AOL TV gets HuffPost makeover

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - AOL TV has been rebranded as HuffPost TV.

The retooled site, huffingtonpost.com/tv, launched Wednesday morning as part of editorial boss Arianna Huffington's ongoing makeover of AOL's editorial properties.

Following the model established at The Huffington Post, it will feature prominent bloggers such as Aaron Sorkin, Norman Lear, Bill Maher and Dr. Phil McGraw.

"It's going to be a sophisticated, bordering on obsessive take on the most buzzworthy shows," Michael Hogan, executive entertainment editor at Huffington Post Media Group, told TheWrap. "But I also think we're going to be looking for ways to connect what's happening on TV to the broader culture."

Hogan said that Jaimie Etkin, former associate culture editor for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, has been hired to serve as editor. AOL TV's five staffers will move to the new site.

Hogan said that HuffPost TV will retain the television listings and show pages from AOL TV -- but will have a different color. Moreover, its tone will better reflect the Huffington Post's.

"People really love to talk about TV, and they know that the Huffington Post is a place to have conversations online, so to me it's like the internet and TV were kind of made for each other," Hogan said.

"One of the primary objectives here is not just to kind of hear ourselves speak and pat ourselves on the back, but to really engage with an audience that we know is there," he said. "They're already there reading The Huffington Post and commenting on The Huffington Post, but also, we know there are all these communities around all these shows, so we want to provide the best possible venue for people to talk about the shows."

He said that people want to talk about the shows they've just watched -- and that HuffPost TV will give them a place to do that.

AOL acquired The Huffington Post for $315 million this past February. When it did, it installed Arianna Huffington as president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which includes AOL properties.

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Kenya army, Somali militia swap Twitter insults

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Kenyan soldiers and members of an extremist Islamist militant group have been fighting each other in Somalia since Kenya invaded two months ago. Now, their spokesmen are taking the battle onto Twitter, with taunts, accusations and insults being directly traded in a rare engagement on the Internet.

The propaganda war on the microblogging website shows the increasingly sophisticated use of media by both sides and underscores that there is often little reliable information about the conflict in Somalia that now directly or indirectly involves a half-dozen nations, analysts say.

"The tweets themselves will not be entirely accurate but it will allow analysts to triangulate that information and come up with a more accurate picture of what is really happening," said E.J. Hogendoorn of the International Crisis Group think tank.

On Monday, the Islamic insurgent group al-Shabab used its Twitter feed to accuse Kenya of having a history of committing "barbarous acts" toward ethnic Somalis, and cited a 1984 massacre where human rights groups say Kenyan troops killed around 3,000 ethnic Somali men in eastern Kenya.

Addressing more recent actions, al-Shabab's tweets that began last week claimed that Kenyan soldiers in Somalia "flee from confrontation & flinch in the face of death." The Twitter feed also described al-Shabab's own press release giving details about Burundian soldiers killed in an October battle between African Union peacekeeping troops and the insurgents. Al-Shabab claimed to have killed more than 150 AU troops at the time.

The AU only reported 10 casualties although Mogadishu-based security sources say the figure was closer to 70.

Al-Shabab's tweets, written in fluent English, mocked an earlier Twitter posting by Kenya's army spokesman, Maj. Emmanuel Chirchir, that threatened to bomb concentrations of donkeys that might be moving weapons for the insurgents.

"Your eccentric battle strategy has got animal rights groups quite concerned, Major," the al-Shabab posting said.

The Associated Press has determined that both Twitter accounts — HSMPress and MajorEChirchir — are legitimate. It's not clear who is writing the al-Shabab tweets. Several Americans, most of Somali descent, have in recent years joined the group that Washington has designated a terrorist organization.

Chirchir has responded with his own barrage of tweets.

"With Al Shabaab joining tweeter, lets take fight to their doorstep," he wrote. Chirchir accused al-Shabab of stoning an innocent girl to death and chopping off hands. He noted that many commanders have banned bras in their territory, and urged readers to retweet the message in support of Somali women.

Al-Shabab, which is fighting the weak U.N.-backed Somali government and controls much of southern Somalia, follows strict Shariah law and has carried out amputations and executions, including stoning to death a girl who Amnesty International said was a 13-year-old rape victim. It also enforces a strict dress code, flogging women whose robes it deems are not thick enough.

