Published: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 05:35:10 GMT Copyright © 1997-2005 DMS, Ltd. / 4yourwebsite
Vulnerability in Server Service Could Allow Remote Code Execution. For more information on this vulnerability, and to download the update, see Microsoft Security Bulletin MS06-040
If you have your Windows system set to automatically download critical updates then you should be all set. To double-check you can click Start -> Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs -- then look in the Currently installed programs and updates list for Security Update for Windows XP (KB921883) -- it will be pretty near the bottom of the list. If it's there then you are all set (for this week anyway), if not you should download and install it immediately.
If you are responsible for system security or system support then this patch should be at the very top of your to-do list -- or, better yet, scratched off of your to-do list because it is already done.
by Elizabeth Kirwin, Sidhe Communications
& Mike Pires, 4YourWebsite.com
One question which should concern all internet marketers is --- What are the search engines looking for? Search engines are based on computer logic, which sees information in text or numerical form, and has a hierarchical approach to font sizes, typefaces, and repetition of words or phrases. This article will give details about search engine preferences and explain how website content can be constructed to cater to these preferences to increase ranking on Google and other search engines.
If your site is a template (mortgage, real estate, etc) and Google reads many sites repeated in the same format on the web, this picky search engine may kick your site from the top to the bottom of the list.
Industry specific keywords can be harvested from website statistics programs or constructed from a strategic plan to draw the right traffic to a site. For example, a realtor would want to repeat the words retirement, relocation, and purchase a second home along with a geographic location to draw long distance homebuyers to their site. By repeating industry specific keywords, a company or organization may increase site ranking in Google. Article writing on a given topic is a very effective tool for placing repetitive keyword text on a home page.
Choose your page titles very carefully and be sure that they include your most important keywords. Not only does this increase the relevance of your page to the search engines, but it also looks better in the search results. When your page title looks better in the search results more searchers will choose your page from the list of possibilities, the more searchers choose your page, the higher it will rank. Be sure to use your keywords liberally in a headline, in subheadings, in the first sentence of the page and in bolded text. This will help your page rank well, while at the same time reassuring the internet searcher that they have landed on a page that is pertinent to what they are looking for.
If you were designing your web pages just for the search engine spiders you would not use graphics at all, but it is necessary to strike a balance between making a page that is pleasing to look at vs. one that will satisfy the search engines. Choose images for your page that also relate to your keywords and make sure that your keywords are in your image alt tag. Make your image alt text describes what the image actually is. Look at your page with the images turned off to be sure that all of your images have accurate, useful and keyword-rich descriptions.
Link text is one of the most important ranking criteria. If you want to see how powerful link text is, try a Google search for "miserable failure". You will find George Bush's official bio and Michael Moore's home page at the top of the list even though neither page contains the phrase or even one of these words!
Internal links within a website direct users to your other pages. Keywords in menu items and other internal links are critical because search engines read them as another link. Don't waste links on text like "Click Here" or "This Page", use your keywords instead. Think of the link text as a vote to the search engines for what your website is about. When you vote make sure to use your keywords, if you won't vote for your own pages then who will?
How many times is your website mentioned on the web? This is another way search engines rank sites. Each time your site is mentioned on the web, insert keywords to introduce the site instead of "for more information" or "click here". Also, be aware that when inbound links are embedded on other sites, your site rises in ranking - any link will help, but a link with your keyword(s) is best. Article writing and syndication on the web ensures that inbound links to your site (contained in bios) are resident on many sites. Writing and disseminating national press releases on the web is another way to increase the number of inbound links. Links to the website are repeated in the press release.
Placement of links with websites of prominence is most important. This creates traffic. However, a savvy internet marketer will choose placement of links on web pages selectively, to increase company profits or an organization's visibility. Use outbound links that help an internet surfer find even more information about your target keywords and you will increase your website's level of authority for your keywords.
