SauravPro

They’re calling it shops or “S-Commerce” and it’s being rolled out in cities and towns nationwide.

“Its a real revelation”, accordingto Malcolm Fosbury, a middleware engineer from Hallingdon. “You just walk into one of these shops and they have all sort of things for sale”.

Fosbury was particular impressed by clothes shop he discovered while browsing in central London. “Shops seem to be the ideal medium for transactions of this type. I can actually try out a jacket and see if it fits me. then i can visualize the way I would look if I was wearing the clothing.” This is possible using a high defination 2D viewing system or “mirror” as it become known.

Shops, which are frequently aggregated into shopping portals, known as “high streets” or “malls”, are becoming increasingly popular with the cash-rich time -poor generation of new customers. Often located in densely populated areas people find them extremely convenient.

And Malcolm is not alone in being impressed by shops. “Some days I just don’t have the time to download huge Flash annimations of rotating trainers and then wait five days for them to be delivered in the hope that they will actually fit” says Sandra Bailey, a system analyst from Chelsea. ” This way I can actually complete the transaction in real time and walk away with goods.”

Being able to see whether or not shoes and chothing fit has been a real bonus for Bailey. “I used to spend my evenings boxing up gear to return. Sometimes the clothes didn’t fit, sometimes they just sent the wrong stuff.” Shops hjave a compelling commercial story to tell too, according to Gartner Group retail analyst Carl Baker. “There are massive efficiencies in the supply chain. By concentrating distribution to a series of high volume outlets in urban centres- typically close to where people live and work-businesses can make dramatic savings in fulfilment costs. Just compare this with the wasteful practise of delivering items piecemeal to people’s homes.”

Furthermore, allowing consumers to receive goods when they actually want them could mean an end to the frustration of returning home to find a despatch notice telling you that your goods are waiting in a delivery depot the other side of town.

But it’s not just the convenience and time- saving that appeals to Fosbury, “Visiting a shop is real relief for me. I mean as it is I spend all day in front of a computer.”

Web Crawling: Web Crawling is the process in which Web Spider from different Search Engines index the websites throughout the World Wide Web (www). Most Search engines limit their searches and focus mainly on the content of the web pages. Before the search engine can tell you where the file and document is kept (in the form of URL) it needs to be found in their database. To find the information, Search Engines employs a special software robot called spiders to build lists of words and keywords found on the websites. When the spider builds its web (lists), the process is called web crawling. In order to maintain and build a useful list of words, a search engine spider needs to take a look at a lot of pages. All information are generally stored in a database. When some one is searching for a particular keyword the search engine generally looks for that keyword in their database.
 
How does the Spider start its journey across the web? Good Question. Generally the Spider’s starting points are heavily used servers which contains a lot of website that are being hosted. The spider will begin with a popular site, indexing every keyword and word on its pages and following every link found. 
                                                  

Spider take a webpage's content and create search words that enable online users to find the pages they are looking for

Most Popular Search Engines Google, one of the oldest and most popular search engines around, began as an academic search engine. When Google Spider (bot) looked into an HTML page, it took a note for the following things.
(1) The words within the main content.
(2) Where the words were found – area of importance.
 
Words appearing on important HTML tags — like title, meta, H1, H2 and other positions of relative importance are indexed for special considerations during a subsequent search on Google’s interface by the user. The algorithm that Google uses while indexing a web page is that it indexes every word on the page, leaving out the articles – “a”, “an” and “the’. Other Spiders have different approaches. Each Spider is designed taking into consideration that it should perform fast and allow the users to search more efficiently or both.ome Spiders will keep track of the words in the title, the subheading, and links along with 100 most frequently used words on the page (keyword density). Lycos used this approach while indexing the web. Other systems like AltaVista go in other directions, every word on the page including the articles. In the next article which will be the continuation of this I will discuss some very important aspect of the webpage which the popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista take very seriously —– Meta tags, Building the Index, Building a Search, Future Search etc.

Last month the criticism of Facebook,the most popular social networking site,was in the headlines around the world regarding breach of  privacy. Tamir Israel of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic pointed out that Facebook and other social networking sites needs to improve their own privacy issues.Canada’s privacy commissioner is set to announce on this thursday how Facebook will comply with privacy concerns.

Israel said on Webnesday,”This sets a standard”.

He also added, “Facebook was pretty high profile, so I think it would be enough to get their attention and get them to comply”

Federal privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart has said Facebook breaches Canada’s privacy law by keeping user’s information indefinitely — even after the user closed their accounts. She also raised concerns, over the sharing of personal informations with almost one million third-party software developer who develops facebook applications like quiz, horoscope and games for Facebook.

