The Netbook Review

The issue’s not paid its fair due. The SEO social web’s here to stay, sure; but inherent in the fact that the internet and the web (never mind the term “social” for now) is so open; is so unregulated in every way, there’s actually a lot more harm than good that’s out there.

Google, it can be argued, is largely a banner ad company, selling clicks and text message sized ads on web servers that are full, for the most, of junk. And junk isn’t safe; it’s benign, like a tumor’s benign, but a tumor’s still a tumor. And junk’s still junk. And all that stuff you think is relatively harmless; well, it isn’t..

But it’s a Pandora situation, and it’s been done, and there’s no turning back. The powers that be, need to actually step in, but unfortunately, we’re going through a bit of a social economic catastrophe, and the only reason why this isn’t a global depression is because the United States is printing money like mad, so don’t expect the Federal government there to take a leadership role in invoking a few rules about this, until, well, something catastrophic happens.

I’m sure it will be some VIP that takes the bullet for the rest of us. It happens every day; somebody on Craigslist gets lured into a murderous trap; somebody’s raped by a “friend” she met off MySpace… But nothing really happens until somebody really “important” gets involved in one of these messes.

As it is, publicly accessible information on Facebook is telling enough; your name and your picture, that’s all you need. From there, you can cross reference a whole bunch of other sites, create false user accounts, and find a “back door” into a social network (and to a larger extent, internet marketing), like any proper hacker. The social web’s given “social engineering” (the security sense of the word, an approach born out of the 80s used to gain control of critical systems by playing the clerk that was at the desk) a whole new set of legs; and the criminals are flying off the handle.

Netbooks Reviewed facebook, Google, privacy, security

The issue’s not paid its fair due. The social web’s here to stay, sure; but inherent in the fact that the internet and the web (never mind the term “social” for now) is so open; is so unregulated in every way, there’s actually a lot more harm than good that’s out there.

Google, it can be argued, is largely a banner ad company, selling clicks and text message sized ads on web servers that are full, for the most, of junk. And junk isn’t safe; it’s benign, like a tumor’s benign, but a tumor’s still a tumor. And junk’s still junk. And all that stuff you think is relatively harmless; well, it isn’t..

But it’s a Pandora situation, and it’s been done, and there’s no turning back. The powers that be, need to actually step in, but unfortunately, we’re going through a bit of a social economic catastrophe, and the only reason why this isn’t a global depression is because the United States is printing money like mad, so don’t expect the Federal government there to take a leadership role in invoking a few rules about this, until, well, something catastrophic happens.

I’m sure it will be some VIP that takes the bullet for the rest of us. It happens every day; somebody on Craigslist gets lured into a murderous trap; somebody’s raped by a “friend” she met off MySpace… But nothing really happens until somebody really “important” gets involved in one of these messes.

As it is, publicly accessible information on Facebook is telling enough; your name and your picture, that’s all you need. From there, you can cross reference a whole bunch of other sites, create false user accounts, and find a “back door” into a social network, like any proper hacker. The social web’s given “social engineering” (the security sense of the word, an approach born out of the 80s used to gain control of critical systems by playing the clerk that was at the desk) a whole new set of legs; and the criminals are flying off the handle.

Netbooks Reviewed facebook, Google, privacy, security

Wave?  What is that?What is this thing Google is unleashing in their next step towards total world domination?  Well, in technical terms, Google Wave is a “web based service, computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wiki, and social networking.”

In casual terms, it means they want to make one web application (keep in mind this is all based around HTML 5) that will integrate e-mail, IM, your Twitter and Facebooks of the world, wikipedia entries, Photobucket type sharing and more, all in one window.  Plus open it up for developers to take it in whatever direction they want from there.  In short, they want to take over the world.  And I signed up for the beta. (That's all it is right now, 100,000 people will be invited in September).

Err…what?  It sounds like it is a mash-up of everything.  And…it pretty much is.  And it looks like it does it very very well.  And in this blog writer's humble opinion, it will change EVERYTHING.

I bold, everything, because I really do think there are huge social, business and casual implications to a platform that is attempting to merge every one of our major online services into one platform.  And I don't mean they will just have a window here for e-mail, and a window over there for IM, and a window up here for Twitter and put in all in one big window.  No, this goes deeper.

