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Recently Google announced that they now allow PDF Downloads of all public domain books that are cataloged in “Google Books – Beta” (basically this is any book published before 1923). While many of the Internet Marketing blogs and news sources are reporting on this it is clear that the only reason they are doing so is because, “Google did it” (trust me if it was MSN Books – Beta even less buzz would be around about it). Clearly no one seems to see any opportunity in this and even Google is just promoting it as a way to “download the classics” at no cost.

To me there is an opportunity here for webmasters to download and then give these books away on their sites. I can hear you now, yelling at the screen telling me, “sure if your site is about classic literature or Shakespeare or something to that effect”. OK, well this is not something that will work in every niche but it may be a bit more versatile then you might think.

For instance I have recently started to build some websites about snakes because one of my hobbies is that I am an amature herpetologist (that is a person that studies reptiles). Now you might not realize this but the world of reptiles is a pretty big niche with one particular site having sat in the top 14,000 of Alexa ratings for more then 5 years now.

OK so how does this tie in together?

Well, I decided to search for any “reptile books” that might be on the public domain and had to smack myself when I found a certain book I should have been thinking of right from the get go. The book is called, “The Reptile Book”, by Raymond Lee Ditmars. Now that may not mean much to you if you are not a herpetologist but you just have to trust me that Ditmars’ book is considered “the book” on reptiles and just about every book ever written after it was published in 1908 has referenced it more then a few times. In short Ditmars is to herpetology as Einstein is to physics.

Now most reptile enthusiasts have never actually seen a copy of this book other then in a library. So my thought was, because this book is in PDF and can easily be placed on one of my servers, I could give it away in exchange for people joining my email list. Further I am also working on a reptile search engine using Eurekster’s Swicki so of course I can do this with other books and incorporate those pages into my custom reptile search engine.

So exactly how does this differ then using typical eBooks for the same type of purpose? I hate to answer that this way but it is both exactly the same and completely different at the same time. You see for my visitors to my reptile sites, no marketer’s eBook has the clout and credit of Ditmars’ classic work. So while using it as an enticement and as a value add is exactly the same as doing so with an eBook on say adSense Profits it is also quite different.

First, not every other site in my niche is giving it away. Second, the author is not just a recognized name; he is literally an icon in the reptile and biology world. Further his book is difficult to obtain in print because of its age and unlike Shakespeare or Homer it does not have the mass appeal to the general public so reprinting it for profit is quite a risk. Yet, to my niche the book has great appeal and should help increase my email list subscription rate by a signifigant precentage.

When I presented the concept to a colleague, he stated, “sure but anyone can get the same book for free on Google Books”. I agree completely but do they know that? One of the biggest mistakes that you can make is to assume your market knows everything you do. In fact Internet marketers by nature are not “normal”, we know far more about the net and search industry then most “normal” people care to know.

Of course if I find say 2 or 3 such specialized books and give them all away the effect is even greater. Additionally as famous as the book might be, many younger hobbyists only vaguely know of it from hearing it referenced in newer books, so I have an additional opportunity to do a brief review of this book and optimize that page as another source of traffic and conversions.

When I look at Google Books, this is the opportunity I see and in time I am sure I will find more niches to exploit with this new source of knowledge. So, if you are an Internet marketer, I ask you, are you looking at everything that comes your way and trying to find unique ways to benefit from them?

This post is less about Google Books and more about understanding how to view the world differently as a marketer then most people do on a day-to-day basis. Next time you hear a new announcement or news story see if you can find the hidden opportunity in it.

Are there any other “hidden opportunities” you can think of? If so please share them below in our comments section, whether or not they include Google Books.

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: Google, Internet Marketing, Books, public domain, Eurekster’s Swicki, eBooks, Google Books, hidden opportunities, internet marketing, free ebooks, marketing ideas, web marketing, marketing tips

Popularity: 4% [?]

Today one of the hot news stories is that a new music service called SpiralFrog will allow users to download any universal music file for free and that the revenue will be derived from advertising. As intelligent as this might sound, trust me we have already hit the peak and it is now going to be a long trip down hill from here on out.

Ok so the first thing you will have to do to download music once this service starts is watch or listen to a one minute commerical, you can then download one song. OK so far not that bad right, it gets worse! Next that song will work for a “period of time” but to keep it working you have to go back and watch more commmericials by logging in at least once a month to do so. NO, NO wait we are still heading down hill. Next when you download it to your MP3 Player it must stay there you can’t put it on a CD it is pretty much locked into your Windows Media Player and your MP3 Player.

Oh but my friends we are not done yet! Nope it is also not compatable with the iPod so you have to use a player that works with Windows Media. Now here is a secret about me I am a Creative Labs fan myself and really like their players BUT to set up a music service that excludes 70% of the market is kind of starting with a pretty big handicap. One last thing for right now you have access to all the songs from Universal Music but no others. Universal is huge and the biggest ones others will follow but it doesn’t help that only one music company is available up front.

To me this is just one more example of the music industry screaming “we are so stupid, we do not understand the market is it not amazing that we became one of the worlds richest industries, oh God why does everyone hate us and steal our property”.

In an article by Vnunet called SpiralFrog offers free legal music downloads, the companies cheif executive Robin Kent stated, “Piracy continues to be one of the biggest issues facing the music industry where illegal file sharing and unauthorised CD burning are the prime means of music piracy”.

OK well just why do people use services like LimeWire to file share and “steal” music? How about the facts that is it is easy, free, fast, works well and you can find any song in the world there.

Yet I think people will be happy to pay for music but if the industry wants to solve the problem they need to address the two key reasons people continue to use file sharing services.

1. People want to be able to play music in their car on a CD or on one of their other PCs, if they have and iPod (and many do) they want to use it. Most services prevent this in an “attempt to prevent file sharing”, but it just doesn’t work. Name that tune and I can get a copy on Limewire.

2. The music industry has told us for years why they have to charge as much as they do and the biggest expense they point to is printing the lables, burning the disks, the art work, shipping, stocking shelves, etc. Well, you can’t have it both ways we all KNOW that it costs a LOT less to deliver electronic music so the price point of around a dollar a song for music you actually own and can keep with out a subscription is too high.

So what is the solution? The music industry would be smart to just build a system where people can buy songs at about 50 cents a title and then do as they please with them. The industry would counter that, then people will share them, my response would be BUT THEY ALREADY ARE AND YOU CAN’T AND NEVER WILL BE ABLE TO STOP IT.