“Its not an easy fix” – Israel said

Stoddart’s office has been meeting with Facebook to see if Facebook comply with their demand on third party software venders if not, she can drag Facebook to Federal Court. Facebook has almost 12 million Canadian Users and 250 million world wide, allowing  friends and families to be in touch by posting comments, photos and email messages.

Israel also commented,”If social networking sites aren’t improving their practices to meet these standards I think we will be getting involved”. That means sites like MySpace, Networking Tools, Linked In, Classmates.com and microblogging site Twitter are all under the scanner.

Isreal said, “Facebook indefinitely keeping user’s information for targetted ads is data breach, which also can be unintentional”.

The internet has holes, longer the information is kept it is likely to be leaked. There is no full proof system. Law suits have recently been filed in United States against Facebook alleging its violation of Privacy Laws. Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian investment firm, recently put Facebook’s value at US$ 6.5 billion to US$ 10 billion.

It is a continuing debate as to which is better, Apple’s Mac or Microsoft’s PC, abbreviation for Personal Computer. Mac’s battle always conjures up feelings of “Us vs Them” amongst the biggest fan of either platform, which are creating confusion for a long time. There are lots of facts and questions regarding the two platforms and having worked with both PC and Mac, I will try to come up with an unbaised statement about each of them.. I am giving my own interpretations here.

(1) Myth: Macs are more expensive than PCs

      Fact: Apple Macs are more pricey as compared to PCs.

 
A lot of hardware and software for Mac (both desktop and laptop) is manufactured by Apple themselves. Mac is only compatible with Apple’s own hardware. So Apple has a monopoly over their products and they do their own pricing and sell them through their own Apple Stores and few authorized Apple Centers. Even the tech-support Apple recruits themselves. They have built a class of users who uses their own propriatory Operating Software OS X. By contrast, Microsoft represent the image of PC and a vast majority of the PC users uses Windows as their operating system. But thats only the software, where as the hardware is built by over 20 different manufactures (small or large) prominent amongst them are Intel Corporations,Athlon AMD which caters to different market segments. The price of PC depends upon the manufacturers and the hardware you choose. PC has different market segment from low,medium, high and super advanced gaming purposes.

(2) Myth: Macs are good for multimedia(graphics, video editing, photography) while PCs are good for   everything else.

       Fact: Depending on end user preference both PCs and Macs can be used for graphics,multimedia, video editing and photography needs.

Now a days it has become the matter of choice for the Graphic Artist whether to go for a Mac or PC. In the good old days, magazines, newspapers, billboard ads or any other visual media, all had been designed using Mac. The PC appears to be an alternative options for those who cant afford Mac. But now the Graphic Artist uses either a Mac or PC. Both are equally stable. But the third party software support for PCs are way more than Mac. Today the business computers are 90% being PC but Mac is entering into that market segment with new options.

(3) Myth: There are far more softwares targetted for PCs as compared to Macs.

       Fact: Quality matters not the quantity.

Its true apparently the third party softwares available for PCs are way more than that of Macs. So in order to encounter the disadvantages and the growing popularity of Windows as Operating System, Macs comes out with Mactels (Mac + Intel) which are basically dual platform i.e. capable of running both Windows and OS X simultaneously. There are softwares like parallel etc which help you run both Windows and OS X simulteneously or in other words its like running two computers in one.

(4) Myth: Viruses and worms do not effect Mac but can damage PC quite significantly.

       Fact: Regardless of the platform, be cautious about viruses and worms and avoid websites that produce viruses.

Its is true that majority of the viruses and worms are built keeping Windows on mind and the main reason being PCs are so many in numbers (90%). But regardless of the platform one should always be careful. Mac OS X Operating System is more stable, secure and more intuitive as compared to Windows. Mac has less tendency to crash.

(5) Myth: PCs are so many in numbers but Macs are limited.

       Fact: Quality matters not Quantity.

Because of the high cost of Mac, people prefer to buy PCs rather than Mac.. Also Macs earlier meant computers for graphic artists. But now the advertising campaign of Apple corporation is to get into the business sector which happens to be Windows strong hold. Very soon Pcs lion dominance on that sector will decline a bit.

