Microsoft  has launched a new online service called msnNOW, which is a social media powered trends and news aggregator. It analyzes data from Twitter, Facebook, Bing and some other services to identify, curate and display the latest news stories and trends. It is like a mash-up of Google News and Google Trends, but instead of search, it is powered by social data .

The search team at Google has created a short video that puts all the useful stuff you can do on Google.com, plus some related search tips and tricks, in one place.

If you are a “power” Google user, you may not find anything new in this video but for the rest of us, this is a good recap of the kind of searches you can perform at Google.com.

And I just learned that you can drag images from the desktop and drop them on to the Google Images website and it will find  similar images on the Internet – that’s much faster than using the “Browse” button.

This story, All the Google Search Tips in one Video, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 15/02/2012 under Google, Internet.

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Product2Brand’s social media training courses will give you hands-on, practical tuition for making the most of your blog and social networking such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. You will learn the pitfalls of using Social Media and things not to do as well as best practice for spreading your message and engaging your clients within a cohesive social media strategy. The Social Media training is led by marketing and internet marketing professionals with real-world experience of implementing Social Media campaigns for business.

Package1: Four hour taster set up sessions
Price per person at Product2Brand
Price per person at client’s premises *(Clients use their own pc – min No 5)

On completion of this taster session delegates will have:
A basic overview of social mediaSet up a Twitter account and have a basic overviewSet up LinkedIn account and have a basic overviewSet up Facebook account and have a basic overview

———————————————————————————
Package2: One day social media basics session
Price per person at Product2Brand
Price per person at clients’ premises *(Clients use their own pc – min No delegates 5)

On completion of this basic social media session delegates will:
Understand how to engage clients using Social Media
Know how to spread their messages effectively using Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook and YouTube
Be able to monitor Social Media campaigns

Introduction to Social Media
What is social media?
Overview of the latest developments and trends

Blogging
What is a blog and why blog?
Overview of blogging
Making your blog socially compatible
YouTube – how to embed YouTube video
Social Media platforms – how to make the best use of them

Twitter
Profiling a Twitter account
Retweets, hashtags and lists
Managing and enhancing Twitter with apps & tools

LinkedIn
Your profile
How to build connections
Using groups to drive traffic and access your markets
Getting recommendations

Facebook
How to use Facebook to aid your business?
Developing a Facebook profile
Setting up a group vs. setting up a page
Facebook apps to share content

Monitoring your Social Media Performance
Where are the people you want to reach?
What are people saying about you?
Analytics and stats tools

Course Pre-requisites
Prior to attending this training course you should have:
A good understanding of the web
Remote access to e-mail – you will be setting up new accounts during the course.
Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook accounts already set up

Package3: Two days – Social media strategy and advanced setup session
Price per person per day at Product2Brand
Price per person per day at clients’ premises* (Clients use their own pc – min No delegates 5)

On completion delegates will:
Understand how to develop their own social media strategy
Understand how to develop a social media map
Be able to set up accounts in Ning and other selected social media
Be able to use some more useful tools such as Ping, Hoot and Social Oomph

Day one – Understanding what social media strategy is and how to link it to your marketing and business strategy
Review your existing marketing strategy
Consider your marketing strategy in the context of the web2, digital marketing, SEO, PPC and social media landscape
Niche marketing via Social Media networks
Exploring Groups and Meta Groups
Develop your social media marketing objectives and strategy
Build a social media map relevant to you your strategy

Day two – Creating your own social network
Integrated web services
Social Networks and Business
Social media analytics and measurement
Services provided by Yahoo, Google and OpenID
Set up LinkedIn groups, Facebook ads, Twitter lists and other tools, Ning groups and other social media
Use of Ping, Hoot, Social Oomph and other Twitter tools

Course Pre-requisites
Prior to attending this Social Media Training course delegates should have:
A good understanding of the web
Remote access to e-mail – you will be setting up new accounts during the course.
Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook accounts already set up

Contact us on our Website or on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter

FOR SIGNING IN TO YAHOO MESSENGER WITH MORE THAN ONE IDs AT A TIME, WITHOUT INSTALLING ANY Multi-yahoo messenger or any such third party softwares. Go to START Then RUN There type regedt32 (registry editer of windows) go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER Now to Software then Yahoo then pager test right click the test folder and select [...]

There are numerous values attached to each link that is generated to and from your website. Some links (such as quality link backs) can bring incoming visitors and help increase your search engine page rank. On the contrary, too many outgoing links can result in reducing the search engine value of your website. One of the most important aspects of website optimization and SEO, includes proper knowledge of link building. Obviously you can avoid the hassle if you already have a good SEO service provider like href="http://www.digitalmoz.com/">DigitalMoz, which is a well know company that provides href="http://www.digitalmoz.com/">SEO Philippines and other countries.

Following is an overview of the five things that you should know about link building, to optimize your website.

