Social Networking and Web 2.0

Filed under: Social Software

Don’t forget, we’re now accepting nominations for the Open Web Awards!

This is the first annual multi-blog awards event focused on social networking sites. The contest is sponsored by Mashable, who will be holding an award ceremony in San Francisco in December.

We’ll have a few voting rounds coming up in the coming weeks, but round one is a call for nominations. We’re asking you to come up with a list of your favorite companies in 5 categories:

1. Mainstream and Large Scale Networks
2. Applications and Widgets
3. Start Pages
4. Mobile
5. Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks

For complete details, see our nomination page and vote in the comments on that page. If you want your vote to count, please post it on the nomination page, not this page. All entries must be received by Tuesday.
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As what was reported, hackers have started on an organized attack on Google, Yahoo and MSN, search engines Big 3 with overwhelming keywords resulting in search results that point to malicious web sites. Once a user clicked on the Links, the sites will result in a download of key loggers, Trojans, or elicit bogus clicks.

An excerpt from ZDNet said: Simply put, damn near any Google search term-even terms like “hospice”- can take you to one of these malware sites. Computerworld quotes Sunbelt Software CEO Alex Eckelberry as saying “this is huge.” I'm inclined to agree, especially considering Eckelberry's inventory: “27 different domains, each with up to 1,499 [malicious] pages. That's 40,000 possible pages.”

How did malware hit top search results? Well, malicious sites seem to have made it to the top Search Engine results through blog spam, comment, and rigging Web pages with keywords for that particular purpose.

The malicious attacks were brought into focus by security researcher Adam Thomas of anti-spyware company Sunbelt Software. The malware from the sites make use of an iFrame exploit in IE and also result in the downloading of Trojans and keyloggers. Currently, major search engines have started purging the malicious Links from their indexes. I just hope they'll be completely successful.

BBC News tells the rest of the story. Click here.

See article.








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Web search engines have unwarily become the bridge for malware attacks.

As Search Engine Journal and SunBelt Software put it: “Attackers are elevating the search result positioning of malware laced sites by populating web forms on large numbers of web sites with the malicious URLs. Using bots to accomplish the task, this elevates the rankings, meaning users unknowingly receive search results that may have Links to infected sites. After clicking the link they are attacked and infected with a large variety of attacks.”

An excerpt from the Search Engine Journal states:

Hundreds of legitimate search phrases have already been found to pull up Links near the top of the results listings that lead straight to the malicious sites. According to Sunbelt Software, they've already found 27 different domains, each containing up to 1,499 bad pages. That's about 40,000 potential pages, which is a pretty big number.

Actually, security threats are freely flowing on the Net. And search engines, which users frequent, are the watering hole of the Net. Once, web search engines are attacked, visitors won't be that safe anymore. Worse, if the problem becomes pervasive it could mean the end of search engines.

Now that the attacks have created a dent, what should you do? Make sure you have your AV and other operating system and updated browser malware software installed. Be wary. Remember threats are everywhere.

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Filed under: Video, Social Software

This week Grant and Christina talk about all things social networking.

• Interview with Insomnia Radio’s Jason Evangelho
• How to promote your brand with social networking sites
• 5 best and 5 worst Facebook apps
• A giveaway
• And a partridge in a pear tree.

And don’t forget to check out Download Squad’s new Facebook page!

This week’s episode features music by The Uberkids.
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Filed under: Business, Internet, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Ever since Facebook announced its advertising platform earlier this month, people have been wondering if the service isn’t a bit of an invasion of privacy.

Now it looks like Facebook has backtracked a bit after hearing complaints from users. The response makes sense. It’s hard to capitalize on your huge popularity as a social network to launch an advertising platform if the users are threatening to leave. And more than 50,000 Facebook members have signed a petition complaining about Facebook Beacon.

In a nutshell, Beacon lets Facebook send messages to users letting them know that their friends bought concert or movie tickets or other goods online. Current Facebook members are already probably sick of receiving messages letting them know when a friend signs up for any new Facebook application, whether it be Scrabulous or a Zombie tag game. But once you start reporting people’s buying habits, well, that’s kind of crossing a line, isn’t it?

