How the Right RSS Viewer Can Keep You Productive

As a savvy productivity driven small business Internet marketer, there are certain tips that will help you easily get to information that will help you in your online marketing. Today’s tip has to do with an a neat RSS Viewer. RSS Explained for the Novice Small Business Internet Marketer Before we get into the nitty gritty, RSS, which is the acronym for Really Simple Syndication, is a web format used to publish frequently updated online content, such as on a blog (blog posts/entries), audio and video in a standardized format. An RSS document is called a feed (or web feed), which includes data that summarizes the publishing information and allows you to see full or summarized versions of text, audio or video on a blog.

Click to read more ...

The Future of the Social Web: In Five Eras

Expect the Groundswell to continue, in which people connect to each other –rather than institutions. Consumer adoption of social networks is increasing a rapid pace,brands are adopting even during a recession,so expect the space to rapidly innovate to match this trend. Clients can access this report, but to summarize what we found, in the executive summary we state: Today’s social experience is disjointed because consumers have separate identities in each social network they visit. A simple set of technologies that enable a portable identity will soon empower consumers to bring their identities with them — transforming marketing, eCommerce, CRM, and advertising. IDs are just the beginning of this transformation, in which the Web will evolve step by step from separate social sites into a shared social experience. Consumers will rely on their peers as they make online decisions, whether or not brands choose to participate. Socially connected consumers will strengthen communities and shift power away from brands and CRM systems; eventually this will result in empowered communities defining the next generation of products.

Click to read more ...

Internet has only just begun, say founders

April 22nd, 2009 by Daniel Silva

Enlarge

British software genius Tim Berners-Lee, one of the founders of the World Wide Web system gives a speech during the 18th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2009) in Madrid. While the Internet has dramatically changed lives around the world, its full impact will only be realised when far more people and information go on-line, its founders said.

While the Internet has dramatically changed lives around the world, its full impact will only be realised when far more people and information go on-line, its founders said Wednesday.

"The Web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than the past," said Tim Berners-Lee, one of the inventors of the World Wide Web, at a seminar on its future.

Just 23 percent of the globe's population currently uses the Internet, according to the United Nation's International Telecommunications Union, with use much higher in developed nations.

By contrast, just five percent of Africans surf the web, it said in a report issued last month.

But that level is expected to rise, especially in developing nations, as mobile Internet access takes off, making it no longer necessary to use a computer to surf the Web, said Internet co-founder Vinton Cerf.

"We will have more Internet, larger numbers of users, more mobile access, more speed, more things online and more appliances we can control over the Internet," the Google vice president and chief Internet evangelist said.

Robert Cailliau, who designed the Web with Berners-Lee in 1989, said having more data on the Internet, and more people with the ability to access it, will spur the development of new technology and solutions to global problems.

"When we have all data online it will be great for humanity. It is a prerequisite to solving many problems that humankind faces," the Belgian software scientist said.

The Internet has already led to the development of businesses that could not have existed without it, boosted literacy and learning and brought people closer together through cheaper modes of communication, the Internet pioneers said.

"We never, ever in the history of mankind have had access to so much information so quickly and so easily," said Cerf.

With the help of other scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), Berners-Lee and Cailliau set up the Web in 1989 to allow thousands of scientists around the world to share information and data.

The WWW technology -- which simplifies the process of searching for information on the Internet -- was first made more widely available from 1991.

The number of Web sites has since ballooned from just 500 as recently as 1994 to over 80 million currently, with growing numbers of sites consisting of user-generated content like blogs.

Even its founders are surprised by its popularity.

"What we did not imagine was a Web of people, but a Web of documents," said Dale Dougherty, the founder of GNN, the Global Network Navigator, the first web portal and the first site on the Internet to be supported by advertising.

For his part, Cailliau said he was impressed that search engines can still sort through the myriad of material that is now on-line.

"To me the biggest surprise is that Google still functions despite the explosion in the number of sites," said Cailliau.

Source: Physorg.com

32 Nifty ways to build links and drive traffic

Link building is an essential necessity for all bloggers, unless you don’t want to be indexed by google and drive a ton of traffic to your blog, then by all means - skip right past this blog post.

Here is a definitive - simple list of things you can do to get incoming links.

1. Give away Freebies
2. Contribute to popular forums, using your link in your signature.
3. Write a pillar or link bait article, and get it plastered on digg, reddit, and other viral sites.
4. Create video link bait that goes viral on youtube.
5. Post your link as the source on Question and Answer sites like Yahoo Answers.
6. Write a Wordpress Theme, or Plugin. Themes are great because you can link back to your site in the copyright area.
7. Do something unusual that gets you noticed on a popular news site.
8. Share the link love, link to others who may link back.
9. Insult an authority in your niche, might get you flamed but it may get you some good backlinks.
10. Become top commenter on do-follow blogs.
11. Produce killer content that people quote, and link to.
12. Use Ping.fm to post your blog posts across multiple social networks so people see it, and link to it.
13. Cross link from your other websites.
14. Provide a great service, or design a web app.
15. Make an ebook. Give it away for a great way to get new email subscribers for your blog.
16. Starting an affiliate program, is a great way to get a ton of incoming links, and authority.
17. Write guest posts for other blogs in your niche, make sure to add your link in the bio box.
18. Submit articles to article sites, linking back to your site in the bio.
19. Purchase Reviews, or ask people to Review it.
20. Become DoFollow and Submit your blog to dofollow directories.
21. Write reviews, if you give a good review the site may link to you, if you give a bad review then other sites might link to your review.
22. Submit to free and paid directories.
23. Write list posts, people love lists(you’re reading this post aren’t you?), and lists get lots of links!
24. Make a poll or survey that people are interested in.
25. Create a wikipedia page about your blog, that links back to it.
26. Sponsor other sites, get them to review you.
27. Start a charity or non-profit.
28. Hold contests. Then post that contest at Blog Contest Site.
29. Release a firefox extension or plugin that is a must have.
30. Interview someone famous, or at least semi-famous. Even a popular blogger will work, your mom, though in most cases won’t work.
31. Writing meaningful, non-spammy, comments on do-follow blogs.
32. Ask for people to retweet, digg, or stumble your best articles.

Source: There's a blog in my soup

10 Business Models to Monetise Web Applications

During my morning reading, The Long Tail had a link to a survey of Web app business models. If you take a look at the charts listing the revenue models, you will see there are twenty models listed. However, that is not an exhaustive list of ways to make money. Some of the models, such as Fixed and Variable Subscriptions, have several "implementations" that you can attempt. Having said this, why is it that monetization is so hard for many Web 2.0 applications? Let's look at what needs to be done to support the various business models.

Click to read more ...