The general consensus seems to be that reciprocal links don't really help your search engine ranking and, in fact, can actually hurt your page rank if you are not careful. Swap links with websites that are already ranked well for your keywords and/or sites that will use your keywords in their link text. This will generate quality traffic to your site even if it does not have an effect on your page rank. Don't link to sites that have nothing to do with the subject of your keywords and especially do not link to sites that are nothing but a bunch of uncategorized links, links to these free-for-all link farms can do more harm than good.
Uploading massive amounts of invisible keyword writing on the home page was once a favored tool of web designers. It is no longer a good idea to mask keywords on the page in any way. Search engines may be fooled at first and your site may land on top of the list for a while, but once filters are run to detect this, search engines may semi-blacklist your site or remove it from results completely. Avoid trying to trick the search engines and stick to techniques that enhance your website's usefulness and relevance to its target audience. The rankings, the traffic and the loyalty of your visitors will follow automatically.
The next Sober Worm hits tomorrow, patch your system now! Since there is no official patch available from Microsoft we are strongly urging all of our clients to patch their system manually and immediately. Be aware that this patch will prevent you from being able to double-click a picture and viewing it with Windows Picture and Fax Viewer (there is a work-around for this if you have Firefox installed). Here are the instructions:
Click Start -> Run then enter CMD into the dialog box and click OK
At the command prompt type the following exactly and then press ENTER:
regsvr32 -u %windir%\system32\shimgvw.dll
You should then see a dialog box that says "DllUnregisterServer in C:\...\shimgvw.dll succeeded."
Click OK and your system is patched.
Next Click Start -> Control Panel and then Double-Click Folder Options. Then Click the File Types tab and find GIF, JPE, JPEG and JPG - change the "Opens with:" program for all of these to Firefox.
Now you are done and safe from the impending Sober attack.
Of course you should also make sure that your Antivirus program is installed properly and up-to-date. We strongly recommend a manual virus signature download to be sure that you have the very latest signatures.
Note: Microsoft has finally issued Windows XP Security Update for Windows XP (KB912919) that resolves this issue, Once you have installed this update successfully you can safely reinstate the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer by following the above instructions to open a command prompt window and then type this command:
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\shimgvw.dll
You should then see a dialog box that says "DllRegisterServer in C:\...\shimgvw.dll succeeded." Click OK and your system is all back to normal.
If you also changed the "Opens with:" follow the same instructions as above but click the "Restore" button for each of the file types.
And P-L-E-A-S-E make sure that your Antivirus program is installed properly and up-to-date.
This does not mean 10 years ago, or even 10 months ago - sometimes it can mean 10 minutes ago!
A Website owner that knows everything there is to know about today's Internet technology, who doesn't keep up with the constant changes for even a few months, will be working with an ever increasing proportion of obsolete expertise and knowledge. This constantly changing face of technology, and especially search engine protocol, requires that Website owners do much more than just stay abreast of today's technology and search engine requirements.
Optimum Website posturing means more than just keeping pace with the present, it requires the predictive vision and ability to see the very root essence of technological and search engine evolution. It is an art that brings the searcher and the searched together in the most ethical and up-to-date orchestration of art, information and technology.
Mike Pires, co-owner of, www.4yourwebsite.com, located in Asheville, North Carolina, was a master of computer technology when computers were still in their infancy. While many of us know computers only as that convenient purchase package of communication hardware and software that we bought from our local Electronics or Office Supply store, Mike has been delving into the inner workings of bits and bytes for several decades. What was a daily reality for Mike was little more than an awe-filled possibility for many of his generation. This broad perspective in the field of computer technology, allows Mike to skillfully lead his team with a level of expertise and insight that is not often found in this highly competitive market of Internet web design, programming and marketing.
As a Website Designer and Marketer, Mike knows from years of education and experience, that the present state of computer technology and Website optimization is only a momentary pause in this ever unfolding field of communication and search engine mechanics. This understanding allows www.4yourwebsite.com a clear advantage over their competitors.
Mike and co-owner, Stephanie O'Guin, working with a team of specialists, pull together all necessary resources for their client's best purpose. www.4yourwebsite.com researches and utilizes the most contemporary tools for today's online advantage, while anticipating and preparing for up-and-coming trends that will give their clients a clear leading edge in tomorrow's market.
