Windows 8 And IE10 Combo Results In Four Times Faster MSN Portal

You may recall Microsoft launched a very special version of its MSN portal a couple of days before the launch of Windows 8. The website donned a design that was clearly inspired by Redmond’s latest operating system that brought it in line with Windows 8.
But there were several improvements under the hood that were supposed to help it load faster.


It seems that Redmond’s efforts are now paying off. A study conducted by an independent firm shows that MSN for Windows 8 not only loads faster than previous version of the portal, but also leaves other Internet news portals in the dust when it comes to performance.

The research was performed by Principal Technologies Inc., which shows that MSN for Windows 8 is around four times faster than eight top major online competitors — including sites like CNN, New York Times, WSJ and Forbes.
Comparing specific sections of the portal, the study found that the Sports page on MSN loaded an impressive 7 times faster than websites like ESPN and NFL, while the News category boasted a load time that at least 3 times quicker than both CNN and New York Times.
Obviously, several factors are at play when it comes to website load times, particularly content heavy destinations like the ones name above.

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Android images with clickable areas

What is android? This is a simple question but the answer is quite complicated. If you go deeper on the word “android”, we will get lot of answers for the question what is Android. To answer in a simple way. 

             Android is an operating system for Mobile phones.

“Android images with clickable areas”

If we want to display an image in Android with clickable areas we can usemethod that involves overlaying a hotspot image on top of the real image being displayed. The overlay image has exactly the same size as the first image. It uses different coloured regions  to indicate the hotspots.

                                                           

For Example:-

Let’s start with what the app looks like when you touch the screen. Circles appear that indicate roughly where the clickable regions on the screen are. When you touch one of the regions, the image changes. For example, when you touch the image near the end of the space ship, the app changes to make it look like you started the space ship.

Touching the image a second time, returns you to the initial view of the app, which is the first picture without the orange circles showing.

The way this app is set up with a Frame View and Image View gives you an easy way to handle scaling. I used a 800 x 480 image for this demo app. It scales automatically to all screen sizes, and it is high enough resolution that it looks good on a tablet. Here’s what it looks like in a portrait orientation.

In a real app, you might disallow portrait orientation because it has a very small usable view. I left it in for testing reasons. I wanted to know that the image and the hotspot image were scaling correctly.

Working

This takes place in 2 steps:-

1.    Getting the layout just right so the images would scale correctly on all Android devices and tablets.

2.    Getting the clickable regions to work and also to scale automatically.

The second image exactly has the same size as the first one. It uses different coloured regions to indicate the Hotspots.The main layout for this app uses a Frame View. It is defined to fill up the entire screen. Within it are two image views. Views defined this way in a Frame View share the space of the frame. The second one appears on top of the first one.

There is a lot going on in this method:

(1) The coordinates of the touch point come from the event object. The coordinates are relative to the view.

(2) Given the coordinates of the touch, we look up the colour of a pixel at the corresponding point in the mask image (the one with the coloured rectangles). The layout rules for a FrameView and identically sized images ensure that the points correspond.

(3) The colour for point is not necessarily the exact colour value we used in the hotspot image. The reason for this is that the colours could change a bit as the image is scaled.

“Conclusion”

A simple way of adding clickable regions and take full advantage of Android’s handling of different screen sizes and orientations. We do not find much overhead for the second image. For simple transitions from one activity to another, this method works out well.

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Semantic Markup Strategies For Local Business Websites

One of the least-tapped areas of local business website optimization continues to be semantic markup. It increases chances that information from your website will be highlighted in search engine results pages via rich snippets, attracting greater attention and clickthroughs.

While special markup likely may not directly improve your rankings in search, it does apparently increase clickthrough rate or “CTR”, as consumers are more drawn to your site’s listings. Just this increase in CTR alone could benefit your rankings over time, as clickthroughs can influence rankings; so, there are a few reasons why semantic markup is worthwhile. This is for Google, Bing, and Facebook search, too. Only a few of these may impact your listing in the local 7-pack or in Google maps, your site can also  attract customers via the regular, keyword search results pages; and, regular listing can and do appear on the same results pages as the 7-pack!

