Free SEO Tool to check your web pages

Nice little SEO tool here that checks out the content of your web page
http://www.the-escape.co.uk/tools/pageanalyzer/

This web page analyzer breaks down the structure and content of your web page and assesses the build quality and content quality from an accessibility, usability and search engine point of view.
Where appropriate, a pass (green tick) or fail (red cross) icon will be displayed for each section of the report. Question marks indicate areas that cannot be scored and need further human interaction

Radio Frequency Identification: Privacy's Last Gasp

I'm sure most of us have heard of the fascinating new industry that's sprung up like a weed as an offshoot of our advances in technology: Data mining. In a nutshell, it involves the collection and dissemination of information about individuals for any use that anybody can think of.

From governments conducting censuses to businesses trying to develop profiles of the people most likely to buy their product, raw information about you concerning everything from your preference in toilet paper to how many sheets you use when you wipe is all grist for their mills. If you use three sheets now, Procter and Gamble wants to know if you'd be more willing to buy a product if you could do the same job with only two sheets, or would you be willing to use four if it were softer?

While most of us don't even think like that, it's these types of questions that plague the minds of the product development folk at big corporations and their marketing departments. Anything and everything they can find out about you will help them build a better picture of how they can get you to buy their products.

Information has become the hottest commodity on the market these days and it's not just being put to so-called innocent use by the corporations and advertising firms. Everybody, from private insurance companies to mortgage brokers to credit agencies, has ways they can make use of that data.

Do you order a large amount of pizza on your credit card or buy a lot of groceries with a high fat content? Don't be surprised if, the next time your health insurance premiums come up for renewal, they either increase your premium or you are turned down because you represent too great a risk because of possible cardiac problems.

You may think I'm exaggerating, and I wish I were, but according to this article in the Globe and Mail newspaper, it's already happening in the United States. A chain of grocery stores in New England has developed software that generates a dietary profile of each of its shoppers based on their grocery purchases.

In order to help cover the costs of developing the programme, they have sold these profiles to organizations wanting to know which of their clients has brought their ill health on themselves through bad diet so they can cut them off from coverage.

The villain behind all this is something that's actually been around for quite a while but is only just being utilized to maximum effect. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is small, silent, and can be utilized everywhere. Procter and Gamble want to install a chip in your fridge so they can monitor what foods you buy.

NCR is installing small screens in shopping carts in grocery stores that will run ads complementing the product you just tossed in the cart. BellSouth has applied for the patent to rummage through your garbage so they can see which chips you threw out and then sell that list to marketing firms. Finally, Pfizer is keeping track of how many Viagra you take and when through chips in the packaging.

Of course the larger implications for RFID use lie in security issues. IBM currently holds the patent for building RFID peephole in walls and ceilings of public places where they will be able to peek into your purse, pocket, and wallet. The chip is being installed in ID cards, like the new American national ID card currently on order, and passports tagged at the borders.

The fact that data is being collected in ways we can't even imagine is scary enough as it is, but what's even scarier are the implications of what that data could be utilized for. Like the example of the New England grocery chain selling its client information to insurance companies, what's to stop any and all information changing hands from supposedly innocent users like marketing companies to those who will use it to create some sort of profile of you for insurance reasons or establishing credit?

Finally, it comes down to what gives them the right to gather this information in the first place. This is information akin to that gathered by a wiretap as far as I'm concerned and should be subject to the same rules and regulations. What gives any business the right to know about my eating habits, just on the off chance that they might be able to sell me a product?

If a government wants to spy on a person, fine — ask the courts for permission like you would in the case of a wire tap and you can then plant RFID devices all over their body. If you're going to have RFID devices in public places monitoring people's activity, which is understandable in these strange times, make damn sure you draw up really tight regulations governing how the information it produces is used and who has access to it.

There is also the question of disposal of the information gathered. What will happen to the literally miles and miles of data that is accumulated? Is it going to be stored somewhere or will it be deleted as soon as it's found to be of no use to anyone?

