There is now a dedicated page for the E-on-Common-Lisp project.

Keyword Value

OK, you've got a business blog or website. Raise your hands now: how many of you have a nice front page, something like a "Contact me" page, maybe a "Rates and Services" page and not much else?

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Linux creator Linus Torvalds announced the first release candidate for the upcoming 2.6.18 kernel, "the merge window for 2.6.18 is closed, and -rc1 is out there". He noted that the changes are extensive, "the changes are too big for the mailing list, even just the shortlog. As usual, lots of stuff happened. Most architectures got updated, ACPI updates, networking, SCSI and sound, IDE, infiniband, input, DVB etc etc etc." Find the shortlog here. Linus went on described additional changes:

"There's also a fair amount of basic infrastructure updates here, with things like the generic IRQ layer, the lockdep (oh, and priority-inheritance mutex support) stuff by Ingo &co, some generic timekeeping infrastructure ('clocksource') stuff, memory hotplug (and page migration) support, etc etc."

Most people leave a fortune on the table when they build a new website because they make the mistake of only targeting the most generic, hard to rank well for keywords and then wonder why they don't have any traffic.

For maximum impact and long term traffic generation you need a combination of tightly focused, specific keywords and 'word combos' using the keywords that people are searching for right before they BUY a product as opposed to when they are researching the market for a product.

Let me explain...

Imagine you are thinking of buying a new golf club, let's say a driver, because you want to add extra length to your drives (all your mates can out-drive you by 20 yards or more and you want to make up for that using a little bit of the latest technology to help you out :-).

You start your research into the best drivers around by entering the keyword phrase golf drivers into your favorite search engine.

Your search query comes up with 150 million pages loosely related to the phrase golf drivers. That's just too many listings to look through to make a buying decision, but you start your research there anyway.

OK, Let's Trim That Number Down A Little...

You look through the first few listings (golf.com, golfdivers.com, etc.) and find out that many people are recommending the Big Berth driver and it has some great reviews from leading golf pros.

You look at the competition in the golf driver market and you decide that one of the big bertha range is probably the club for you.

Next, you do a search for big bertha divers and come up with 1.2 million pages of information to wade through.

You find three or four sites on the first couple of pages that look interesting so you do some more reading that confirms the Big Bertha is what you need.

Most of the sites you find are shopping sites with no real content, but a couple of them have useful articles related to Big Bertha drivers.

After reading and researching, you settle on the Big Bertha Titanium 454 driver.

Now you are ready to actually BUY your new golf club, so you enter the phrase buy big bertha titanium 454 driver into your search engine to find the best deal.

You now search for the best price and delivery conditions (hey you want it today now that it's so close :-) and buy the driver from the merchant of your choice.

Can you see the distinction between these keywords?

The keyword phrase golf drivers is a research keyword.

The keyword phrase big bertha divers defines the search further, but it still isn't specific enough for most people to make a buying decision. They are still often in 'research' mode at this stage.

The keyword phrase buy big bertha titanium 454 driver is a buying phrase.

These are the phrases you want to build your website's tier three or four pages around.

These are the 'money' pages where people will click through to your merchant or sales site after they have been PRE-sold on the benefits of buying the big bertha titanium 454 driver.

Your keywords for the pages in your golfing website's structure would be something like -

Tier two - golf drivers

Tier three - big bertha divers

Tier four - buy big bertha 454 driver or buy big bertha titanium 454 driver

You won't get many people arriving on the last two pages each month, but the visitors who do come will be ready to buy a big bertha titanium 454 driver!

And you'll be right there to recommend your merchant or sales page to them...and earn a commission :-)

But doesn't that mean you have to build lots of pages related to all of these products and services if you want your share of this free, highly targeted traffic? For example, there would be hundreds of different golf drivers on the market.

Well, yes, if you want to make the most money you will... By having pages related to all the different golf drivers available you will gradually rank well for some keywords, then more of them over time.

Then your good rankings for these easy-to-rank-for pages will start to see your harder-to-rank-well-for keyword focused pages ranking well too.

Put great PRE selling copy on your pages, a picture of the product on the page if possible that is also a hyperlink to the specific product on your merchant's website or order page, and you're set.

Then do it for all of the products in your merchant's range that you want to promote.

You also need to build pages for the important research keywords too as you will start to rank well for these over time, but your focused product related pages will bring in a steady stream of highly targeted, ready-to-buy visitors who have done their research and are ready to take action right now.

How sweet is that?

I hope this article helps you to increase your website's revenue and puts you on the way to becoming a super affiliate or selling a lot more of your own products and services.

About the Author

Rocky Tapscott is the author a free 7 Part Mini Course "How To Build The Perfect Home Based Business Around Your Favorite Hobby, Pastime, Sport Or Skill" which uses 6 real life case studies to show how others have used a proven system to build profitable businesses around their favorite hobby.

Drop by http://www.hobbyandlifestyle.com/ecourse.html to grab your free copy.

Linux pinfo

I have never liked Linux "info". The reason is simple enough: I don't like Emacs, and "info" uses an emacs style interface.Pinfo displays the same "info" files, but is more lynx like; up and down arrows move you from clickable link to clickable link, right arrow invokes a link, left arrow returns you tothe previous page.