The music industry needs to look back at the dual tape deck and realize it did not distroy them.

If you are a younger person you might not really remember tape decks but they were “the music media choice” in the 70s, 80s and much of the 90s. When the first dual tape decks came out in the 70s the music industy went ape over it, clammering how the piracy would be insane and starve the poor artists. Sorry but last time I visited the Sony Executive offices in New York City they still had LEATHER WALLS and marble floors.

Every single top executive in the music industry should be forced to write the following 1000 times on a chalk board.

Music by its nature is simply sound and if it can be played it can be recorded, if it can be recorded it can be placed in a portable format and if it can be placed in a portable format it can be shared. Since we can not make music with out sound we can’t stop sharing so we need to embrace it and learn how to profit from it.

These record companies reaction to file sharing is one of the most short sighted and profit killing business moves made in the history of the free market. If 10 years ago they had just jumped on board and made a site that sold music cheap and portable, integrated forums and community features, developed mailing lists of people based on their prefrence and did the basic things successful web companies do they could be making more money from ADVERTISING today then anyone in the world and no not by making people be forced to watch an ad prior to one download.

The model is simple, today if you control traffic you can make billions and music drives traffic, grasp that music execs it is your only way out of this issue.

As for SpiralFrog, in Florida when I was growing up when the first rains came each year many of the frogs came out and got squished on the road, when I think of SpiralFrog, the image of those little squished frog is all I can see,

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: universal music, download music, MP3 Player, Windows Media Player, iPod, Creative Labs, file sharing, CD burning, music piracy, LimeWire, spiralfrog, ipod, digital music, download music

Popularity: 7% [?]

Part 2 - The Hidden Gold in Your Analytics

In Part 1 of this series (It is for Affiliate Marketers Too) I discussed how with just a little creative math and and adding a few redirecting URLs can allow an Affiliate Marketer a much better view into the metrics of their site. This next installment is also great for Affiliate Marketers, however, this next use of tracking software applies to anyone who has a web site and wishes to gain more traffic to it. Odds are that is you so let's did right in! Let's start out by looking at PPC marketing as it is today and a phenomenon that has been termed the "search tail". 

When marketers buy traffic from sources like Google AdWords or MSN adCenter they typically bid on two types of terms. The first type would be high traffic terms, for instance at Sage Telecom we bid on the term local phone service on Google which gets many searches each day. Such terms cost more money because they have a high volume of qualified traffic behind them. The second main type of term that marketers bid on are the hundreds of terms that have only ammount ammount of traffic behind them. Many times these terms have the best traffic for instance we also bid on "local telephone service in Dallas Texas". While there are a lot less searchers for those visitors are looking for something very specific that we have so they are exactly the type of visitor we are looking for. 

While the big terms in any niche market make up about 50-60% of the traffic for it, the countless other smaller terms all add up to make up the other half and that is a lot of traffic to ignore. If you graph out all the traffic in a niche you find a huge tail that makes your graph go on and on and this is what has been termed the "search tail". So just how do you utilize this search tail? Well you can either buy the terms (at lower bids most of the time) or you can publish a bit of content each day targeting them with SEO and over time you build a nice source of organic traffic utilizing the tail. The problem is that most marketers use WordTracker, Yahoos Term Suggestion Tool or Googles Search Tool so over time much of the "search tail" gets targeted and SEO competition and bids both increase. 

However, if you use google analytics or other software to track your sites traffic you gain access into something that is known only to you. You find what I call the "private search tail". These are small terms that most likely only you or a very few other marketers know about. Let me explain, each month I will run say 20-30 searches for some made up term on Yahoo Search and it seems that it never shows up in the term suggestion tool. Same with Google and others. When you see that 37 people searched for "term xyz", last month on Yahoo the number is probably a bit higher. 

I do think that the bigger terms are fairly accurate but I think because there are honestly billions of searches each month several hundred thousand unique searches a day never get added to the data base behind these tools. For instance I search for my own name on Yahoo and Google all the time, part vanity and part experiment. I know others do as well but check the tools and they will show no one searches for me. Apparently I am just not famous enough to make the list even though I am positive I got searched for more then 100 times on Yahoo last month, just like several dozen terms your site is most likely getting traffic for right now. Here is what I mean if you are using a tool that tracks all the phrases people search for and then end up on your site you will find if you look deep enough some phrases you never thought of and some that won't show up on any of the suggestion now. 

This is you own "private search tail" and the good news is it is only the beginning of a gold mine that is just waiting to be exploited. Let's say you dig into your web tracking tool and find that one particular term brought you a "lousy 3 visitors" last month. I am about to show you how that might be a gold nugget. Let's say you only rank on MSN for that term and in position #6. Now we know a similar rank on Google or Yahoo would produce a LOT more traffic. Not a ton but certainly more then 3. Get this, I used the Expected Clicks Tool that was created by the SEO BlackHat Team and a bit of reverse math to come up with what happens if you take a term that gets three visits a month on MSN at rank #6 and get into position number one for it on all three search engines.

The results would be… MSN - 33, Yahoo - 63 and Google - 169

Total Visits for Number One on All Three - 265 Visitors (Even if we assume that number is 50% to high and we are still looking at about 130 targeted visitors a month on one non competitive term) Now here is what you really need to grasp it may be very possible to obtain a rank in the first position on all three engines with some basic SEO for this term because there is a huge chance that this term actually has not shown up on any of the term suggestion tools. 

Now only you or may be another marketer in your niche really paying attention to his web logs knows to target it. You also know by the very fact that you gained a rank for it, that ranking for it is easy to do. Look, you made not attempt to gain a rank for this term and it just happened. In today's market that only happens with non competitive terms. This is like mining for gold nuggets and one leads to more. Here is how this plays out if you follow a simple system. Each day you should be monitoring your web traffic when you spot a rank for a low traffic term today's to a list you keep in Excel or some other program. 

As soon as you see a few visits from a low ranking term on any search engine you know it is a target for optimizing. You now have a choice you either tweak the page that is already ranking but it would be better to create a new page that specifically targets that term, set up a few links for that term pointing to the new page and keep going. In this way your site continues to grow and develop and gain even more traffic. Perhaps you incorporate that term into a fact sheet, an article or a news blurb on your web site. The beauty is the terms themselves give you idea's for new content. This over time creates a snowball effect. Even if you just put out two pieces of new content a week that will be 8 new pages a month, then a funny thing will happen. 

