DVD sales, Variety reports, appear to have dropped 5%-6% from their 2007 levels. And while Blu-ray titles moved at a rate four times higher than the prior year, that still wasn’t enough to make up the difference. Overall, disc sales reportedly dipped 3%-4% below 2007’s $15.38 billion total.

“As far as I’m concerned, down is the new flat and flat is the new up,” one executive told Variety. And he’s right. It’s not a huge surprise, given the significant economic downturn, that consumers spent less on homevideo entertainment last year. But total industry sales were still over $20 billion (it was $22.9 billion in ‘07) — things aren’t exactly bleak.

The year’s biggest DVD sellers were The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Kung Fu Panda, Wall-E, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and I Am Legend.

Meanwhile, Blu-ray discs haven’t been selling quite as hotly as the industry would like. While early predictions put 2008 sales targets at around $1 billion, the format had only rung up around $800 million by November. Holiday sales were strong however, with Iron Man and The Dark Knight especially strong.

Homevideo executives predict that it’ll take another couple of years before Blu-ray can offset DVD’s decline. One industry insider tells Variety, “Privately, they’re all concerned.”

In other words, if you purchase a computer with Vista preloaded on it, on or after July 1, up to some undecided date (OEMs can choose to have an even shorter timeframe within the one Microsoft will give), you will have the option to upgrade to Windows 7 for free when it becomes available. However, as with previous Microsoft operating system upgrade programs, there are restrictions:

* A language version of the qualifying Windows Vista product can only be upgraded to the same language version of the Windows 7 upgrade software.
* The Windows Vista product can only be upgraded to the associated edition of the upgrade software. No other upgrade paths are available and supported under the Program. For example, the following upgrades are not allowed in the program: upgrades from Windows Vista Home Basic or Windows Vista Starter, upgrades from Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate, or upgrades from Windows Vista Business to Windows 7 Ultimate.

Remember that Microsoft has not made this information available to the public, and it is still subject to change. It won’t be long now before we know for sure which editions of Windows 7 the software giant is planning on releasing. So far, it’s clear that Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, and Enterprise are on the table but an official list still isn’t available.

Source : Click here

There are a number of online tools that I use in my SEO efforts. Some of these tools are free and some cost money. I suppose you could do your SEO work without most of these tools, but who would want to? They make life easier, and they make your SEO efforts more efficient and effective.

A good keyword tool is critically important

I have to tell you, as far as I am concerned the single most important tool in your tool kit is a keyword tool. As I’ve said before, if your keyword phrases are not ever searched for then your search engine optimization efforts are in vain. First you need to find out what people are searching for in regards to your topic, and then do your optimization.

There are a lot of keyword tools out there if you do a little searching. Some are free, but I use WordTracker which costs me about $60 for a month subscription. It’s an online tool, and you just log in and use it whenever you need it. I usually end up subscribing for a month every few months. The thing is, it is so valuable that it would be worth way more than 100 times that price. Thank god for competition.

With WordTracker you can find out how many times a keyword phrase is searched for, how many sites are competing with you for that keyword phrase, and how many times your search engine listing would be seen per day if you were on the 1st page of the search engine results page. It also finds keyword phrases for you in various ways. Once you subscribe you have a wealth of information available as to how to effectively use the tool.

Google webmaster tools are invaluable in achieving a high ranking on Google.

I am a firm believer in using Google’s webmaster tools. For crying out loud, if Google is willing to tell you what errors and problems your site has, then you should listen! The webmaster tools tell you things like which keywords it sees in your sites content, what it sees in the link text on other sites that point to yours, which of your pages are being pointed to from other sites, and more. The tools tell you when you have duplicate title tags, not enough words in your meta description and when the meta description is duplicated on more than one page.

You can submit a sitemap to make sure all of your pages get spidered. Sitemaps can be very simple, consisting of just a list of URLs in your site. Google spiders your sitemap within hours of it being submitted, and it then tells you if there are any errors. It’s simply amazing.

Google Analytics is another good SEO tool

Google analytics can provide you with a wealth of information about your visitors, where they come from, and the paths through your site they take, the entry and exit pages and tons more valuable information. And it’s free. You can see at a glance your visitor bounce rate, number of visits over time, page views, and keyword phrases used to find you and so much more that I don’t have the space here to go into details. It’s very easy to check out, so check it out.

Link Popularity Checking Tool

Marketleap has a great little tool for checking your link popularity; marketleap.com. This tool lets you measure your website’s online awareness and overall visibility. This SEO tool helps website owners find out who is linking to their site and gives a useful benchmarking report to quickly show where you stand in comparison to competitors and other major online players. You can also track your links over time by checking every so often. The site keeps records; some of mine now go back 4 years!

