Frank painted the interior of our President”s house shortly after he purchased it.  He did a great job!  He was personable and very fair priced.  He took great pride in his work and was meticulous, pointing out and correcting defects . . . → Read More: Las Vegas Painting]]> Media One Pro built a site about “Las Vegas Painting”.  Featuring local Las Vegas painter Frank Sarabia.

Frank painted the interior of our President”s house shortly after he purchased it.  He did a great job!  He was personable and very fair priced.  He took great pride in his work and was meticulous, pointing out and correcting defects even before I noticed them.

We produced this website and helped with the Internet marketing, in exchange for a combination of payment and bartering.

Obviously the iPhone . . . → Read More: iPhone or Android: Which Platform is more critical in regards to Marketing?]]> While there are other mobile operating systems that shouldn’t be ignored (Blackberry for one), there are two that seem to get the most attention, and that may end up competing most for user and marketer attention above the rest in the foreseeable future. These are of course the iPhone OS and the Android OS.

Obviously the iPhone OS runs on iPhones, and now on iPads. These are very popular devices, but in the smartphone market Android is gaining a great deal of ground, and in the tablet market, Android hasn’t really arrived yet, but it is expected to soon.

The smartphone Space

At Google I/O last month, Google announced that Android activations had passed 100,000 a day. Also last month, a report from the NPD Group found that in the first quarter of 2010, Android devices actually outsold iPhones in the U.S. The legitimacy of this has been disputed, but I don’t think anyone’s disputed the fact that Android use is gaining significant momentum.
 The Tablet Space

A recent study from Retevo found that over half of consumers surveyed would buy an Android tablet over an iPad if it were cheaper. $100 Android Tablets are expected to arrive this year. Now that’s not to say that this version of the Android tablet would be the iPad killer. You have to consider that Android will likely be implemented across a wide range of devices, as opposed to the iPhone OS, which will operate on Apple’s devices.

One reason Android has been able to grow so much in the smartphone market because of pricing deals. For example, Verizon has offered buy-one-get-one-free deals on Android phones. The tablet market could see a similar scenario – pricing playing a major role.  
Google TV – Will It Be a Real Edge?

At Google I/O Google unveiled Google TV, a platform that merges the web experience with the television experience. Launch partners include Adobe, Intel, Sony, Logitech, Best Buy, and Dish Network. Sony will sell TVs and Blu-ray players which come with the platform. Logitech will make set-top boxes, and Dish Network will provide its customers with it.
 

This week, Apple CEO Steve Jobs implied that it is destined to fail, mainly talking about the lack of success of set-top boxes in general and the lack of nationwide cable services as the main barriers. However, Dish Network is nationwide, and is making moves that could net the company more customers away from competitors, even before Google TV arrives this fall. That could mean good things for Google TV.

What does this have to do with Android? During the announcement, Google demonstrated some of Google TV’s Android integration. You will be able to use Android devices to control Google TV, for one. You will also be able to send apps from your Android device to Google TV to interact with them on your television, effectively turning your TV into an Android device. Google TV users may find Android devices useful.

Not To Take Anything Away from iPhone OS

None of this is to discount the importance of reaching Apple’s users. They are consumers too, and there are a lot of them. However, when resources are limited, businesses may have to do some prioritizing. Ideally, you want to get in front of as many potential customers as possible. It just looks like at this point, that Google is positioning itself to get Android in front of a whole lot of people. But still, a lot of this is forward looking.
 Quick Tips

1.  If you can find an angle that makes sense for your business, and you can afford the resources, develop a mobile apps for mobile platforms.

2.  Regardless of whether or not you have your own apps, look for ways that you can get be found in other mobile apps.

3.  Look at the most popular apps and find angles for how your business can take advantage of some of them.

4.  There may be a great deal of creativity involved in finding the right angles, but there are so many apps out there already (and the number will continue to grow rapidly), there will continue to be more unique and innovative opportunities. Just explore them. By the way,Google is putting apps directly in its mobile search results now for both Android and iPhone users.

5.  Advertise. There is also a growing number of mobile advertising opportunities, including various forms of in-app advertising. Watch for Google to offer more interesting formats, now that it has acquired AdMob and Invite Media.

“What’s important for marketers to realize is that it’s a similar redux of the Mac PC wars in the 80s/90s where Apple puts out a great product but constrains the market with its controls & dictation while Android with its openness & no licensing costs allows it to flurish,” Michael Martin, who founded GoogleAndBlog (often cited as a top Android site), and currently runs MobileMartin tells WebProNews. “Case in point, the iPhone is self constrained to AT&T for some time while Android is available on all 4 major US mobile providers as well [as] pre-paid service Cricket along with 50+ other carriers around the world amounting to over 100,000 activations per day – this provides greater marketshare.”