These new pages will then start to not only rank for the targeted terms, they also rank for new terms in your "private search tail". Then you guessed it you build new pages for these new terms. Over time what happens is you can build a massive ammount of traffic for a large number of terms with little competition. Of course if you do PPC you also have a brand new source of cheap terms to bid on as well. It gets even better because by using these terms you also DIRECTLY RESPONDING to your visitors and providing them the content they are telling you that they are looking for, call that low-tech behavioral targeting. 

The final and perhaps the most valuable benefit to this technique is that it gives you what I call a mutual fund approach to SEO. Let me explain that, let's say you have a high traffic term bringing you 5000 visitors a month to your site. A high traffic ranking is great and we work hard at gaining them ourselves, but if that is all you have and you loose your rank you loose all your traffic. Then you get to choose to either to work at getting the rank back or buy the traffic at a high cost per click. Not the best choice to have to make now is it? 

When you incorporate a private search tail what happens is a bit different. Over time let's say you build up that same 5,000 visits with the search tail approach. All in all you end up with 100 terms that each average 50 visits a month to get the same 5000 visitors. Now you loose a rank on 1 or 2 terms, well, you are still bringing in 4900 visits a month and you only lost 2% of your traffic. Further you don't have 20 top marketers gunning for your positions every single day to contend with so each rank is far easier to retain. 

There are even more benefits, such as the fact that this requires you to create new original content on an ongoing basis and it will keep your finger on the "pulse of your site" to a much higher degree then most marketers ever experience. It all starts with the use of analytics software and taking the time each day to dig around an seek out that new gold nugget. Just like mining the results go to the prospector who does the work to find and extract the gold that is just lying in the data waiting to be found.

~ Jack Spirko

Additional Resources

Google Analytics Open To All SiteMeter Free Web Tracking Active Meter Tracking

Technorati Tags: Affiliate Marketer, tracking software, search tail, Google AdWords, Google, niche market, organic traffic, SEO, google analytics, private search tail, web tracking,

Popularity: 6% [?]

Video surveillance has gotten very high tech and I have always been interested in the technology. I recently ran across a cool video surveillance software package. After watching the online demo of the Digital Witness software, I was amazed at how advanced their service is for a low monthly subscription price. I am not a fan of having big brother watching over me, but businesses can attain great savings in various ways by utilizing the technology which in my eyes warrants the use of video surveillance in businesses.

The system by Digital Witness uses DVR’s linked to video surveillance cameras to archive video for very easy anlaysis at any time from anywhere. The video is stored on the Digital Witness server for easy viewing on the Internet any. The most popular application for this service is to restaurants and bars but it is very valuable in any retail or business environment. If you have a customer try to dispute a charge you can easily call up that transaction and you have the video proof of each movement for that specific customer. The benefits of a system like this are limitless.

According to a 1999 study done by the National Restaurant Association, employee theft averages $218 per person each year. Worse yet, security experts call that estimate conservative. According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, occupational fraud costs the average business $4,500 per employee annually. The total national loss to occupational fraud is over $400 billion, and the restaurant industry claims over 9.5 percent of the total.

Digital Witness has developed its own proprietary software that allows you to view live video, recorded video, even video tied to your point of sale system. It also can develop customized, easy-to-read reports that provide the information you need to run your business better. Their interface is easy to use and allows you to retrieve video by camera, time, activity, and many other variables and can be viewed online anytime.

I highly recommend that owners of any restaurant, bar or retail store look into digital video surveillance and video management. This can help decrease loss, recapture revenue, improve customer service, improve training and productivity, improve customer service and ultimately improve your bottom line.
surveillance, video surveillance, loss prevention, restaurant surveillance, video management

Popularity: 5% [?]

Technorati Tags: surveillance, video surveillance, loss prevention, restaurant surveillance, video management

It would appear that all the major search engines have been reported to be updating their indexes in some way.

Google is updating back links at some of the Google data centers.  We have watched one particular term bounce from #16 to #11 on page two during this time, looks like it will end up at #11 just one away from the front page.  Which goes to show when you practice white hat seo you tend to come out ahead in an update and it also demonstraits that the back link update is effecting rankings.
Yahoo has been recently reported to have updated its algorithm or index, although there is no official word from Yahoo on this as of yet.  The same term we have seen move around at Google has been moving around on Yahoo Search and has ended up moving from page 3 and number 26 for us up to page 2 and number 13.  While we are happy about that move and still gunning for page one it was wierd to see our rank go back and forth almost every hour for a two day period.
And MSN Search has confirmed that an update has occurred to their index recently and this was the one update that term had a negative response on.  We moved from position number one down to position number three on MSN Search / Microsoft Search / Live.com or what ever they are calling themselves this week.

So in this update it would appear that MSN, Google and Yahoo have moved closer to a similar result over all yet the top ten for this term are vastly different on all three engines.
According to Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Watch Blog Google’s update may not be represented in the index but as noted above we have indeed seen term bounce around of the various data centers during this update.
Yahoo and MSN’s updates have reports that the search results have indeed changed and everyone in the blogosphere seems to concur.  Overall and across the board we are pretty happy so far,  keep an eye on your results though because none of these updates appear to be complete yet,

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: major search engines, Google, Google data centers, Yahoo, Yahoo Search, MSN Search, MSN Search, Microsoft Search, Live.com, MSN,

Popularity: 4% [?]

Way back in May of this year reported on a Creative Labs law suit against Apple in our post, “Ipod Violates a Patent“. The suit centered around the way that songs and titles were organized for navigation on the Ipod and Creative claimed that said navigation scheme was developed by their company for their MP3 Player and Digital Media Player interfaces.

Nobody thought much of this at the time wondering how setting up the way titles display (which is almost identical to the file system used on most PCs) could possibly be protected under a patent.

Well Apple Computer must have felt quite a bit of pressure about this issue because they just agreed to settle the issue by paying Creative Labs a 100 Million dollar lisencing fee. Which will cover life time use of technology.

Apple may have just figured buying Creative off was the best long term play or they may have been more afraid of loosing the case in any event Ipod Users can now be sure that they file system will remain the same. As for Creative Labs, their biggest competitor was just forced to contribute 100 Million dollars to them, my bet is a lot will go into development new products, designed of course to compete with Apple. Irony at its’ finest in my opinion.

The problem for others though is now if they are going to use a file system that looks anything like Creative’s or Apples there is now a precedent for the need of a lisence. With the settlement coming “out of court” it will not carry the weight of a true legal ruling but it indeed could be a big road bump for anyone competing in the digital media space in the future. In the end that could be the real reason Apple settled the case.