Mac OS X Ruby on Rails II

When we left off with Mac OS X Ruby on Rails. I had Rails up and running but had not a clue as to where to go from there. It's not hard to find information and tutorials on the net, but as always, assumptions are made, prerequisites are brushed by or ignored entirely, and you can find yourself in a hall of mirrors wondering which one of the reflections is what you really need. No doubt the page you are reading now will have similar deficiencies, so take a deep breath and be prepared for adverse conditions.

Inclue!, just released a couple of days ago, is a new breed of mass-market branded RSS Reader ... which integrates into Outlook (to consume RSS content), as well as Internet Explorer and FireFox (to directly subscribe to RSS feeds while surfing).

But why a new breed of branded Reader?

a] It integrates with Outlook, which most other branded RSS Readers don't (usually either web-based or desktop applications)

b] Publishers can create their own branded version (unfortunatelly only with their own feeds right now) in 5 minutes, and then distribute it via their Inclue! landing page, which is also automatically generated.

c] Publishers that sign-up for their affiliate program receive a commission when end-users decide to upgrade their Reader to the premium version.

d] The Include! Reader is based on viral methods to further spread your RSS feeds and help you get new subscribers, for example using the FeedBurner Flare tool to entice your RSS subscribers to get your branded Inclue! Reader. Similar links are also displayed when a user forwards an RSS feed item to his friends via Inclue!

To see how it works, take a look at my quick version (just a demo, haven't included all the feeds, a decent description and so on).

Inclue! also does a great job of promoting RSS to end-users, giving them concrete benefits of how RSS will actually help them ... from tracking eBay auctions to getting job notifications. Just take a look at the link above.

Essentially, the Reader is targeted at new RSS users, giving them simple functions, especially with their ease of subscribing to feeds with just one click.

Now I'm just waiting for them to add visual branding possibilities ... :)

Recently I have been thinking a lot about how software and content developers target different software platforms.  Two very compelling recent developments are the adoption of Flash video and AJAX. 

Both Flash and DHTML have been around for a long time.  It seems that over the past year these two technologies are really taking a big jump. 

One is standards based. One is proprietary.  One has weak developer tools. One has strong content tools.  Both have relative ubiquity. 

A key question for me is what factors govern the decision framework for making a bet on these technologies.  How do developers and content creators “do the math” to decide that the power and customer value of the experiences they can create are worth the cost of development, page load time, test hit, etc. to make a bet on these?

For the .NET Framework, the story has several dimensions.  For server side programming, and websites in particular, there seems to be about an even trade off between PHP or JSP and ASP.NET.  This is pretty clear with the rate of new site development on ASP.NET and the options you get today from hosting companies. 

Client side targeting is another part of the story.  Right now web sites with hosted Windows Form controls are rare and corporate IT team do actively write .NET Framework applications.  Consumer penetration is actually quite good with estimates of 55-60% of all desktops today have the .NET Framework 1.1.  There are a lot of shareware/freeware apps now starting to take a bet on the .NET Framework. I personally suspect this is because of the great tools and the speed of development.

So, how does your team approach this area? When do you decide to take a technology dependency? What a key factors for you?

Retour par hasard en découvrant les avancées de Microsoft sur le RSS.

Belle idée en tout cas que de penser intégrer RSS dans Internet Explorer 7.

A la différence de son confrère, le moteur de recherche MSN en version bêta semble moins attiré/(pollué !) par le rapport signal/bruit de la blogosphère... Aussi il est toujours intéressant de veiller/regarder ce qu'on dit de vous, de votre société sur le MSN Search.

Une requête Blogging Planet sur Msn Search et en bas de page, vous trouverez l'icône RSS.

Il serait peut-être temps de trouver un terme plus joli pour parler de RSS dans les dîners en ville ? Sur Wikipédia, on parle de read more:

[Q] From Andrew Gerrie: “Why do people use the phrase believe you me, when they want to emphasise a point or opinion? I really don’t think it makes any sense; possibly it would be better if it were believe me you, but even that is poor English.”

[A] It’s a puzzling way of speaking because we don’t use English in that way any more. My knowledge of formal grammar being more than a bit shaky, I went for information to Professor Geoffrey Pullum, co-author of the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, the 1800-page volume that is the standard work.

Because English doesn’t add endings to words to show how they are being used in a sentence, word order is crucially important. Today, virtually all sentences that make a statement have to be put in the order subject-verb-object (SVO): “The man pats the dog”. That makes clear who is doing what to whom. “The dog pats the man” has a quite different sense.

At one time, however, English used to allow verb-subject-object (VSO) in certain situations, mainly imperatives. The 1611 King James version of the Bible has many examples: “And he went out to meet Asa, and said unto him, Hear ye me”; “Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands command ye me”; “For thus saith the Lord unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye shall live”; and “Lay ye them in two heaps at the entering in of the gate until the morning.” And here’s G Herbert Temple in 1633: “Come ye hither all, whom wine Doth define” and another writer in 1695: “Mark ye me; that’s holy stuffe”. These days, we only see them in old writings or fossil expressions like:

Mind you, she’s very intelligent.
This was the fifth time, mark you.
Oh, come ye back...

