Facebook Places can be an excellent way for business owners, especially businesses like restaurants, bars, and the like, to promote themselves. When a user checks in with Facebook Places, it shows up in their friends’ news feed like a status does. You can also tag other friends that are there with you:

Notice how the business name shows up in the feed item. Not only does it notify the user’s friends of where they are (possibly drawing more people to the business), it’s also an implicit endorsement for your business.

Facebook Places will do nothing for your business if you don’t encourage people to use it. The Facebook Help Center article for “Places for Advertisers” has several helpful tips, including how to set up your place page and how to claim your place so you can manage the address and other information. The Help Center article for Places is also a good place to look for general information. Running promotions or offering incentives for people who check in is another way to encourage people to use Places. The service is still very new, but the chance that Facebook will eventually allow you to run promotions or targeted advertising for Places users is fairly high. Starting to plan now will help you to be ready when that time comes.

The meeting is only 1 of 3 major events I have planned for that day. Starting at 8 am, my son Kyle and I are going to help the Downtown Council get ready for the Jaguars by painting the Paw Prints down Adams Street. The Paw prints start near Main Street and go almost all the way to the newly minted Everbank Field. After the meeting, Kelli and I are attending the first preseason home game with the Jaguars taking on the Miami Dolphins. We are season ticket holders and when we are not building websites in Jacksonville or implementing search engine optimization, we really love going to the games.

First, create the non-www IIS website. The host header for this website needs to be domain.com, without the “dubs.” For this website’s Home Directory, choose “A Redirection to a URL” and enter a value of http://www.domain.com$V$Q. The $V$Q argument after the domain will collect and redirect additional path information such as directory and file name. Lastly, for “The client will be sent to,” select “The exact URL entered above” and “A permanent redirection for this resource”. This website will receive non-www requests and send them to the www website. 

The non-www IIS website will send request to the www website, including additional path information.

Second, create the www IIS website. The host header for this website needs to be www.domain.com, with the “dubs.” For the website’s Home Directory, choose “A directory located on this computer” and assign the appropriate directory. This website will receive redirects from non-www requests and from www requests, making it the de facto website of the two IIS websites.

To get everything working, the website’s DNS needs to be updated. The primary A Record and the www A Record need to point to the IP address of the computer that IIS is installed in. Once the DNS has been updated and is propagated, the non-www to www redirect will work!

Screen resolution statistics for elykinnovation.com, July 2010

In July, 21% of our visitors had a screen resolution of 1280×800, 16% had a screen resolution of 1024 x 768, and 11% had a screen resolution of 1280 x 1024. These three screen resolution groups represented the majority of our visitors. If we were to redesign our website this month, our design would be friendly to these resolutions, which it already is!

Content Network Example
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Search Network Example
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The first obstacle is writer’s block and you don’t have to be a writer to get it. Keep a sticky note nearby and pen down ideas during your work week. Revisit them later and decide which idea you can blog about the best. This will usually be a specific topic that you have detailed knowledge on. You will be surprised on the many ideas you get! We blog about several topics from information we learned in our industry such as web design trends or about a specific website project we completed. The scope of our blogs range from easy-to-understand such as content writing to very technical issues such as a specific Yahoo Search Marketing problem. Sometimes they are completely off topic such as “pimping” a grill, just for fun! We have learned that “blogger’s block” usually disappears once you get the hang of it.

Coming up with the content is usually the second obstacle for new bloggers. Content is a huge factor in getting ranked in search engines. But do not ignore the human visitors to the blog. Write content for visitors first by making an appropriate title and provide clear, supporting content. Include quotes, pictures, and movies to supplement the point. Eventually this will be published to the internet so polish it up! Then, determine what keywords are appropriate to the particular blog post and include them in the content where it makes sense and will not confuse the reader. Including relevent keywords can help your website in search engines. Avoid “spamming” keywords in the content- if a visitor feels spammed, the search engines can recognize it too and penalize you with lower rankings.

If you can get past the writer’s block and can develop relevant, keyword-rich content, your blog is well on its way to effectively communicating with your potential and current customers, in addition to showing search engines you mean business!