Both companies are spinning the event in a positive light but anyone can see the company that got a 100 million dollar check is the clear winner here.

~Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: Creative Labs, Apple, Ipod, MP3 Player, Digital Media Player, Apple Computer, Ipod Violates a Patent

Popularity: 5% [?]

On August 14th Google Announced the release of a new version of Blogger called you guessed it Blogger Beta (is everything any Search Engine does always Beta?). We did not pay that much attention here at Comtech News as we keep focused mostly on stuff like SEO, Local Phone Service , Digital Music and HDTV. Besides we are pretty happy using Word Press as our Blog Platform with it’s open source and massive amount of free plugins.

Yet at the request of fellow Comtech Blogger Mark Barrera I took a look at the new Blogger Beta from Google and I have to say I was impressed enough to do a quick review of it here.

In Keeping with my recent review of Microsoft’s Office Live where I set up a play site for the African House Snake I decided to use the new Blogger product to set up the African House Snake Blog to accompany the site as a fun way to try out the new service.

Google’s Blogger Developers did a lot right on this one some new features I really like include…

1. A greatly expanded selection of Templates with a lot of simple adjustments you can make to several just by selecting a different version of it.

2. Simple ways to add new sections, links and images to your blog template, and control the way they display with simple drag and drop.

3. Once set up you now have tremendous control over the look and feel of your blog with simple clicks you can change your color scheme making your template truly your own.

4. If you have used blogger in the past they kept the core functionality the same so you won’t be lost setting up your new blog.

5. On the old blogger you had to “republish” with a second click after you saved template changes now when you save a change Blogger knows to republish for you.

6. Greater control for multiple users and to fight comment spam.

7. Provided an easy way to allow a user to set an image into the site Template in my case I used a cool Striped African House Snake.

In short Blogger Beta is pretty damn good and I think the term Beta is just here because everything Google does new is Beta it should simply be called Blogger 2.0 in my opinion it works better then the proven platform and is much easier for a novice user to set up, customize and use.If you are looking for a free blog that requires minimal technical knowledge that still allows for customizing I would have to say that at this point Blogger Beta is among the best.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Part 1 - It is for Affiliate Marketers Too  

Recently Google Announced that Google Analytics was available and free for the asking with instant access to all comers. Up until a few days ago you had to get in a pretty long waiting line to get an invitation code to gain access to Google Analytics because when first launched the demand was so intense Google simply could not keep it working as an open ended system. We reported on this a few days ago as it was announced in Mark Barrera's post, Google Analytics Available Free to Site Owners I thought that was a good incentive for me to post today and do a short series about the general importance of Analytics Software be it from Google or any source. 

Now most eCommerce companies that actively take orders on their own server do a reasonable job of tracking things via some type of tracking software. I find it is generally the Affiliate Marketer that fails to the highest degree to utilize such software effectively. The issue for affiliates is that once they send a visitor to an Affiliates Site they must rely on the partner to report any further information. To put it another way an affiliate marketer would ask how to I track conversions when the sales happen on my partners server? 

There is actually a pretty good way to do this. First the marketer would set up his site just as always but on his links that would send traffic offsite rather then link directly to his partner he would link to an internal page that would redirect to the partner site. So if his site was sales page mastermarketer.com/sales.htm rather then link to partnerdomain.com from there he would link to mastermarketer.com/salesrefer.htm and that page would redirect automaticly to partnerdomain.com. Why you may ask would anyone go though the hassle to do this? Because trust me the data gained is gold. Let's say you have a conversion rate on traffic to your sales page of 1% you calculate this with very basic information. Last month 2000 people visited that page and you got 20 sales from it. Yet there is so much you don't know for instance if you don't add the redirect page you may see that 1800 people exited your page.

The difference is of extreme importance because what you don't know can cause you to make a poor decision. For instance what you don't know in this model is the conversion rate of your partners affiliate page nor do you know the conversion rate of that your sales page has for getting to the first goal (goal one is to get the user off your site to your partners site). With out this how do you know which parts of your web site to dedicate time to or which partners to develop more sales pages for? Now what happens when you create that simple redirect page on the way to your affiliate link? 

It is a lot like a school math problem, once you have all the necessary numbers to form an equation you can find the unknown numbers. In this case what you did not know before is of the 1800 people that left who went to the partner page and who left your site to go somewhere else. Watch how simple the numbers end up if you have a redirect. Our marketer sets up the redirect and tracks his sales over the next month, again he gets 2000 visits and 20 sales. His exits from the sales page are 1800 but he finds that his exits from the redirect page are only 800 and this means that over 1000 visitors a month are going elsewhere.

First, he now knows that 50% of all his traffic is leaving the site so he knows the place to make changes in on the sales page. He may need to improve copy or provide a second option or even make navigation of his site better so visitors choose to look around the site where they might choose to take a different positive action but he at least knows that he is loosing those 1000 visits into nothingness and can try to do something to improve that stat. Second, he now knows that his partners sales page and product is doing very well in fact it is outstanding. The conversion rate for traffic to it is not 1%. No it is actually 2.5% for traffic that gets there which is 150% better then he believed with out proper tracking. 

With this knowledge he can decide that this particular affiliate partner is worth building better sales pages for or not because he is now tracking all such sales traffic. With solid numbers he knows how much weight his site is pulling and how much weight the product and affiliate site is pulling so his efforts can be spent on the services that sell best and his improvements made to his own site in the areas with the greatest potential to increase revenue. I will continue this series later in the week and the additional segments will apply to all marketers not just affiliate marketers but I started with this one because it is the most complicated and directed to the group of marketers who generally are most convinced that they can't obtain true conversion metrics. 

In the online world those who track things win the marathon over the fly by night sprinters and build solid systems that produce results long term. In the next segment we will uncover a often missed gold nugget buried in most web tracking data. In fact one most people look right at several times a week and just never bother with.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Yea you read that right. I think they are just nuts in certain ways. First I want you to go to yahoo and try to run a search with their blog search engine. Good luck with that it is almost impossible, now if you do a news search you will see some blog search results and you can then did deeper but you would have to know that first. This is one I have been struggling with for a long time, why would you go out of your way to build an awesome blog search tool and then burry it so no one can find it?

Oh and it is not like no one has an interest in it either, one person has even created a piece of code to allow you to search it directly. You can get more info on that application here, and as he points out if he can do it certainly the experts at Yahoo could as well.

Now we have yet another thing Yahoo has done that makes about as much sense as putting your lamp behind the door of a closed closet then wondering why you have poor lighting in your house.