So check to see if you’ve added the following markups to your local website (if applicable). To improve your traffic, even on search results which are not directly related to something you sell.

There are some Semantic Markup Strategies For Local Business Websites:-

Authorship Markup:- first of all best semantic markup is likely authorship – it allows your personal photo to appear with pages you author, and your website, when they are listed in search engines results. For local search, this may be even more compelling in Google, making your listing appear far more interesting and professional in the 7-pack.

To enable this to happen, you must have a Google+ profile for the business proprietor, link to it from your website including a querystring with rel=author.

<a href=”[profile_url]?rel=author”>Google</a>

Then, link back to your site from your Google+ profile in the “Contributor To” section. It’s also a good idea to have a good author for Google+.

                                                                          

Local Business Schema and Geotag:- you can use this to markup your address and contact information on your site, although there are additional fields you can include such as hours of operation, payment types accepted, and more. 

Example Markup

                                                                                                   

Testimonial:- through this Google allows local businesses to disclose that they have a testimonial by using semantic markup for reviews, and Google sometimes will display that information in conjunction with the business’s listings in SERPs. Testimonials can increase their chances of being displayed in the snippet text beneath your listing, and in the sample text callouts shown variously in the cached images of your webpage

                                                                                 

Breadcrumbs:- breadcrumbs can help a user orient themselves in the site’s hierarchy, and provide them with related pages that they might wish to visit. For this reason, Google began bubbling-up this data to display in rich snippets as additional links beneath the hyperlinks page name. simply from a statistical perspective, having additional links to your site on search results pages increases the odds of you having users click through overtime – so, breadcrumb links are highly desirable! Google does a fair job of automatically detecting by them in order to be displayed in the snippet. To increase your chances, use the breadcrumb markup on your site pages.

Events:- if your company participates in some events or provides special services at different times/dates during the year, you might consider incorporating the events schema markup. You don’t feel confident at doing the coding necessary; Google does give you another option for Events at this time.

In your Webmaster Tools account, Google has provided a beta service called the Data Highlighter for Events. Using the interface, you can highlight elements of events and tell Google which data item is which event element – Name, Date, Venue, Address, URL etc. if Google deems the Data Highlighter to be successful, they’ll likely expand it to include other types of rich snippets as well.

Coupons/Offers:-  if you have coupons or special offers, use the Offer Schema. Its not clear to me that Google or Bing does any special snippet treatment for coupons or offers at this time, but they included it in Schema.org, and it would make sense for them to consider incorporating it more visibly at a future date.

Video:- Google recommends that you use the VideoObjectSchema to help them to better interpret and represent your video content in search result. Consumers apparently like seeing videos of products or of businesses providing services, so this can help with conversions as well.

Recipes:- recipes get tons of searches on the net, and for that reason search engines highlight the presentation of their listings in search results. Your reason for publishing a recipe doesn’t have to be dramatic, though – just do it to interact with the web community more and your business may benefit.

Individuals:- in addition to displaying author information, you can also mark up information about executives and employees on your site as well by using the Schema for a Person.

Table & Bulleted Lists:- this is not mostly in use but if you have tabular data or content that lends itself to production in a list, providing this on your website can again make your listing in search results get more consideration, and it affords you the chance to display more info about products and services before probable customers have even reached your website.For example, this could work great for many restaurants, if they put their menu in an HTML table – preferable, compared with the Flash/PDF/image formats that many eateries use instead.

Products:-  if your business sells products, seriously consider incorporation data about them on your site and marking it up with the Product Schema. Product markup can enable your listings to show price, rating, and availability in the search results.

Meta Descriptions:- meta descriptions have been one of the earliest and longest surviving semantic markup elements. They’re possibly the most-influetial as well, since they often appear as the entire snippet text in search results. The description Meta Tag is still frequently neglected on many small business websites.