The petition asked for the right to opt-out of the program easily. Yesterday Facebook responded by saying Beacon would become an opt-in program. Each time Facebook wants to send out a Beacon message, the service will ask users for permission first.
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Filed under: VoIP, Social Software

Facebook is attracting more and more developers due to its exploding user population and the relative ease of creating Facebook applications–snapins which provide narrowly-focused functionality on a Facebook user’s profile page. So it’s no surprise that the venerable Voxalot service has brought their VoIP calling solution to Facebook.

Voxcall lets you click to call Facebook buddies, as well as field calls from them, as long as you both have a SIP URI (that’s a VoIP address that acts like a phone number and looks like an e-mail address). Of course, if you don’t have a SIP URI, you can enroll in the Voxcall Premium service, which supports placing calls to ordinary telephone numbers. And if you’re worried about abuse or phone spam, as many click-to-call users are, Voxcall has implemented a PIN code verification which will stop malicious users from registering your SIP URI without your permission. The way it works, once you register, Voxcall places a VoIP call to your URI–and then you enter your PIN code.
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So you think all is said and done about Internet search engines? You might also think that information is just moving back and forth. But is that really the case?

I do believe that a lot of things are yet to be discovered and more are still to come. SEO gurus could not agree more. As a fact, Nicolas Bombourg, a co-founder of Reportlinker.com and a web specialist, will be having a talk that delves into the future of search engines.

Reuters reports:

Ubiquick SAS - operator of the award-winning search engineReportlinker.com - announced today that its Vice President Nicolas BOMBOURG will be speaking at the Online Information Conference to be held at Olympia Conference Centre in London, December 6.

The conference is part of the Online Information Exhibition, Online Information 2007, the world's leading event for online content and information management solutions. Produced by Incisive Media Events, the conference includes a session titled “Search, Is there any innovation left?” with Nicolas Bombourg part of the panel of expert speakers. The panel will explore the future of search engines, how search engines. Have adapted to web 2.0 and how the next generation Internet threatens general search engines.

Nicolas Bombourg on the panel will be Jayne Dutra, Information architect at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA (USA); and Tom Reamy, Chief Knowledge Architect and founder of KAPS Group.

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Filed under: Social Software

Download Squad is pleased to announce that we’re participating in the Open Web Awards. What that means is you, our dear readers, get to participate in the first ever interblog collaborative award event designed to recognize excellence in the social networking world. The Open Web Awards are the brainchild of the folks over at Mashable, and about 30 blogs are participating.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll have voting rounds in several different categories. But today we’re going to give you a list of categories and call for your nominations. To nominate a company or website, just leave a comment with the business name and the corresponding category. For example, if you want to nominate Hi5 in the Mainstream and Large Scale Networks category, just say so. That’s all there is to it. Once we’ve got all the nominations in we’ll add your votes to those gathered from other web sites and let you vote on the top companies in each category.

Here are the categories:

1. Mainstream and Large Scale Networks
2. Applications and Widgets
3. Start Pages
4. Mobile
5. Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks

Feel free to interpret these categories however you like. You can nominate a company in just one category or in all five. Please just make one selection per category. Now go forth and nominate.
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While browsing for some meaty news and information, I found a nice article penned by Thomas McMahon of WebProNews. The article gives 7 ways to promote a blog. Here are the ways:

1. search engines - Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask are constantly looking for new content to crawl and rank. Ensure your site is search friendly and submit an XML sitemap for faster indexing. Before you know it, the search engines will start bringing traffic.

2. Tagging Engines - Sites like Technorati have blog searches that focus on serving up content based on what categories and/or tags you've used with your post. Ensure you're using good categories and tags for additional exposure in tagging sites.

3. Blog Sites - Technorati, Google Blog Search and community sites like Topix all index blog sites specifically and use those posts to feed their content. No websites allowed, only blogs.

4. Feed Reader Suggestions - Rojo and Bloglines have the ability to share or suggest feeds based on what the user is already subscribed to.

5. Social Networks - If you have a Facebook, MySpace, MyBlogLog or one of the many social bookmarking sites, included your feed in those sites to gain a bit more exposure.

6. Social News Sites - If you spent a lot of time and have one great post, it may be a candidate for Reddit, Digg or Mixx. Or maybe one of the many Pligg sites that are popping up.

