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Web 2.0 – Next Big Thing

admin — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 05:43:51 +0000

Web developers, designers, bloggers, and even major media outlets have been abuzz with talk of “Web 2.0″ this year. Though the term bears the familiar version number so often attached to software products, it doesn’t actually refer to any one technology. Rather, Web 2.0 is the moniker for an emerging set of Internet-based tools and an emerging philosophy on how to use them.

Many people—including, or perhaps especially, supporters—critique the “Web 2.0” moniker for definitional reasons. Few can agree on even the general outlines of Web 2.0. It is about no single new development. Moreover, the term is often applied to a heterogeneous mix of relatively familiar and also very emergent technologies. The former may appear as very much “Web 1.0,” and the latter may be seen as too evanescent to be relied on for serious informatics work. Indeed, one leading exponent of this movement deems continuous improvement to be a hallmark of such projects, which makes pinning down their identities even more difficult.1 Yet we can survey the ground traversed by Web 2.0 projects and discussions in order to reveal a diverse set of digital strategies with powerful implications for higher education.2 Ultimately, the label “Web 2.0” is far less important than the concepts, projects, and practices included in its scope.

Indeed, some Web 2.0 features have been around for years, such as eBay feedback, which allows buyers to rate sellers on their customer service. Another is Amazon.com’s reader book reviews and the suggestions the company gives to visitors based on what others with similar interests have purchased.

The term Web 2.0 was actually coined a couple of years ago by executives of O’Reilly Media, a publishing company that also helps organize technology conferences (including the Web 2.0 Conference, held annually in San Francisco). It was meant to describe Web sites emerging from the ashes of the technology industry’s recent collapse.

Every nonprofit has stories to tell, and yours is no exception whether the stories are about people who receive services from your programs, volunteer experiences, or ways others are impacted by your work. One way to get those stories out to the world is to publish them on a blog.

Short for “Web logs,” blogs are online journals created by an individual or an organization and cover topics ranging from human rights to fashion and everything in between.

ogs are a great example of how emerging voices are not only being heard but amplified. By reading and discussing each other’s posts, bloggers form a massive network that is able to exert pressure on national media and, increasingly, on policy makers as well.

Blog postings, typically updated daily, can include images, photos, links, video, audio, or simple text. The postings are archived by date and sometimes by category or by author. Permanent links, or “permalinks,” allow other bloggers and Web site owners to link directly to a specific post on your blog and encourage inter-blog dialog. Digg, the technology news site, operates like a popularity contest. Individuals nominate articles from various news sources to appear on the Web site. Articles that generate the most votes from users become the top headlines. No editors are involved.

In keeping with many of its Web 2.0 brethren, Digg’s visitors can create profiles and leave comments, creating a mini community.
Since its founding two years ago, Digg’s popularity has blossomed. In December, it had 698,000 online visitors, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, challenging Slashdot, a veteran in the technology news arena that had 1.27 million visitors during the same period.

What’s accelerated Web 2.0 ideals more recently are new technologies. Implementing the movement’s basic principles is less expensive and easier than it was several years ago because of the evolution of data storage and software, plus the wider adoption of high-speed Internet connections by consumers.

Ajax, a kind of software that makes Web site features faster to use, is a staple of Web 2.0 companies. So too is RSS, a technology behind online news feeds.

In any case, some say the definition of Web 2.0 has expanded so that almost every Web site can qualify. Even some supporters agree the meaning has become diluted.

“It’s almost like the dot-com generation if you suddenly had dot-com in your name, your valuation was 10 times higher,” said Yahoo’s Horowitz. “Now, if you have a photo-sharing site, so what? But you have a Web 2.0 sharing site, and then it gets a lot of buzz.”

Web 2.0 tools are important, but their impact goes much deeper than their gadget-y novelty might suggest. Individuals and organizations alike are finding new and increasingly effective ways of connecting through Web 2.0 technology. This is the human side of this technical transformation.

Even the smallest organization has a story to share and voices to amplify. Web 2.0 can help you be heard. This new Web of connections is already allowing nonprofit supporters to build movements for social, environmental, economic, and political change. Don’t let your movement leave you behind.

White Hat Vs Black Hat

admin — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 04:57:22 +0000

As with any other business practice, Search Engine Optimization can be performed within or without the boundaries of accepted business ethics. White hat SEO is optimization that follows the guidelines set forth by search engines. Black hat SEO intentionally undermines these guidelines.

For those who haven’t heard, for the past year or two some have labeled different forms of search engine optimization by different hat colors. Those who practice what some refer to as “ethical” SEO are the White Hats (like the good guys in the movies), and those who some refer to as “spammers” are the Black Hats (like the bad guys in the movies). Those who are not quite as pure as the driven snow but who aren’t quite as… umm… aggressive as a full-fledged “search engine spammer” are sometimes referred to as Gray Hats.

There are various new shades added to the list:

* Dark Inky Black Hat SEO: So evil he’s a typo squatter installing spyware. Plain illegal, too.

* Charcoal Hat SEO: Optimizes really unrelated pages for all kinds of queries, but within the bounds of legality.

* Dark Gray Hat SEO: This SEO is e.g. a splogger stealing content from other sites. (What, that’s better than charcoal?)

* Slate Gray Hat SEO: An SEO creating link farms and such.

