Windows 7 Interface: The New Taskmaster

Operating System | Posted by Sanjiv
Jan 21 2010

The Windows experience occurs mainly in its Taskbar – especially in the Start menu and System Tray. Vista gave the Start menu a welcome redesign; in Windows 7, the Taskbar and the System Tray get a thorough makeover.

The new Taskbar replaces the old small icons and text labels for running apps with larger, unlabeled icons. If you can keep the icons straight, the new design painlessly reduces Taskbar clutter. If you don’t like it, you can shrink the icons and/or bring the labels back.

In the past, you could get one-click access to programs by dragging their icons to the Quick Launch toolbar. Windows 7 eliminates Quick Launch and folds its capabilities into the Taskbar. Drag an app’s icon from the Start menu or desktop to the Taskbar, and Windows will pin it there, so you can launch the program without rummaging around in the Start menu. You can also organise icons in the Taskbar by moving them to new positions.

To indicate that a particular application on the Taskbar is running, Windows draws a subtle box around its icon – so subtle, in fact, that figuring out whether the app is running can take a moment, especially if its icon sits between two icons for running apps.

In Windows Vista, hovering the mouse pointer over an application’s Taskbar icon produces a thumbnail window view known as a Live Preview. But when you have multiple windows open, you see only one preview at a time. Windows 7’s version of this feature is slicker and more efficient. Hover the pointer on an icon, and thumbnails of the app’s windows glide into position above the Taskbar, so you can quickly find the one you’re looking for. (The process would be even simpler if the thumbnails were larger and easier to decipher.)

Also new in Windows 7’s Taskbar is a feature called Jump Lists. These menus resemble the context-sensitive ones you get when you right-click within various Windows applications, except that you don’t have to be inside an app to use them. Internet Explorer 8’s Jump List, for example, lets you open the browser and load a fresh tab, initiate an InPrivate stealth browsing session, or go directly to any of eight frequently visited web pages. Non-Microsoft apps can offer Jump Lists, too, if their developers follow the guidelines for creating them.

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How to sell more software from your website

Web Design | Posted by Sanjiv
Jan 05 2010

You want to sell more software from your website? How do you make the client truly understand your product and trust it and your company enough to pay the price? Tips on what you should do.

Selling software online is not an easy task. How do you make the client truly understand your product and trust it and your company enough to pay the price? Like it or not, it’s very similar to selling face to face: the first impression may be decisive for the clients’s future actions. Online, the website is your face.

It has to be comprehensible and easy to use. Here are a few tips on how your website should be to sell software better:

  • It has to look professional and attractive at the same time.
    You don’t have to show off your web designer skills. Too many colours, graphics, flash animations or drop-down boxes can only tire the visitors and make them leave faster. Less graphics will also make the site load faster. At the same time, it shouldn’t be dull, so it needs to be somewhere in the middle.
  • Make sure your message comes across loud and clear.
    In order to sell more software, information about software products must be easy to find, easy to follow and the same goes for the order process. Since most information is in the text, make it easy to read. Some coloured backgrounds make the text difficult to read, like purples, orange and reds. On the other hand, dark backgrounds may have a depressing effect on the visitors’ mood. The text colour is very important. Keep in mind that different browsers show colours differently, so don’t go crazy with it. It’s better to use Plain fonts, like Arial, Times New Roman, Verdana and Courier, because they’re easier to read. Fancier fonts may be used for headlines, but not full text. Remember though that sans serif fonts are easier to read on screen.
  • Easy navigation is law.
    Make sure there’s a link to the homepage at the top left of every page, except the homepage itself. Be careful not to have ‘dead end’ from which the visitor can’t find their way back to where they came from. Place the most important links in the top part of each page. Clearly mark read and unread links, preferably using standard colours.
  • Base the site’s hierarchy on your customer’s needs.
    Don’t make them search the entire site before they find information about products, prices and payment methods.
  • Don’t make pages too long.
    A web shouldn’t be more than 2 or 3 normal pages lengths, as no one likes an endless scrolling. If you have information for more than that, divide it into several pages with short information clips on the main index page leading to the second page.
  • Check all the links on your website to make sure they lead to a page.
    Tags from the navigation menu must be representative for what that page is about.
  • Serve friendly error messages.
    Don’t let the visitors see a page with ‘404 not found’ written on it. Put your creativity to good use. Error messages may include navigation to documents that do exist, a search box or a contact email address.
  • Have a privacy statement and testimonials.
    Potential clients must feel confident dealing with you. Having a separate page to express your policy towards their email addresses, how you accept orders and gather information, who has access to information and how you use that information will help you sell more software. Also make a separate page for comments from satisfied customers. Offer to include links to the customers’ websites in return for using their comments.
  • Contact information or a link to it should be on every page.
    If customers need additional information about the product, contact information like a phone number and an email address should be easy to find on the website. Let people know the hours and days of operation and the time needed to answer their requests. Give a contact name; it makes people have more faith that someone will actually read their message.
  • Set up a frequently-asked-questions (FAQ) page.
    Base it on real questions your customers had in the past.