Adding to their full range offering of services in the field of Website and Database Design as well as Custom Programming, Website Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Website Marketing, www.4yourwebsite.com also offers full Press Release and Copywriting services. Entire packages, both large and small, are all affordably priced, allowing almost any individual or business that Website they only dreamed was possible.
If you would like more information on how you can have a Website of your own, or improve the functionality or visibility of one that you already have, contact www.4yourwebsite.com.
This article is the second in a series of Spider Food / Search Engine Optimization / SEO articles. Your website should promote your business and your business should promote your website.
Have you heard the story of what Wal-Mart did to Rubbermaid? It is a very good illustration of why you should not put all of your eggs in one web basket. A few years ago, when Rubbermaid needed to raise prices because the cost of a a key raw material had gone up, Wal-Mart refused. Wal-Mart had the attitude that “You might be Rubbermaid, and you might have a great name, but you’re not going to tell us what to do, we’re not going to take your price increase, and we really don’t care what it does to you. Since then, Rubbermaid has shut down many of its US facilities, and laid off more than 10,000 workers, there could be more than twice as many more laid off over the next few years as Rubbermaid is forced to move much of its production overseas in order to remain viable while satisfying Wal-Mart’s hunger for low prices.
I know that you want to jump right to all of the magic tricks that will put your website on the first page of Google, Yahoo and MSN; we will get down to that soon, but there are some other very important principles that you must learn first. These preliminary foundational principles are where the real website promotion magic is secretly hidden. Don’t try to skip over learning and applying these very important first steps, cheating and skipping many of these steps is what most everyone else does, and you are reading this because you want to do it better. If you learn and apply these principles fully, you will automatically have success in what you now see as that elusive pot of gold at the end of the SEO rainbow. If you learn and apply these very important first steps you will have success that is so far beyond those coveted first page rankings that, while they are important and very desirable, by the time you get there I promise you that you will no longer care about them as much as you do right now.
Try a search for any of the phrases that you want your website to be found by. How many pages show up for that search? For one of mine there are 319,000,000, I happen to have a top listing on many of these, but I don’t want to fight with 319,000,000 people to try and keep it! For just about any phrase that you come up with there will be thousands, or more likely millions, of other sites that are vying for that top ten position. Why devote all of your website promotion time and budget on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with those kinds of odds? If you think that is a good idea then I bet you play the lottery too, and actually expect to win someday soon. Let me clue you in on that one – the lottery is just a tax on people who are bad at statistics and math. Spending excessive amounts of time, money and energy on search engine optimization is for webmasters that are too dim-witted to realize that there are lots of other ways to get people to visit their websites. It is for people that do not know what you have already learned, and what you are about to learn.
Think beyond being listed on the first page of Google, Yahoo and MSN to WHY you want to be listed on the first page of Google, Yahoo and MSN. WHY do you even care about this? I can sum up why for you in one word – TRAFFIC! You want these top search engine positions because they will generate traffic to your website. What you really want is traffic, NOT a first page ranking for your website. It should be obvious to you that the success of any website is in direct proportion to the amount of visitors it receives. If success is about visitors, then why on earth would any reasonably intelligent human being devote 95% of their website promotion efforts to a single method of advertising their website? Here’s something even more obvious that you may not have thought of. Google is not the only way that your site can be found on the web. Google, Yahoo and MSN are not the only way to be found either, there are directories, there are banner exchanges, and there are hundreds of millions of other websites and even other search engines. How many of those list your site?
If you really want to build steady, long-term traffic to your website then advertise it in every legal way that you can think of. This will require time, effort and cash. You can spend a lot of time and effort and a little money, or you can spend a lot of money and a little time and effort. If it was easy and inexpensive then everybody, including you, would have already done it and you wouldn’t be reading this. If you are looking for the easy way to get visitors to your website then you bought the wrong book, if you want the best way then read on.