Kenyan human rights activist Hassan Omar Hassan says the flurry of tweets obscures the paucity of information about actual operations by the Kenyan military since it entered Somalia in October. Kenyan leaders have not said how long the intervention might last or what the ultimate goals are.

"To make an honest judgment about the war, Kenyans need more accuracy in war reporting," said Hassan. "We don't know the full story ... the government has been able to circumvent accountability."

The military originally portrayed the incursion as a short mission sparked by the kidnappings of foreigners in Kenya, near the Somali border. But Kenya has been pushing for the establishment of a buffer state along its border with war-ravaged Somalia for many years.

Last week, Kenya's parliament approved a plan to eventually place the Kenyan troops under the command of African Union forces in the Somali capital, indicating that Kenyan forces could remain in Somalia for a long time. The plan has not yet been approved by the U.N. or donors funding the AU force.

Analysts say if al-Shabab tweets timely, accurate information about events it may force more disclosures from Kenyan and African Union military authorities. But al-Shabab has already allegedly exaggerated the numbers of wounded civilians and its military victories.

On Saturday, al-Shabab tweeted that Kenyan jets had bombed a Red Cross feeding center in the town of Bardhere, with scores of women and children injured.

A day later, the Red Cross confirmed their center was hit, but said there were no casualties because it was empty at the time.

___

Follow Katharine Houreld at http://twitter.com/khoureld

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iPhone 4S leads online smartphone buzz

We've already seen?fish wielding tools and?ravens socializing, and now we're seeing another hint to the inevitable world domination by animals. This?bearded dragon has mastered the video game?Ant Crusher on its owner's cellphone. Sure, the game seems perfectly tailored to the … Continue reading →

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Expedia shareholders to gain from spinoff: report

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's disgraced Olympus Corp ironed out its crooked accounts on Wednesday after a 13-year fraud, with a $1.1 billion dent in its balance sheet triggering speculation it will need to merge, sell assets or raise capital to repair its finances. The 92-year-old maker of cameras and medical equipment filed?…

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"First of all, ew" - 'Shit Girls Say' becomes a hit: viral video spotlight

We've already seen?fish wielding tools and?ravens socializing, and now we're seeing another hint to the inevitable world domination by animals. This?bearded dragon has mastered the video game?Ant Crusher on its owner's cellphone. Sure, the game seems perfectly tailored to the … Continue reading →

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Report: Most people still don't trust online info

NEW YORK (AP) — Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed the rise of social networks and mobile technology that's put the Internet at an arm's reach, day and night — yet a new study has found that people are even more distrustful of the information they find online.

Three-quarters of Internet users find the Web an important source of information, but most people still don't deem the content they see online reliable, according to a report out this week from the University of Southern California's Center for the Digital Future

Such are the deep chasms among Americans' attitudes about the Internet.

In 2010, 15 percent of Internet users said they find only a small portion of online information reliable. That's greater than the 7 percent who were likewise skeptical of the vast majority of information they come across on the Internet.

The mistrust is especially true for social networks. That said, people don't look to social networks for reliability. Rather, they visit the sites to socialize and share photos, updates and videos.

Trust grows when it comes to established media outlets and government websites. In 2010, 79 percent of Internet users said they found content posted on government websites reliable, about the same as in 2003, the first year the center looked at that question.

Jeff Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future, said Americans tend to be more trusting of government and big media.

"Other countries are better at distinguishing good information from (the) unreliable," he said. In repressive regimes where media is closely tied to the government, citizens grow adept at filtering truth from propaganda.

When it comes to privacy online, Americans are actually more concerned about businesses than the government, the report found. Nearly half of U.S. Internet users said they are worried about companies watching what they do online, compared with 38 percent who said the same for the government.

Looking ahead to the next decade, Cole expects tablet computers and other touch-screen devices to largely replace personal computers and with them, the clunky computer mouse.

