What is CSS, Ajax and Web 2.0

First to define what CSS, Ajax and Web 2.0 are and how they apply to web sites. For this I'll turn to the Wikipedia definitions of each term.

CSS, short for Cascading Style Sheets, is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can be applied to any kind of XML document, including SVG and XUL.

Ajax, (the programming language, not the cleanser) short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a web development technique for creating interactive web applications. The intent is to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user makes a change.

Web 2.0 is a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004 which refers to a supposed second generation of Internet-based services - such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies - that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users.

Google's Supplemental Results

What exactly are Google's supplemental results, why does everyone fear getting indexed in the supplemental index and how can you get out of the supplemental results again? Here is a quick summary of the most important facts regarding Google's supplemental results.

What Are Supplemental Results?

A supplemental result is just like a regular web result, except that it's pulled from our supplemental index. We're able to place fewer restraints on sites that we crawl for this supplemental index than we do on sites that are crawled for our main index. For example, the number of parameters in a URL might exclude a site from being crawled for inclusion in our main index; however, it could still be crawled and added to our supplemental index.

If you're a webmaster, please note that the index in which a site is included is completely automated; there's no way to select or change the index in which a site appears. Please also be assured that the index in which a site is included doesn't affect its PageRank.



 

Google and Yahoo! The battle and IE7

The battle between Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft has been going on for some time and the playing field has grown beyond just search. The competition now includes the fields of social media, communities, online software and the latest - internet browsers.

In what could be a brilliant move, Google and Yahoo! have taken the approach, "if you can't bet them - join them" by releasing their own version of the recently released Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (IE7).

The features of all three versions are identical; the key difference is the services provided as defaults. Obviously the teams at Google and Yahoo! didn't want the world's top internet browser excluding their services, so they released their own versions.
Optimized versions of the IE7 browser will see users offered either Google or Yahoo! search as the default, the homepage will be set to their search engines, and their toolbars installed automatically.

While it appears that Microsoft hasn't stopped the roll out of the Google and Yahoo! IE7 versions, it seems they have had some say in the way they are marketed. If you visit the download pages for the two new versions, they look identical. So if Microsoft isn't setting the guidelines, then Google and Yahoo!'s marketing departments must be on holidays.

What these releases do mean for Microsoft is even more exposure for their Internet Explorer. Considering Google's very public support for Firefox (IE7's closest competitor), Microsoft execs would be seeing these new IE7 versions as the lesser of two evils.

Simplicity and Power (in Google's page creator)

Image Editing: Now you can make a pictoure look just right in the context of your webpage. You can crop, rotate, lighten, darken and add special effects to it right from whitin your browser.

Multipple sites: When you sign in to Google Page Creator, you will automatically be given a page with the same name as your Gmail address, so you dont worry about choosing a name when you're just trying to get started.

Pages for Mobile: This feature has an awesome power-to-compexity ratio: Now, every Google Page creator site automatically has a mobile edition. So when people visit your site from their mobile browser, they will see it optimized for their particular phone.
http://ojvcentral.com
exemple on a Google page created page

Google, Yahoo and MSN join forces in the sitemap tecnology.

The Sitemap protocol, Which was created by Google, nearly two years ago, will be adopted by Yahoo and MSN. Yahoo are using another protocol, whitch they will continue to support, but Nicrosoft will stop using its current protocol after Sitemap is fully implemented early in 2007.
A sitemap is a file that webmasters put their sites to guide the search engines automated web crawlers in properly indexing theis web pages.

The benefit for webmasters is less work and the content indexed more rapidly.

http://ojvcentral.com/

Google looks to newspapers

After taking control of the Internet's advertising model with the advertising program AdWords, Google is now set to extend its reach to print. Google is helping more than 100 of its customers buy advertising space in over 50 daily newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Denver Post.

If the three-month trial is successful, Google could extend the linkage between online and print advertising to all its customers.