They want to integrate the back and forth threading, forwarding, replies and attachments of email, merge it into an IM style real-time chat system (completely with literal real-time, character by character updates of you typing, instead of seeing “Joe is typing” for an hour), add some VCR features (any new people added to a “Wave” can see a play-by-play of the conversation as it happened), allow users to simultaneously upload, download, and delete pictures and integrate a very sophisticated spell checker into the whole process – with this one Google puts a bid on redoing the damage the last few years have done to our “lol u guz r da gr8tst” youth.  And if you can't read that, don't hurt your brain trying to, I did just writing it.

Add in the fact they are opening this up to development, open source style, and you have something that will be as huge as Facebook, at least in the applications side of things.

Imagine if businesses were to adopt Google Wave en masse.  Pizza Hut gets Wave, and offers it to their customers.  Pizza Hut tweets through Wave a special deal they are offering for the day.  Customer A decides he or she wants to order a pizza based on the Tweet he or she receives through Wave.  Instead of calling, or working through the online ordering system, maybe an application has been developed for Wave that allows the customer and an employee direct conversation for ordering a pizza.  The customer jumps into a new wave with a Pizza Hut employee, the employee takes the order and away we go.

This is a simple example that probably won't even be close to anything that will come out, I'm sure what will come along will be WAY more cool than anything that I could think of.

Imagine for businesses.  You are working in a web based company, maybe providing web design, programming, SEO, and admin services for a business.

Customer A contacts Account Executive A and gets the ball rolling.  Cust. A needs a new website, web design and some basic SEO services.   So AE A opens a new wave between Cust. A, Designer A, Designer B and SEO A, and they all can collaborate between the 4 of them.  Plus if Designer B and SEO A need to talk about something inside the Wave, but do not want to start a new one, they can not Wave Designer A and Cust A and just Wave each other, and then when their conversation is finished, go back to Waving everyone.

The business implications are HUGE for this, especially on large projects, with multiple departments working on one single project, or collaborations through different departments.

Even in my business, if I have a Sony digital camera repair that one of my staff are working on, and I need to change the work order, and I'm at home, I can just Wave it to him, and I'll have a thread based means of replying and seeing it.

So if you are interested even a little bit, get on board, and use the Wave.  I strongly believe this will change the face of things, the same way email, IM or social media has changed things.

This one just does it all.

Netbooks Reviewed chat, Google, Google Wave, instant messaging, social media

How much personal information do you have online? Have you ever thought about that question? Have you ever searched for your own name on Bing? How about the different variations of your name, have you googled them? Take this story that just happened to me as an example of how personal information and data can end up online without your knowledge or permission.

Today I received an email from, Google Alerts telling me that my name had popped up in a new web page. I get these emails just about every other day because I am on various social media outlets and I have my own computer repair blog so I didn’t think it was anything strange. However once I read the email, I had to check it out.

A day or 2 earlier I had written a letter of recommendation for a friend and thought nothing more about it. Then I get the Google Alerts email and I had to see what it was talking about. Apparently the friend needed to convert the Microsoft Word file to an Adobe Acrobat file and used the website http://www.scribd.com to do so. No big deal, right? Well, the website made the letter public and Google had searched it and found my name. This is why I was alerted. So I called my friend to ask her about it and apparently her resume as well as 2 more letters of recommendation were also posted online as well. Thanks to Google Alerts, we were spared the embarrassment of having somebody else find it.

How much of your personal information is online? Have you ever Googled your own name? I highly recommend it, you could be shocked at what you find. And if I were you, I would set up alerts for the different variations of your name. That way, any time something new is added, you’ll know about it.

Creating your own alerts is simple. No account or login is needed.

1. Go to Google Alerts.

2. Input the name or phrase for which you are interested in receiving alerts.

3. Choose comprehensive.

4. Enter your email address.

5. Click on “Create Alert”.

6. Google will automatically send an email to the address that you enter. This email contains a link that says “Verify this Google Alert request” and you need to click on it.

7. You’re done.

Keeping up to date with your information online is a great way to reduce embarrassment and credit fraud.

Netbooks Reviewed data security, Google, social media

If your website is not ranked well in Google, it is like you never put it up. Very few people visit the sites on the second page of Google. Being in the top 10 is important as discussed in ppc bully 2.0.  If your website is not in the top ten, it will be like a secret website where only you and your friends know about.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts know many of the factors that Google weighs to determine which websites will rank on the first page of search results. How Google exactly does this is top secret. Because of this, no one can guarantee you the number 1 spot in Google or any other search engine.