The center has surveyed more than 2,000 U.S. households each year since 1999. The latest report is a look back at the past decade of Americans' Internet use. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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Chris Dodd's Defense of SOPA Makes Him Sound Like a Despot

It's pretty problematic how former Senator Chris Dodd is vehemently?defending the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) with the same argument that despots have been using to justify censorship for years. Now the head of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and one of SOPA's most outspoken proponents, Dodd's logic sort of folds back onto itself. "Hollywood is pro-Internet. We stand with those who strongly oppose foreign governments that would unilaterally block websites and thus deny the free flow of information and speech," Dodd said on Tuesday at the Center for American Progress. "So I want to make it clear right at the outset that our fight against content theft is not a fight against technology. It is a fight against criminals."

Related: Bring on the Anxiety Parade for the SOPA Alternative

We've heard this line before. Indeed, targeting "criminals" serves as a handy, sweeping justification for any ruling power to whittle away at civil rights in the name of the law. In learning more about the history of web censorship, we stumbled across some startlingly of the similar instances in which what are the anti-Internet regimes -- here's a list -- explained how they're actually fighting crime, rather than freedom when the block people from visiting websites.

Related: The Web Collectively Protests Congress's Censorship Law

The Great Firewall of China is probably the most famous government Internet censorship efforts. The government can apparently add new keywords to block certain kinds of sites or even specific kinds of content whenever it wants. Take earlier this year when China shunned the Nobel Peace Prize Committee and blocked news sites from reporting on Liu Xiaobo, the imprisoned Chinese dissident who won this year's prize for standing up for freedom of speech. Why'd they do that? "Liu Xiaobo is a criminal," the Chinese Foreign Ministry explained.?

Related: Hollywood Dominates the Debate at Internet Censorship Hearing

But SOPA is about enforcing copyright law, Dodd might contend. Even the tech companies that oppose SOPA admit that they're open to finding better ways to protect intellectual property, though Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain recently told The Atlantic Wire that the government hasn't done any real data-driven research to prove that it would even be effective. The problem with the law, critics say, is less the intended purpose than it is the possible execution. Indeed, Chinese government has taken this position too and should the U.S. government join, it could open up even more censorship around the world.?"In China 'copyright' is one of many excuses to crack down on political movements," Chinese blogger Isaac Mao told CNN recently. "If a new law like SOPA is introduced in the U.S., the Chinese government and official media will use it to support their version of 'anti-piracy.'"

Related: Tech Companies Not Taking a Stand on Censorship Are Being Blacklisted

The Indian government is less consistent than China in how it censors the web, but the reasoning is often the same. Just this week, India's acting telecommunications minister Kapil Sibal spoke out about blocking content on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter in order "to remove disparaging, inflammatory or defamatory content before it goes online." (Read: keep citizens from criticizing the Indian government.) How do they justify that? The digital rights advocates at the Electronic Frontier Foundation explain:

The world’s largest democracy has been known to censor online content from time to time, typically under the guise of national security or obscenity. The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team is tasked with issuing blocking orders, while Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure allows police commissioners to identify and order the blocking of material that contains a threat or nuisance to society.

Again, it's not specifically about censoring the internet. It's about punishing criminals.

Related: The Titans of Silicon Valley Rally Around the SOPA Alternative

Syria's been particularly duplicitous about misinformation lately, but blocking the internet in the name of the law has been going on there for years. In 2008, The Economist reported on the censorship problem in Syria by focusing on how the government interpreted laws quite broadly, not only to censor the Internet but actually convict bloggers of crimes:

For "defaming and insulting the administrative bodies of the state", the president of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression, Mazen Darwish, was recently sentenced to a salutary ten days in jail. His real crime was to report on riots in an industrial town near Damascus, Syria’s capital. Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based lobby, said his case brought the number of journalists and "cyber dissidents" imprisoned in Syria to seven. …

For several years Syria has been an enemy of the internet. The security services keep opposition figures and even ordinary bloggers under surveillance. The main internet service-provider bans 100-plus websites. Most sites carping at President Bashar Assad’s government are silenced, as are many Kurdish and Islamist sites. A yellow screen flashes up with the words "Access Denied".

So Syria is extra bad because they not only block the sites, they throw bloggers in jail. Because they're criminals, the government contends.

