Posts tagged needed
‘More guidance needed’ for multinational SEO – DirectNews
Jan 19th
 Social Barrel |
'More guidance needed' for multinational SEO
DirectNews For businesses keen to improve their multinational search engine optimisation (SEO), more comprehensive guidelines are needed, according to one expert. … SEO vs PPC Most Common SEO Mistake Explained Success with SEO campaigns |
View full post on SEO – Google News
FCC Report Finds Better Broadband Needed for Schools and Libraries
Jan 9th
The FCC has released a report on the state of broadband connectivity at those schools and libraries that receive funds from the federal E-rate program. The E-rate program provides more than $2.25 billion in funding annually in order to offer discounts for schools and libraries so that they can obtain affordable telecommunications services and Internet access.
The report is based on data from a survey conducted in 2010 that looks at broadband usage in schools and libraries. The survey found that almost all respondents have some form of broadband connection to at least one facility. Just 2% use satellite and 3% use dial-up in order to access the Internet.
Sponsor
Most schools and libraries that responded have Internet speeds greater than 3 Mbps (55%). 10% have speeds greater than 100 Mbps. More than half of the school districts that responded (60%) say they subscribe to a fiber optic connection. Private schools are more than twice as likely as public schools to have either cable (31% to 16%) or DSL (29% to 16%). And 66% of respondents say they provide some wireless connectivity for students, staff and library patrons.
However, nearly 80% of all survey respondents say their broadband connections do not fully meet their current needs. 55% say that slow connection speed is the primary reason their needs aren’t met. 39% says that cost of service is the major barrier to meeting their Internet needs. 27% cite installation costs as the barrier. Rural schools and libraries, in particular, struggle to provide adequate bandwidth to their users.
What Are E-Rate Recipients Using Broadband For?
Email tops the list of the most-used app by E-rate users. 98% of respondents say that’s what Internet access is regularly used for and 69% say it’s the most essential app. For libraries, online reference materials are the most important and most used app. 86% of library staff and patrons regularly use online reference materials, and 62% say it’s the most essential tool they access online.
Schools and libraries both indicate that they see usage increasing. For example, 56% of all E-rate survey respondents say they plan on expanding their usage of digital textbooks in the next 2 years, and 45% say they plan to implement or expand their use of handheld devices for educational purposes. Currently, the average student-to-computer ratio of those schools responding to the survey is 5.86 to 1.
According to the FCC, this data will help the agency make better policy decisions for the E-rate program. The FCC has made better broadband access one of its major goals.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Windows Phone 7 is the Mobile Reset Microsoft So Desperately Needed
Nov 8th
Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 made its debut in the U.S. today. We got a chance to give the company’s new mobile operating system a spin over the last few days. Even though we have a few minor issues with it, Windows Phone 7 (WP7) is a welcome and much-needed reboot of Microsoft’s mobile platform. The new mobile OS introduces quite a few innovative design ideas and should give the company a good shot at once again becoming a major player in the mobile business. Here are some of the things we enjoyed while using the phone, as well as some of the negatives we discovered during the time we spent with it.
Sponsor
Note: this is not a hardware review, but just for reference, the phone we used for this test was an HTC Surround. The Surround is somewhat of an odd device, as it looks as if it has a slide-out keyboard but actually features an extra set of speakers instead of a keyboard, as well as a “fold out kickstand for hands-free viewing and hands-in-the-air fun.”
Good: The Metro UI Design
Few people think of great design when they think of Microsoft. With WP7′s Metro UI, however, the company has managed to reimagine what a mobile user interface should look like. Developers have the ability to bring a fresh new design to all of their creations that is consistent across virtually all of the apps on the phone. As Paul Thurrott noted in his in-depth review of WP7, “one of the neatest things about Metro is that it gets out of the way. With Metro, your content – i.e. what’s important to you – becomes the UI.”
The design’s focus on whitespace, modern typography and glanceable information makes it a welcome change from iOS and Android.
Good: “Glanceable” Homescreen
The first thing you see when you turn your WP7 phone on is a homescreen with numerous “live” tiles. This is a very different concept from what Apple and Google are doing with their mobile operating systems. The screen looks deceptively simple, with flat, monochromatic tiles, but these squares represent your email inboxes, phone calls, the people hub (which shows pictures of contacts that recently updated their social networking profiles) and other apps, all of which can update in real time. One of the best examples for this is the calendar tile, which always shows your next appointment. You can pin any app to this screen, which scrolls vertically.
A swipe to the right from there brings up an alphabetical list of all the installed apps. Microsoft decided to go for simplicity here, so there are no folders or multiple screens that allow you to organize your apps in different groups.
This homescreen is part of what sets WP7 apart from the competition and – in this author’s opinion – represents a step forward from the experience on Android and iOS devices. On the other hand, though, once you install a large number of apps, WP7′s focus on simplicity breaks down and folders would be a nice feature to have.
The unlock screen, too, includes a lot of glanceable information. Just by hitting the power button, you get to see your next appointment, as well as the number of unread email and unheard voicemails.