Facebook Open Graph:-  to help ensure your site’s pages are presented well in Facebook search and various interface, incorporate. Use it simultaneously with Schema.org protocol – the two do not conflict with one another. Each time you insert semantic markup, be sure to check it using Google’s structured data testing tool. So go through this checklist and add any of the semantic markup options you can, and it may help you achieve a very rosy year for your website and business in 2013

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Top 10 Freelancing Websites

Freelancing is one of the best and easy way to get for your ability and aptitude without in fact getting employed and being ruled by the employer. It is in fact, more in use as a business where the clients give you contracts if they find you worthy enough to work with. The mainly concept of freelancing must not be new to my readers as, giving best suggestions to enhance your freelancing skills and make it more productive.

Mostly freelancers love that they get to make their own schedule – one that works for them. “Sometimes, everyone wants to do their work at 10:30pm, in pajamas, with CSI on in the background, and bowl of Doritos on my desk.”

There are present the top 10 freelancing sites, that are best known for their services:-

oDesk:-  oDesk is the one of the best site for freelancer. According to the overall ratings of the site, oDesk enjoys the best reputation. The best thing of this site is that attracts most of the users is the simple layout and efficient handling of data. It provide thousands of jobs posted daily in every category. 

 

Elance:-  Elance is another freelance work provider. It is also provide the jobs like the other sites. However, getting paid through this platform is not as easy as it seems to be on other freelancing sites;  to contract user is required to clear few tests in order to move on in posting a job

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Project4 Hire:- the site has recently improved its stats a lot. Similar to Elance, the site provides a platform for all the talented people, looking for jobs online and making their freelancing career a success.

People Perhour:- just name is enough to understand how devoted this site would be in offering freelancing jobs to the members. It’s a site where numerous of jobs are published related to different fields and people who are in search of jobs choose the most suited ones for them and apply for them.

 Php Codelance:- sometimes there is misunderstood that freelancing is mostly restricted to article writing and programming. And this is the one of the best site which provides freelancing jobs specifically to PHP developer.
 

Sitereviver:-  recently launched in 2012, is enjoying to earn money through it promising look and worth praising services. The site is easy to use and the job posting process is absolutely free.

Freelancer:-  freelancer is one of the best freelancing sites with effective layout that gives it a high quality look. You have to just create your own profile on your freelancer platform and can bid for 10 jobs(free) per months.

vWorker:-  people find this site, somehow user unfriendly, maybe that’s the reason that you get a response for your posted jobs much quickly as compared to others. A good site indeed.

GetAFreelancer:-  this site is really good for the professional programmers, interpreters and graphic designers, providing a track of opportunities to those who have enough talent to complete with the best freelancers that are in the same race as they are.

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SEO Strategy for 2013

Recently updates in Google has altered many strategies of SEO, which was working for many websites earlier. Link building with same anchor text, keyword based content generation which was unethical from starting, but have brought SEO rankings for websites which followed these strategies. But after Google Panda and Google Penguin update, ever y campaign needs special attention as it is required for new campaign. Below are few tips to improve your SEO campaigns according to new updates. Note that we’re only covering those metrics critical to SEO-Optimizaion  for the search engines. As a result, more general metrics may not be included.

Search Engine Share of Referring Visits-: it’s really critical to keep track of the contribution of each traffic source for your site. These include:

• .Direct Navigation
• .Referral Traffic
• .Search Traffic

                                                                         

Visits Referred By Specific Search Engines:- three major engines make up 95%+ of all search traffic in the US-Google and the Yahoo-Bing alliance. For most countries outside the US 80%+ of search traffic comes solely from Google.

• .Compare Performance vs. Market Share
• .Get visibility into potential drops
• .Uncover strategic value

Visits Referred By Specific Search Engine Terms and Phrases

The keywords that send traffic are another important piece of your analytics pie. You’ll want to keep track of these on a regular basis to help identify new trends in keyword demand. You may also find value in tracking search referral counts for terms outside the “top” terms/phrases-those that are important and valuable to your business. 

