Real estate is known for its bubble. And this bubble is now benefiting from the advances in the online technology. The online realm shrinks the globe into an accessible community. The buying and selling of real estate is now…

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How do you gauge whether a particular website is professionally done? Having a polished appeal is not the only basis of measuring a website. It has to delve deeper. User-friendly navigation system, fast loading features, distinct and idiosyncratic style,…

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Web Search Engine Optimization hype this couple of weeks includes the reduction of the impact of Google bombs. One of the most popular, if not the most popular, Google bomb is that which include no less than President George…

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Web Search Engine Optimization hype this couple of weeks includes the reduction of the impact of Google bombs. One of the most popular, if not the most popular, Google bomb is that which include no less than President George…

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There are a lot of businesses today that are considered seasonal. The same is also true in the online world. So how do you do web Search Engine Optimization on these sites? Websites can also be seasonal in nature….

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Filed under: Photo, Web services, Yahoo!, Social Software

The last time Flickr tried this there was such a backlash that they supported both the old Flickr IDs and corporate overlord ones. But that was then, and this is now…
The Flickr News blog just announced that as of March 15th, the only access to your Flickr account will be via a Yahoo! ID. So, the last holdouts in denial of the acquisition will either have to quit the service or link to a Yahoo! ID. This official thread has been created to voice your concerns \ questions to the Flickr staff and community.

We’re told that this change is in preparation for some large projects later this year (ohhh - anyone have any ideas??). We’ve seen this requirement already with the recent updates to Flickr Mobile and Yahoo! Go that only allow Yahoo! accounts.

The same post also mentions the addition of a couple of limits:

• Maximum number of Contacts will be 3000
• Maximum number of Tags per picture will be 75

These changes are pitched to improve system performance. Flickr has started an official thread for any comments about the limit changes.
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If you got it, flaunt it. So you can brag about your web design expertise by showcasing flashy and hard-to-do effects. But people are not visiting your site to be awestruck by them. They need significant information and with…

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Filed under: Fun, Blogging, Social Software

Way back when they published books about good Web sites, we Internet pioneers who were around when it was decided that an “@” symbol should separate the username from the TLD used to have a line of yellow sticky notes on our monitors to note the entire URL for Yahoo when it was at Stanford and required our paying fealty to a Sumo wrestler. Surfing, a quaint but archaic term, was how we found Web sites. Click on one, then click another. Use the back button to go home. It’s impossible to really surf anymore; there are a gazillion Web sites and what with pop-ups and other drekky code impeding our way, there’s no going home again.

With TMI overload, we need to tiptoe through the Web sites with more focus yet not lose the joy of discovery, because that’s why the Web was born. Enter StumbleUpon, a social site determined to help you discover pre-reviewed sites that pique your interest. The model is friendly and the toolbar non-malicious. (I keep it turned off when working because the siren song of discovery outweighs my willpower.)

The Web is fairly female-brained IMO in that women can often start a conversation, travel in several seemingly unrelated directions (click links), converse where they are (view Web pages), and journey backward through the conversation to the starting point (back button). Some of us are comfortable using our mental dropdown lists to jump several topics backward without rehashing the entire exchange. StumbleUpon is conducive to taking a break; it’s like visiting or make new friends.

Case in point: a new Photoshop tutorial site? I found one in undiscovered country and added it to my StumbleUpon favs. With some careful keywording and reviewed pages, I’m not wasting time clicking on pay site links from (the) Google, stupid sites, or sites that pop up garbage. Fairly Flickr-like, I can invite friends (although I never upload my contacts anywhere) with a couple of keystrokes. If you have friends, you can visit what they visited if they care to share.

Think of it as a personality test. Look at my tag cloud - it’s pretty easy to analyze me as a geek, isn’t it?

Firefox has a plugin that lets you “channel surf” what Stumblers call the best-reviewed sites on the Web. Should you aspire to the title, you can become a Top Stumbler. Wikipedia defines StumbleUpon as a commercial web discovery service that integrates peer and social networking principles with one-click blogging.

The downside? As with all social networking sites, someone has to pay the bill. Expect targeted advertising on fewer than 2% of your page views. As of July, 2006, there were 1,000,000 registered stumblers and bloggers can use these tips to increase their StumbleUpon referrers and generate increased blog hits.

A temporary gold star to Stumblers who review sites so I can save time between that work stuff.
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Filed under: Internet, Productivity, Web services, Social Software

Zoho announced a new product called Zoho Notebook at this week’s DEMO conference. Pimped as “the online application for gathering and creating multiple types of content that can easily be shared with others,” Zoho Notebook is a little bit of Google Notebook with some Microsoft OneNote sprinkled on top, and finally brought to a simmer with some innovative and powerful web 2.0 collaborative goodness. Read/WriteWeb got to sit down with Raju Vegesna, one of Zoho’s developers, to ask a few questions, and indeed found that collaboration is indeed one of the most compelling aspects of Zoho Notebook. Users can choose to share an entire notebook, a single page or even a specific piece of content on a page. Sound complicated? Then check out the demo video Raju put together to strut Zoho Notebook’s stuff.