Here are some other web baskets for you to put your eggs in:
Add your own ideas to this list and try them as well. Contact Us if you have any ideas that you think should be added to this list. This is advertising and promotion that will not be undone in the blink of an eye by a Google or Yahoo algorithm change. These ideas, and the ones mentioned in Spider Food (1), will provide a solid foundation for steady traffic to your website and to your business.
Later sections of Spider Food will get into how to increase traffic by having those top rankings, but these introductory, foundational principles will focus on traffic and success for your website WITH or WITHOUT all of those Googley Yahoos! The moral of this section is to diversify your website and business promotion beyond Google, beyond search engines and even beyond the internet. Don’t become dependent on any one source of traffic and leads, diversify, diversify, diversify… And remember, your website should promote your business and your business should promote your website.
When all goes well it is as simple as follow the instructions, mail it in and get your check.
Just in case it doesn't go smoothly be sure that you keep copies of everything (order numbers, case numbers, names, dates, etc.) and document all of your communications. We ended up too frustrated by email and phone call dead ends, so we made 5 copies of everything that we had (19 pages in all), wrote a 4 page letter to go with it and mailed it all to:
Dell, Inc.
One Dell Way
Round Rock, TX 78682
We sent a copy to:
• Dell Customer Service Department
• Technical Support
• Dell Management
• Rebate Fulfillment Department
And a CC: to Michael Dell just for good measure.
Since all is resolved, we won't bore you with the details, but here is the intro to our 4 page letter:
Dear Dell:
Here's the short version of my ordeal with Dell: You owe me $200 and a hard drive. Please send them now.
Here's the long version....
I am writing to you out of sheer desperation and frustration and praying SOMEONE at Dell can help me out. I purchased the two Dell computer systems referenced above, back on 2/7/05. I placed my order online.... 4 more pages of details...
We mailed everything on 8/20 and started getting phone calls and email responses on 9/1 from David C. from the Resolution Expert Center; David is, indeed, a true Resolution Expert. Our issue was now given an OMNI case number and things flowed like fine wine (which we had already been driven to drink much of during this ordeal). We received exceptional communication and unprecedented follow-up that included several phone calls and more than 15 emails (all of them with useful and pertinent information). We have been issued credits for our rebates (one on 9/8 and one on 9/9) and our brand new replacement hard drive arrived yesterday (9/9). So, after seven months of being in the depths of Dell, our hell has been completely and Delliciously transformed to a heavenly resolution in less than a week.
We wish that Dell could have provided more people like David C. and this level of customer service (like Sharper Image and Target do so well), on the front end. Nevertheless, our faith in Dell has been restored. Thank you David C., we will continue to endorse your company and your products.
Update Published: Sat, 10 Sep 2005 :: This issue has been resolved by Dell, for the rest of the story see How to Get Your Dell Rebate (Our Trip to Dell and Back!)
Original Article Published: Sun, 21 Aug 2005
Does Dell actually give those rebates that they promise? We're pretty sure that they do not, based on this response from the Dell REBATE FULFILLMENT DEPARTMENT after SIX months of phone calls (mostly waiting on hold and being transferred, disconnected or told to call other numbers) and emails (mostly canned responses). After finally being escalated to a Rebate Fulfillment Department Manager, who seemed to resolve the problem, all traces of her were gone when we tried to follow up with her six weeks later, as she suggested. We still had not received our rebate at that point - nor at this point either for that matter. Her name is gone from the directory, her extension no longer exists, her fax line has been disconnected and there is no trace of the two case numbers that she gave us. Here´s a sample of the latest canned email response from Dell...
"Dear Dell Consumer:
Thank you for your recent inquiry. Unfortunately you have reached the incorrect department. We are the Dell Rebate Fulfillment Department and are not able to assist you with your request.
You may reach the Dell Customer Service Department by calling toll-free, 1-800-624-9897, option 4, enter your order number, option 1, option 4, option 4. This will get you in touch with a live representative who will be more than happy to address any questions you may have.