7. Social Bookmarking - From Furl to del.icio.us there is no shortage of social bookmarking sites. Bookmark a few of your best posts to gain exposure in those areas. Just don't over do it by bookmarking everything.

It's time to mix the potion. Stir it well and offer it to the web. Then you can enjoy the aftermath.

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Since you are reading this entry, there is a great possibility that you are suffering from infomania. Who are at risk? Well, anybody who has an internet connection and a mobile phone.

It may sound good to you but it isn't. According to Hewlett Packard, infomania can reduce our IQ score by as much as 10 points. Basically, infomania is a state of mental distress by a fusion of some factors including technology.

Social networking makes us dumber? Ah-hah.

So what are the danger signs? Here's an awesome checklist…

• You find yourself checking your emails on the weekend, your day off or even on holiday and nothing can stop you.
• You might interrupt a dinner party or business meeting to respond to a text message or answer a call and are quite happy to do so.
• Infomaniacs are often avid social networkers hovering for extended periods of time around sites such as Digg, MySpace, YouTube, Bebo, Stumbleupon, Facebook, Flickster and Twitter to name but a few.
• You may have several profiles on different sites that you find hard to keep up with so you neglect one or two as your interests and social networks change.
• Blogging is a popular pursuit where serious Infomaniacs can spill out their views and opinions to anyone that happens to pass by. Fellow Infomaniacs can review and rate their work, some will leave critical comments, others positive encouragement but all serve to perpetuate social networking and distract us from other tasks.
• You neglect family and friends in order to keep up with the sheer volume of information you feel you need to process and keep up with on a daily basis.
• You send your email or message and lo and behold there is no response whatsoever so you continually check and recheck for a reply.

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If a carpenter is equated with hammer, nails, drills and more, an SEO guru should be equated with reliable SEO tools. But they need not be costly. There are some which are affordable while others are offered free of change.

WebPro News writes:

Google Analytics
Google shook up the search analytics scene with the release of Urchin-powered Google Analytics. Google bought measurement powerhouse in 2005 and eventually integrated its tons of information into its Analytics product, the second incarnation of which was released early in 2007. The good news, all that information is free.

Compete Search Analytics
Metrics firm Compete grabbed some buzz this fall with the release of Compete Search Analytics, of which there are both free and pay versions.

Mint
Mint is a relative inexpensive tracking tool ($30 per site) that tracks browser type, country of origin, internal searches, outbound clicks, specific page tracking, and page trending.

SEODigger
Another free tool available, SEODigger shows:

* Which keywords your site ranks high enough for to be in Google top 20
* Analysis of user sites and competition sites,
* How well sites are optimized for search
* Information on entire domain as well as pages

SEO for Firefox
This tool tells you:
* PageRank
* Estimate of inbound Links via Yahoo and MSN
* Number of .edu and .gov Links to the site and pages within
* Number of del.icio.us bookmarks for a page
* Estimated Technorati Links
* Alexa ranking
* How many pages are in Google's cache
* How many page are indexed in DMOZ
* How many Bloglines Links
* Top keyword bid prices on Overture
* Bid estimates and click volume estimates on Google

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It seems that Google is currently experimenting with new robots.txt commands. If your robots.txt file accidentally contains one of the new commands, it might be that your robots.txt file tells Google to go away.

Search is not limited to the major search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN). Look around the web, there are plenty of search engines to address your queries. And I have gathered the best that I have found…

Answers.com
The website is a one-stop Search Engine chamber with over 4 million topics. Uh-huh. That huge! The information includes excerpts from Wikipedia and Oxford University database and other reference publishers.

AfterVote
The site is a social ‘metasearch’ Search Engine that delivers results from the major web search engines. It shows how each site ranks in the search engines. As an added feature, the registered users can vote a website among the result and post comments which will appear in the search results.

AltSearchEngines
This is a blog about (as it name implies) alternative search engines. You can find sufficient information about the subject matter. All in all, there are more than a thousand. The blog may not have all the info about them but what is already there is essential.

KartOO
This is a metasearch engine that delivers the results not as the ubiquitous list but as a map or cloud. Each search result is represented by the URL and a thumbnail of the website. The results also show keywords and their relation to the sites.