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YouTube begins testing lighter ‘feather’ version

Internet Business | Posted by Sanjiv
Dec 04 2009

In a nod to efficiency, YouTube on Thursday began testing a more lightweight version of its video player pages called “feather.”

Feather pages do a number of things to speed up the video-playing process, from defaulting to the standard quality version (instead of high quality or high definition), to removing various on-page features such as being able to control the size and coloring of an embed. The idea is to get the video playing as soon as possible with fewer on-page distractions.

Other efficiencies include limiting the number of loaded comments to just 10, which users are now unable to vote on or respond to. Video replies, real-time sharing, and auto-suggest from YouTube’s search bar have also been cut. However, related videos remain–albeit at a more limited 5 videos compared to YouTube’s usual offering of 21.

Users who want to try out the new interface can do so by opting in to it on YouTube’s TestTube page, which houses experimental, or otherwise not-so-ready-for-primetime features. These include YouTube’s visual warp browser, its live streams product, and comment search tool. Once it’s enabled, it can quickly be disabled from any video page with a little green box that sits on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.

It’s worth noting the feature does not yet appear to work on all videos just yet. We had the best luck on popular videos, including those from YouTube’s featured section. Also, if you’re a YouTube power user who regularly makes use of things such as video replies and user comments, it’s worth staying on the standard version of the service.

Below you can see a before and after of feather mode on the same video. Click it to enlarge.

Youtube

Youtube

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SEO Tips: What Are The Top 10 On-Page SEO Tasks To Do and To Avoid?

online business | Posted by Sanjiv
Nov 27 2009

seo-process6I know that off-page seo is overall more important but it is difficult and takes a long time to implement.

You can get good results for medium competitive keywords using on-page seo.

Here is my list of the top 10 on-page factors you should optimise for.

On-Page Seo Checklist of Tasks to Do:

  1. Place your keyword in the landing page URL. Remember the closer the keyword is to the beginning the better
  2. Use the keyword in the domain name. Each word should be separated by a hyphen
  3. Use keywords in the Title Tag which should not exceed 60 characters. The closer to the beginning the better.
  4. Use keywords in the body text. Do not exceed a density of 5% (keywords as % of total word count).
  5. Use keywords with header fonts, H1, H2, H3 etc. H1 is best.
  6. Keyord Proximity: (For 2 or more keywords in search phrase). Should be as close as possible.
  7. Keyword Prominence. Keywords should be as close as possible to the top of a page. Bold and large fonts are best.
  8. Internal Link Anchor Text. Use keywords in these links. Separate keywords with hyphens – not more than 3.
  9. Site map. Create a site map with keywords in the descriptions around each link.
  10. Outgoing Links: Use keywords in anchor text in and around these links.

On-Page Seo Checklist of Things To Avoid:

  1. Do not use Flash or if necessary use it very sparingly as it is invisible to search engines.
  2. Avoid over optimization . Don’t use too many keywords exceeding the  recommended density of 5% and avoid repetitively use the same keyword – known as keyword stuffing.
  3. Don’t link to link farm sites.
  4. Don’t Redirect with refresh meta-tags
  5. Don’t Use Excessive Cross linking between > 10 sites hosted on the same server.
  6. Don’t steal images or cop[y large blocks of text from another website.
  7. Don’t use too many unrelated keywords on a single page.
  8. Avoid using dynamic pages if you want toi use keywords in the URL.
  9. Avoid using excessive Javascript.
  10. Avoid using frames on your web pages.

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10 Important Rules for Internet Marketing

Internet Business | Posted by Sanjiv
Nov 19 2009

Anybody who is into Internet marketing needs to understand the basic rules for this type that is totally different from usual marketing done in companies. People in this field also need to know that these rules keep changing with time, so they have to keep themselves updated.

The managers need to have enough knowledge about these rules in order to allocate budget properly. He/she should be aware of the limitations each tool have regarding ROI.

Remember, Internet marketing is a two-way marketing tool encouraging customers to communicate & is totally different from traditional marketing that merely delivers the company’s message to the customers. As Internet changes the way we communicate with our customers, it also provides us with a long list of tools to choose from. The most commonly used ones are email marketing, PPC advertising, banner advertising, link popularity, lead generation, article marketing, search engine optimization, online press releases, tapping blogs, contextual text advertising, text link advertising, pop-ups & pop-unders, etc.