Thank you for contacting Dell. Customer Contact Center Dell.rebatestatus.com"So after I press 4, then enter my 9 digit order number, then press 1, then press 4 and then press 4 again, I can wait on hold for 48 minutes. Then after being transferred or told to call another number several times, pressing several more 1s and 4s and various other numbers and listening to several full-length concertos while waiting on hold, I will finally be talking to a live person in the Rebate Fulfillment Department, who is probably the one that told me that they are the wrong department via email to begin with! This live person (who is probably in India) will most likely just tell me (in broken English that I can hardly understand) that the Dell Rebate Fulfillment Department doesn't actually send out rebates, call customer service. If you are a programmer you will immediately recognize this infinite loop that we have been trapped in for the last six months.
Dell is great when all goes smoothly, but there is nowhere a consumer can go if there is a complaint. Stay tuned for the rest of the Dell Rebate Bait-And-Switch Scam story if this is not resolved by this time next month. It will be both entertaining and enlightening.
Update Published: Sat, 10 Sep 2005 :: This issue has been resolved by Dell, for the rest of the story see How to Get Your Dell Rebate (Our Trip to Dell and Back!)
As of August 1st, 2005 4yourwebsite´s Asheville Web Design Office is now at 263 Haywood Street in downtown Asheville. Still plenty of convenient parking and hours by appointment. A full-time receptionist is available for pick-up and drop-off of your Web Design materials.
Please be sure to note this change of address in your records. Website, eMail Address and Phone Numbers remain the same.
This article is the first in a series of Spider Food / Search Engine Optimization / SEO articles. Your website should promote your business and your business should promote your website.
Before we get started with Search Engine Optimization, and learning to feed the Spiders, let's take a much broader look at your business and website promotion. Any truly effective website promotion campaign will also include several offline website promotion strategies. Getting your website online is not enough; having a page one ranking in Google, Yahoo and MSN is really fantastic but it is not enough either; you need to promote your website, both online and offline. Think of your website as a new and valuable dimension to your existing business, think of your website as part of your business and not as a separate cost or, hopefully, profit center. Create your marketing campaigns with your website as an integral part of them.
Your website should be an integral part, not only of your marketing, but also of your business. In fact, instead of being a drain on your precious resources, did you know that your website can actually help you to manage your day-to-day business operations more effectively? Strategic database design can and will help you to manage your day-to-day business operations and can also be used to automatically update your website with key business information. A well designed database-driven website will help you to manage your business more effectively and will also work for you 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. This is what we mean by "Web Designs That Work".
Online, your site needs to be promoted through search engine optimization, directory listings, strategic link exchanges, effective advertising, publicity through free and paid press releases and other promotional strategies that will vary with the nature of your business. These will be some of the subjects of upcoming Spider Food articles.
Offline you should always include your web site address anywhere that you place your business name. Don't write, print, or even say your business name anywhere, or any time, without the website address being included. Here are some ideas:
Place signs with your website address on them in your physical location to generate more traffic to your website, and to remind your customers that you are a progressive company that uses technology effectively. Make business cards for your website and place them on or near the signs. Integrate, don't isolate. Your offline and your online campaigns should really be ONE cohesive campaign. An integrated marketing approach is your most effective strategy.
Get the picture? Does it have your website address on it? I hope so. Any material that you produce for, or about, your business should always include your website address. The more you use your website address the more impact it will have. Using your website address in print, television or radio advertising allows you to effectively communicate the full breadth and depth of your business in a much smaller, or shorter (i.e. cheaper) ad. www.4yourwebsite.com tells you all that you need to know to find out all that you want to know about us. Do you have a www (World Wide Web) address that tells me all that I want to know about you? If not, Contact Us now. Your website will show your customers that you are interested in serving their needs in every possible way. For your younger customers, and some of your older ones too, your online presence verifies and legitimizes your very existence.
Now that I've got you thinking more effectively and globally than just search engine optimization (SEO), Spider Food (2) will get down to the business of getting your website found by those search engines, you will learn to feed the spiders. It's all just a matter of learning what, when and how they like to eat. Remember, your website should promote your business and your business should promote your website.