Quintura
This site, which uses Yahoo’s index, is based on a visual Search Engine technology. When you do a search using Quintura, the term you use appears at the center of a cloud. The related search terms narrow your queries.

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One thing that will reflect your web visibility is your site's SQ score.

How does it function, a MarketWire release tells the story:

Search Quotient said today that its new free service, which for the first time calculates a composite score reflecting a website's true Search Engine rankings, is scoring a hit with online businesses eager to boost traffic to their site.

“The whole rankings phenomenon had reached a point where it needed some kind of composite score and a simple enough name that everyone could understand and use as a frame of reference,” said Tom Madden, who invented the SQ score.

According to Madden, it was important to find a concept and a name for it that could be branded and become the industry standard. “By determining their SQ score, soon everyone will know their website's comparative rankings on major search engines,” he said. “Search Quotient or SQ will become the ultimate comparable score denoting how visible a website is on the ever expanding Internet,” he said.

“Not only can it tell you instantly how you rank on Google, Yahoo! and MSN, it can show you that by adopting Search Quotient's SEO strategy and campaign, your rankings can soar to the cyber heavens,” said Gregg Weiss, Vice President of Search Quotient.

The website looks at url and keywords then it reports a composite score reflecting your web rankings on major search engines, the sine qua non of visibility online. I still got to try it though.

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You might have received an email that could compromise your vital information. The email states that if you search via search engines such as Google and you enter your area code and phone number, it will give your directions to your house and other vital info. And the threat is not just linked with Google but with other web search engines as well.

So if you want your information to be available to searchers, remove your phone number on the web. Google has this suggestion:

Google Phonebook Name Removal

* To remove your residential listing information from the Google phonebook, please fill out the form below, entering all information exactly as it appears in your phonebook entry. Doing so will mean your residential listing does not appear in Google for any phonebook search, even searches conducted on your name instead of your phone number. Please note that this removal is permanent and that it’s not possible to add your phone number again in the future.

* To remove your business listing information from the Google phonebook, please send a signed request on your company letterhead to the address below. Include a phone number and email address at which you can be reached so that we may verify your phonebook removal request. Please note that this removal is permanent and that it’s not possible to add your phone number again in the future.

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'Tis the season to be jolly fa-la-la-la-la la-la-la-la. Yes, Christmas, the jolly season, is fast approaching. And what does Christmas spirit means to you?

For me it's giving. This season gifts and donations will overwhelm hearts…and search engines. Time to give. Time to remind other people to share what they got. And you can do it online. Actually, there are a lot of donation-gathering search engines which use searches to help raise fund from advertisers. LetThemKnowItsChristmas.com and ClickNow.org, which offer quick Links, are just but a few of them.

Many sites have an “add to searchbar” button or link which allow automatic popping in the list. You can access those sites by clicking on the tiny arrow beside the Search Engine logo. Everyclick, Magic Taxi and SearchKindly are examples of such sites. GoodSearch went a step further in having a helpful instruction page for adding to Firefox, IE and Safari.

Shiny Shiny gives the details:

In Firefox, you will be asked whether you plan to set this as a default. If you click on without doing so, it's simple to fix this.

1. Click on the arrow mentioned above to see your list of available search engines. You want to have a charity option at the top, so you need to click on “Manage Search Engines”.
2. This will bring up the dialog box shown in the screenshot above which will let you select a Search Engine and bump it up and down the list. Job done, conscience assuaged.

IE 7 is just as straightforward. When you click on the link to add to the search bar, a dialogue box will come up which will allow you to tick a field to make this new addition your default Search Engine. Then just click on “Add Provider” and you're pretty much done. Again, if you haven't ticked the box:

1. Click on the dropdown arrow and choose “Change Search Defaults”.
2. Pick the charity site you want to make your default and press “Set as Default”. Ta-dah!

If you are running Vista and you have security turned up to eleven, you might have to first confirm that you wish to install a new Search Engine, as it's a little oversensitive to anything you might want to add to your computer.

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Does Internet search engines help build your IQ? Or perhaps the other way around? Are the web search engines making you an infomaniac?

No. Not the fictional character in the LEGO Island series of games who oftentimes forgets things and loses his train of thought.

