

p2pnet news view | Mobiles:- Rogers was hung, drawn and quartered by online Canadians when, as p2pnet wrote recently, “it was revealed Apple was displeased with Rogers and its attempt to use the second coming of the iPhone, now popularly known online as the Jesus phone, to scam customers into three year contracts with pitiful resources.”

Rogers spokesman John Boynton resorted to what can only be (charitably) described as a fact realignment when he claimed Smithereens, a blog which said Apple was holding back the number of iPhones to be sold from Rogers outlets, had, “retracted most of its story”.

But it had done no such thing and meanwhile, you could be forgiven for thinking the Jesus phone does indeed represent the second coming for Canadians.

“Apple sells one million iPhones in first three days after release,” said a Canadian Press story filed, ironically, in New York.

“One million iPhones sold,” trumpeted 24 Hours Vancouver.

“Rogers Breaks Activation Record With iPhone Launch,” stated andPOP, Canada.

“Long lines as iPhone finally arrives,” noted the Financial Post, Canada.

“Tech fans queue to snap up iPhones,” declared the Ottawa Citizen.

But not everyone was having iPhone orgasms.

“Rogers iPhone 2nd most costly in the world,” said the CBC, going on »»»

According to CBCNews.ca’s iPhone iNdex, which compares basic service plans from the 27 carriers in 21 countries that have announced pricing for the device’s launch on Friday, Canadians who buy the device before Aug. 31 will be faced with a total minimum cost of $2,176 US over the course of the three-year deal they must sign with Rogers.

That is second only to the $2,554 US customers of Vodafone will pay in Italy with their two-year service agreement.

What’s that they say about fools and their money?

And, “Beware: A new iPhone 3G could cost you $6,132.74!,” said Digital Home.

Nor was GizMoreRepublic —- from whence came the pic on the right —- impressed.

It wrote »»»

The lambs of Apple lined up at Rogers stores across Canada last Friday to get their hands on the new must have accessory. Like a bra for a sagging self-image, the iPhone makes many Canadians feel relevant again. But shortages and service problems dogged Rogers big day beneath the Apple glow.

It went on »»»

Toronto’s Rogers Plus store was one of the few across Canada that was opened at 8 a.m. It was opened early to serve over 300 customers that had waited overnight like sheep awaiting their turn to be sheared by Rogers. Unfortunately that’s a lot of disappointed Apple faithful as the outlet only had 100 iPhones to peddle.

Said Smithereens on The Day »»»

By the looks of things, my assertion one week ago that Rogers stock of phones had been depleted was correct, having been confirmed multiple times today by reps who admitted they had originally been expecting many times more units than they received for today’s launch.

Most locations said they were expecting 100 or more iPhones at first, but they received on average (of those who would tell me how many they had) just 6-15.

Secondly, my suggestion yesterday that Rogers was likely diverting the bulk of its iPhones in each city to the special corporate “launch party” locations also seems to have proven true, as many stores today were actively pointing customers in the direction of these central corporate stores saying “They have 10 times as many as we do.”

And I can understand why they would want to send customers away: Many stores couldn’t sell their iPhones today if they wanted to, since the Rogers account database (SalesCentral) was down for most of the day, crushed under the weight of so many simultaneous activations. (Something Rogers isn’t used to, perhaps?)

Every single store I visited today had the same story: They were able to activate a few lucky customers who were at the front of the lines this morning, but soon after, the database started crashing erratically. Every rep I spoke to had a tale or two about customers who showed up at 9:30 or 10am and didn’t leave with their iPhone until noon or later.

In essence, to describe this launch as anything but chaotic would be quite a stretch.

Stay tuned.

First and foremost, everything that was included with Firebug, you would expect to pay for in a commercial IDE. The very thought of releasing this extension for free blew my mind. Yes, I said the extension is FREE. If you are using it constantly (which I am), you can donate some cash to Mr. Hewitt for all of his hard work. I pitched in my contribution.

Let’s get to the extension. One of the things that I love is the ability to have dual monitors while programming. The one problem I had with Firebug was the panel was always at the bottom. With version 1.0, you can run Firebug in a bottom panel OR run Firebug in a completely separate window. Move the other window over to the opposite monitor and start debugging. Awesome!

HTML & CSS Tools

Firebug provides a Box Model viewer, along with an improved inspector. Click on the HTML tab in the left panel and the Layout tab in the right panel. The Box Model is displayed on the right while the HTML tree is displayed on the left. Start moving through the tree and as you hover over an HTML item, you’ll notice the HTML in the browser window will be highlighted. Click on some text in the HTML tree. You can edit the HTML right there in Firebug.