Google has introduced a new portal service that makes it much more like Yahoo and MSN. Go to http://www.google.com/ig to try it out.
Is it worth it? They still have some work to do to make it as useful as Yahoo and MSN and there are a few glitches, but overall it is great. In true Google fashion, the page looks and feels a lot cleaner and loads a lot faster than its rivals.
What's missing? First of all the most important thing that is missing is actually a good thing - there are no dancing bananas or other distracting, flashing graphics and no popup annoyances. On the negative side, I've grown to really like Yahoo's RSS feature that lets me add my own RSS feeds, I'd like to see this feature added to the Google portal. The Stock market ticker will show you delayed quotes of a custom list of stocks but does not allow you to actually track a portfolio like Yahoo and MSN do. If you actually want any level of detail you end up in a frame that lets you look on Yahoo Finance, Fool.com, MSN MoneyCentral or ClearStation to get it.
What are the glitches? When I look at stock detail and then click the Google logo I'm back at the old, uncustomized Google home page instead of mine. When I click on Go to Google News I end up on an generic Google News page, even though I've customized my news, it takes a few extra clicks to get to my personalized Google News page and then it is difficult to get back to my customized portal page.
I'm sure that these glitches will be fixed soon, and I hope that they add RSS. As long as they keep their clean look and keep improving they might take over the portal traffic next.
A 4/30/2005 Associated Press release talks about software that "enables cars to fix themselves and avoid accidents". The article quotes Bill Gates as saying that "Eventually there could be a car that wouldn't let itself crash." This is really scary, don’t you think that he should be working on a computer that "wouldn't let itself crash" first?
I don’t want to ever be behind the wheel of a car that depends on our current state of technology to keep it safe. Sitting at my computer during a crash can be extremely annoying, and is only slightly dangerous to those around me, but hurling myself down the highway at 65 miles per hour in an automobile requires a much more reliable operating system than any that I've seen so far. I'm annoyed enough already about Microsoft forcing it's conventions on me when I'm typing a letter, if they start being able to dictate how I drive my car then it better be through a much more user-friendly and rock-solid interface than Bill Gates has ever even dreamed of.
I’m also very concerned about the security of any such technology. Would you want to drive to work one morning in an automobile that just automatically downloaded CrashProof Security Update Service Pack 2? And I’m sure that you don’t want to even think about the security repercussions of not installing such an update on your “Crash Proof” automobile.
This Crash Proof technology is certainly a goal worth striving for, but until I can run my computer for years at a time without the need for a software patch or a three finger salute (Ctrl-Alt-Delete) restart I don’t think I’ll be wanting any software “drivers” installed in my car. Hope my trusty Honda Element lasts until the bugs are all worked out of this system.
The redesign of the Palmer Wahl Instruments website is complete and the site went live on Monday. There have been rave reviews. The SPOCweb site features trade show schedule, contact list, calibration eMinder, RMA, RFQ, corporate profiles on 4 companies, catalog request or download, shopping cart and many other features.
There are thousands of thermal imaging products, process thermometers, pressure gauges, recorders and data loggers, testing and calibration, sensors and other industrial instrumentation. The products span 25 different catalogs from 4 different companies. Catalogs are divided into product lines and can be listed by category or by company. Users can easily find the products that they need with 3 - 5 clicks. Users can also use Model Number Search or Advanced Search to find the products that they are interested in.
Some products can be purchased directly from the factory online using the shopping cart. A Request For Quote (RFQ) option is available on all products. Product details can include a product highlights, description, picture, specification, drawing, applications, catalog, instruction manual, calibration instructions, features, benefits, how it works, related or accessory product lists, certifications, warranty information and much more.
Management of all this information is handled easily and efficiently with SPOCweb, a custom database maintenance program that updates a local network database. This local database updates the website database which is used to automatically create the thousands of pages that are available on the site.
Beware! There's a new phishing attack brewing. This new attack is directed at online banking users. It runs a script just from opening the infected email, so no longer is it necessary to click on a bogus link in order to end up on a phishing site. The script rewrites your host file so that you are directed to the fraudulent phishing site instead of to your banking site. There, you will unknowingly give the phishers all of your electronic banking login details.