Ask yourself: Are you an infomaniac?

Mind1st has this to say: Infomaniacs are often in denial and will justify their actions by maintaining there is no other way. Everyone accepts that technology is here to stay but few will admit that they cannot function as a human being without it. In other words, Infomaniacs are unable to switch off but at the same time they refuse to accept they have a problem.

For those of you who are still in doubt, there is only one fool proof way to check and no you don't have to complete an online test to do it. Just try turning off your computer and your mobile phone for a few days. If you can't, I rest my case.

Reality check: Is the web making our minds stink? Think hard.

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Search Engine Optimization is all about achieving top web rankings and driving more traffic to your website. But as I tell my clients, the goal will never materialize if no SEO tools come in handy.

Yes, SEO tools are pretty crucial in realizing your goals. To help the newbies out there, I have compiled the most essential SEO tools:

Keyword Suggestion Tool
This tool gives keyword alternatives. They come along with keyword traffic estimates. Choose niche keywords to be more competitive.

Backlink Builder Tool
This tool aids website owners build quality backlinks, it searches for websites of the theme you specify that contain keyphrases like “Add site”, “Add link”, “Add URL”, “Submit URL” etc. Most of the results are good backlinks.

Backlink Anchor Text Analysis
Quality backlinks are a must. They shouldn’t be just backlinks. They have to have quality. This tool help SEO enthusiasts determine the backlinks of their website and the link text used by the backlinks to link to their websites.

Domain Stats Tool
This tool makes you seize all types of statistics of your rival’s domains. The statistics includes Yahoo WebRank, backlink count, Alexa Taffic Rank, pages indexed by some search engines, and age of the domains.

Indexed Pages Tool
This tool delivers the total link count for each URL from major web search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, AlltheWeb, and Teoma.

Reciprocal Link Check
This tool makes you certain that your link partners are linking back to your website. It also determines the anchor text used by your link partners to link to your website.

Adsense Calculator
Google AdSense affiliates can use this tool to learn the factors that influence their earnings by experimenting with values.

Link Popularity Tool
You can use this tool by entering a valid URL. Then it query all the major search engines and then return that URL’s total link count.

Check Google Pagerank
Now you can check the Google PageRank of any webpage minus the installation of the Google toolbar. Yes, it’s free and trouble-free. You just enter a URL and press the button.

Page Size Calculator
Enter a URL and this tool will tell you how large the file size of the website is.

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Don’t let SEO the last to be considered. Despite some warnings, a lot of webmasters and web designers are still committing this fatal mistake. At all times, put SEO in mind; even when you are just starting the web design of your site.

You might think that so much information about web Search Engine Optimization has already been disseminated. But mind you, a number of my clients who seek relief have disregarded the importance of SEO in designing their sites.

And they aren’t alone. Earlier, I have read a sad plight of a website owner who has to start all over. The story can be found here.

The aesthetic, functionality, and SEO aspects of the website should never be compromised, that is. So to preclude you from the detrimental ‘start over’ situation, find the balance between those aspects. You can have a good grasp of what to do by reading this article. Be cautious. Only then you can save much time and effort.

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Filed under: Business, Design, Developer, Fun, Internet, E-mail, Office, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

With more and more users building documents in web based applications, we were starting to think the market belonged to a handful of new companies like Zoho, ThinkFree, and a little upstart called Google. But it looks like there’s another serious contender in the online Office space.

Live Documents has a strong pedigree. The service comes from the guy who created Hotmail before Microsoft purchased the webmail service. Live Documents are flash based office applications that have the ability for collaboration and online and offline syncing in a MS Office based environment. Applications are similar to Microsoft’s traditional Word, Excel and Powerpoint, but are built using Flash and Flex so that any user on any system can view and edit at will in a richer multimedia environment. If the web portion doesn’t do anything for you, the desktop client might with its offline abilities. It wraps up MS Office through a plug-in and embeds collaboration options into them as well, making it possible for multiple people to edit documents at the same time keeping them secure and allowing for revision controls.

Live Documents is not currently live, but you can request to try out their office solution on their website. We are awaiting an invite, and will report back if it’s a worthwhile contender when we actually see it in action.
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