Good: The “Right” Apps are Available at Launch
There are already over 1,000 apps in the Marketplace and the U.S. launch will surely herald the beginning of a new wave of apps that will appear over the next week or so. Microsoft clearly understood that getting developers on board early and making app development easy was going to be a major factor in the platform’s success.
The main apps you would expect to see on a mobile phone, including Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, Netflix, the Weather Channel and others are already available. So are streaming music apps from Pandora and Slacker and social networking apps like Seesmic. There are also already plenty of good news apps (including AP and Huffington Post apps), photo apps, e-book apps (Kindle) and productivity apps, ranging from PDF readers to a number of to do lists.
By working directly with the developers, Microsoft also ensured that popular games like Flight Control, Guitar Hero 5, Need for Speed and the Sims are already available on the phone, as well as some good games from Microsoft’s own Game Studios, including the excellent The Harvest.
In the briefings we had with Microsoft in the last few months, the company always stressed that it was more interested in getting the “right” apps on the phone and not 200,000 other apps that nobody would be interested in.
Looking at the current lineup of apps, there are still some gaps in the lineup, especially when it comes to turn-by-turn navigation apps (though there are plenty of interesting mapping apps for WP7 out there already). Of course, not everybody has jumped on the WP7 bandwagon yet, so it’s to be expected that some apps are still missing. Frequent travelers, for example, won’t find any airline apps and there is also no Instapaper app for WP7 yet.
Good: Hubs and Integration with Third-Party Services
WP7 makes extensive use of hubs. These are built-in apps that can aggregate data from a multitude of services (typically configured online on Live.com). The photo hub, for example, can aggregate images from Windows Live, as well as from Facebook, Flickr, SmugMug and others. The people hub works similarly and can display recent social media updates from your contacts. Third-party apps will be able to extend the functionality of these hubs, though we haven’t quite seen this in action yet.
Microsoft didn’t shy away from integrating third-party services here. This may come as a bit of a surprise to some, but this move is quite consistent with how the Windows Live team, for example, currently approaches the online ecosystem.
Mixed Bag: Giving Carriers Their Own App Stores and Ability to Delay Updates
Carriers and OEMs can run their own WP7 app stores and our demo unit featured both an AT&T and HTC store. Carriers can also pre-install their own apps on the phone’s homescreen. While this is somewhat annoying, the good news is that the carriers can’t stop you from deleting these apps.
In another concession to the carriers, Microsoft is also allowing them to stay one step behind Microsoft’s official release cycle for WP7 and delay updates. Given that Microsoft is setting rather stringent rules for the minimum hardware in every WP7 device, this is somewhat odd. On the other hand, though, this is still better than the situation many Android users find themselves in, where they can never be sure when and if they will get the next version of their operating system.
WP7′s Achilles Heel: Internet Explorer
The browser is one of the central apps of every modern smartphone and sadly, Internet Explorer can sometimes drag down the overall positive experience with the phone. We ran into numerous issues with sites that just didn’t work or look right. Among these were Techmeme and Digg‘s mobile site. We didn’t come across these problems too often, but when we did, these were usually showstoppers and made for a rather frustrating browsing experience.
For the most part, Internet Explorer on WP7 felt more than fast enough for browsing most sites, but the browser sometimes slowed down to a crawl when looking at more complex AJAX-driven sites.
There are, of course, still a number of other minor issues and missing features. For the time being, for example, there is no way to copy and paste content. There is also no unified inbox for those who need to juggle multiple email accounts and the lack of folders makes managing large app collections harder than it should be.
That said, though, Windows Phone 7 is fun and easy to use. It doesn’t just bring numerous interesting design ideas to Microsoft’s mobile platform but introduces quite a few novel concepts that its competitors will hopefully bring to their own platforms as well.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
SEO Training Course Gives Websites Much Needed Boost in Traffic – I-Newswire.com (press release)
Oct 11th
|
SEO Training Course Gives Websites Much Needed Boost in Traffic
I-Newswire.com (press release) You will get SEO training and website traffic generation training. The course is broken down into 10 parts covering everything from PR marketing to fortune … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Bank of Korea Says ‘Vigilance’ Needed on Inflation – BusinessWeek
Aug 25th
|
Bank of Korea Says 'Vigilance' Needed on Inflation
BusinessWeek Aug. 26 (Bloomberg) — South Korea is alert to inflation risks and may need to raise interest rates again, … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Search Engine Optimization- Advice Needed?
Mar 26th
Hi- I have created a web site with a keyword rich domain name. However, it has no hyphens in it (lets call it mywebsite.com). I have since bought the hyphenated version of the domain name (my-web-site.com) and would like some strategic advice.
I have a PPC campaign with my first domain name through Yahoo and Google, and several sites already link to it. I really don’t like the hyphenated version of the domain name because I think it looks low class. Any ideas what I can do with it to optimize search placement?
Is seo specialist is needed in my company all the time as an employee ?
Mar 23rd
on the basis of my little knowledge , seo specialist is making his mission in increasing my company’s website rank and puting it in the first 10 result in search engines like google or altavista … and after his mission is done , I can say that I don’t need him in my company …. so, is that right?
sorry 4 my weak english, thats because I’m arabian man
I’m waiting to read your answer
