Archive for March, 2008

For those of you learning web design, here are some “killer” video tutorials. Not much has changed since the initial release of Dreamweaver in 2004 … especially when it comes to the basics.

So whether you are learning Dreamweaver MX or Dreamweaver CS3, you should find these videos useful.

Click here to go to Dreamweaver MX Video Tutorials

Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:

• monitoring a developing news story
• keeping current on a competitor or industry
• getting the latest on a celebrity or event
• keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams”  

Of course, we care about “keeping current on a competitor or industry.”

Each time Google finds a reference to the topic you request, it will be send you an email with all the new information it finds pertaining that topic.

It’s fast and free. Google Alerts can do all the legwork for you and send you all the relevant new information in your industry.

If you have a website, and are not so satisfied with the results it’s giving you, you need to ask yourself a few things.

What kind of website do you have and what’s its purpose?

Is your website a brochure, an e-commerce catalog, or a direct-mail-style pitch?

Do it has audio and video? Is it of professional quality?

Is your website over-optimized for the search engines, and baffles your visitors when they get there?

Beware of search engine tactics and second rate media that actually gets in the way of effectively delivering your marketing message,.

When telling your business story, and creating a memorable brand image, you need to be on target, and eliminate the noise.

Deliver your message and tell our story in a memorable manner to a motivated audience.

Do optimize your website for the search engines, but don’t let that get in the way of your message.

There are two types of sitemaps.

1. The common HTML site map page lists the pages of your site. It is meant to help visitors find the information they need on your website.
2. The XML Sitemap – usually called Sitemap with a capital S is a way for you to give Google information about your site.

Simply put, a Sitemap is a list of the pages on your website.
Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google’s normal crawling process.

Read more about creating a Sitemap for your website and submitting it to Google here.

Microsoft Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie’s announced this week that the company has ?decided to make our most current standards-based mode the default? in the new beta of Internet Explorer 8. Read more here.

YouTube’s founder, Steve Chen said they will be adding live video support this year.Videoblogger Sarah Meyers asked Chen about video blogging, in which he said:

2008. We’ll do it this year. Live video is just something that we’ve always wanted to do, we’ve never had the resources to do it correctly, but now with Google, we hope to actually do it this year.

There are many sites that offer live video, and we all know Yahoo recently launched Yahoo Live, which does live streaming video as well. How might this stream into search? Well, Google has been seriously pushing video ads and this is just one more way to generate content to stick ads in – preferably contextually relevant ads.

Live video is just something that we’ve always wanted to do, we’ve never had the resources to do it correctly, but now with Google, we hope to actually do it this year.