The Compete tool helps you compete!

I’ll conclude with a wonderful tool I use to find out the approximate traffic that any particular web site has; compete.com. You put in the URL of the site you are interested in and the tool gives you a number of statistics including the approximate traffic that the site receives. You can compare up to 5 URLs at a time and the tool gives you both numbers and graphs to view. Obviously the more traffic a site gets the more accurate the estimate. I’ve tried several and compete gives me the most accurate figures of the ones I’ve tried.

I like to see what kind of traffic a site gets when I am considering trading links and when targeting specific keyword phrases I like to scope out the competition to see if it’s worth doing.

There are many more tools that you can find online, but this gives you a very good start, and possible all you really need to perform expert professional SEO on your webpages.

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As of this moment, you’re probably wondering how you can make money writing online when you can’t even get a decent job interview in real life. Well, this makes everything much more fruitful for you.

Working online is actually easier than working in a real office on a 9-5 timetable. And one of the best ways to make money writing online is by using blogs.

Contrary to popular belief, it’s not all that difficult to earn from blogs once you’ve found your niche. Search engines love them, and blogs are generally accessible to the public (unless you lock them, of course).

Here’s some of the ways to make money writing online using blogs:

1) You could put adsense, promote affiliate products or products of your own in your blog to make money

2) You could also earn through advertising. Once your blog becomes well-known in the blogosphere, potential advertisers are going to come knocking your door. You might want to set up a counter to know how many people are viewing your blog.

3) You might be surprised by the number of people out there who surf the web all day and read blogs. Some of these people are marketers, advertisers and other professionals who are looking for writers. One of them might come across your blog, like how you write, and contact you for possible employment.

4) Your blog helps you establish connections with other bloggers / writers who could do a joint venture with you, or at least recommend you to a potential employer.

You don’t have to carry a Phd to make money writing online. All you have to do is use your imagination and creativity to get your blog earning the dough for you.

It is recognized that the primary role of the internet involves dispensing news and information. It is no wonder that the online methods used to do this have continually evolved to better accommodate user needs.

With the advent of web 2.0 and the ever growing number of social sites internet users have made clear their preference was for more interaction. Even marketers acknowledge this preference and channeled their promotional efforts in this direction.

Blogs have risen to be one of the most popular and widely accepted methods used to fill the needs and demands for communicating amongst today’s internet enthusiasts.

Let’s review 5 benefits that make blogging so popular:

#1 – The Process is More like Play and Less like Work

Writing for a blog is less restrictive than many other forms of writing. Blogging tends to be more of a conversation as opposed to a formal presentation. There is less emphasis put on grammatically correct compositions. Blog readers are a more ‘casual’ audience and as a result are more accepting of human error.

Blog entries are ‘judged’ more on the content of the message then the format in which it is conveyed. Just getting your point across in a more natural style with the use of intrigue, humor, sarcasm, or even shock is more engaging to the readers. If the post is informative, helpful, or entertaining then it is more likely to be received more favorably.

The ability to leave comments and receive responses also allows readers to get more involved in the process. This alone makes it more interesting and satisfying for both reader and blog owner alike.

#2 – Blogging is Easy

If you can write in MS Word you can blog. There exist virtually no technological challenges therefore just about anybody can blog. Interfacing with most blogs is mostly point and click allowing you to add graphics, audio or video easily.

Picking and choosing your own layout and theme is just as easy and twice as fun. Your blog look can be changed in a flash and as often as you like.

#3 – Your Blog Can Reflect Your Personality

Your blog layout and also your blogging style can be tailored to reflect your personality or special interests. In fact it is encouraged to do so to help your blog stand out from the other blogs out there, after all there is only one you!

Also by doing this you allow your readers to further bond with you by giving them a deeper insight into who you are and what makes you tick.

#4 – Cost Efficient Advertising

A blog is one of the most cost efficient advertising methods available and a powerful way to gain an internet presence. In a manner of speaking it is cheap. Unless you like to spend money this should be appealing to you.

Your only expense with a paid blogging system is the cost of a domain and a hosting service. To establish a blog with a highly respected and popular blogging system such as Wordpress will cost less than $100.00 annually.

#5 – SEO is a Breeze

If you’re interested in making your site easier to find within the search engines, blogging is the way to go. By posting to your blog frequently you’re encouraging the search engine spiders to ‘crawl’ your site to look for any new entries. As a result this will inevitably boost your rankings since search engines love fresh content.

Given these 5 benefits we’ve discussed here can you now better understand the advantages of blogging and reason for its popularity? It is a fun, easy, and economical way to make your presence known on the internet. How can you resist?