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25 Computer Security And Online Safety Articles:

01.) 2006 Security Watch

02.) About Encryption and Making Your System Secure

03.) Beware Internet Explorer Plug-Ins

04.) Computer Viruses that Come a Calling

05.) CounterSpy 1

06.) Department of Defense Crackdown on Secuity - 2006

07.) Fighting of Viruses_Advancements in AntiVirus Sofware

Suites

08.) Fighting Spam

09.) Finding the Security Suite that meets your needs

10.) How Many Spyware Items are Infecting my Computer

11.) Name Rank and Social Security Number

12.) Parental Peace of Mind

13.) Phishing for your Identity

14.) Protection You Can Afford

15.) Securing Your Computer System

16.) Spam Buster

17.) Surfing the Web Anonymously

18.) The Advancement of the Keylogger

19.) Trojan Horses

20.) Website Security Rules of the Road

21.) What are Intrusion Detection Systems

22.) What the Heck are Botnets

23.) Who are the Players in the Antivirus Industry

24.) Why Do I Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me

25.) ZoneAlarm

25 eZine Marketing Articles:

01.) Why Publish an eZine

02.) Making Money from Selling Advertising Space

03.) Mailing List for Affiliate Marketers

04.) Which One is More Important - Product or Mailing List

05.) Publishing Your eZine - the Pros

06.) Publishing Your eZine - The Cons

07.) Deciding the Nature of Your eZine

08.) Churning out eZine Content

09.) The 3 Best eZine Formats

10.) What You Need to Start an eZine Publication

11.) Converting Every Visitor into Subscriber

12.) Converting Every Web Page into Subscriber Snatching

Devices

13.) Ad Swap Magic

14.) Building Your List with Articles

15.) Building Your List with Paid eZine Advertising

16.) Refrain from Buying Bulk Mails

17.) Weakness in Safe List

18.) Using Free Reports to Build Your List

19.) Landing Page Success Tips

20.) Building Your List with Give Away Ventures

21.) A Popular Autoresponder Marketing Technique

22.) Autoresponder Improvements

23.) Autoresponder Marketing Techniques

24.) Do The Two Step

25.) Improve Your Sales With Autoresponder Improvements

25 Web Design Articles:

01.) 5 Important Rules in Website Design

02.) 5 Ways to Keep Visitors Coming Back

03.) Generating Revenue with Good Planning

04.) Good Design Practices

05.) How To Have Websites Built For You The Cheap Way

06.) The Importance of a Sitemap

07.) Improve Usability of Your Website

08.) Building Your Mailing List with Downloads

09.) Make It Easy To Buy From Your Site

10.) Mistakes To Avoid When Using Web Templates

11.) Pros and Cons of Flash-based Sites

12.) Reducing Load Time Through Image Optimization

13.) Search Engine Friendly Pages

14.) The Importance of A Good Design

15.) Ways To Improve Sales Through Your Website

16.) Web Design Elements You Should Avoid Having on Your

Site

17.) When Is the Right Time to Redesign

18.) Who Is Your Audience

19.) Why Hire A Designer

20.) Why You Should Use Graphic Templates

21.) Is it Easy to Create Our Own Website

22.) Should I Create a Website

23.) The Key to Better Websites-A Navigation

24.) The Key to Better Websites-B Design

25.) Website Customization

25 Basics of Investing Articles:

01.) Avoiding Impulse Spending

02.) Rebates - Reward or Rip Off

03.) Spend Wisely to Save Money

04.) The Budget

05.) Why Should I Make a Budget

06.) About Online Trading

07.) Choosing A Broker

08.) Determine Your Risk Tolerance

09.) Determining Where You Will Invest

10.) Different Types of Bonds

11.) Different Types of Investments

12.) Different Types of Stock

13.) Getting Your Feet Wet

14.) How Much Money Should You Invest

15.) How To Know When To Sell Your Stocks

16.) Investing Basics

17.) Investing for Retirement

18.) Investing Mistakes to Avoid

19.) Investment Strategy

20.) Long Term Investments for the Future

21.) Stabilize Your Current Situation Before You Invest

22.) The Importance of Diversification

23.) Understanding Bonds

24.) What Is Your Investment Style

25.) Why You Should Invest

40 Self Improvement Articles:

01.) Your 7 days program to self-improvement

02.) Why is it important to improve your self

03.) Unlock your self improvement power

04.) Self improvement and success

05.) Motivation, the heart of self improvement

06.) Build your self esteem, a starter guide to self

improvement

07.) Harnessing your attraction power

08.) Unleash your creative thinkink

09.) What Innovation Can Do to Your Life

10.) Adventures in Creative Thinking (creative problem

solving)