Now a days the majority of web pages are built with the help of open source PHP/MySQL based softwares. The main aim is to provide goods and services to their clients or users. Due to the interactivity the site provides, in order to engage the visitor with user interactive forms where user input is the key, its very important to address the security issues that can be exploited by malicious third party and ensure the best user experience. Some common types of Hacking is discussed below. There are many kinds of attack which the hacker does in order to control your website partially or totally. The most common and most dangerous types is the SQL injections and cross site scripting (XSS) Sql Injection techniques is to include a small piece of data or code to the database system (MySQL) which will exploit the database vurnability. SQL injection can run havoq on your website which can range from data deletion to unwanted data addition. Some precaution against these attacks on SQL injection are as follows:
Its a good practice to add a layer between the interactive forms and the database. That layer can be as simple as character escaping where the dangerous character of SQL commands are omitted or set to be deactive so that the database process these as normal strings.

There are several importance of having a meaningful logo. A few of the reasons are as follows:

1. A logo is the very first impression people get of your company -
Before a potential client even walks through your door, your logo is a representation of your company. It can make a company appear large, small (whether it really is or not) fun, serious, professional…
2. A logo needs longevity
Once a logo is designed it will represent your company for many years.
3. A logo needs to be original
A logo should be designed specifically for your company. A cheap “generic logo” may not reflect your company’s values. A cheap logo may also use clip art which could end up being used by another company.
4. A logo should look professional
You wouldn’t take a potential new client to Mac Donalds for lunch, in effect this is what is being done with a cheap logo. A logo should give your company a professional image, appropriate to its needs.
5. A logo should reflect the time and thought gone in to designing it
One of the problems here is that people don’t always realise the amount work that goes into a professionally designed logo:
* The research – even if the budget is quite small I would expect at the very least to find out who the company’s main competitors are and how they present themselves
* The brainstorming of ideas
* The rough sketches
* The 4 or 5 logo options worked up on the computer
* The amends, tweaking and further amends
6. A logo is the starting point of your whole corporate image
The colours typography and style of a logo will often dictate the corporate look of the rest of a company’s literature.
7. A logo is the face of your company to the outside world. A logo should look equally impressive when it is reduced to fit to a business card or being a large one to fit a banner. So when designing a partecular logo for your company the efforts and the brain along with the creativity being put together in order to have your company stand out from the competitors.

Marketers from Retail website face a challenge whether to  go with the basic organic (true) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or put the money on Ads that show up along side on the search engines like Google? According to a study by Engine Ready, an Internet Marketing Company, suggest that the visitors who get to retail sites through sponsored links are more likely to buy than those who clicked your organic results, and they also spent more, the average order of a paid linker was $11higher, at $ 117.06. Jamie Smith, the chief of Engine Ready, speculated that the online shoppers are not that interested in organic (true) search results where more the content of the website better than the organic marketing.  So the shoppers are more interested in the retail company which invest more on the paid ranking.

The popularity of Twitter gives Social Networking a whole new different direction. Now a days social networking is not about creating a profile or inviting friends, posting  comments and messages against your uploads like videos and
photos but also maintaining a constant contact with them.

 Thats where Twitter comes in. It’s all about letting your contacts know what you are doing? Twitter has definitely given Social Networking the answer they were looking for ie constant contact to their followers or being followed. Another feature of Twitter which is really popular is their real-time search engine. Facebook, another popular Social Networking site is all gearing up inorder to move into Twitter teritory. The company (Facebook) has began
rolling out a new version of its search feature, which it began testing with a selected few last month. This search would be a real-time search. The announcement of Facebook’s real-time search comes hot off the heels of their big announcement about the acquisition of Friend Feed,  which comes with a pretty nifty real-time search engine of its own.

Interesting enough, the search engine giant,  Google also got its own project that works and seems to have
 some real-time search implecations. The company has announced a search engine called “Caffeine” —– this is I guess,Google’s response to FaceBook’s Friend Feed. “Caffeine” aims at indexing the content much faster. Google suddenly out of the blues, opened the floodgates on what its describing as the next generation of search engines, most likely to test its efficiency and performance using real traffic.

 Why Caffeine?

 The new search engine called “Caffeine” explains what the differences are. On the live demo of “Caffeine” initial tests conducted on the afternoon of Tuesday August 10th,compared “Caffeine” to Google current stable release and tested for simple and complex queries.The result that has been apparent with this version are as follows:

(1) The top three non-paid search always remains the same.

(2) The order of results start changing as high as #4 sometimes #6.

(3) The speed is really faster like two times or more.

(4) The search data is more accurate.

(5) In essence, Caffeine picked up the same websites as compared to Google stable version only in different stacking order.