I’ve always loved CSS, even back in Netscape days (when it was supported). However, I always wanted to know about the size of a DIV. In the Layout tab, when you hover over the Box Model, you’ll notice it’ll draw a ruler around the box for those who are having problems with dimensions of the box.

You can even edit the CSS. Firebug provides you the ability to tweak your CSS while looking at the browser, so immediate adjustments can occur while editing the CSS. Excellent feature.

Why are my pages taking so long to load?

Firebug provides a network monitor to see if your pages are taking way too long to load. After reading some recent statistics about web sites, I think this feature will definitely come in handy. To activate this feature, make sure Firebug is open and you have the Net tab selected in the left panel. You won’t see much right now. Reload the page and just watch your statistics light up the screen. Wow! VERY cool.

Want more information on what came down from the server? Expand the page by clicking the plus (+) and you see the headers of each item that was received. Nothing like digging into Firefox and finding out the dirty details, huh?

We can’t forget AJAX

No, we can’t. Firebug still delivers when it comes to everyone’s favorite: AJAX. They have vastly improved the AJAX monitor in this version. Click on the tab XHR (XmlHttpRequest), and load a page that contains AJAX. Activate it and watch as the activity is displayed in Firebug.

Speaking of JavaScript, you’ll never guess what Firebug included in this version. A command-line for JavaScript. You can type in JavaScript code and have it display the results immediately. Flashback to dBASE III+, but I digress. Not only do you get a command line for JavaScript, but you also get auto complete when you type at the command line. Whoa!

If you’ve run into JavaScript errors before (and who hasn’t), you know the Firefox debugging console isn’t what its cracked up to be. Firebug has an entire section dedicated to profiling, logging, editing, stack tracing, nested groupings, and assertions (oh my).

You’ll have to believe me when I say I haven’t even scratched the surface of everything that’s included in this extension. If I could give this extension a rating of 6, I would, but Firebug receives my highest rating for a good reason. I’ve been using the extension for a week and I’ve not run into one problem so far and its been a godsend and solid performer since I’ve started using version 1.0. As an extension…nay, an application, Firebug has shown me a great deal of programming expertise and knowledge of just how powerful Firefox’s extension architecture really is.

For those who work in a corporate environment and use Firefox along with IE for web development and new employees are hired, the ONLY two extensions that should be a requirement for designers and developers would be the Web Developers Toolbar and the awesome Firebug extension.

All of that being said, with my previous knowledge of Woopra and its capabilities, I was literally floored this afternoon by a flood of new “stuff” that I had either completely missed or capabilities that were added in this new release. So if you are a Woopra user (or if you are not, just sign up), pull up a chair, grab a cup of your favorite beverage and read on. This is pretty cool.

All of the following assumes that you have an active Woopra account, are using WordPress, have the WordPress plugin installed and have the Woopra application (1.1.1.0) installed on your machine.

* With Woopra, and the Woopra WordPress Plugin, you can monitor all your registered users and all your commenters. This sounds obvious/relatively mundane until you install the plugin on your WordPress blog and create an event notification on the application. Follow the bouncing ball.
o Open up your Woorpa application, click on the manage tab on the left and then click on Create a new Event Notification.
o Then type in “Known Visitors” into the label box, click Next.
o On the next window, click and activate the checkbox next to “Visitor is tagged or is a member” and click next until you come to the “Edit Notification’s look and feel” screen.
o Here click on the “Notification’s Icon” dropdown to click on “visitor’s Avatar” and then paste the following in the “Custom notification message” box: Visitor %NAME% is viewing %PAGETITLE% Then click on Apply Notification button