Of course, if you’re already salivating, you’re going to have to pick up a self-control book or two. While Zoho Notebook was announced today, it won’t be out in public beta until March. Still, if it’s as handy and powerful as the video makes it out to be, we’ll be sure to get our hands on it for you as soon as possible.
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Google bombs have become a problem for Google. The official Google webmaster blog recently had a statement about Google bombs and how Google deals with them. How does this new algorithm affect your Google rankings?

You could be wondering how sellers in eBay fix auctions. Well, they could do it fairly or the other way around eBay Inc. is an online auction and shopping site where people and companies transact business regarding buying and…

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When you consult SEO firms and they give you “Optimization guarantees,” better be aware that what may be pleasing to your ears may turn out to be virtually worthless. Getting top Search Engine optimization results takes passion, expertise and…

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If you are a YouTube fanatic, there is one good reason why you have to stick to the website. Aside from interesting videos, YouTube intends to share revenues with its users. Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube, said one of…

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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Google, Social Software

Google products are no strangers to mashups from all forms of enthusiastic users and 3rd parties, but you know something cool is brewing when Google mashes up two of their most visionary services: Maps and Book Search. Recently on the Google Book Search blog, David Petrou announced this cool new feature, which they’ve added to the “About this Book” section of books you find in Google Book Search. Now, not all books will that have text about a location or two will get a map link (at least for now), but the ones that do will also include links to the actual pages of the book where a mapped location is mentioned.

If you want to see how cool this all is, the announcement post includes links to quite a few examples of books they’ve already mapped, such as Around the World in Eighty Days, Illustrated New York (1888) and The Travels of Marco Polo.
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Sandbox has achieved a high level of popularity especially among Search Engine Optimization enthusiasts. For quite a while, it has threatened website owners. However, the situation is far different now. Experts in the SEO realm have already come up…

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I’ve been quiet here, but have been blogging a lot at the Asia Source II blog. Its been fun facilitating the Open Publishing sessions - I’ve learnt so much myself! We’ve had huge challenges with connectivity - 120 of us sharing a 256 kbps modem; trying to get Plone then Drupal working and finally resorting to Wordpress for the live blog! Rather than writing it entirely, I’ve got lots of folks from different countries and tracks sharing their perspectives. Lazy me

Here’s one of my early postings there:

We’re working in military tents!

There are four learning tracks
for the morning sessions. Three of the four groups are working in
military tents, fitted with 8-10 computers. The uber geeks have a
classroom, where they can lock up all their cool gizmos like wireless
transmitters.

Here’s what Track 1 on Open Publishing had as their objective for the Camp Blog they are running as one of their projects:

- to create a lasting online documentation of the camp

- to capture the “spirit” of Asia Source

They’ve been blogging, learning how to resize and insert images today, tomorrow they go podcasting. Fun!

Go over to the blog and join the conversations there!

Filed under: Internet, Blogging, Web services, Yahoo!, Social Software

After the recent acquisition from Yahoo!, I only just got around to checking out MyBlogLog (My profile shows me registering on 1/26/2007).

These days, most social services integrate with the Flickr API, so I thought nothing of it when I saw that I could set that up. However, according to a post on Mashable!, it looks like this is a shiny new feature (we love those here).

Further investigation finds a post on the MyBlogLog blog where the developers announce this new way of adding pictures to your profile.

The Mashable post gets into additional thoughts for Yahoo! property integration - Yahoo! IDs is a given, and del.icio.us makes sense also. I’d also like to add Yahoo! 360 - for those of us that use it, it’d be nice to incorporate the MyBlogLog tracking into the ‘official’ blogging service from ‘Big Daddy’.

If you already use MyBlogLog, we’d love to see you in our Community.
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Most Search Engine Optimization discussions these couple of days delves into improving SEO rankings for a particular keyword phrase. The problem though is the lack of focus on the FOLD. Search engine optimization services include the passion and art…

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Most Search Engine Optimization discussions these couple of days delves into improving SEO rankings for a particular keyword phrase. The problem though is the lack of focus on the FOLD. Search engine optimization services include the passion and art…

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Filed under: Internet, Windows, Yahoo!, Freeware, VoIP, Social Software

I could have sworn that Yahoo! Messenger already did this, but according to this post from the Yahoo! Messenger blog, you can call any 800 (or other typical free - 877 / 866 / 888 / etc. call) and not use any minutes from your Yahoo! Voice account.

This announcement coincides with the upcoming Yahoo! promo for the movie “The Messengers“, something to do with a ‘click-to-call’ (whatever that is) campaign they will be running. Hopefully, this isn’t the start of getting ads played before you make a call.

In addition, the post mentions a new minor upgrade to v8.1.239. We’re told that changes include voice quality improvements and minor fixes for it running in MS Vista (but why not just run the Vista version instead??)

The voice quality continues to be decent, certainly good enough that I’ve dropped long distance and international calling from my landline - preferring a combination of my cell & Y! IM to call around the world.

Go get it from the official download page.
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