11.) The Powers of a Positive Attitude

12.) Your 7 days program to Positive thinking

13.) Power through the people

14.) The Road to Intuition

15.) Creating Effective and Efficient Relationships

16.) 10 ways to empower your communication

17.) Happy as You Want to Be

18.) 10 ways to start taking control

19.) Setting Your Goals - Easier Said, Easily Done

20.) Time management and personal growth

21.) Your 7 days program to Stress management

22.) Your Recommended Daily Allowance for Relaxation

23.) The Way to Wellness It's time to start a Healthy life

24.) How to Become an Ideal Leader

25.) Things You Thought You Knew About Leadership

26.) The Spiritual Challenge of Modern Times

27.) Do Yoda Proud: Meditation 101

28.) 5000 Year-Old Medical Secret Unearthed

29.) Why Coaching is the Way to Go in Team Management

30.) The Game of Life Start your own coaching

31.) Life Mapping

32.) 10 questions you should ask to yourself

33.) Impossible is Just a Word

34.) Life is About Choices and the Decisions We Make

35.) Energy Healing 101 - Pranic, Tantric, and Reiki

36.) Genuine Happiness Comes from Within

37.) Enjoy your life - change your point of view

38.) Inspirational quotes than can improve yourself

39.) Your 5 minutes daily program to Stress management

40.) To Go or Not to Go Herbal, that is the Question?

10 Web Traffic Articles:

01.) 7 Surefire Ways To Increase Your Traffic

02.) Heres Why Paying For Your Traffic Is A Smart Move

03.) How To Generate Traffic Using Only Free Methods

04.) How To Monetize Your Traffic

05.) How To Use A Tell A Friend Script

06.) Search Engine Optimization

07.) Top 5 Ways To Low Cost Traffic

08.) Using Google Adwords For Laser Targeted Traffic

09.) Using Overture Yahoo To Get Website Visitors

10.) Viral Marketing 101

10 Affiliate Marketing Articles:

01.) 3 Things All Affiliate Marketer Need To Survive Online

02.) 3 Ways To Boost Your Affiliate Commissions Overnight

03.) A day In The Life Of An Affiliate Markete

04.) Easy Affiliate Profits Using PPC

05.) How To Become A Super Affiliate In Niche Narkets

06.) The 3 Most Common Affiliate Mistakes

07.) Using Camtasia Can Increase Your Affiliate Checks

08.) Using Product Recommendations For Profit

09.) Which Affiliate Networks To Look For When Promoting

10.) Which Affiliate Program Should I Choose

10 Google Adsense Marketing Articles:

01.) 3 Reasons Why Adsense Is Essential For Content Sites

02.) 5 Ways To Improve Your Adsense Earnings

03.) Avoid Getting Your Adsense Account Terminated

04.) Don't Get Caught With Adsense Click Fraud

05.) Google Adsense The Easiest Money To Make Online

06.) How To Start Making Money With Adsense

07.) Monetizing Your Website With Adsense

08.) Monetizing Your Website With Adsense.

09.) Using Other Peoples Info To Increase Your Adsense Cash

10.) Who Else Wants To Make Money With Adsense

10 Email Marketing Articles:

01.) 3 Quick And Easy Ways To Build A Profitable Opt-In List

02.) 3 Things To Avoid When Emailing Your List

03.) 4 Crucial Things You Need To Do To Build Your List

04.) 4 Ways To Get Your Opt-In List To Trust You Quickly

05.) 5 Things To Consider When Publishing A Newsletter

06.) 7 Ways To Make Money Using Nothing More Than Your List

07.) How To Build A List Of Eager Subscribers

08.) How To Get Your Subscribers Begging For More

09.) How To Grab Their Attention With A Subject Line

10.) Use Articles To Build Your List

40 Ebay Marketing Articles:

01.) eBay: The First 10 Years

02.) EBay Income Possibilities.

03.) What You Need to Know BEFORE You Get Started on eBay

04.) A Beginner Guide to the Different eBay Auction Types.