"For advertisers, it gives them access to a network of newspapers through an online interface and the ability to potentially reach a new customer base.
ojvcentral.com

Google Mail and RSS goes mobile

Google is going more smarter about mobile devices. Google's search experience on PDA's and cellphones, has been, for quite a while, very different than it is on a full-sized screen.No Google is parsing Web pages it links to and tries to repackage them in a mobile friendly way.
Thought, Google's mail system Gmail, has not been a great experience on mobile devices. But now Google is releasing a mobile Java Gmail application for cell phones that makes using your Gmail account much easier. This new app will be pre loaded onto some new sprint phones, or avaliable for download for anyone else who has a Java-capable phone.The app gives Gmail its own custom menus system, which is much easier to navigate than a Web based app would be on a cell phone. Mail from the Gmail system shows up clearly, and the sites display attachments, like photos, Word doc's, in the app.

Google's new new RSS reader has also a mobile interface. It's subtly different appliacation from the full-sized Web version of Google Reader.
More here on the subject "Google goes mobile".

Google COOP
Make your own version of Google Search. Coop allow companies or individual users to set up pesonalized online searces - on topics ranging from proframming to sports.
This is really a way to make your own search engine as a value to offer your customers on your pages.
The service allows users to choose which pages they whish to include in a tailored Web search index, what the search results will look like on their own Web sites and whether other users can contribute their own favorite links to the index.
Custom Search Engines generate revenue through Adsense advertising revenue-charing program with Websites. Commercial users will be required to carry Google ads to pay for the free service.
Customized Web search should result in more relevant search results for specific users which in turn is likely to entice advertisers to pay more as ads become more targeted.
Privacy is protected because Google hosts searches on its own computers.
Sites employing custom search can choose whether users see results only from their site, from a selected list of related Web sites or across tens of thousands of others. They may also give priority to certain sites over others, in contrast to Google's classic pabe-rank system based on popularity.
Custom search engines empower communities everywhere to organize their own information and make it searchable.

http://ojvcentral.com/coop

Windows for mobile; Do it on your cell phone

 

Windows Live for mobile brings together all the ways you talk to your friends and connect with information.

E-mail, blogging, Web search, maps, and driving directions - you'll be amazed at how easy it is to get it all on the go.

Use your mobile phone to easily access your Windows Live world when on the go.

http://mobile.live.com/GoLive/

 

Advertising

Choosing An Online Business Is A Tricky Business
Read this article posted 14-10.2006. About to choose an online Business. Learn how to not get trapped by the hype: "To good to be true"

Communication changes


Younger email users are favoring other newer forms of communication like social networking sites, IM (Instant Messaging) and text messaging, and they see email as a "goog way to reach an elder, a parent, teacher or a boss, of to receive an attached file".There is a very strong sense that the migration away from email continues.

What about IE7

Monday, 11 September 2006

Seen from the user, improvements iclude tabbed browsing, better printing, RSS feed integration, more advanced searching, and better security, as well as plenty of add.ons to enhace the user experience.However, the most important changes that will have a more direct impact on how your site is loaded and displayed are:
RSS integration - IE7 automatically detects RSS feeds and asks you to subscribe. It also gives you the option to have IE7 auto-check for feed updates. Is your feed properly recognized by IE7?

Updated CSS behavior - the IE7 team worked very closely with the W3C workgroup to ensure standard compliance. They made over 200 changes from IE6 to become compliant with CSS2.1. Even if your site is standard compliant, it may not be renderd exactly the same as it is in IE6 of Firefox.

AJAX XMLHTTP Request changes - the IE blog states: "to have your cross browser AJAX work better with IE7, you really should be invoking the native XMLHttpRequest first to see if it's avaliable before instantiating the ActiveX control, instead of the other way around."
Added security features - everything from more secure SSL defaults to disabling most ActiveX controls by default has beed changed to help make the user's browsing more secure. These changes could drastically change your users browsing and purchasing experience.
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