Radio frequencies can be monitored by anybody. This technology is highly susceptible to being hacked, according to engineers at John Hopkins University, with it becoming even more vulnerable when they enable the tags to be read from a distance. What kind of guarantees are there that personal information like medical records aren't being lifted and then sold to the highest bidder? Maybe it's naïve to believe that sort of activity doesn't occur already, but this will make it even easier for people to access that information in the future.

A few years back when Benetton found out that consumers don't like being spied on, they were forced to recall millions of garments that had RFID chips installed in them. Other companies in Europe have been forced to back down in the face of consumer outrage, so you can make a difference. In the above cases, people simply refused to buy products from Gillette and other companies involved with making use of the chip until they said they had removed them.

But it seems like North Americans, in spite of all our claims to be freedom loving, have no problems giving up their freedom of privacy at the drop of the hat. The governments have plenty of means of collecting information about all of us already, all of which are regulated by laws to protect you from them. RFID is no different from things like wiretaps, telephoto lenses, and long-range microphones employed to infringe on your privacy now.

I see little or no justification for corporations like Proctor and Gamble to be accumulating personal information on individuals in the name of making sure we see the right commercial at the right time. As these new information technologies get more and more sophisticated, it's up to the public to decide whether or not they are willing to allow their personal habits to be public knowledge.

The industry claims that regulations will develop as the technology use expands. To me, that is akin to closing the barn door after the animals have escaped. Now's the time to tell them what we will and will not allow them to collect and what we will allow them to do with that information. You have the right to privacy. Demand that it is respected.

Google Adds Traffic Info to Mobile Maps App

Google has enhanced its Google Maps mobile application by adding traffic information and the ability to save routes, the Mountain View, Calif., company plans to announce Tuesday.

Google Maps, which can be downloaded for free to mobile devices, will update itself automatically for existing users, said Gummi Hafsteinsson, a Google product manager.

When users enter a route, Google Maps will now indicate traffic flow along the way by tracing segments in green, yellow or red. A green segment has normal traffic flow, yellow indicates some congestion and red signals heavy traffic. Based on the traffic condition, the application also estimates driving time.

The traffic data is constantly updated and comes from a variety of sources. It is available for about 30 major U.S. cities, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, Hafsteinsson said.

The PC version of Google Maps, doesn’t offer the traffic-flow feature yet, although it will be added later on, he said.

Also new is a feature that lets users save routes they take on a regular basis, like their commute to work, allowing them to call them up more easily, Hafsteinsson said. Unlike the traffic information, which is United States-only, this feature is also available in Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Although Google gives the application away, mobile carriers may apply charges related to its use and data transfers.

A list of mobile devices that support Google Maps can be found online.

Source

War of the Internet world

By Brier Dudley
Seattle Times staff columnist

Many people have heard about the huge data centers that Microsoft and Yahoo! are building east of the mountains.

In the War on Google, those are the aircraft carriers. Less well known are the special-forces teams the erstwhile tech darlings have assembled for nimble, strategic attacks on their rival.

These teams are led by newcomers whom Microsoft and Yahoo! brought in to invigorate their organizations, lure hot talent and reclaim the buzz. Overall their mission is to accelerate the creation of Internet products that get their companies back in the running.

I spent time last week with both of these commanders: Gary Flake, director of Microsoft's Live Labs Internet research and product group, and Bradley Horowitz, Yahoo! vice president of product strategy.

They have similar roles but radically different styles that reflect the personalities of their companies. Neither would say whether their companies are forming some sort of anti-Google alliance.

The strongest link is Flake, who led Yahoo! research until last summer. Earlier he was at Overture, an online ad pioneer that failed to stay ahead of Google.

Flake doesn't want that to happen again. Live Labs is trying new product-development approaches that mesh the work of engineers with scientists in Microsoft's research group. Its team of about 40 engages on projects around the company and incubates projects of its own.

"Our target is nothing less than to build the greatest Internet technology in the world," Flake said.

Live Labs also helps fill a role that has been played by Bill Gates, research boss Rick Rashid and strategists like Craig Mundie and Ray Ozzie. Flake said Microsoft's too big now for one or even a few individuals to keep track of it all.