On August 7th Yahoo announced Yahoo! Search Builder, some thought it was great, some greeted it with a yawn stating that is was pretty much a copy of Eurekster’s Swickis yet others such as the Comtech News Team expected something to be there that is sadly missing.

What did we expect to see when this product came strait from Yahoo?

Simple, a way for Yahoo Publisher Participants to link this new Search Builder to our Publisher accounts. Publisher for those who don’t know is Yahoo’s answer to Googles very successful AdSense Program. This allows site owners to display content based ads on their sites and earn revenue when their visitors click on those ads.

One feature both Google and Yahoo have done for their publishers is also allow them to place a simple “search box” on the site as well. When a visitor uses it they end up on Google or Yahoo with a list of results just as if they had searched directly on Google or Yahoo. Yet they website owner is still rewarded because if the user then clicks on any of the ads on the results page they again receive a cut of the ad revenue.

This has worked well for what could be termed a “Power Player” such as major ISP or News Site that has tens of thousands or loyal visitors or more. For instance a Internet Service Provider might create a standard “start page” for their customers and include such a search box to create a significant source of revenue with that captive audience.

However, both Google Adsense and Yahoo Publisher are not really powered by a few power players. The backbone of the programs are tens of thousands of webmasters focused on interesting niches from everything from poker, to fishing, to technology, to flowers to just about anything you can think of. Now what incentive does a visitor to such a site really have to use a “search box” that is just a mirror of Yahoo? Not much if they wanted a Yahoo or Google result they would just go there and do the search.

Yet Yahoo Search Builder allows for so much more. Let’s say we here at comtech news wanted to create an MP3 based search engine to keep our visitors up to date with MP3 and digital music news. We could dig in and find the 25 best sites that have up to date information about MP3 news. We could include no spam sites, no manufacture sites of a promotional nature and keep it soely a group of news type information.

Of course that is exactly what a reader of our Ipod - MP3 Section would want to see. These results would be very interesting and relevant to our visitors and they would come to realize that if they wanted MP3 info about the latest and greatest to come to our site and use our niche engine.

Nice right? Sure but get this Yahoo has provided us NO WAY to link those results to our Publisher Account so in effect we would be giving them our search traffic for free. Now we like Yahoo but not that much!

Now if this isn’t bad enough I think Yahoo is really missing the bigger picture. Let’s say I have 4 sites in a particular niche and create slightly different Yahoo Custom Searches for all of them. Of course I include my sites in the list of 25 and some times a visitor will search on one of my sites and end up on another and continue to refine their results. Each time they run a search the Yahoo Ads will be based on the results of the search and that will make the Ads MORE RELEVENT to the user.

So who benefits from this?

First - Yahoo because more people would use the tool to send them qualified visitors of course in time the ability to help their users target demographically from this source alone is mind blowing.

Second - The publisher who would have a powerful new way to improve and further monitize their site.

Third - The Visitor who has a way to find more info and get more out of their web experience.

Fourth - The advertisers who will get very targeted traffic from users who have run very specific sources.

In short everyone wins. That is why my post has been titled “Is Yahoo Crazy”, it is hard to understand why a company doesn’t do something that is good for everyone involved including them.

Worse, if you visit the Post on the Yahoo Search Blog Announcing the Launch of Search Builder and look in the comments you will see a ton of questions about the new application. You will note that Yahoo Company Employees have answered just about all of them. Well, except you guessed it the visitors including me who have asked about linking this application to our Yahoo Publisher accounts. No answer in fact we have just been ignored as though such questions were never asked.

If you participate in Publisher please go to the Search Builder Post and ask them the if they plan to allow Publishers to monitize this application and if not why not.

In many ways Yahoo does a better job then their huge rival Google but many times they just don’t publicize their efforts enough or in this case they don’t quite finish the job. That is why I am asking, Is Yahoo Crazy or is there another hidden explanation.

So what are you thoughts on things like Yahoo hiding their own Blog Search and providing no incentive for their many tech savy Publisher partners to utilize their new Search Builder?

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: Comtech News, yahoo, google, search builder, seo, sem, yahoo publisher, google adsense

Popularity: 6% [?]

SanDisk is reported to be ready to soon reveal product updates and price reductions in another attempt to wean away more prospective customers of Apple’s iPod. According media reports (Wallstreet Journal and Reuters Canada) , SanDisk, will launch a MP3 player called the Sansa priced at $249.99. It will offer 8 gigabytes of memory, which is enough to store 2,000 songs, which is almost double the capacity of the similarly-priced Apple’s iPod Nano but falls far short of the 30GB Ipod Video that is only 50 dollars more.

SanDisk also intends to cut down prices of its other music players by as much as 30 per cent, according to source reports. So far there is no official confirmation from the company on any of this. The report quoted the company’s chief executive officer Eli Hariri as saying he wants the company to be clearly positioned as No 2 in the market and distance itself from competitors like Creative, Samsung and Sony.

~ Jack

Technorati Tags: digital music, mp3, ipod, sandisk, creative labs, samsung, sony, music download, portable music

Popularity: 5% [?]

The entire staff of Comtech News uses the FireFox browser for our daily browsing needs. Not because we are anti Microsoft, heck I even run the Microsoft adCenter Code Blog, we use FireFox in short because it works better then Internet Explorer and other common browsers.

Partly because it has greater security and partly because of the huge ammount of cool extensions that improve browsing and help a great deal with research. In our opinion once you start using FireFox you will never go back and most who have tried it seem to agree.

Now Mozilla has launched what may be one of the coolest viral marketing efforts ever by asking users to create their own 30 second video commericals for publication on the web. The commericals range from a skate boarding girl, to a lady in a homemade fox suit to a moronic IE Icon Fasinated by the little spark orbiting around him.

You can view all the commericals here, FireFox Commericals. You can also view our personal Favorite here, Moronic Internet Explorer Icon.

If you work for a company that shoots video or even makes screen capture video you may want to create a movie to add to the mix. If you have never given FireFox a shot, we promise it will change the way you see the web so you should check it out the only thing you have to loose is a million open windows and security holes.

~Jack

Technorati Tags: video, firefox, mozilla, browser, commericals, internet explorer, moronic, security

Popularity: 5% [?]

The Google Analytics team announced this week that its analytics accounts are now available without an invitation code. Until this past Tuesday, Analytics accounts were on an invitation only basis.