It is quite possible to be on the first page of Google if you know some SEO techniques. Here are some factors that contribute to your search results:

* Your target keyword
* How many websites target the same keyword phrases
* The number of pages your website has
* How well you use keywords on your site
* Number of baclinks pointing to your website

To be on the first page of Google, first make sure that your website outshines the competition.   Add regular features, articles and special offers, give your visitors good reason to return to your site. Be on top of things when in comes to your niche market.

Do keyword research and identify the keywords that you want to go for. Make sure to add these keywords in the website title and content of your website.  Do not over do this.  Put relevant keywords as well but do not put your keywords repeatedly.

Create a lot of one way do follow links to your website. Each links counts as a vote in your favour and is a key factor in search engine optimisation.

While SEO is important and worth paying for if you can afford it, there are some things you can do if you are on a tight budget. Just remember that optimizing your site takes time and you are unlikely to see immediate results unless you have identified a keyword that has little effective competition.

Netbooks Reviewed Google, internet marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Wave?  What is that?  What is Google’s latest bid for world domination?  Well, in technical terms, Google Wave is a “web based service, computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wiki, and social networking.”

In casual terms, it means they want to make one web application (keep in mind this is all based around HTML 5) that will integrate e-mail, IM, your Twitter and Facebooks of the world, wikipedia entries, Photobucket type sharing and more, all in one window.  Plus open it up for developers to take it in whatever direction they want from there.  In short, they want to take over the world.  And I signed up for the beta. (That’s all it is right now, 100,000 people will be invited in September).

Err…what?  It sounds like it is a mash-up of everything.  And…it pretty much is.  And it looks like it does it very very well.  And in this blog writer’s humble opinion, it will change EVERYTHING.

I bold, everything, because I really do think there are huge social, business and casual implications to a platform that is attempting to merge every one of our major online services into one platform.  And I don’t mean they will just have a window here for e-mail, and a window over there for IM, and a window up here for Twitter and put in all in one big window.  No, this goes deeper.

They want to integrate the back and forth threading, forwarding, replies and attachments of email, merge it into an IM style real-time chat system (completely with literal real-time, character by character updates of you typing, instead of seeing “Joe is typing” for an hour), add some VCR features (any new people added to a “Wave” can see a play-by-play of the conversation as it happened), allow users to simultaneously upload, download, and delete pictures and integrate a very sophisticated spell checker into the whole process – with this one Google puts a bid on redoing the damage the last few years have done to our “lol u guz r da gr8tst” youth.  And if you can’t read that, don’t hurt your brain trying to, I did just writing it.

Add in the fact they are opening this up to development, open source style, and you have something that will be as huge as Facebook, at least in the applications side of things.

Imagine if businesses were to adopt Google Wave en masse.  Pizza Hut gets Wave, and offers it to their customers.  Pizza Hut tweets through Wave a special deal they are offering for the day.  Customer A decides he or she wants to order a pizza based on the Tweet he or she receives through Wave.  Instead of calling, or working through the online ordering system, maybe an application has been developed for Wave that allows the customer and an employee direct conversation for ordering a pizza.  The customer jumps into a new wave with a Pizza Hut employee, the employee takes the order and away we go.

This is a simple example that probably won’t even be close to anything that will come out, I’m sure what will come along will be WAY more cool than anything that I could think of.

Imagine for businesses.  You are working in a web based company, maybe providing web design, programming, SEO, and admin services for a business.

Customer A contacts Account Executive A and gets the ball rolling.  Cust. A needs a new website, web design and some basic SEO services.   So AE A opens a new wave between Cust. A, Designer A, Designer B and SEO A, and they all can collaborate between the 4 of them.  Plus if Designer B and SEO A need to talk about something inside the Wave, but do not want to start a new one, they can not Wave Designer A and Cust A and just Wave each other, and then when their conversation is finished, go back to Waving everyone.

The business implications are HUGE for this, especially on large projects, with multiple departments working on one single project, or collaborations through different departments.

Even in my business, if I have a digital camera repair that one of my people are working on, and I need to change the work order, and I’m at home, I can just Wave it to him, and I’ll have a thread based means of replying and seeing it.

So if you are interested even a little bit, get on board, and use the Wave.  I strongly believe this will change the face of things, the same way email, IM or social media has changed things.

This one just does it all.

Netbooks Reviewed chat, Google, Google Wave, instant messaging, social media