The following are some illustrative examples of the test conducted yesterday August 10th, 2009 i.e. Tuesday

Google Stable version search result for the search term "Freelance php developer"

Google "Caffeine" search result for the search term "Freelance php developer"

 Illustration 1

 From the above illustrations it can concluded that Google “Caffeine” is more than two times faster than Google stable version. For the Keyword “Freelance Php Developers” Google Stable Release took 0.22 second to search  6,140,000 websites  and latest Google “Caffeine” took 0.08 seconds to search 7,110,000 . So in half the time more websites.

Google Stable Version see the website ranking for "Freelance php developer"

 

Google “Caffeine” see the website ranking for “Freelance php developer”

 Illustration 2

See the ranking order has changed to in new Google “Caffeine” as compared to Google Stable Version on the keyword “Freelance Php Developer”. So Google “Caffeine” can do a real-time search.

Google already indexes content fairly quickly, as a matter of fact the faster it gets at doing so,the closer it will get to real-time search, a direction Google is persuing. So to conclude this topic the next hot thing on the web is the Real-Time Search.

The world has changed since the advent of the advanced Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Technique.
In a nut shell SEO involves getting pre-qualified traffic to your website by optimizing the websites (organic or algorhythm) by showing up on the number one page on the popular search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo on certain keywords. More the ranking (towards the number one in number one page) on the search engine better the possibility of getting more pre-qualified traffic on your website.
But now the demand for tracking the behaviour of the customer on your website have become really vital i.e. what they are doing after getting on your website or what are the webpages they are visiting on your site and also the amount of time they are spending on each page, and then tracking the bounce rate. To fullfill these needs Google Analytics kicks in. Google Analytics is a free webmaster tool for tracking those pre qualified leads to your website. You can use Google Analytics as a basic preference or as an advanced user. You will be amazed if you start tracking the customer and you can get a lot of tips from the data gather through Google Analytics and their behavior which drives towards a potential sell. The basic use of Google Analytics is to look at the number and collect data. A typical Google Analytics interface will look like as follows:

• From the DashBoard at a glance you can see the number of people visiting your site on a weekly, monthly or fortnightly basis (You have the option of selecting this preference). Generally if you are getting a lot of hits consider a weekly or fortnightly options, for less traffic or specific traffic website consider the monthly options.
• Tap the sources of traffic, so that you can determine from which search engines they are coming from like Google, Yahoo and MSN and if they are coming from referral sites you can track them as well.
• Tracking which keywords your visiters are typing in order to find your website from the search engines.
  You can know which pages are most popular and are visited by your potential client. You çan get these info from Top Content of Google Analytics.

Also you should need the following skills:

• Ability to copy and paste  the Google Analytics Code to every page of your website.
• Ability to Spot whether the content is serving the right visitor you can get this info from the % of bounce rate.

The following are the 6 most important points for improving SEO ranking of the website.

(1) Keyword Research/Analysis: Keyword Research or Analysis is the first step in order to start the SEO for your website. Here the Webmaster skills are tested to the fullest. First thing is to take time to find out which are the keyword in your segment people uses a lot. Make a list of the generic keyword (which will take time to appear on Search Engine), middle level Keywords invovling local search (comparitively easier to have your website ranked on those particular keywords on Search engine) and lastly the tertiary keywords or long tailed keywords. Use these above keywords on the title of the html page. This approach will signficantly increase your search results in few days time.

(2) Get Advice from SEO Guru that works: Get advice from the professional websites that has proven record and implemented on their clients. There are some common approaches which works. If you do everything right it should significantly increase your website’s ranking. But again its not a over night thing it needs time to get noticed.

(3) Look after your Website Codes: Your website should be built using the latest web technology xHTML and CSS. This approach will minimize the coding on the HTML side as the design aspect will be controlled by CSS (cascading Style Sheet).

(4) Make User friendly Navigation System: Making your website navigation system easy to browse and simple navigation will definitely increase traffic. Getting traffic to your website and make them stay on your website (the later is a difficult task to achieve). Use of interactive forms, voting on popular issues, Chat from the website, use of blogs on the same area of interest will definitely be helpful to keep the pre qualified leads on your website.

(5) Try not to use Flash or image based navigation links: Do not use Flash or Image based navigation links as to Search Engine it will appear like a wall cant read through the best way is to use text as navigation links.

(6) Getting Links from trusted and reputed sources: Doing link exchanges from reputed and trusted website will increase your website ranking significantly. Links coming to your website is like votes and Google will rank your website based on these votes.