Get Indexed More Quickly

To get your website, particularly blog to be indexed quickly, you can put a link on a popular website. The search engine bots are likely to crawl that website often and they might see your link and travel through it to your website. While getting quality link backs from established websites in the short run can be difficult, you can post your website links on websites like YouTube . However, it is advised that you do not spam your link but rather post it on e.g. your own YouTube channel. Other ways of getting your website linked with an established website can be to write guest posts on other blogs (and link to your website), leave your link to questions in online forums (the link should lead to relevant content), etc.

class="aligncenter" style="padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; border: 0px;" src="http://aliwaqas.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/get-indexed-fast.jpg" alt="get-indexed-fast" width="500" height="333" border="0" />

No Follow Tags

No follow tag can be applied to links and entire pages on your website to command the search bots to not to follow certain link(s). This ensures that specific links e.g. outgoing links, do not count for anything SEO related.  While there is some skepticism as to how much attention bots pay to the no follow tags, Bing and Google both claim to value the no follow tags.

class="aligncenter" style="padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; border: 0px;" src="http://aliwaqas.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/SayNotoNoFollow.gif" alt="SayNotoNoFollow" width="421" height="283" border="0" />

Reciprocal Link Building

While it is always a good idea to link to reliable sources, you are far more likely to get reciprocal link backs from websites who are more similar to your website’s content. For example, you are unlikely to get a reciprocal link if you link to the BBC website, than linking to a fellow blogger. While the potential websites providing you with courtesy link backs may be your competitors, they are still likely to link to your blog, if and when you link to them. This is because your link backs will provide them with fresh visitors and is likely to increase their ad revenue, and vice versa.

class="aligncenter" style="padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; border: 0px;" src="http://aliwaqas.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/SEO-Link-Building.jpg" alt="SEO-Link-Building" width="300" height="300" border="0" />

Link Priority

If two separate links on a webpage of your website link to the same page, then Google only uses the first (that appears in the code) of the  two links. This means that it is not wise to repeatedly link to a specific page from a single webpage. Furthermore, if you require doing so, make sure that the first link has a relevant keyword hyperlinked with it. However, you can use two or more links on a single webpage, to link to separate webpages on your website.

class="aligncenter" style="padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; border: 0px;" src="http://aliwaqas.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/1st-link-priority.jpg" alt="1st-link-priority" width="300" height="300" border="0" />

Use Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing companies can help your website acquire good search engine visibility, which often results in quality link backs. This is because websites appearing in the initial pages of search queries also get linked by websites that benefit from their content. You can always acquire the help of DigitalMoz href="http://www.digitalmoz.com/services/sem-philippines/">Search Engine Marketing Philippines, which is a company of expert professionals that can optimize your website and help you get quality backlinks by enhancing the search engine value of your website. For more information, visit href="http://www.digitalmoz.com/services/sem-philippines/">DigitalMoz website.

Like most companies, yours has likely entertained the idea of a business blog, but never taken the steps to get it off the ground. Perhaps your concern lies with cost, or with the ins and outs of running a blog. If that’s the case, then don’t despair. A business blog is an essential aspect of success in online marketing. It’s inexpensive, easy to maintain and one of the main reasons why companies of all sizes have eschewed outbound marketing approaches for inbound marketing strategies. So what are the main benefits of a business blog?

Building Your Company’s Brand

A well-designed business blog can not only accentuate your product and service offering, but it can help distinguish your company within its market. Today’s blogs allow companies to provide their users with continually updated content, content that helps to provide users with more than just information on a product. Companies use their blog to update their customer base on best business practices, industry procedures, news and the cost-per-use benefits of using their products & services. In essence, the blog is used as a valuable resource for customers who want the most up-to-date information about the industry and its makeup.

Segmenting Your Customer Base

Today’s blogging platforms help companies to segment their customer base in terms of their likes & dislikes, their age, education level, where they live, ethnicity as well as their marital status. All of this can be done by placing a simple widget within the blog itself. Segmenting a company’s customer base was once the domain of the large corporation, ones with large marketing departments whose sole purpose was to track the performance of their outbound marketing strategies. Today, companies use their blogs and analytics to analyze their visitors at a granular level. They can track their click-through-rates, thereby isolating which icons pique their readers’ attention. Inbound marketing through a business blog has moved marketing from a moving target to one where specific measurements are the rule of the day.

SEO Optimisation

A business blog is a tool which an online marketing company would employ, as search engines such as Google, Bing & Yahoo love sites which are continually updated with fresh, quality content. However, it’s not merely about pumping out one article after another, but ultimately about accentuating that article with interactive videos and using social media marketing platforms that push that content out to the most interested parties. The most successful business blogs make each and every new addition to their content something to celebrate. They not only use their blog to advise customers on best practices, but also to update them on recent events within the industry and to educate them on the biggest issues facing their market.

Establishing Your Online Marketing Presence

Let’s face it, maintaining an online marketing presence is vital to your company’s future. It lowers your company’s costs of customer acquisition, increases your marketing ROI (return on investment) and builds strong customer relationships by incentivizing your readers to return for more valuable, well-written content. The costs of a blog are a fraction of the costs of conventional outbound approaches. Being searched online is much less expensive than searching for customers with print, radio, TV, billboard and magazine advertisements. Having a blog allows you to deliver information directly to those who need it most. More importantly, it provides your customers with a reason to return, time and again. Can you better match their needs by having a business blog? Most definitely! Is it a cost-effective way to support your company’s website.