05.) Staying Out of Trouble with eBay Listing Policies

06.) Learning the eBay ingo?

07.) 5 Simple Steps to Posting Your First eBay Auction

08.) An eBay Seller Checklist.

09.) What Your eBay Reputation Really Worth?

10.) Is the eBay Customer Always Right?

11.) 10 Sure-fire Ways to Kill Your eBay Business

12.) 10 Steps to Successful Selling on eBay

13.) eBay ?Part Time or Full? How to Decide

14.) How to Think Like an eBay PowerSeller

15.) How to Use eBay to Grow Your Other Businesses

16.) Taming the eBay Search Engine

17.) How to Choose the Right eBay Product Category

18.) eBay Title Writing Tips.

19.) eBay Description Writing Tips.

20.) 10 Tips for Increasing Your eBay Response

21.) An Introduction to Bidding and Buying on eBay.

22.) Your Rights as an eBay Buyer

23.) 10 Ways to Avoid Being Ripped Off on eBay

24.) How Important is Your Buyer Reputation?

25.) How to Check an eBay Seller Reputation (and Why You

Should Do It

26.) Understanding the Different eBay Auction Types

27.) When to uy Now?and When to Bid.

28.) eBay Auction Buyer Tips and Tricks.

29.) When and How to Withdraw Your eBay Bid

30.) You Won that eBay Auction! Now What Do You Do?

31.) The eBay Buyer FAQ.

32.) SafeHarbor; eBay Own Scotland Yard.

33.) Using PayPal on eBay.

34.) How to Get eBay Coupons.

35.) Introducing the New eBay uyer Credit?Program.

36.) Tips and Tricks for Using eBay Search.

37.) When Things Go Wrong: How to Resolve eBay Disputes.

38.) Watch Out for eBay Automobile and Computer Scams.

39.) Tips for Buying Collectibles on eBay.

40.) Taking Advantage of low?eBay Auctions

25 VIRAL MARKETING ARTICLES:

01.) 3 Steps to Find 廮reebies?to Add to Your E-book

02.) 6 Ideas for Viral Marketing

03.) B2B Marketers Do It, Too

04.) E-Books and Affiliate Programs

05.) Folksonomies - a New Viral Marketing Tool

06.) Four Good Reasons to Use Viral E-Books

07.) Getting a 壣uzz?On

08.) Houston Museum of Natural Science Went Viral

09.) How to Get and Use E-Mail Addresses for Viral

Advertising

10.) Humor Turns E-Mail Viral

11.) Start Viral Marketing Campaigns Using E-Books

12.) Successful Forum Viral Marketing

13.) The Many Facets of Viral Marketing

14.) The Subservient Chicken

15.) Using Chat Rooms in Viral Marketing

16.) Using E-Mail to Achieve Objectives

17.) Using File Sharing in Viral Marketing

18.) Using Forums in Viral Marketing

19.) Using Videos in Viral Marketing

20.) Viral Marketing Goes Mobile

21.) Viral Marketing using Forums

22.) What an E-Book Can Do for You

23.) What Works & What Doesn't in Viral Marketing

24.) Why and How E-mail Viral Marketing Works

25.) Your E-Book is your Viral Salesman

Search Engine Optimization An Introduction

SEO, the acronym of Search Engine Optimization, leads us to a series of clues to understand the modus operandi (the working method) of search engines.

It is the process of improvising the visibility of a website via the"unpaid" searching, also known as the organic, algorithmic or the natural way of searching. The higher on the page, more the visitors the site will receive. SEO is about making small modifications to parts of a website. Viewing individually, these changes seem like incremental improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on the site`s user experience and performance in organic search results.

Search Engine Optimizers

SEOs are the consultants who carry out the optimizations on behalf of a client. They make the client web site "search engine friendly". Users watch or read websites but they can only read the programming code with which they are developed. Though the SEOs target different kinds of search, in forms of images, sounds or video, they are a part of the page which the engines cannot decipher. For this reason, the positioning work is based on HTML tags and text.

The leading searching sites use "automatic indexers" (also known as web spiders, robots or crawlers) to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. Here comes the use of SEO tactics.