Generally, it’s wise to keep the 10 following rules to succeed:

  1. Use a variety of techniques:
    Don’t put all your eggs in one basket & never go for only one technique at a time. Make a list of all those techniques that suit your marketing objective. Just to get started & to understand the trend, you can research about what your competitors are doing on the Internet.
  2. Invest a small amount in every tool when you first use it:
    As a general rule, don’t put a lot of money in a tool that you have not used before. This also applies to off-line marketing tools.
  3. Be persistent in Internet marketing:
    Do Internet marketing as a regularly as possible. With each passing day, it’s becoming more difficult to get the traffic attracted, as the competition is getting more & more tough.
  4. Use these Internet marketing tools to build relationship with your customers:
    Don’t forget to follow-up after every contact with your customer. This can be done by just sending thank you cards to your customers or sending season’s greetings so that they know you remember & care for them.
  5. See Internet marketing as a long-time effort:
    Don’t expect changes overnight. Remember, you might not succeed the first time you use a particular Internet marketing tool. This doesn’t mean that you should not use that technique ever again. Keep learning from your mistakes & you’ll succeed.
  6. Test your tool:
    Always test the tool before a visitor lands on that page so that the required changes are made on time.
  7. Never restrict your marketing to Internet only:
    Doing marketing on Internet doesn’t mean that you stop marketing off-line. Keep using those traditional marketing methods side by side.
  8. Keep learning new Internet marketing techniques:
    Always be on a lookout to know at once of the new techniques coming up.
  9. Be different from others:
    You can’t attract your target market unless you do it in a unique way. Try to be different from competitors. Don’t be a follower, be a leader.
  10. Measure your result:
    Your marketing campaign doesn’t end till you track & measure the result produced by running it. Each Internet marketing tool requires a different method of measuring its success. Have a thorough knowledge of these ways even before putting your hands in any tool.

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Content Management System

online business | Posted by Sanjiv
Nov 05 2009

Internet has become the foundation for revealing the all kinds of useful information, whether you need to write for business, literature, or personal concerns, you will find out that all pieces and sources of information are meticulously paced on this platform. Just a deliberate push on the specific keywords, may open the line up, in trillions of favorite search engines and websites before you look upon the answers for your quests. You may be pretty acquainted with the facts that all categories of websites are created by the dedicated writers and website designers.

Content management system may sound like a new term for you but it goes without saying that content is always at the first consideration to higher up the rank of a websites in all major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN, thus the arrangements of the content can lead your websites, to get indexed throughout on the internet server, and this reverie for elevating the rank of the websites can only be true, if you have added up the valuable keywords in addition to original content.

“The content is the most susceptible part to accommodate your websites on the internet, therefore often the term content is regarded as the King of a Website”, which lets your websites talks and get in class by itself”.
Contact management indicates the rigorous stipulations and conditions help you to classify the variety of the colossal content in a specific order and arrangement for catching the up most perceptiveness from the side of visitors. Reminiscent of other administrative tasks, content management also pertains on the coordination of classic myriad actions of the networks, and normally it is managed in the form of special chronological order. The module to regulate web designing and content developments is the first preferred intrinsic, directly interrelated to the production of a sophisticated website.

In other aspects; content managements is the developments of two simultaneous proactive rules namely an effective content writing and second creative web designing.

Content management involves the integration of two creative characteristics, namely designing and writing. It is necessary to maintain a close synchronization between both of these aspects.

Hence the buck stops at the door of the writer, it is an out and out responsibility of the writer to reveal every part of of the creative whims and set of useful massages on the paper, after taking into deliberation the productive tools, that write may utilize in converting the simple manuscripts into a valuable piece of information. The designers on the other side should do the best to renovate the content into life by adorning the content with some futuristic visual designs.

The both set of features must be monitored by the head of the content or content manager, it is better to develop a perfect interface between two aspects, additionally the designers can be facilitated with different set of profuse templates, in the same way, writers should be provided with some guidelines on their work, So they can come up with expected results after getting full support from the content management correspondence. Finally an innovative production can be emerged, after drenching through the precious ideals and efforts that is called a final webpage. The end of a content page indicates the start out to manage the content for publishing, accordingly the further liabilities are held with the team of content management to touch on the related products in the way, that it can be come forward into a quality webpage free of common miscalculations and errors of the written work, and likewise quality checker may modify the content, if it feels like to need something. The part of the editorial manager becomes vital at this segment of the content management, it is the last stage for making the amendments in the written articles/webpage, and undoubtedly at this juncture the content must be forehand rectified in the full profundity, because the product has to hit the market.

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