There’s a reason why so many companies have decided to use business blogs to grow their online presence. It’s easily maintained and provides customers with a chance to interact with their vendors in ways like never before. Use it to promote your products & services, or use it to accentuate your company’s capabilities and knowledge. Either way, a business blog has to be an essential part of your online marketing strategy.

Bird and Co is a website design company, developing business websites and providing effective online marketing services.

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Google’s widely anticipated alternative to Flipboard is finally here. It’s called Google Currents and the next screenshot should you give an idea of what Currents is all about.

Google Currents is a Flipboard like app that lets you read blogs, news websites and other online publications in a magazine format on your mobile phone and tablet devices. The app is available for both Android and iOS platforms.

One big advantage with Google Currents is that you can read your subscriptions offline and it will even download the embedded images for offline access.

You can get Google Currents now from the Android Market and the iTunes Store. This is currently available only for US users but there’s at least an easy workaround for iPhone /iPad users.

Publishing to Google Currents

As a web publisher, you can package one or more RSS feeds, image slideshows, tweets, videos, social network updates and any other HTML content into an “edition” and publish it to Google Currents which others can then subscribe to on their tablet or mobile phone.

[*] Digital Inspiration is also available on Google Currents.

There’s no programming required as Google Currents provides an web editor (screenshot) for publishers to create these bundles. You can also pull content from Google Docs and ePUB ebooks into Currents. The default layouts are beautiful but advanced users may apply their own CSS styles to further customize the appearance of their magazine.

Read RSS Feed with Google Currents

Google Currents can also be used as a RSS reader to follow feeds that are not available as standalone editions. Simply subscribe to any RSS feed inside Google Reader and then pull it directly into Google Currents using Add More –> Library –> Google Reader. The plain feed will automatically be served in a magazine layout similar to other editions.

Google Currents vs Flipboard, etc.

There are quite a few reading apps – like Flipboard, Yahoo LiveStand, Pulse, Zite and AOL Editions – that let you publish (and consume) online content in a magazine format. However, Google Currents is probably the only app that will share advertising revenue with publishers which is obviously a big incentive.

Tags: All of Asia, Azhar Siddique, Azmat Saeed, Chairman, Congress Party, Executive, Facebook, Featured, Google, India, Information Technology, information technology sector, Internet Service Providers, internet works, judge, Kapil Sibal, Lahore, Lahore High Court, Microsoft, Ministry of Information Technology, Muhammad and Ahmad, Pakistan, president, search engine, social networking website, Sonia Gandhi, Technology, Telecom minister, Today's Images, trusted lieutenant, USD, Yahoo, Zaid Hamid

Idiocy in South Asia

Posted on 05 December 2011 by Tea Server

Exhibit A:

You would think that a country with an information technology sector with revenues in excess of $75 billion would have a government which knows how the internet works. But you would be wrong.

Please check out what Kapil Sibal, India’s Telecom Minister, is demanding of Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft:

About six weeks ago, Mr. Sibal called legal representatives from the top Internet service providers and Facebook into his New Delhi office, said one of the executives who was briefed on the meeting.

At the meeting, Mr. Sibal showed attendees a Facebook page that maligned the Congress Party’s president, Sonia Gandhi.  “This is unacceptable,” he told attendees, the executive said, and he asked them to find a way to monitor what is posted on their sites.

In the second meeting with the same executives in late November, Mr. Sibal told them that he expected them to use human beings to screen content, not technology, the executive said.

The three executives said Mr. Sibal has told these companies that he expects them to set up a proactive prescreening system, with staffers looking for objectionable content and deleting it before it is posted.

Of course, this brings to mind the Lahore High Court’s efforts to ban Facebook because of “blasphemous” material published on it.

LAHORE: Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed of the Lahore High Court on Monday directed the Ministry of Information Technology to submit a report by October 6 on a petition seeking a permanent ban on the access to American social networking website Facebook for hosting a competition featuring blasphemous caricatures.

The judge also directed the ministry to block access to all websites in Pakistan spreading religious hatred on the Internet. The judge made it clear that no search engine, including Google, would be blocked during this process.

The judge was hearing a petition moved by Muhammad and Ahmad, a public interest litigation firm, through chairman Muhammad Azhar Siddique.

The petitioner submitted that Islamic values were being derogated in the name of information, which was hurting the feelings of billions of Muslims. He submitted that despite clear direction by the court, the ministry had not blocked websites spreading religious hatred.

I really don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that these people’s teenage children or nephews or nieces would know more about the digital world than they do.

Exhibit B:

With this one, the headline speaks for itself, and I will add no commentary.

Pakistan arrests Indian monkey for crossing border

“Pakistan arrests Indian monkey for crossing border”

(Presumably, this was a tit-for-tat measure for India holding in detention a pigeon suspected of spying for Pakistan last year. And to this blog’s western readers, no, neither the monkey story nor the pigeon story are from The Onion; they’re very much real).

Zaid Hamid's trusted lieutenant

Syndicated from: Asian Correspondent » Ahsan Butt

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