Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's keynote last night was one of the most anticipated events of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. It was expected that he would unveil a device to compete with a supposedly upcoming tablet from Apple, but people anticipating such news were met with the unveiling of a different device - the HP Windows 7 slate device, which apparently doesn't live up to some of the tech crowd's expectations.
Ballmer says the device is more powerful than a phone, and "almost as powerful" as a PC. You can't get too much out of it, but here's an official video of the device that's floating around:
The device will be available some time later this year.
In addition to this, Microsoft-related news to come out of CES includes:
- The Sony VAIO L all-in-one laptop built for HD entertainment and multimedia content creation, and including a 24-inch touchscreen (Windows 7)
- The Lenovo A300, one of the thinnest PCs yet at just 18mm, but with a 21.5-inch HD widescreen LED display (Windows 7)
- Microsoft and HP are teaming up on search and portal experiences. Bing will be the default search engine, and MSN the default homepage on HP PCs in 42 countries.
- Ballmer announced the upcoming exclusive availability of the HTC HD2 in partnersh/> [...]
Thu Jan 07, 2010 10:40 am
DIY SEO Software Reviews
Is DIY SEO any good? Does it work?
When I got to look at DIY SEO my first thought was: good structure & layout, lets see what is under the hood. But then after opening up the hood I found a car with no engine.
On a score of usability I would give the site a 9 or a 10, but in terms of utility it would be lucky to score as high as a 2 or a 3.
Google AdWords: The Cheapest SEM Strategy for Small & Local Businesses
Maybe there are some small businesses out there who are content being obscure, or who only want to rank for their own business name plus maybe 1 or 2 longtail keywords. But for those businesses I suggest bypassing SEO and buying a few Google AdWords ads.
- Low traffic keywords are typically cheap to buy search ads on - because you only pay by the click. If few people are searching for something then there will be few clicks to buy.
- Not only are such markets small, but due to their small size they are also heavily fragmented, making the AdWords traffic even cheaper.
- If few people are searching for your brand then you can likely spend $25 a month on AdWords and ignore learning SEO.
A Legitimate SEO Strategy Requires Investment
With a paid search campaign, you can use Google AdWords to instantly buy search traffic and gain new customers. SEO is a drawn out strategy & typically requires a much deeper initial investment.
There is little value in investing in SEO unless your goal is to dominate your market, and there is sufficient market scale to justify investing thousands of Dollars (and far more when you consider the value of your time). After all, a single link from Business.com or the Yahoo! Directory will run you $299, and 2 links hardly makes for an effective SEO strategy - but they will set you back $600 a year.
And you do/> [...]
Tue Apr 06, 2010 01:00 am
Android Tops Windows Mobile Worldwide
Even if Google prefers to name different versions of Android after tasty desserts, the mobile operating system is still doing a good imitation of a simple snowball rolling downhill. A new report from Gartner indicates Android's even grown to the point that it's beaten Windows Mobile in terms of sales on a worldwide basis.
Gartner pegged Android's sales at 1.6 percent of the smartphone market for the first quarter of 2009. For the first quarter of 2010, that figure was 9.6 percent, instead, which works out to an increase of 600 percent in the space of one year.
Meanwhile, Windows Mobile's sales decreased from 10.2 percent to 6.8 percent of the total, allowing Android to take fourth place. And the iPhone OS's share of sales didn't increase by quite as much, bringing Android somewhat closer to third.
Apple and Android are, despite their third- and fourth-place finishes, arguably the winners here, too. Gartner observed in a statement, "Android and Apple were the only two OSs vendors among the top five to increase market share year-on-year. Symbian remained in the No. 1 position but continued to lose as Nokia remains weak in the high-end portfolio."
Android and the iPhone OS are still a long way from the top, though, meaning Google may have to work its way through a lot more desserts before displacing another competitor.
[...]
Wed May 19, 2010 10:55 am
Google is Beating Bing & Yahoo Again, Now In Real-Time Search
Google unveiled its real-time search interface today and it looks much, much better than what rivals Yahoo and Bing have done so far. The new Google real-time search functionality will appear on selected search results pages, below News results, above or below top ranking natural search results - sometimes just above the fold of the page.
The new type of results are well-integrated, unobtrusive, diverse in contents and formatted simply. It appears to be a job very well done. It's hard to believe that neither Yahoo nor Bing have created an experience anywhere near as compelling.
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Bing is a Bummer
Bing's "real-time search" comes in the form of a special page for Twitter results. On that page you see a tag cloud of popular terms on Twitter, links shared regarding those terms and a few recent tweets in which each link appeared. It's not very visually appealing. In fact, it's downright ugly. It's also not integrated extensively into the main Bing site.
Search results on Bing come only from Twitter and links share on Twitter. There are a lot of low-value retweets displayed. Twitter is of course just a small part of the real-time web.
Yahoo is MIA
Yahoo! on the other hand, displays Twitter as a tab in a select few news search results pages. That tab offers links being shared on Twitter, not tweets themselves. It's very hard to find a search result that uses Twitter results, /> [...]
Mon Dec 07, 2009 14:45 pm