Here is a quote from the Google Analytics Blog:

“Now anyone with a website can instantly create one for free by simply by visiting google.com/analytics or by clicking on the “Analytics” tab within AdWords. After you create an account, we suggest reading the Installation Guide to get it set up quickly and correctly.”

Google Analytics provides powerful metrics when you link your Google Adwords account to the Google Analytics account. Google Analytics calculates ROI metrics from automatically imported cost and keyword tracking data in Google Adwords, saving you time and allowing a single interface to manage your ads and make sure that your ROI goals are being achieved. Google Analytics is not the best analytic software available but used alongside your current log analysis tool, it can provide extra insight into site activity. It is also priced better than any of the competition out there - FREE!

Technorati Tags: google, analytics, log analysis, web stats, adwords

Popularity: 4% [?]

Almost since the first drop of oil was refined or lump of coal sent through a breaker man has dreamed of a day when we can create energy from nothing. There are two type of simple energy that exist in the universe that have no ill effects on man or the environment that also exert massive energy that can be observed each and ever day.

The first is gravity which holds everything on planet earth not to mention holds the planet in orbit. We tend to see gavity as a very powerful force, I mean it hold the entire earth, 8 other planets and millions of smaller bodies in orbit around the sun. Yet there is another very common force that is far more powerful then gravity, that force is magnetism. Think about it you have a paper clip being held to a table by the force of gravity and even a small kitchen magnet held above it exerts more then enough force to over come gravity and cause the paper clip to leap into the air and be held by the magnet. Everyone has played with magnets at one time or another but seldom do we realize that what we are seeing is a show of just how much more powerful magnetism is then gravity.

Think about this another more revealing way. You get two very powerful magnets, and place them so they repell each other. You take a machine that exerts just enough force to hold them together but that machine runs on gas. You put 10 gallons of gas into the machine which runs it for 5 hours. During that 5 hours all the gas is burnt and all the emissions are released into the atmosphere. Upon completion of the 5 hours the machine fails and the magnets repel. The magnets have lost none of their force, created no emissions and out lasted the gas powered machine.

Now a firm in Ireland has claimed to have found a way to harness this power to produce clean and unending energy. Such claims are made often and treated with a great deal of skepticism, (as they should be) because so many have attempted to produce energy from magnets and failed in the past.

Yet just today Dublin-based Steorn said its technology based on the interaction of magnetic fields allows the production of clean, free and constant energy challenging fundamental scientific principles. In fact they have issued a challange on their website were you can learn about the people who accept it and the results of the testing. You can view that challange here

Now this whole thing could just be a unique form of Link Bait , it did get us to link to them right? Yet it seems pretty well thought out and if they are going to go through with it, I just can’t believe the bad PR would be worth a few hundred links.

In short the company is looking for 12 independent scientists to take part in a rigorous testing exercise to prove the technology creates free energy. If this proves to be true the impact on global energy demands could be enormous. The story is that the Firm was orginaly hired to create probing methods of powering CCTV cameras over three years ago and that research led to the creation of this new technology.

You can read a story about the Challange and Technology in The Irish Examiner’s story,
Wanted: scientists to test free energy technolog

Call us skeptical hopefuls here at ComTech News. We would love to see this claim proven truth but will reserve any judgement until some creditable independent results are published. No one doubts that magnetism has the potential to create energy, it is the formula to do so that remains the Holy Grail of magnetic energy generation, just perhaps Steorn has found it…

~ Jack

Technorati Tags: create energy, gravity, magnetism, free energy, ComTech News, Steorn, technology, emerging technology, energy crisis,

Popularity: 6% [?]

I previously authored an article on this blog entitled “The Future of Net Neutrality”, anyone reading that article would easily come to the conclusion that I am on the same side of the issue with companies like Google, eBay and others who believe that users should have free access to any content and Service Providers should not be permitted to control access based on its type or the publisher or provider of it.

I decided to make this next article on the subject as even handed as possible and allow as little personal bias into it as can be accomplished. The purpose of this article is simply to explain what both sides of the debate are about and how the opposing groups are both using the same term to describe what their individual version of “Net Neutrality” is, because to understand the debate we must first get past that fact that both parties in it actually claim to be, “for net neutrality”.

Net Neutrality Version One – According to the Service Providers (AT&T, Comcast, etc)

The big service providers would tell you that the net remaining neutral is their goal. Their definition actually sounds quite reasonable as well because what they mean by neutral is no government regulation in regard to Internet access.

In other words they want the government to stay out of the business of making any regulations in regard to Internet access that would affect the three parties involved in any Internet connection, (the user, the connection provider and the content provider).

The key tenants to this argument are fairly simple to understand.

First, that the Internet has come all this way with no government intervention and has done so with amazing speed, creating more small businesses then anytime in history. It has spread communications, information and education at the speed of light across the globe and become the primary means of communications for the vast majority of the civilized world.

All of this has been done with out the government being involved and history has proven once the government starts to regulate there is no stopping it and it creates greater expense, taxes and restrictions. In short that no involvement by the government is what Neutrality if all about and that promotes true free enterprise.

Second, that right now many markets are underserved and there is a huge need to deploy broadband networks into rural America. That doing so is going to cost billions of dollars, so the Service Providers need to be able to justify the expense in order to build out the next generation of high-speed Internet access.

The solution according to the service providers is to charge the publisher of the content based on a tiered system for the type of content they want to deliver or for a higher speed connection to the end user. So if Google wants to provide steaming video and use up more of the high-speed connection, then Google should also have to pay for the extra bandwidth, not Joe Consumer. In the end some one is going to pay for it either the end user or the content publisher and the service providers claim that it is the “big corporations like Google” that should be paying the bill.

Third, that the model is already proven because it is not much different then the way landline phone service is sold today. Right now, for instance AT&T sells access to its lines at a wholesale rate to a Competitor who can then resell it to end users. One example is that AT&T resells local access to their copper lines to Sage Telecom who provides local phone service in eleven states. The two companies negotiate the pricing of the access and it works so why not continue this model of free enterprise into accessing broadband networks?

Fourth, that at the core the service providers claim that it is they indeed who dig the ditches, burry the lines, pay for the optical fiber, build the towers, maintain the network and spend billions on countless other expenses required to build and maintain these broadband networks. As the owner of these networks they should be able to control access to them sort of like if you buy a car you should be able to control who rides in it.

Overall it would appear that the service providers have a pretty good argument for both the definition of net neutrality and the right to maintain control over the networks they have so much invested in; however, the other side also makes some compelling arguments.