There are millions of ways today to increase your site exposure. There are new strategies popping up each day and the basic techniques are way forgotten. There are many trends along the way from coupon marketing, credit card marketing, social networking to making tabs.

Some are about following the rules involving no deception. It ensures that the search engine indexes the content and subsequently ranks. It is about effective marketing, making efforts to deliver the quality of content the user wants. It is about the accessibility keeping the uniqueness of the gist. Again there are attempts to improve rankings in ways disapproved. Search engines on finding the use of illegal ways reduce their rankings or delete them from their databases.

SEOs - a good Marketing Strategy?

SEOs may give a high return on investment but on the contrary the algorithms of the engines might change and hence no guarantee.

"To be a good SEO is crucial, but the key lies in quality.

Speeding Up A Windows 7 Computer

Everyone wants a fast Windows 7 computer. This is especially true of people who play games. So the question is what makes a Windows 7 computer fast? How can you speed up your Windows 7 computer without paying an arm and a leg to increase the speed.

Several things make a computer fast. The most important is keeping it clean. A new Windows 7 computer is like my 2 car garage in 1985. At that time it help 2 cars no problem. Today is holds no cars. There is no room because other stuff has been stored there.

The same is true of most computers today. When they were purchased they were fast because they were empty of software. Over time software accumulated in the computer. The most egregious software is memory resident software. Often we use programs for a short time and then never again. However, these programs often have memory resident components that slow down the computer. A clean computer is a fast computer. How to clean is computer is the focus of another article.

In this article the focus is on what makes Windows 7 fast. So the first step is to measure Windows 7 speed. There are benchmarks and diagnostic programs that measure performance and speed. While they do a good job, they are not the measure on what a computer user considers fast. To me fast is responsive. Windows 7 has a responsive measurement tool called the Windows Experience Index. It is a measurement scale ranging from 1.0 to 7.9 currently. Newly purchased computers typically score in the range of 3.4 to 4.5.

To find the Windows Experience Index, click on START, then point to COMPUTER, click the right mouse button (the other mouse button), and use the normal mouse click to open PROPERTIES from the bottom of the menu. the overall rating is displayed smack dab in the middle of the display. A click on the Windows Experience Index to the right of the overall rating number should reveal the rating for each of the Windows Experience Index categories.

The Windows Experience Index measures Processor speed, Memory speed, Graphics card desktop performance speed, graphics card 3D gaming and business performance, and hard disk transfer rate. It rates the overall performance of the computer as the lowest score in any of these categories.

Many computers today have quad-core processors running at 2.5 to 3.2 GHz with DDR3 memory. Such systems typically score in the 6.9 to 7.2 range for CPU and memory speed. Generally, CPU and Memory are not a major consideration in making a Windows 7 computer fast. My laptop running an Inter i3 dual core 2.13 Ghz CPU and memory performs in the 5.9 to 6.1 range.

Disk drives in computers are Serial AT Attachment (SATA) drives. They rotate at 7,200 rpm. This is typically twice the 3,000 rpm at which automobile engines cruse. Laptop drives may run at 5,400 rpm. High performance drives operate at 10,000 rpm. So why the focus on rpm speed. A large part of disk performance is the time it mechanically takes to move the disks read/write mechanism. Part of that mechanical performance is the rotational speed of the drive. So 5,400 rpm drives are slower than 7,200 rpm drives. Most SATA drives have a Windows Experience Index of from 5.6 to 5.9.

What remains is the graphics card performance. That is the area which makes the Windows experience index run in the 3.4 to 4.5 range.

How do we make our Windows 7 computer more responsive? Changing processor and memory are costly. They are likely the fastest components already. Changes there make no sense. With Windows XP, increasing the computer's memory size from 256 MB or 512 MB to 3 GB or 4 GB noticeably improves performance. Most Windows 7 computers today come with 3 GB to 6 GB of memory. Windows 7 64-bit Edition can use more than 6 GB. My computer has 16 GB of memory. However, application programs mostly are written to use no more than 4 GB or memory. So most of the 16 GB memory is unused. Right now my computer seems to be using 10 GB of memory. Increasing memory size in a Windows 7 computer is not likely to result in a noticeable improvement in responsiveness.