* Gray Hat SEO: An SEO who actually reads the search engine’s webmaster guidelines, but then tries as much “evil” as she can get away with.

* Light Gray Hat SEO: This SEO creates original content (lots of it), but the content is still only aimed at search engines.

* Off-White Hat SEO: This guy not only ensures the site is indexable – he’ll also make sure to get lots of backlinks from friends.

* White Hat SEO: This person puts up the content that people are actually searching for, and prepares the site to make it very accessible. White Hat SEOs only optimize those of their pages they deem worthy to be ranking top in search engines.

* Luminescent Pearly White Hat SEO: Not only does this SEO do everything the White Hat SEO does, the LPW Hat SEO also makes sure pages will not show up for irrelevant queries.

But are these labels helping anyone, and do they really mean anything? Certainly, the SEO methods I use would put me into the White Hat category. Does this make me better than those in the Black Hat category? I guess the question would be, better at what? It doesn’t make me a better person, nor does it necessarily make me a better SEO. It might make me better at not getting a site banned from the search engines, but then again, most Black Hats know that their sites will eventually get banned and have figured that into their business model. So it’s not really a question of good or bad, like the hats seem to imply.

White hat SEO includes:

* Increasing keyword density within text in a relatively natural manner

* Designing keyword friendly Titles, Meta Tags, Meta Descriptions, Headers, and Alt text for your site

* Natural linking between your site and similar sites

* Developing new, link-friendly content for your site

Both White Hat and Black Hat SEOs have their place. Lots of people are indeed looking for the types of products and services that Black Hatters specialize in. There is a huge demand for their black magic. As much as I hate lousy search results, as long as the Black Hats are doing their thing to the types of sites that I wouldn’t be seeking out anyway, then it really doesn’t bother me; it’s the search engines’ problem to get rid of it.

The important thing to note, however, is that most sites don’t need to resort to Black Hat SEO.

There are definite advantages to cutting corners and utilizing black hat SEO, mainly that your page will increase dramatically in Search Engine Results Page (SERP) rank within a relatively brief amount of time. However, search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc.) are constantly updating their algorithms to detect and penalize black hat SEO.

Formerly, it was common practice in black hat SEO to create hidden text within web pages. This text increased keyword density without creating phony sounding text. For instance, if I wanted to increase my keyword density for copywriting I could simply insert the following line at the bottom of my text:

Then I could change the text font color to white and “presto” the text disappears — my keyword density for copywriting increases but my visible text remains the same.

It all depends on what the Website owner’s goal is. Do they want quick fixes and throwaway domains for the chance of a temporary big payoff, or do they want a stable business that takes a lot of time and energy, but which pays off handsomely over time? Neither one is necessarily right or wrong — just different. It’s just like the stock market or gambling in many ways. If you’re willing to be extremely aggressive, there’s a chance you’ll make a ton of money. However, there’s usually even more of a chance that you’ll lose a ton also. It really comes down to how much of a gambler you are.

Fortunately, this basic black hat practice is no longer viable, as search engines have developed methods to detect ‘keyword spam’ and same-color text. Websites with such black hat tactics are not only recognized by the search engines as black hat sites, but are penalized and often completely removed from SERPs. If this happens to your page, it can take months or years to regain your ranking.

Most current black hat SEO takes place on the design or programming side of website development. These tactics include:

* Cloaking — Showing a different page to search engines than to site visitors

* Duplicating content — creating numerous copies of web pages in order to increase page rank

* Link Farming — Buying into ‘link farms’, sites with no other intention than to increase your links unnaturally

* Page jacking — Copying and pasting text from other websites and using it as your own

fIs Black Hat SEO worth the Risk? In my mind, no. You may get away with it and it will be very lucrative for you to quickly climb the SERPs. However, keep in mind that competitors and Search Engines are extremely suspicious of quick-climbing websites. If your site is found to have black hat SEO, it will be severely penalized by if not completely removed from the search engine.

For a company looking for long-term success, there is absolutely no reason to gamble with their site. But seriously, even though it may take more lead-time, the White Hat method is a lot less stressful, and quite frankly a whole lot easier.

How to create a Google Site Map

admin — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 04:22:31 +0000

Officially announced on June 6th, 2005 at Google’e Blog, Google Site Map allows you to submit a listing of all your urls for Google to crawl.

There have been many questions concerning the procedure of creating a Google Site Map. Below is the non-Python way of creating one. (Note: Google has further documentation at their site)

First, create a file named sitemap.xml

Use the following code in any HTML editor:

Here’s a breakdown of those properties:

lastmod -

This is the date the document was last modified and uses the following formats:

dd.mm.yyyy

dd.mm.yyyy hh:mm

dd/mm/yyyy

dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm

changefreq -

Tells Google Sitemaps the frequently that content of a particular URL will change.

Your options are “always”, “hourly”, “daily”, “weekly”, “monthly”, “yearly” or “never”.

The value “always” should be used to describe documents that change each time they are accessed. The value “never” should be used to describe archived URLs.

priority -

The priority of a particular URL relative to other pages on your site.
You may select between 0.0 and 1.0, where 0.0 identifies the lowest priority page(s) on your website and 1.0 identifies the highest priority page(s) on your website.

Add as many pages as there are in your website.

Google Sitemap supports up to 50,000 pages per XML file.

Once you’ve completed all of those steps, you’ll need to submit your site map page.

Submit to: (requires gmail account)

https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login