Net Neutrality Version Two – According to the Content Publishers (Google, eBay and any Website Owner)

Content providers which would include anyone that provides any form of content (standard web pages, steaming video and audio, VoIP Phone Service, etc) have a much different definition of Net Neutrality which interestingly enough starts out quite a bit similar to that of the Service Providers. They would also point back to the beginning of the Internet all the way up to present day but state that it is the Service Providers who are trying to change the historical model.

That the meaning of Net Neutrality would be for it to stay exactly as it has been, the provider sells a connection to the user of a given speed and quality and from that point the user should be free to access any type of content with no interference by the Service Provider. That it is now the Service Providers that are threatening to take away the principal of Net Neutrality and the government should step in to prevent this from occurring.

Again the key tenants of the content publishers are also pretty easy to understand and directly counter the arguments made by the Service Providers.

First, that the Internet has created countless new millionaires and spawned a huge growth of small and medium sized business and has done so primarily because in the Internet world borders to competition are almost non-existent. That Joe Entrepreneur can set up a business and directly compete with the largest corporation from the comfort of his own home precisely because his huge competitor can’t gain access to customers via any type of “preferred connection”.

Further that the pace of the internet is moving toward rich media like VoIP Phones and Steaming Video and these technologies open up a whole new world of competition for small businesses and entrepreneurs. With this technology a small time blogger can compete with big radio talk shows via a podcast or a local fishing guide can compete with The Outdoor Channel via steaming video. Of course it is impossible for the average person to get a T.V. Show or a Radio Talk Show via conventional media but the neutrality of the internet has allow this new segment to grow and thrive. So, the crux of the argument is that if the big players are permitted to buy faster access to the user it will come at the expense of the small business allowing for the quashing of countless potential new business and sources of information and entertainment. In short the big companies win at the expense of the small businessperson and the consumer.

Second, that the claim the Service Providers make about the need to build new networks in underserved markets is simply an “excuse” to justify changing the historical Neutrality model. That the underserved audience is all the opportunity needed just justify the expense of building the network because if you provide high speed access in such an area that you will gain a large number of users quite rapidly because they want high speed access.

The further argument would be that once the network is built and the Service Provider gains subscribers they will be charging them a monthly fee for access for years to come just like they do with Cable TV and Phone Service where clearly the small business person has never been able to compete. That only by requiring service providers to allow equal access for all content providers can the historical growth of the Internet and new sources of information, services and entertainment continue to grow.

Third, content providers would state that the existing model with in the local phone service market is actually a case for keeping the Internet “neutral” according their definition. They would simply point to the several thousand competitive local phone companies that have lost money and gone bankrupt in the past 10 years under that model and the limited choices that leaves consumers with today.

Of course they would also point out again how anyone can currently compete on the internet with a minor investment while almost no one could possibly afford to go out and compete with AT&T directly for local phone customers, precisely because AT&T controls access to all the customers you would have to compete for. Further stating that allowing the Service Providers to charge publishers for access will give them the same advantage on the Internet, to a large degree killing off the last great market open to all comers.

Fourth, while the Publisher would happily concede that the Service Providers do indeed build the Networks and are entitled to profit from the investment that they make. However, they would state that, said profit is derived by providing service to their customers not by charging publishers who are already paying for hosting and transfer on their end.

• First, they would state that as a user you should indeed decide “who rides in your car”, in this case what content you want to view and from whom. If you pay for a 3 MB connection you should be able to access any information you choose with it.
• Secondly, they would also state that we are not talking about the car but the road itself when it comes to internet access and once you pay to drive on a toll road you are free to do so and just like a road, the Internet is a public domain. That a Service Provider should no more be able to discriminate in regard to Internet Access then the government should be allowed to decide who rides on a bus or drives on a public road. That the Internet itself is a public domain and once access is paid for on both ends it should not be encumbered in any way.

Final Thoughts

As long as this article is it really only scratches the surface as to the argument on both sides of the coin. This is not a simple two-sided argument but a multi-armed monster that has a long way to go before the issue is resolved. As I authored this I realized that I could indeed make a compelling case for either side if I chose to, such debates are often the most difficult.

My concern with this one is less about which side wins the debate because I believe that if the debate is healthy and the public is well informed the solution will be reasonable. I do fear that by and large the public is simply unaware that this debate is even occurring. Worse those that do are being told that both sides want “Net Neutrality” with no explanation of what that really means or what the other party in the debate means when they are both constantly using the same term for completely different concepts.

What I would encourage any reader to do would be the following…

1. Learn all you can about the issue and form your opinion but do so by being informed not marketed to.

2. Once you form an opinion make it known, post in blog and forums, write your senator and call radio talk shows get the debate out into the main stream.

3. Understand that this issue DOES affect you because it will have implications for decades about where our information comes from and the growth of our economy. It will affect you whether you are a tech guru or a ditch digger the issue is that big, even though relatively few people are discussing it or understand it.

Attempting to be totally “neutral” in arguing both sides of this issue was difficult but helped me understand the issue much better; I hope it has done the same for you.

Popularity: 6% [?]

A little over a month ago Microsoft launched Microsoft Office Live Beta with a lot of effort and resources but it did not make a huge splash in the media, in the web development community or even with the bazillion affiliate marketers out there always looking for new places to publish content. Something is missing in the message because the product while far from perfect is pretty damn good at an offering price of FREE. 

I think perhaps that the message is falling on a highly skeptical market that has learned over the past decade that if something on the internet is "free" then you better be careful messing around with it or just accept going in that free is not really free and there must be some "catch". When you look at what you get with Microsoft Live Basics at no cost you might begin to wonder indeed just what the catch is or where the gotcha if any is coming from. Take a look at this feature list…

• Easy-to-use Web site design tool - Get started fast with our easy-to-use Site Designer tool. Don't worry — it was designed with the small-business owner in mind, so you can quickly create your own Web site.
• Free domain name and hosting Select your own domain name (for example, www.northwindtraders.com) and let Microsoft keep your Web site up and running.
• 5 personalized e-mail accounts Access your company e-mail using your personalized domain name (for example, jsmith@northwindtraders.com).
• Storage and data transfer - More than enough space to promote every aspect of your business and plenty of bandwidth to allow lots of customers to visit your site.
• Web site traffic analysis and reporting tools View the success of your Web site with reporting that lets you see how often people visit your site, what pages they visit the most, and their system and browser information.
• Support Our online support pages are here to answer questions and help you get started by providing quick responses to your most frequent questions. One-on-one e-mail support is also available to address other questions.