He continues, “Next is mindshare, which for smartphones is predominantly based on the quality and number of applications (as welll device specs & usability)…While Apple allienates developers with its cryptic & arbitrary acceptance rules for the App Store which people had to bite their lip to endure due to both marketshare & mindshare, they are relieved of this with OPTIONS that include the Android Market while they are FREE to provide their applications through other venues.”

“So marketers can see the tide is turning while also saving costs. If developing apps, with a cheaper Android programmer in Java vs a more expensive iPhone developer in C as well, there are now tools from Ansca & Rhomobile that allow cross mobile application development with one click instead of recoding for iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, Palm.”

Here is a list of services that we need fulfilled.  If you can meet the requirements, send us an email and let’s discuss further.

 What . . . → Read More: Six things you can do to remove bad press from the search results]]> No matter how good your company is, some people will always write something negative about your site, even if you tried your best to help them. Some customers might write negative comments about your company in their blogs or some of your competitors might like to damage your reputation by creating fake comments about your site.

 What can you do if web pages with negative comments appear on Google’s first result page for your company name?

 1. Fix the problem

If people write negative reviews about your company, the first thing that you should do is to fix the problem that caused the negative review.

2. It doesn’t hurt to ask

Send the webmaster of the web page with the negative review a polite email and ask for removal of the negative comments. Many webmasters will cooperate if you explain the issue.

3. Give web pages with positive comments a boost

If the webmaster does not want to remove the negative review, find websites that contain positive comments about your site.

Link to these pages from your own website to increase the link popularity of these pages. The more links the pages with the positive reviews have, the higher they will be ranking in the search results.

If appropriate, bookmark web pages with positive remarks about your website on social bookmark sites such as Digg and Delicious.

 4. Ask for testimonials from happy customers

If you receive positive feedback from customers, ask them to write a review on ConsumerReview.com, Epinions.com or similar sites.

5. Add your website to company wiki pages

Websites like AboutUs.org allow you to create an article about your company. If your company is important enough, you might even create an entry in Wikipedia.

These Wiki pages will also appear in the search results when someone searches for your company name.

6. Make sure that your own website tops the search results

If your own website comes first for your company name then most people will click on your link and don’t look further. Use IBP to make sure that your own web site has position 1 in the search engine results.

Removing negative comments from the search engine results can take some time. It’s best to avoid negative experiences at the outset by providing high quality products and good customer support.

The only experts on the . . . → Read More: The Truth about the Google Duplicate Content Penalty]]> The truth of the Google duplicate content penalty is quite simply that there is none! If that confuses you, then you have been reading too many misinformed forums or blogs where people get stuck on some popular term that they have no idea what it means, and then profess to be experts.

The only experts on the Google duplicate content penalty, and the only people who are qualified to define it, are Google, and in Google’s own words “There is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty”. This comes directly from Google’s Webmaster Central Blog.

That should be the end of this article, at precisely 96 words excluding title as I define my word count. But it is not. Why? Because even though this blog is operated by Google, and even though much the same has been stated by Matt Cutts, Google’s main software engineer, and other Google experts, people still argue and complain about the Google ‘duplicate content penalty’.

So here is the truth: you might ask who am I to know the truth, but I read all the Google blogs and their official statements, and in applying what I learn, I achieve excellent results for my web pages on Google search engine listings: and those of Yahoo, MSN and Bing. So I am coming from a sound base that my results can prove.

As a professional article writer whose customers trust to get them the best results from the articles I write, I have to be very aware of the policies and the way the algorithms work of each of the major search engines, and so I am as qualified as anybody to comment on myths such as this.

The Truth of the Google Duplicate Content Penalty

There is no duplicate content penalty. Google’s major search engine function is to provide a customer the best possible results for a search, based upon the search term (keywords) that the customer has used in the Google search box.

Google’s customers are not:

1. You, who use it to get your web pages listed.

2. Adwords advertisers that use Adwords to advertise their products.

3. Corporations or individuals that use it to have their web pages listed.

4. Internet marketers who recommend others to use Google for advertising or searching.

Google’s customers are those seeking information, whether that is to solve a problem, where to purchase a product at the cheapest price, find a sports result or to get directions to a specific location. Everybody that uses Google uses a search term to find some information that they need. That search term is what you and I refer to as a keyword.

If Google detects several web pages offering exactly the same content, its algorithms will select that which best offers the information required and list that. It might also list one or two other pages offering exactly the same content if there are good reasons for it doing so (e.g. more links to other relevant websites, more other relevant pages on the domain, and so on).