Because of Vista’s less-than-appealing reputation, customers are still clamoring for XP – and this policy change will enable channel partners to continue to build XP-based systems and not have to guess just how many customers will request it in order to go ahead and pay in advance for the XP solutions they anticipate selling. Since Vista was released, this is the third time Microsoft has extended XP’s availability and given partners flexible delivery dates beyond XP’s phase-out date at the end of January. Microsoft expects to debut Windows 7 in June.

Sources:IT ChannelPlanet:: Windows XP Gets Another Channel Reprieve

The capability gives Google a window to shoehorn more advertising onto third party websites.

Friend Connect lets websites incorporate social features — like Twitter-style chat, and the ability to embed and share content on MySpace or Facebook — onto their pages. Users can log in once to participate in communities across a multiplicity of destinations. It went public earlier this month — shortly after Facebook launched a similar offering.

The main difference between the two methods of marketing is that PPC is aimed entirely at your budget and skill in setting the campaign, however, organic listings are based on the quality and stature of your website in conjunction with the strict search engine guidelines.
Search engines change their algorithms very frequently. There are several reasons behind this, and the most obvious among them is the fact that they want to improve their results. The results are concluded after making a study of the users who are active on the web. Organic search engine optimization methods involve using all the legal and white hat methods for the optimization of a site on the web. If you make use of all the legal methods, it will ensure that you will never be tangled in any kind of legal mess.

It is not humanely possible for search engines to crawl the huge number of websites on the web. So it is not a person rather automated software called spiders or bots used to crawl the sites. The relevance and importance of a site is determined based on the results of the crawling done by the software. Since search engines keep on changing their algorithm and criteria for giving rankings to sites, you must be fully aware of what is needed to attract the attention of all the major search engines.

There are several methods and technique that can be used for optimizing your site on the web. The idea is to announce to everyone that you have entered the market and are interested in doing serious business on the web. Well if you do not tell anyone about you, how do you expect others to know and find out about your business? Ultimately, it is your call to determine what methods you feel will be the best for your site. However, it can be safely said that organic SEO are one of the best methods that can be used for the promotion of your online business site.

The X18-M and X25-M are based on Intel’s multilevel cell memory. The technology that differentiates the SSDs from competitors, according to Intel, includes highly parallel 10x NAND flash channels and “native command queuing” that enable up to 32 concurrent operations for faster performance.

The drives have read speeds up to 250 MBps and write speeds up to 70 MBps. Both are available with SATA interfaces of 1.5 Gbps and 3.0 Gbps.

The life expectancy is 1.2 million hours of mean time before failure, and power consumption is 150 milliwatts during a typical PC workload and 0.06 of a watt at idle. Pricing was not released.

Along with the two mainstream SSDs, Intel also makes the X25-E Extreme SSD for servers, storage, and high-end workstations. The SATA drive is availability in capacities of 32 GB and 64 GB, and has a life expectancy of 2 million hours of MTBF.

Intel’s mainstream drives are far from the largest in the industry. Toshiba last week introduced a 512-GB, 2.5-inch SSD for notebooks. Toshiba also makes 2.5-inch and 1.8-inch SSDs in 64-GB, 128-GB, and 256-GB capacities.

Source : Information Week

HP announced its iPrint Photo application today as precursor to its main debut during CES 2009 (only two weeks away now). The free app allows you to print 4 x 6-inch photos from your iPod Touch or iPhone to HP printers connected to a Wi-Fi network.

Since those two gadgets are basically tiny PCs, it was a given that one of the main printing leaders created a way to bypass the transfer-to-the-PC step. Still, it appears that there are a few functions that the company missed out on that could have really added something for portable users.

For example, an app that included mix and matching possibilities into a single printing sheet would have been interesting and could have played upon the creativity of iPhone users (as well as the larger options of its line of printers). For now, you can only print one image at a time.

Also, according to the company’s website, the printing from the Apple portables can’t be interrupted in the middle of the wireless command — otherwise, the job will likely be cancelled

Recently, we noted that several companies were in the process of creating gadgets compatible with small, digital, portable cameras and that have the ability to print pics on the fly. Part of this development is due to the surprising re-emergence and cultural appreciation of instantaneous cameras, like the classic ’shake-it’ Polaroid. Cameras with embedded printers, like the Tomy Xiao and the Instax 200, produce the pictures immediately.

Gobyicon The HP app doesn’t solve the paper side of the printing equation, but if you have access to a somewhat small HP printer that can be carried around, it will prove useful and you might even be able to get better prints that with the other cameras. Of course, there is one thing the app can’t do, and that’s improving the camera in the iPhone, which leaves a lot to be desired.

Source : Click here