Well, I was pretty skeptical myself but figured I would sign up and of course the free part what what I doubted most. During sign up I was prompted for a credit card number, (ah-ha! I thought then digging into the FAQ I found that this was to prevent fraud and ensure people could not get thirty sites for free along with 30 free domains at Microsoft Expense). I went ahead and completed the sign up and then noticed two, one dollar charges on my card on Aug. 4th, then on Aug. 9th just as promised my two dollars were credited back. 

So thus far the "free" test has been passed, and thinking further on it, Microsoft would be nuts to pull any type of scam here as the bad PR would be a disaster so I think we can just accept in this case free is really free. So on to the next question, how does it work? Rather then experiment with one of my corporate site or one of my affiliate sites with this new technology I decided to play with one of my personal hobbies, it just so happens that in addition to being an SEO and Telecommunicaitons Technical Geek I am also an amature herpetologist and have been for the past twenty years so I decided to build a site about the African House Snake which is an animal I have been working with a lot lately. 

I figured building something that I did not have to take too seriously would give me the patience to learn a new site builder and not be second guessing myself for not using sothing like FrontPage or DreamWeaver where I could get things done a LOT faster. So I registered African House Snake . Com and proceeded to begin playing with the system. While I have yet to put up any real content I figured I would post my impressions so far starting with the features promoted by MicroSoft. This initial review is based on VERY LIMITED experience and I will continue to post more in-depth on individual features as I build out my little hobby site. 

Feature One - Easy-to-use Web site design tool, - OK I am biased I don't really like any site builder so I have to answer this one with a mind on other builders I have used. I would say easy is a relative term. The first time user will get frustrated but will be able to figure things out in time if they take the time to do so. For instance, I had a pretty tough time figuring out how to get a picture of my House Snake as the main site image but I did figure it out and doing it again would be "easy" though I would call doing it for the first time "difficult" or at least time consuming. I will definitely post more about the builder itself in time. 

Feature Two - Free domain name and hosting, - This one checks out the hosting provides 30 MB which is plenty for most small business sites or personal sites that would use a free tool like this. The domain is really yours, if you want to take it with you to another host you will then have to pay for it, once you move it, but it is free as long as you use Microsoft Office Live and YOU DO OWN IT personally.

Feature Three - 5 personalized e-mail accounts, - Again this feature works well and is included free. The web mail interface is a copy of the online hotmail interface so honestly with just a bit of experience anyone can use it. An added bonus I discovered while creating an email is you can then make the holder of the account a "user" on the site itself and set permissions to them either as an "editor" or an "administrator" which makes this ideal for group colaberation on a web site. I have not yet tried the "Outlook Connector" but will do so in the future. 

(It was a little confusing that once you set up the email account, you get a message about setting permissions, clicking on that link took you to the right place but the "new user" you just created does not show up, you then have to create that same user with the same info as a "site user" but doing the whole thing took less then 5 minutes my first time)  

Feature Four - Storage and data transfer, - The promo says "more then enough storage and transfer", and it is a decent allotment of 30MB of storage and 10,000 MB of Transfer. That should cover just about any small business. Anyone using heavy graphics or rich media with good traffic may need more but at a cost of zero it is hard to argue with that allotment of space and transfer. 

Feature Five - Web site traffic analysis and reporting tools, - This is pretty basic you can see the number of page views and unique visits, the precentage of browser use, most visited pages, your highest exit pages and some other common stats. What is missing is the most valuable information of all, the "referring source" and "search phrase stats". So you can see how many people come but not where they come from or what they searched for to find you. I do hope Microsoft fills this gaping hole. It does appear if you "upgrade" to Essentials you get referring stats, perhaps that is the lone "gotcha" with the free versioin. 

Feature Six - Support, - Like many "support sections" of Microsoft Products, (and to be fair many other vendors), all the answers seem to be there it is finding them and understanding them that is most difficult. I think any engineer driven company needs common people, who have never used the product before, to then learn the product with the engineers support documentation, the organize support information and translate it to basic English prior to publishing for the public. 

The tech language is pretty basic so they did get that down pretty good it is the arrangement of the data that makes some tasks hard to find. Over all it is a great tool and again at a price of free and accepting the fact that it is in Beta you can't complain much. Still I have several suggestions for Microsoft to improve this product and make it more useable and simply work better. 

1. They really need a "view and edit HTML source" option. Many marketers have a lot of cut and paste code they need to implement or may want to use a third party tracking tool or run contextual ads. These are just a few reasons a site admin would want access to the Code Level. In fact so far this is the ONLY site builder I have ever seen with out the ability to edit the HTML. 

2. It is one thing for you to be required to use Internet Explorer to edit and manage your site. One can hardly blame Microsoft for making it this way as part of trying to maintain their lead in the Browser Wars. Like most techy types I use Mozilla FireFox for my browsing needs but I don't mind using IE to run a online Windows Application that just seems like a reasonable requirement (especially in Beta). Yet the site should display correctly in all common Browsers. 

Anywhere from 10-15% of web surfers use FireFox so the site should display properly in it. I found that if I left the site at "100% of window" it displayed fine but when I set it to "centered" and "780 Pixel Width" (where it looked much better by the way) it displayed perfectly in IE but had issues in FireFox. One, the site did not "center" it remained left justified in the FireFox Browser.

Second, while the pixel width of 780 was obeyed it then cause some alignment issues with the tables on the site. Here are some screen shots showing the alignment and centering issues, Properly displayed in Internet Explorer (will open in a new window) Shown with Errors in FireFox (will open in a new window) These issues indeed need to be corrected as much as Microsoft would like to have 100% browser share it isn't going to happen so a web master must insure his site displays properly for all common browsers. I simply set the site to 100% of window for now and it appears to display properly in FireFox. 

I will report more in-depth in the future about individual features and I am sure I will find more to complain about but I would expect Microsoft is listening to the market and will continue to improve this product. In fact while toying with the system as I wrote this article I was asked to take an online survey by Microsoft so they are making the effort. I do give them a lot of credit for making that effort. Indeed, the questions were in regard to many of the issue I have brought up in this article so they are certainly on the right track. In summary the tool is reasonably easy to learn to use, it is free and you can have a team of up to five working on, building and developing your site. The uses are many from a primary small business web site, to a academic or online publishing site or even a site set up to appear as "third party" in nature to promote your primary web site. I think Microsoft has a real hit with this concept but more effort needs to be made in getting the message to the market, 

~ Jack Spirko

Popularity: 8% [?]