"We have historically relied on some really brilliant people to ... look at the forest and occasionally dive down and look at the trees and how the trees related to one another," Flake said. "While Live Labs isn't quite the institutionalization of that function, it's more of an acknowledgment that that's a really important thing to do."




Horowitz was hired by Yahoo! two years ago to work on multimedia search, then he moved to the product-strategy job last year.

Yahoo! is less than half as old as Microsoft and has 10,000 employees to Microsoft's 70,000. But after Google took its Internet crown, Yahoo! realized it, too, had product-development challenges.

Horowitz finds and nurtures promising ideas. "We're the grease of innovation — we're a catalyst and a lubricant," he said.

One approach is "Hack Yahoo!," a program that has all employees spend a day building whatever they choose. They pitch their ideas on stage, and executives give tongue-in-cheek awards like "Least Likely to Ever Get Past HR" or "Most Likely to Keep the Lights On and Pay the Bills."

Hack Yahoo! is "a means of finding the cream within and allowing the good stuff to get the attention and the mindshare," Horowitz said.

Last week's earnings reports made it clear both companies have a ways to go. Yahoo! said its new ad platform is delayed, and Microsoft said its version won't be profitable until 2008. Meanwhile, the pressure's on Flake and Horowitz.

"We've got a pretty strong hand now," Horowitz said. "Now we've got to rearrange the cards and play that hand in a lot of ways, but the hand itself, I'm pretty proud of what we were able to do."

Brier Dudley's column appears Mondays. Reach him at 206-515-5687 or bdudley@seattletimes.com

HP Unveils Revolutionary Wireless Chip that Links the Digital and Physical Worlds

Hewlett-Packard has announced a Memory Spot chip "about the size of a grain of rice or smaller (2mm to 4mm square), with a built-in antenna. The chips could be embedded in a sheet of paper or stuck to any surface, and could eventually be available in a booklet as self-adhesive dots," says the company's press release.

It's like an RFID chip, but can hold 256 kilobits (32K) to 4 megabits (512K), so "it could store a very short video clip, several images or dozens of pages of text. Future versions could have larger capacities."

Information can be accessed by a read-write device that could be incorporated into a cell phone, PDA, camera, printer or other implement. To access information, the read-write device is positioned closely over the chip, which is then powered so that the stored data is transferred instantly to the display of the phone, camera or PDA or printed out by the printer. Users could also add information to the chip using the various devices.



HP suggests a number of uses:

-- Medical records: Embed a Memory Spot chip into a hospital patient's wrist band and full medical and drug records can be kept securely available.

-- Audio photo: Attach a chip to the prints of photographs and add music, commentary or ambient sound to enhance the enjoyment of viewing photos.

-- Digital postcards: Send a traditional holiday postcard to family and friends with a chip containing digital pictures of a vacation, plus sounds and even video clips.

-- Document notes: A Memory Spot chip attached to a paper document can include a history of all the corrections and additions made to the text, as well as voice notes and graphical images.

-- Perfect photocopies: A Memory Spot chip attached to a cover sheet eliminates the need to copy the original document. Just read the perfect digital version into the photocopier and the result will be sharp output every time, no matter how many copies are needed, and avoiding any possibility of the originals jamming in the feeder.

-- Security passes: Add a chip to an identity card or security pass for the best of both worlds -- a handy card with secure, relevant digital information included.

-- Anti-counterfeit tags: Counterfeit drugs are a significant problem globally. Memory Spot chips can contain secure information about the manufacture and quality of pharmaceuticals. When added to a drug container, this can prove their authenticity. A similar process could be used to verify high-value engineering and aviation components.

There are reports at BBC News, USA Today, The New York Times

Zune - iPod killer from Microsoft

By Kim Peterson

Seattle Times technology reporter

Microsoft confirmed Friday that it will sell a music and entertainment product later this year under the brand name "Zune," the first of a family of devices designed to compete head-to-head with the dominant Apple iPod.

The first player, scheduled to be on store shelves this holiday season, will have a hard drive and a wireless connection that lets users share music, Microsoft said in an interview with Billboard magazine. Later on, the company could release players for video and video games.