Now you will receive a notification on your desktop whenever a registered user or a user who has left a comment, visits your blog. This gets even cooler when you notice their gravatar shows up on the notification and you are now able to track these known visitors are they traverse through your blog. You can even choose to initiate a web chat with these visitors through the Woopra application. The chat shows up on their browser. This is cool and scary at the same time.
* Another cool new tool I discovered today was the little map of the world on the top left corner of the “live” tab. Now I had noticed the map there but had not looked into it much. Look for a small arrow on the top right corner of that map. Once you click on that arrow, the map opens up to a full screen view and now you are able to use your mouses’ scroll wheel to zoom in on any part of the map and use your cursor to identify users. I could spend hours doing this on a busy day.
* I had noticed the small column of labels at the top right hand corner of the Woopra desktop application but had not paid much attention to it. The lowest item on that list is called “live” and once clicked it shows the number of  users on your blog on a moving bar graph, much like whos.amung.us
* The analytics tab has a bunch of hidden gems. Some newer features were also added to the items on this tab. Click on the Analytics tab on the Woopra application and look for the following:
o The “referrers” tab now has a few new subtabs. They include regular stats stuff like webpages, domains and search engines. But now this tab also include Feed Readers, Emails, Social Bookmarks, Social Networks, Media, News and Communities. Each one of these intrigued me and the I was taken aback by the breakdowns of referrals from various applications. The Email tab gave me the most food for thought. If your blog has email readers or you publish regular newletters via email, this tab could help you identify reader populations from various email services. Clicking on the graph part of the display brings up a historical view.
o The “pages” tab breaks up visitors by subdirectories. With WordPress’ permalinks, you can now determine how hard your yearly archives are working for you. Apparently, over a thousand people looked at my archives from 2003 this week. As your data grows, this tab could contain breakdowns by tag, by author and any other permalink features that you have enabled through your blog. I wonder why our WordPress tag is so popular?
o The last tab to point out is “systems”. Now this data can be mundane and almost all stats programs offer some sort of systems breakdown. Woopra adds to this functionality by letting you find permutations of systems options. This blog receives more Chinese speaking, Internet Explorer 6 users on Windows XP than any other language. I will be using that information to my advantage, I am sure you can find your particular niche to help or enhance.

Woopra is a great tool. It is even better with these little tidbits. There are literally thousands of different ways to enhance your stats and understand your reader population better. I have just outlined a few that I had completely missed till today.

Have you found any cool new tricks for Woopra that you would like to share?

We can say that an off-page factor includes the maximum part of SEO Optimization work but the results of off-page optimization reflect through on-page. Thus this is quite assumable that a rock solid off-page optimization with a poor on-page optimization will not very fruitful for any website.

People have an idea that on-page optimization is very easy and it can be done within an hour. But let us remind you friend, search engine algorithms are really very cruel and it is improving day by day. Thus it is very crucial for your website to do the best on-page optimization for receiving ultimate ranking.

For organic and natural search engine ranking on-page methodologies are extremely important and these techniques are used to define your website business or we can say to describe the motive of your website business in front of all search engines.

15 unforgettable priceless tips regarding on-page optimization

1. URL Naming: If possible try to place your prime targeted keyword as your domain name. This will help you to advertise your business at the first impression.

2. Title Tag: Decorate your title tag with your utmost preferable keywords of your business in a smart and eye checking manner.

3. Meta Descriptions: Sketch your proper business announcement with simple words for catching concentration of the visitors who are searching similar kind of product or service which your website is going to deliver them. Possibly you can punch your keyword into that description but in a tricky way.

4. Crawler Notification: All kind of search engine crawler notifications like SE robots instructions, website owner and publisher declaration, website language, copywriter name etc. should go from the Meta portion of all your web page.

5. Image Optimization: Crawlers are unable to read images and the flash part of your web page but these images or flash is required to influence the visitors. Thus Optimize this images with suitable contents using Alt tags which reflects your proper business.

6. Text Links: Use text links of all of your important pages of your site and if possible then try to avoid flash links, Java script links, image links etc.

7. Keyword Density Checking: Modern SEO services told us that you should inculcate your keywords at your content and maintain the density with an ethical mode.

8. Broken Link checking: Broken links are really very harmful for any site, thus don’t forget to check it first, if it exists then remove that from your site in a quick approach.

9. Static URL’s: Remember that all of your important pages should have short and static URLs and dynamic pages may follow those static pages. If unwanted lengthy URLs exist at your site then replace them with short.

10. Footer: Don’t forget to place links for all important pages at the footer part of your index page. This allows your visitors to jump at important pages with just a single click.

11. Robot.txt: Ensure that robot.txt is necessary at your website with apposite crawler notifications.

12. XML Site Map: Nowadays an xml feed acts as a site map which includes all pages of your site and is really indispensable from crawler point of view and should be confined as a link at the index page or at the common footer portion.

13. Canonical Issue: Nowadays optimization for Google is vastly required because maximum customers come at your site through it. Thus canonical issue should be solved first if exist.

14. Common Header and Footer: a common header text and footer text within H2 tag should be placed at each of your web pages.

15. Avoid Black Hat techniques: Achieving organic ranking and holding it for long time depends absolutely on white hat techniques and we should simply avoid all black hat strategies.

Welcome to A Promotion Guide. If this is your first visit, you might want to take the time to read through this page. It contains a free step-by-step website promotion tutorial
that also serves as a “User’s Guide” to the site. Reading it will give you a good idea on what you need to do, when you need to do it and how the articles on this site will help you.