Only systems that have Windows Script Host (WSH) enabled are vulnerable to this attack. WSH lets you run VBScripts and JScripts in the Windows operating system. I strongly suggest that you immediately check to make sure that WSH is disabled on your system. Here’s how:
Windows 98: Select Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs -> Windows Setup -> Accessories. In the Accessories list find the Windows Scripting Host item and uncheck it. Click Ok, then Ok again.
Windows 95/NT/2000/Me/XP/2003: For NT/2000/XP/2003 systems you need administrator rights to make the necessary changes. Specifics will vary slightly and there are multiple ways to get to the right screen but, basically what you need to do is open My Computer -> View -> Options -> File Types, find the VBS and/or VBScript Script File entry and delete it. If you need to run scripts you can create a command file to prompt first before running a script and substitute the WSCRIPT Open with your command.
Move over Google, Microsoft is making a big splash into the search business. Results are fresh, complete and relevant. Lately the search engine kings have, in my opinion, become complacent and arrogant.
Google’s index was months old for quite a while, now that it’s more up-to-date it is still far from complete. Pages seem to get dropped for no apparent reason, making their directory quite useless.
DMOZ, The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors. Many of these editors are dedicated and devoted individuals; some of them are also arrogant and complacent. How they decide if your site is “worthy” of being added to the directory I don’t know. I waited several months to get our site added to the local Asheville directory for Web Designers. I still have not been added to the general Web Design directory and have never heard a word from any of the editors to acknowledge my submission or give any reason for not including it, it just doesn’t show up. It seems the volunteers doing the Asheville section of the directory are far more responsive to submissions than some of the other sections.
Yahoo. Here is arrogance at its highest level. From Yahoo’s own submission page: “Your payment and participation mean that within 7 business days Yahoo! will review your site and consider it for inclusion in the Yahoo! Directory… Important note: Use of the Yahoo! Express program does not ensure that your submission will be accepted for inclusion in the Yahoo! Directory or that it will receive the site placement or description that you request.” What is the cost for this review, with no guarantee of inclusion? $299.00! … Per year!!! Sorry, but I don’t give $299.00 to anybody for (very possibly) nothing. Because Yahoo charges so much for mostly nothing their directory is also very old and very incomplete.
Enter Microsoft. This is the behemoth that many seem to hate for its arrogance. But wait! Their directory seems really complete and includes a site that I just created less than a week ago! And I didn’t even submit it to MSN or anyone else because it is really not complete yet. This is awesome! Given a choice, I would have never chosen Microsoft to put these other search engines in their place. But, I have to admit that, they have done an awesome job of producing results that are fresh, complete and relevant. Isn’t that what we are all looking for in a search engine?
I can usually bash Microsoft with the best of them but, this time, I have to sing their praises instead. Hopefully, by the time they get arrogant and complacent (in this area), one of the others will get the message and give them a run for their money. Competition is good, wherever it comes from, if it helps to create new and better products for us all to use.
After a long testing period, the official version of the new web browser Firefox launches today. The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), a division of the Department of Homeland Security, recommends switching to this new web browser. You can find a link to the Firefox website on our Client Tools page.
Of course, once we all follow this advice, the virus authors will start attacking Firefox instead of Internet Explorer and then we'll all have to switch back. Firefox does seem to be a more bulletproof browser but, so far, it has not been attacked like it will be once we are all using it.
Am I going to switch? Absolutely! I already did with the pre-release versions. I like it, not just for the extra security but for the speed, the tabbed views, the clean look and feel, it is a great browser, more stable at version 0.7.x than some other products (that will remain unnamed) at version 5.x.x and 6.x.x, all of that and it also has a really cool logo.
I agree it's important to be a savvy consumer about this kind of thing, and it is difficult if you're a layperson who isn't that familiar with the trade. Just registering the domain name was an adventure for me.
I think "low price" and "family" help is what got the site into its current state, so I know exactly what you mean about weighing price considerations and quality issues. P