These details have been rumored for months as Microsoft held talks about the devices with the entertainment industry. Some analysts said Friday that Microsoft confirmed the news to ensure that the speculation doesn't drive expectations beyond what the products would actually deliver.

Microsoft released little information Friday, but people briefed on the project said Zune will work with a Microsoft service that allows users to listen to a vast library of songs for a monthly subscription fee. These services act more like a rental service for music, although users can pay more to purchase permanent copies of songs.

The model is used in RealNetworks' Rhapsody service. It isn't a direct competitor to Apple's market-leading iTunes Music Store, which is not subscription-based and sells songs and videos on a for-purchase basis.

A subscriber will be able to share an entire play list of favorite songs with another person, as long as both are paying the monthly fee. The Zune service will also go beyond previous services in terms of allowing artists to connect directly with users in new ways. An artist could offer weekly releases over Zune, for example. One week might be a tour of that person's home or a spoken message to fans.

"Where Apple, I think to a certain extent, focused on the user, Microsoft is taking a different approach and really focusing on the artist and trying to create a system that would best allow that artist to speak to their fans," said technology analyst Rob Enderle.

Microsoft released a geometric, Tinkertoylike logo for Zune on Friday and set up a Web site, at comingzune.com, to promote the devices.

One music-industry executive said Microsoft is planning a huge marketing and promotional launch for Zune. So far, however, the hype seemed to be centered on a whisper campaign that got its first stamp of legitimacy with Friday's announcement.

Analysts said Microsoft will have to pull out all the stops to launch Zune in a way that can make any significant dent in the 70 percent share that Apple owns in the digital music player market. Already, Microsoft took an unusual tactic in choosing Billboard as the vehicle for its first Zune announcement.

"This isn't the type of product that's going to be announced at some kind of industry conference by Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer talking about the technical specs," said Jupiter Media analyst Michael Gartenberg.

Microsoft is also parting with history in that it will begin competing directly with partners who have their own digital music players. Microsoft has worked closely with Creative Technology, Toshiba and iriver on devices, but they haven't made many inroads against the iPod.

To really compete with Apple, Microsoft felt it had to go its own way, even if that meant sacrificing some partner relationships, Gartenberg said.

"Microsoft has been preaching that the market really cares about choice in platform," he said. "But consumers are saying the only choice they care about was should they get an iPod Shuffle or iPod Nano. At the end of the day, the partners failed to deliver any meaningful market share."

But to really get in the ring with Apple, analysts suggested that Microsoft needs to have its own counterpoint to Steve Jobs, the enigmatic Apple chief executive who personally introduces new products at closely watched company events. Jobs regularly fires up the technology crowd in ways that Microsoft executives do not but may need to, for a Zune launch.

Don't expect Apple to step to the sidelines for Zune. Jobs predicted a Microsoft digital music, or MP3, player in a January interview with Newsweek.

"What's going to happen is that Microsoft is going to have to get into the hardware business of making MP3 players," he said. "This year."

And in a conference call with analysts Wednesday, Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said he was excited about the company's future products.

"We are very confident in the products in our pipeline and I just don't imagine that the creativity at Apple could ever be low," he said.

Kim Peterson: 206-464-2360 or kpeterson@seattletimes.com

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/

12 Secrets to Successful Blogging

Blogs have become very successful and popular lately, and SEO consultants say that they can be very profitable if they are managed and marketed the right way. Generating profits from a blog doesn't require selling anything. Profits can be from ad placements, banners, or contextual advertising. The best blogs draw the attention of a large audience and keep them coming back for more.
There are many types of blogs available. The most common types are:

- Professional blogs: These blogs are focused on discussions about professions, job aspects and career building
- Personal blogs: These blogs take the form of an online diary and contains thoughts, poems, experiences, and other personal matters
- Topical blogs: These blogs focus on a certain topic or niche, discussing specific aspects of the chosen subject
- Business blogs: As its name suggests, these are discussions about business and/or stock market

Other types of blogs include but are not limited to science blogs, cultural blogs, educational blogs, and photo blogs.