So, not all duplicate content pages will be refused a listing. If these duplicates are articles, then the algorithms that the spiders carry on their backs will take the links from these articles into consideration, the authority of the directory on which it is published, and other factors, before deciding which should be listed. It is wrong to believe that this decision has a chronological factor, but, if you include a link in your article Resource section to your web page that contains the same article, then your page is liable to be listed above the others, partially because of a greater number of links back to it from the other copies, and partially because your entire site is liable to be more relevant than these others to information being sought by Google’s customer.

This is not because yours was created first, but because it better meets Google’s criterion for authoritative back-links. However, if the rest of your website is not equally authoritative, your page might be listed behind another with the same content or even not listed at all.

All of this is designed by Google so that its customer is offered the most relevant range of results to the keywords they used. That is what Google is for, and is its ultimate objective. Google will not penalize any individual or any website for publishing what you refer to as ‘duplicate content’, and it will take your version into consideration for publication just as any other version.

What counts in the long run is which version Google’s algorithms believe to be most likely to provide the best possible information to the person seeking it, and if that means not publishing a whole host of duplicate information, then that is only fair, isn’t it? If you used Google to find some information, you wouldn’t want to find page after page saying exactly the same thing, would you?

No, and neither does Google. A Google listing comes from its indexing of billions of web pages that contain the keywords used by the searcher: both in relation to the entire phrase and to the individual words used in the search term. If you want your copy to be different, make some minor changes and perhaps change the form of the keywords, but most importantly, change the title and the introductory paragraph to which the crawlers will take special notice.

You then have a better chance of your version being listed along with some of the others, but remember: the next time you use the term ‘duplicate content’ you are using a term that does not exist in Google’s vocabulary for any reason than to deny its existence. The Google Duplicate Content Penalty does not exist: the truth!

You just need to edit the HTML signature file at C:\Documents & settings\(your username)\Application Data\Microsoft\Signatures

Create a HTML file and simply choose it in Outlook.

Done!

NOTE: If your files are hidden, you will not see Application Data. Unhide the files and folders to . . . → Read More: How to add an HTML signature in Outlook 2007]]> Missing your HTML signature in Outlook 2007? Here’s your simple solution:

You just need to edit the HTML signature file at C:\Documents & settings\(your username)\Application Data\Microsoft\Signatures

Create a HTML file and simply choose it in Outlook.

Done!

NOTE: If your files are hidden, you will not see Application Data. Unhide the files and folders to see this.

These social networking sites have the advantage of early entry to the marketplace and have established themselves as the leaders in this group. Myspace is generally for a . . . → Read More: Social Networking Sites – Why it's important to have your very own]]> So on the Web, more and more social networking sites are sprouting up every day. But the majority of popularity has fallen upon Facebook and secondly, Myspace.

These social networking sites have the advantage of early entry to the marketplace and have established themselves as the leaders in this group. Myspace is generally for a younger audience who enjoys music and videos more than updates on there friends.

Facebook has become the practical site where people are more interested in updates from their friends list. Also there is an endless supply of web applications that have made Facebook fun and useful.

But where is this social networking trend taking us? Well, with Facebook, you can have “Fan” or “Company” Pages to help promote your group/business. You can also set up groups where people can gather online to share and discuss certain topics.

But the one weakness that Facebook has is that it is too general. Meaning, it is an online meeting place with no certain genre or niche. So on Facebook, you can meet anyone of any type, shape, ethnicity, age, location, etc. There isn’t a focus or requirement to join this global community.

And this is where a small start-up social networking site can have an advantage. By creating a site that specializes in a certain genre (say for example, young people who are fans of baseball), you can create a specific community that like-minded people can join and meet other similar people. So how is this done you may ask?

Media One Pro has the skills to produce a social networking site in a short amount of time (1-4 weeks). We can design and develop your site with any specific niche in mind!

What are the costs you may now ask? Well, to hire a developer to create the code and build your site, you would be looking at an upwards of $20-30,000. This does not include monthly hosting costs or monthly maintenance.

So now is a social networking site out of your league? Not with us! For a limited time, we can take on new projects and create your social network for less than $1,000 to setup and only $150/month for hosting and maintenance!

Here’s what you get in details:
1) Domain Name Registration
2) 1 Template Creation
3) 1 Template Revision
4) Setup of Social Networking Application
5) 1 Content Management System installed and setup
6) 1 hour Social Media consultation (a $200 value!)
7) 1 month free hosting

After your initial setup fee ($1,000), you only pay $150/month. This includes hosting, support, and 1 article or 1 video optimization and submission.

You not only save yourself the $20-30,000 in developer costs, but you pay one flat monthly fee to maintain your own site (and dont’ forget, you can make this money back with simple ad placements, such as Google and Adbrite!).

So what are you waiting for? Contact us today for your FREE consultation and let’s get your business online with social media and ahead of the pack!