• Jacksonville Storm Wallpaper – 800 x 600
• Jacksonville Storm Wallpaper – 1024 x 768
• Jacksonville Storm Wallpaper – 1280 x 800
• Jacksonville Storm Wallpaper – 1280 x 1024
• Jacksonville Storm Wallpaper – 1440 x 900
• Jacksonville Storm Wallpaper – 1600 x 1200
• Jacksonville Storm Wallpaper – 1920 x 1080
• Jacksonville Storm Wallpaper – 2560 x 1440
• Jacksonville Storm Wallpaper – iPhone
• Jacksonville Storm Wallpaper – PSP

Bing, the latest search engine developed by Microsoft, opens with a simple design. The header hugs the top of the browser and displays links to Microsoft-owned services while the body of the front page is the real attention getter. Surrounding the search field is an impressive photograph that changes daily. Each photograph is labeled and includes hot spots that provide educational details with relevant links. Users can also enjoy scrolling through previous photos or disabling the feature altogether. The Bing home page concludes with subtle links to promotions and popular searches.

Sporting the most straightforward home page in the business is Google. Set over a white background with “old school” blue links and plenty of open space, users have no problem locating the search field. In the header, links are provided to dictate what category to search in while links surrounding the search field offer preferences and facts about Google programs. The simple and recognizable Google logo remains the most prominent element- after all, it’s the only picture! For popular holidays and unique anniversaries, the logo will change to a relevant picture with a link to an appropriate website.

Yahoo!’s home page has several elements outside of its search feature. The top of the front page houses the search field itself, which includes common category links. Below the search form, taking up much of the middle, is a list of featured news followed by the a standard, text-only news section. The left and right regions include links to common internet sites such as eBay and FaceBook, popular searches, and a single graphic advertisement.

Each of the 3 search engines provides a different home page experience. Users who enjoy a quick way to search the internet while catching some eye candy along the way will prefer Bing’s simple and fresh approach. Net surfers who favor an unobstructed and minimalistic search page with pleasant surprises will continue to prefer Google. Lastly, those who like to eyeball current events and visit common internet sites while they search will stick with Yahoo!. Which search engine you choose can say a lot about you!

The picture is of a Great Blue Heron that I spotted on the beach while visiting Sarasota, FL early last year. I hope you enjoy, and will be sharing more pictures in the future:

• Great Blue Heron Wallpaper – 800 x 600
• Great Blue Heron Wallpaper – 1024 x 768
• Great Blue Heron Wallpaper – 1280 x 800
• Great Blue Heron Wallpaper – 1280 x 1024
• Great Blue Heron Wallpaper – 1440 x 900
• Great Blue Heron Wallpaper – 1600 x 1200
• Great Blue Heron Wallpaper – 1920 x 1080
• Great Blue Heron Wallpaper – 2560 x 1440
• Great Blue Heron Wallpaper – iPhone
• Great Blue Heron Wallpaper – PSP

The first instance of the account balance is located in the Account Summary in the Dashboard. This value is usually from the past, as indicated by the date. The next instance of the account balance is in the Billing and Payment Information in Administration. This value, in our experience, is very inconsistent. It can mirror the first account balance, display a different past account balance, or display the current account balance. Again, a date will indicate the time of the given account balance. Usually, the account balance between these two instances is not current or just plain inconsistent.

How do we determine what the current account balance is if the two account balances available are from the past or inconsistent? Reload the page! Use the browser’s refresh feature (a browser button or the F5 key) or click the Administrative tab. Both methods will refresh the page, and hopefully recalculate the account balance to the current value. It may not always recalculate the current account balance on the first or second refresh, but it will eventually.

This is not a user-friendly way of getting a significant piece of information from any account. The account balance should display the current balance. After all, reports are available to find out any past account balance. We asked Yahoo Search Marketing’s Customer Solutions team why the account doesn’t display the current account balance.

We would like to let you know that the balance amount that you see when first logging is the amount displayed the last time you logged in. Normally this updates within a few minutes but can take up to 10 minutes to refresh the data. Be sure you are checking the time stamp which is located underneath the balance whenever you check your account so you know when the displayed balance was last updated.

While Customer Solutions’ response doesn’t answer the question, it reveals the account balance displayed after logging in is the account balance as of the last login date. This makes some sense, but we remain skeptical of its accuracy after a quick test. We signed into a Yahoo Search Marketing account that displayed a day old account balance when the last login was a week ago. Customer Solutions’ response also fails to provide any enlightening information on the issue. We will continue to use the old fashion approach to getting the current account balance, refreshing the page.

If you would like to increase incoming traffic to your website with pay-per-click marketing, , email marketing, or search engine optimization let our experience and skills get you off to a good start!