In order to have a successful blog that attracts a lot of visitors and keep them coming back, you need to follow some simple rules. Here are some tips from SEO consultants:

1. Before you begin blogging, carefully consider what you are going to write about in your blog as there are lots of interesting topics out there, waiting to be discussed. You can find them in every day life, in the media, in the news - anything that attracts attention and a loyal following is good. You can look for blog subjects in many places, the most important being the Internet of course.

2. Put quality content in your blog. If you have quality content people like to read, they will return to your blog and tell other people about it as well. Posting articles containing useful information on your blog is very beneficial for attracting more traffic. Make sure you add your URL address below your posted article! If other web site owners find your articles useful and decide to include them within the content of their web pages, the added link will contribute to increasing your popularity every time it is hyperlinked.

3. Update the blog on a regular basis. If you don't do this, visitors will not return and they will move on to reading another blog that is updated more often. You should try to update your blog daily. Many newcomers have blogging fear, fearing their inability to update it daily. If your blog is interesting enough, offer your readers the ability to keep it updated by posting their own personal thoughts and share stories so you won't have to do all the updating work yourself.

4. Listen to what your readers have to say. Always pay attention to the readers' suggestions and try to find out what people were actually searching for when they found your blog. Try to focus on that theme and even consider developing it by encouraging the visitors to discuss new aspects of that particular theme.

5. Keep it short and concise - You don't need material that takes hours to read, people usually like to quickly skim a blog for quick tidbits of useful information and if you post materials that are difficult or take a long time to read, you will most likely drive them away.

6. You can also include some artistic work or pictures in the blog, to make it more visually appealing. Blog picture managers such as Picasa are freely available on the Internet to accomplish this.

7. If your blog has interesting, original content, bloggers might decide to add links to it on their web sites and comment on your suggested topic. By gaining back-links to your blog from other web sites, your web site will place higher within search engine queries, thus boosting your link popularity.

8. Announce the launch of any new blog with press releases. Free publicity through press releases are powerful tools for increasing incoming traffic. Search engines love press releases and it gives them a good reason to spider and to index your site quickly.
Include free downloadable viral reports on your blog to turbo-charge visitor traffic and build a subscriber/viewer base quickly.

9. In order to simplify the creating and updating process of a blog, take advantage of the many blogging tools and software readily available, a number of them are free. Blogging software such as WordPress or Movable Type helps you update a blog easily. There are even free blog generators such as Blogger which allow you to host your content on Google's servers without having to install any software or obtain a domain and host content.

10. Offer to inform readers of your blog with free email management services like Feedblitz (if you don't have an email list management solution) in addition to offering RSS feeds for subscription. Readers and visitors can be kept updated of any new information being added to your blog without having to check the site constantly.

11. Utilize blog and ping to get sites indexed quickly by the search engines. By notifying popular ping servers monitored by blog search services such as Google Blog Search, you attract search engine spiders to a blog. A blog can automatically be setup to ping certain web sites. An easy method of doing this is by adding the Pingomatic service to the sites to ping in the blog software which pings many popular ping servers at once.

12. Finally, remember to submit to popular, high quality blog directories such as Feedster, Technorati, Blogstreet, and Best of the Web Blog Directory to boost your web traffic and link popularity!

If you respect these rules you will most likely have a successful blog, and you will be rewarded in the process. Ask a SEO consultant for further information and assistance if you are stuck for ideas to promote your new blog.

This article was written by Anthony Yap of http://www.anthony-yap.com/HYPERLINKhttp://www.anthony-yap.com/. Anthony Yap is a SEO Expert and internet entrepreneur. He works with many businesses to maximize their profit potential through cost-effective search engine optimization. For select clients, he offers a guaranteed top ten rankings package in the major search engines.

Microsoft Outlines The 12 Philosophies Of Windows

WASHINGTON—Microsoft has announced 12 principles by which the company will guide its development of the Windows desktop platform, starting with Windows Vista and beyond.
At a New America Foundation Policy Luncheon at the National Press Club here, Brad Smith, Microsoft's senior vice president and general counsel, outlined the principles and discussed lessons Microsoft has learned over the past 10 years based on antitrust battles, regulatory scrutiny and fierce competition in the operating system and software market in general.