When it comes to the bottom line for your organization, few metrics matter as much as conversion. This is a much higher conversion rate than most of the 1000s of keywords used to find our site. With this information, we can now do two things.

1.       Checking our rankings, we see that we only rank #4 for “SEO Tools”. Working to improve this position will undoubtedly lead to more conversion

2.       Because our analytics will also tell us what page these visitors landed, we can focus on efforts on that page to improve visitor experience.

While conversion rate tracking from keyword phrase referrals is certainly important, it’s never the whole story.

Number Of Pages Receiving At Least One Visit From Search Engines:- the number of pages that receive search engine traffic is an essential metric for monitoring overall SEO performance. From this number, we can get a hint into indexation – the number of pages the engines are keeping in their indices from our site

Some most important tips to improve your SEO campaigns according to new updates:

• Link Building
• Exact Match Domain
• Content Marketing
• Video Marketing
• Social Media

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Mobile Advertising

Everyone knows cell phone and Smartphone technology is developing rapidly.  Today everybody wants to purchase and no doubt people also purchasing multimedia-capable phones, through its advertising opportunities continue to grow rapidly. Opportunities are increasing for people in all career streams like writers, graphic designers, brand managers, and engineers.  Product and service-oriented companies can application and mobile web browsers.People want to recurrently subscribe to data service it may be text and picture messaging, content downloads, and mobile internet. These media channels help carry content and advertisement. Mobile marketing is smart, easy, cost effective, and efficient. Advertisements could be as simple as an ad or link at the bottom of a text message. Advertisements could be designed and effective to hearten viewers to respond instantaneously. It is much cheap in cost than internet advertising.

                                                                       

BENEFITS

Mobile advertising helps you connect with far-reaching customer base at a low cost. You can expend limited amount of money on advertising and focus more greatly on product improvement. Through this you can speedily and successfully reach a large number of people at once at any time since people always keep their cell phones close by.

How It Works

Mobile advertisements must be designed in a visually appealing and consumer friendly way. If you would like to advertise a product, then you have to work with a marketing agency that has established tools for building, executing, monitoring, and controlling campaigns. Flexible real-time reporting tools can help you maximize your earning potential.

Take a step back to assess what demographics are most reachable through mobile advertisements. Then decide that mobile advertisements are right for your business. You might decide against mobile advertisements since many people may not have Smartphone.

When you decide for mobile advertisements then work with a marketing firm to develop an ad campaign. Pay particular attention to colors, designs, logos, readability, multimedia message, or with an online application or web browser. Software can be customized according to your business’s need and requirements.

Companies

AdStar, ADMOB, and Zest ADZ are some  examples of companies that providing  mobile marketing services.

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Advance SEO Tips For Blog 2013

In some times, blogs or weblogs have proven its usefulness as a promotion tool for those and brands when used to communicate ideas and information. Behind it two evident reasons why this platform for content publishing and community building is so successful in business promotion are:
It’s potential to easily spread attentiveness through interactivity and audience rendezvous

Its ability to manipulate consumers’ buying decisions.

Experts says that blog is the most important social media tool. Everything else that follows will just maintain and proliferate the content that your blog has. And this is the part of the SEO.

SEO is an important method in blogging. It gives the new and embattled visitors. Leads and budding customers to the blog can be easily generated through this channel. 

It is not matter how you write content and it should never crossing point with it through SEO. Because search engines are all about improving the online experience of their users. So your SEO come close to should do too.

There have been so many changes in Google’s search algorithms in past few years. In which a few new signals, factors and methodologies where improve.

Always create contents that get actually searched and consumed by your target audience. You can use keyword research tools such as Google’s Keyword Tool to get content ideas. Focus your content development approach on providing answers to frequently searched information on subject.

Make sure that the content is absolutely relevant or actually about the query you’re targeting. Try to create more landing pages (not just posts). Because blog posts can do pretty well on search results. But static pages can perform better.

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