This tutorial is split into three phases that each have two, three or four steps. It is highly recommended that you start from the first phase and move forwards only after you have completed all of the steps in it.

We’ll begin with the assumption that your site is brand new and that you haven’t done any website promotion work yet. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t use the tutorial if you have submitted to a few search engines or registered your site with a couple of directories. If you notice that there are some things you have already done, feel free to simply skip over them.

Promoting your site takes a lot of time and may involve waiting several weeks or even months to get into certain directories and search engines. Thus, it might be wise to bookmark this page so that you can return to it later and continue the tutorial from where you left off.

Website promotion, phase one - Directories

You should start your website promotion efforts by listing your site at the most popular Internet directories. Because they can send you substantial amounts of traffic and affect your ranking in various search engines, it is wise to make sure that your site is present in all of the major directories before doing anything else.

Step one - General information

Submitting to directories is easy and doesn’t require much effort. It’s ensuring that your submission will be accepted that makes this task a hard one.

1. First, read “Boost your traffic with website directories” to get a basic idea on what directories are and how to submit to them.

2. Examine the article about web page design to get some tips on how to improve your site and reduce the chances of it being rejected.

Step two - The Open Directory Project

Start with the Open Directory Project. While your site has to offer good, unique content to be accepted to the ODP, its editors usually review sites quickly and won’t reject them without a good reason for doing so. This, along with the fact that submitting to the ODP is free of charge, makes it a perfect starting point. Completing this step successfully will also provide you with experience that will prove to be very valuable later on.

1. Read my thoughts on how Google’s ranking algorithm works and notice how an ODP listing seems to affect your ranking at Google. Keep this information in mind when you submit.

2. Take a look at the advice on submitting your website to the ODP.

3. Finally, submit your site to the ODP.

4. If your submission isn’t successful, consider becoming an editor at the Open Directory and listing your own site.

Step three - Yahoo

After securing a listing at ODP, your next task is to get the folks at Yahoo to notice that your site exists and is worth a place in their directory. This might cost you a fair amount of money if you are running a commercial site, but is usually worth it. Non-commercial sites can get in for free, but might require several submissions and a lot of patience before they are accepted.

1. Check out the Yahoo-specific guidelines and hints and the article about how Yahoo’s search feature ranks sites.

2. Bite the bullet and submit your site to Yahoo.

Website promotion, phase two - Search engines

Now that your site has been included in ODP and Yahoo, you should already be receiving clearly more traffic than before. The next task is to get to know search engines and use them to bring even more people to your pages. Because you have completed phase one, you have established a good foundation for making your site perform well in the search engines.

Step one - Search engine optimization, basics

In order to gain good rankings, you’ll need to learn the basics of search engine algorithms (ranking systems) and adjust your pages to meet their criteria as well as possible. This will take some time and effort, but doing some work now will save you from a lot of trouble in the future.

1. First, try to make the design of your site as search engine friendly as possible. To read more about the subject, take a look at my article about website optimization.

2. Next, you’ll need to do some keyword optimization. Sounds frightening, but in plain English it simply means choosing the correct keywords for your pages. Using the wrong words is perhaps the most common reason why people don’t get satisfying results from their search engine optimization work.

3. Continue by reading these search engine optimization tips.

4. Read the article about META tags and add them to all of your pages. The META keywords tag isn’t absolutely necessary, but the META description tag is very important.

5. Learn what link popularity is and how search engines use it to rank your pages.

6. Unless you have already done so, read about Google’s algorithm. Google is among the most popular search services of today, so it is wise to take its requirements into account.

7. Use all of this information to optimize your pages for the search engines.

Step two - Search engine optimization, advanced

Your site is now adequately prepared to really start bringing in traffic from search engines. But if you want to widen your knowledge about them and increase your chances of success, you still have some work to do. On the other hand, if you’re totally exhausted and just want to get this thing over with, you’ll be delighted to know that this step isn’t absolutely necessary.

1. Study some of the more advanced things related to search engine optimization. Among them are cloaking, css tricks, doorway pages, themes and how to improve your search engine ranking with click popularity.

2. Read about the things you should avoid doing from this article that outlines common web site promotion mistakes.

Step three - Submitting to search engines?

Now is the time to make sure that your site has a presence in the indexes of major search engines. Fortunately, they are quite good at finding your site on their own. There are things you can do to help them, though..