In every case, you or ye is the subject, but it comes after the verb it’s attached to. Believe you me belongs in this set. It seems odd to us today because English language rules forbid us to construct such expressions. We can’t naturally say “Take you care of yourself, now!” for example.

But, having said all that, an oddity is that believe you me is relatively modern. The Oxford English Dictionary’s first example is from 1926. I’ve only been able to improve on that by six years—it turns up in the USA in 1919 as the title of a novel by Nina Wilcox Putnam. For further help here, I turned to Benjamin Zimmer, at the University of Pennsylvania, an ace at researching historical word usage. He tells me that there are earlier examples, but that nearly all of them are in verse, where the phrasing is useful for scansion. He has been able to find only three examples in prose from the nineteenth century.

What seems to have happened is that a once-standard phrase that had been lurking in the language for generations suddenly became much more popular and widespread around the 1920s. What we have here is a revitalised fossil, a semi-invented anachronism.

Syndicate Your Content to Other Online Media

Yes, traditional search and news search will get you the visitors that are currently actively searching for specific content, no doubt about it. Those are the visitors that need something specific right now and will use the search engines to get it.

But chances are that your website won't be their first destination after their search, especially if you're not well ranked for the specific keywords these people are looking for. But, they might get to a website that at least partially covers the topic you're covering.

And not all online traffic comes from search.

Much traffic is generated by the e-zines that people subscribe to, by frequent visits to favorite online destinations for specific topics and so on.

The point is, every day online users are visiting websites that have something to do with your topics ? but these websites are not your websites.

Now consider this fact: Content is best served when contextually relevant to the current online environment of the visitor.

How can you take advantage of this fact?

You can work towards getting your latest headlines, content summaries or even full-text content published on these websites, to increase your online exposure and receive targeted traffic from these websites.

In short, online content syndication is all about delivering your content to other websites and having it re-published there.

Essentially, this is a concept adapted from TV syndication, where TV show producers and TV networks allow other TV networks to run their show for a price. The difference is that in the world of online syndication the coin isn't money, but rather the traffic and exposure you receive by syndicating your online content.

Here are some quick examples:

A cooking website provides an abundance of cooking tips, recipies, reviews and other cooking related content. You on the other hand wrote a book on exotic indian recipies you are now trying to sell online. It's a perfect match. The cooking website is (or should be) looking for new ways to get more credible content for its visitors for free, while you're looking for increased exposure. In this case you could provide that website with your latest selections of exotic indian receipies, perhaps with a new recipe every day. The website would publish your headlines and short summaries of the receipes, and their visitors would need to clickthrough to your site to read more ? giving you the opportunity to make the sale. Or, the other way to do it, would be to allow the cooking website to display your syndicated content in full, but with an ad at the bottom of your recipies inviting readers to order the book, with a link to the order page.

You're a direct marketing consultancy firm, specializing in direct marketing in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Well, there are dozens of websites covering direct marketing, but none provide direct marketing tips on direct marketing in the CEE region. Although you're not in the publishing business, you could easily provide direct marketing portals with semi-daily commentary on direct marketing in the CEE, tips for marketing in the region, coverage of direct marketing events in the region, legal tips and so on. The portals would better satisfy its visitors by providing them with more unique content, while you could generate new leads from the people that visit your own website after clicking on your headlines.

You're an e-commerce site selling low-priced laptops. What you could do in this case is seek out websites that cover and review low-priced laptops and offer them to re-publish your latest laptop deals and releases, to direct people to your webstore where they can make the order or simply find out more about the laptops promoted, and the website would in turn receive a commission for every product sold through them. This same concept works for any affiliate marketing powered business. If you have affiliates, you can help them generate more sales by providing them with ready made content about your products, such as a list of upcoming seminars and similar.
No matter what industry you're in and what your goals online are, you are almost certain to have your own relevant content that you want re-published in whole or in part on other websites, and you will be sure to find websites that reach the same audience and cover the same or complimentary topics that could be interested in republishing your content.

The key, however, in making all of this work, is contextuallity and relevancy.

The content you wish to distribute must be highly relevant to the audience your prospective syndication partners reach.

The content must be in some context with the website you want it to be available at.

This tactic will not only generate new traffic for you and bring you highly relevant and targeted visitors, but will also help you increase your online credibility, increase your brand recognition and might even help you become established as a thought leader.

But what's the role of RSS in all of this?

RSS has become the de-facto standard for online content syndication.

All you need is to provide an RSS feed with the exact content you want to syndicate, and all the other websites owners need is a way to consume your RSS feed and display its contents on their websites.

Once you update your RSS feed, for example when adding a new news piece, the content on your syndication partners' websites is updated too. If you're syndicating content to a thousand other websites, all of them will receive the same updated version at the same time you update your RSS feed. Easy, simple, cheap and streamlined.

And because this is a standard there are now countless tools available to make this process easy for everyone involved.