It is possible to improve responsiveness with a faster disk drive. This requires disk drive replacement. Two drives can improve performance: 1. Solid State Drives (no moving parts) and 2. High RPM drives (10,000 rpm). Both types of drives are expensive with Solid State Drives (SSD) being the most expensive. Solid State Drives also wear out over time (several years) depending upon use. The smaller the SSD, the quicker it wears out. SSD are the fastest drives because there are no mechanical parts.

One disk drive strategy is to get a small 128 MB SSD that only holds Windows 7 and the application programs and place the remaining data on another larger SATA drive. The Windows supports the Windows paging files and temporary file area. These areas are constantly used by Windows to store and retrieve data while you are working on the computer. Making that storage and retrieval process faster makes Windows more responsive. Word, Excel, Pictures and Music files stored on another slower drive do not make the Windows 7 computer less responsive because we expect some delay every time we retrieve one of those files. My computer uses a 128 GB SSD for Windows. It has a Windows experience Index of 6.8. All my data is stored on 1TB SATA drives with a Windows Experience of 5.9. I have not tested 10,000 rpm drives as yet to determine their Windows Experience Index. The Windows Experience Index is not published for any drives because it depends in part on the motherboard and CPU to which the drive is attached.

The last area is the graphics cards. Because their Windows Experience Index score is low they offer the greatest potential for improvement. Graphics cards are advertised with high performance chips (chip sets) from ATI or Nvidia typically. They have graphics memory on the card. Fast graphics chips and more memory on the card can speed up and make games more responsive. They should make the 3D business and gaming graphics Windows Experience Index higher.

In contrast a card with a high 3D performance and a low desktop performance our computer may not make our computer as responsive as we hope. Also how we use our computer can be important. In my case I run four (4) monitors each with 1920 by 1200 resolution. So having two Digital Video Interface (DVI) connectors on a graphics card is important because I need two graphics cards to support the four monitors. Configuring the cards for responsive performance requires that the motherboard of the computer have graphics card slots (Peripheral Connect Interface Express - PCI Express connectors) that run at the highest PCI Express speed (16X speed) from both slots simultaneously.

The final consideration is the graphics card memory interface. The interface can be 64-bit, 128-bit, 256-bit or higher. Here the larger number is better. If you are a gamer and get the best performing chips (chip set) on a graphics card that only has a 64-bit interface you could find the gaming performance less than expected. Not being a game player (except for Solitaire) I may be incorrect here. In the case of four monitors, a $100 card that has a 256-bit memory interface produces a Windows Experience Index rating of 6.8 for both Windows Desktop and 3D Graphics performance. Finding a good performing and moderately priced graphics card requires a look a the specifications and specifically the memory interface. Cards with a 320-bit memory interface or higher can be very expensive. Actually, some cost more than my motherboard, CPU and 16 GB of memory.

The last part of performance is the network interface. Computers with a 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps interface are common. Few if any computers operate at the original 10 Mbps Ethernet speed. The speed is not so important here. Internet speeds are typically slower. The Verizon FIOS speed is often slower than 35 Mbps. This is under the 100 Mbps of most computer Ethernet interfaces. So then what is important to understand about network performance? It is simple, when a network is not working well, a Windows 7 computer slows to a snail's crawl. With a malfunctioning network interface (or any Universal Serial Bus - USB interface) it looks like someone poured liquid nitrogen over the computer so it is frozen solid. This can also happens when the batteries in your cordless mouse die.

So a responsive Windows 7 computer is determined more by graphics card performance and memory interface, as opposed to CPU speed, Memory speed, and disk drive speed. Any network, USB or mouse problems tend to stop everything. Keeping the computer clean from unused and memory resident software helps as well.

Pete the Nerd
"Your Friend on a Technically Challenged Planet (c)"
(c) P D Moulton

Pete is the original Dial-A-Nerd. Advertised in the 1990 USA Today classifieds, Dial-A-Nerd concept was created in the late 1980's to provide telephone computer help. Dial-A-Nerd became the Dial-A-Nerd Radio show on WJFK Radio and then the Technically Correct TV Show on WMAR ABC Channel 2 in Baltimore.

Pete has worked on computer before the earliest days of personal computers. In his early years working in data communications he personally met some pioneers of the Internet, but he never met Al Gore.