1. Get to know how search engine submission works and how the search engines determine which sites to list.

2. Read the article “Targeting your search engine marketing” to see which engines are the most popular ones.

3. If you are running a commercial site, you might also want to consider paying for search engine placement. Take a look at how you can use PPC search engine advertising to buy your way to the top.

Website promotion, phase three - More techniques

After being accepted into the largest directories and having pages of your site come up in answer to searches done at the major search engines, the long hours that you’ve spent on website promotion have begun to pay off and your daily visitor count is starting to look good. But there is still plenty you can do to help your site attract even more traffic.

In phase three, we’ll examine different promotion methods that you might want to try. However, in order to prevent you from wasting your time on things that don’t work, we’ll also go over a few techniques that have proven to be less than spectacular when I experimented with them.

Step one - Keep these in mind

First, let’s take a look at the good stuff. The articles introduced in this step are about the website promotion methods that are at least partially effective. Some of them work better than others, but if used correctly, all of them can produce results that will be worth your while. Of course, most of the articles include advice on what you need to do to obtain the best possible results with the method discussed.

1. If you sell something on your site, you might want to try banner ads. Usually banner campaigns are seen as expensive and ineffective, but it is partially because advertisers don’t know how to design good banners.

2. Read the article on how to increase traffic with return visitors. Getting people to come back is the secret to why some sites get amazingly many hits per day.

3. Learn what reciprocal links are and how to get them, then put that knowledge into use. In addition to sending you visitors, reciprocal links will also increase your link popularity and help your site rank higher in the search engines.

4. Start using E-mail signatures. They might not produce thousands of visitors, but are a great way to promote your site a bit without having to actually do anything.

5. Evaluate whether your site could benefit from joining a topsite list. These lists have their good and bad sides, but might be at least worth a try.

6. Consider trying to build traffic with Usenet advertising. It can give you a nice traffic boost and help spread the word about your site, but only if done properly. Read the article to learn why Usenet promotion should only be done with great care.

7. Writing newsletter articles often works well and can send you large amounts of targeted traffic in a short period of time, for free.

Step two - Forget these

As said, everything just doesn’t always work the way it should in the world of promotion. In step two, our attention is focused on website promotion methods that are more trouble than they are worth. They might not be entirely useless, but your time would be better spent on improving your site or spreading the word about your site in other ways.

1. Click exchange programs are easy, fast, free and will get you a lot of visitors. That’s why it might be a surprise to hear that they really aren’t good website promotion tools.

2. A lot has been written about FFA pages and for the past few years, most of it has been negative. The only thing they are good for is increasing the flow of spam to your E-mail address.

3. Winning website awards can occasionally be useful, especially if the awards are well-known. However, sometimes the winner of the award is not the real winner.

Final words

Congratulate yourself for being persistent, bright and hard-working. Most get frustrated and quit before this point, which is why most sites never become anything. After all, the secret to having a successful site is working hard in both promoting
and creating it. You just might have what it takes.

After going through those three phases, you’ve read just about everything this site has to offer. While there is more to website promotion than what we have discussed here, you now know quite a lot about the subject. If you still desire more information, don’t forget to come back to this site every now and then. This tutorial is always incomplete, because I continuously notice things that I want to write about.

I hope that A Promotion Guide has been able to help you to make your site more popular and thus given you the chance to spread your ideas and thoughts to a larger audience. And remember, if you have achieved good results, it’s not because I showed you how to do it - it’s because you did it.

This intense six-week course will demonstrate how small business can successfully harness the Internet. You’ll gain knowledge for cutting through the clutter with practical, high-impact promotional solutions — such as search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising (PPC), linking campaigns, online auctions and top shopping sites, email marketing, classified ads, blogging, online publicity, and affiliate strategies. Using online research, case studies, class exercises, and professional feedback you’ll learn how to develop a web strategy for your business or for your clients.

Ideally this research and planning is done prior to launching a web site. However, if you already have a web site that is not performing well, this course provides fresh concepts for online success.
Outline
Week 1: Introduction to Web Site Promotion and Search Engines

* Developing an online marketing plan
* Optimizing and registering with top search engines and directories (SEO)

Week 2: Developing an Internet Advertising Plan

* Conducting a link campaign
* Planning your ad campaign
* Pricing models for advertising
* The ad creative and effective targeting

Week 3: Popular Forms of Online Advertising and Promotion

* Banners and classified ads
* Pay-per-click advertising
* Online auctions and top shopping sites

Week 4: Maximizing Your Return

* Coordinating the ad campaign
* Creative development and testing
* Measuring your results and ROI

Week 5: Effective Business Communic