ADVERTISEMENT Smith said the principles largely come from things Microsoft picked up in the consent decree the software giant signed in settling its landmark antitrust battle with the federal government, but that more recent developments led to the crafting of some of the other principles.

The 12 principles are based on three main areas: choice for computer manufacturers and customers, opportunities for developers, and interoperability for users, Smith said.

"These principles are 12 tenets to govern and guide the development of Microsoft Windows," Smith said.


Microsoft adopted a set of philosophies that led to the crafting of the principles, he said.

One was the recognition that operating systems evolve over time and that the addition of new functionality to an operating system makes life easier for developers.

And, while the U.S. antitrust ruling recognizes that innovation in all forms is to be encouraged, it should not stifle competition, Smith said.

"We've seen over the last five years steady improvement to audio and video playback in Windows, but at the same time we've seen phenomenal success by others," Smith said, noting that Apple with its iPod technology is an example of this.



Meanwhile, Smith said that beyond the new principles. "We've have nearly five years of experience under the U.S. consent decree, and the one thing we've learned the importance of is humility…"

Ted Halstead, president and chief executive of the New America Foundation, who also served as host of the event, said, "This is a real, historic turning point, not only for Microsoft, but for the industry as a whole."

The first principle goes to the installation of any software.

"We will ensure that Microsoft will design Windows in ways that make it easy for people to add non-Microsoft features," Smith said.

No. 2 is easy access: Computer manufacturers are free to add icons, shortcuts and the like to the Windows Start menu and other places used to access software programs so that customers can easily find them, Microsoft said.

Read the rest of this eWEEK story: "Microsoft Sets 12 Principles for Windows Development"

Verbatim Introduces Blu-ray Q3 2006

Verbatim has announced that it will begin shipping its new Blu-ray Recordable/Rewriteable media during July.

Manufactured at Verbatim's parent company - Mitsubishi Chemical Company (MCC) - optical disc facility in Mizushima, Japan, Verbatim's initial products will include 25GB single layer media in both write-once (BD-R) and rewritable (BD-RE) formats. Verbatim has already supplied burner/recorder manufacturers and their software suppliers with engineering samples of the new high-capacity media for securing read/write compatibility.

"Our automated manufacturing equipment is in place and we have confirmed the feasibility of mass production of BD-R and BD-RE media," said Torsten Leye, Product Manager DVD, Verbatim. "Currently licensing and media qualification procedures are being established. Verbatim will lead the industry in the production of high-quality, next-generation media, much as we did with CD and DVD recordable products. Our experience with DVD dual layer manufacturing also gives us a head start in producing 50GB dual layer Blu-ray media which will be introduced later this year."
The new Verbatim BD media will include the proprietary ScratchGuard hard coat developed by MCC. This protective coating is a key technology for BD disc production as the BD data layer is close to the surface of the disc and not protected by a plastic substrate as with DVD media. The new hard coat will protect the BD data layer from scratches and fingerprints without warping the disc and allows the usage of the media in a bare disc form, without a cartridge.

Ron Stuart, General Manager, Verbatim UK, commented, "Blu-ray will revolutionize the media industry as the discs will allow far greater storage capacity than is possible with CD and DVD technology. The blue laser has a shorter wavelength and this means it is possible to write smaller data pits, which vastly increases the amount of data that can be put onto a disc - and the discs also have extremely long archival life plus excellent playback performance.

"Verbatim's products have a ScratchGuard coating and will withstand finger print smudges as well as being dirt and dust repellant. They are also less sensitive to ultraviolet light and have successfully passed the 'steel wool' test - this involves a steel wool cloth being rubbed against our Blu-ray discs to simulate possible day-to-day hazards."

Well known for its role in the development of recordable and rewriteable CD and DVD media, Verbatim has established excellent relationships with leading optical hardware manufacturers and by providing benchmark media for performance and compatibility testing Verbatim validates its media across the broad range of burners, recorders and players..

The additional testing ensures that the best compatibility between hardware and Verbatim-branded media.
With Verbatim premium quality recordable BD media, users will be able to record and enjoy the amazingly sharp images that high-definition video provides. Blu- ray discs will find extensive application in computer data storage. thanks to their 25GB capacity.
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