looking for advanced xsl tutorial?

check this link out: http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl/

That's what I have used to get started, quite good source of refs.

free press releases

Below is a list of sites where you can post you press release. Make sure that it is available first on your site, to get it crawled, and get the full benefit of the article you have spent so much time writing with your targetted keywords:

PRWeb.com
PressBox.co.uk
WebWire.com
24-7PressRelease.com

bespoke application agreement

You have built a bespoke application for one of your client? you wonder what should your development agreement include.

Here we go, a nice checking list just below:

If no 'off-the-shelf' software is appropriate for your particular requirements, you may need to have software written or adapted for you by a software house. The development agreement between you as the client and the software house will include the following:

The Copyright Licence: The intellectual property (copyright) in the program is invariably licensed rather than sold to you by the developer. You may also wish to insist that the licence is exclusive to you (although such exclusivity is likely to be reflected in the price). You should also specifically agree the following:

1. How long the licence is to last
2. whether you can transfer the licence to another;
3. whether or not the licence is restricted to one computer
4. your rights to source codes, object codes & run-time versions.

The licensor will normally build in provisions to protect against unauthorised copying by you and your staff.

The Specification: The specification should specify the program's performance and capabilities including speed of response. Changes to the specification should be precisely recorded and a schedule of rates for additional modifications should be considered. The specification should address:

1. The tasks to be performed
2. the equipment on which the software is to run
3. the timescale for the work
4. details of information to be entered, used by the program & how results and progress reports
5. files to be created
6. password access requirements and speed of response requirements.
   

The Price: The price (or licence fee ) will generally include training and documentation and the pricing clause should also include provisions for calculating the cost of additional work. The components of the price and what may be separately chargeable should be precisely defined.

Completion: Writing software involves unpredictability and some flexibility in timescales is inevitable. Provision for delays should be built into the contract (including when time becomes 'of the essence') and attention should be given to building into the contract penalties for delay. You should also consider when you may be considered to have accepted the software as satisfactory and your rights to pre-acceptance testing.

Maintenance and Enhancement: Bugs will appear and you will seek prompt remedy. If problems arise within the contractual warranty period, the licensor will normally fix the problem free of charge within an agreed timescale. Thereafter, a maintenance agreement may be entered into which provides for the remedy of defects and possibly the provision of enhancements and updates.

Escrow: The source code of the program may be deposited (in escrow) with an independent person or body (e.g. the National Computing Centre) so that you can access it if the software house which developed the program goes out of business or under other circumstances specified in the agreement.

Liability: If a program causes damage, potential compensation could be huge and the software house will invariably limit its exposure (particularly for any indirect damage) by use of an exclusion or limitation clause. Such clauses are a matter for negotiation but the availability of insurance cover will be a key determinant.

Progress Monitoring: With complex contracts, expert adjudication (e.g. by a computer engineer) may well be appropriate in order to oversee performance of the project.

Dispute Resolution:Anticipating the possibility of you and the developer ending up in a dispute, a clause agreeing an acceptable form of dispute resolution would be advisable. As alternatives to litigation in Court, arbitration or alternative dispute resolution may offer the advantages of appropriately expert adjudication, possible cost-savings and allowing the parties to remain in the driving seat in settling the dispute.

Just found www.johntudorphotography.co.uk, and loved the photos at first sight.



Which one is the star? The statue, or the tower?



This photo reflects exactely the fehling you can have when you go to such a nice place, a place you have been dreaming about for quite a while. And when you eventulaly managed to get there, you see a a mac donald or a pizza hut on the best spot. Dreams are replaced with junk food!

nice tools

Long time I have not recommended tools. here we go, nice one here:

http://www.iconico.com/colorpic/index.aspx: want to pick up a colour from the screen. Before, it was a print screen, open photoshop, save it, and then picjk up the colour. Now it is a little bit easier with this tool.

google surfs on the open source trend wave

http://code.google.com.

An other clever move from google. what's all the fuss about open source? Well, with open source, you get people developing new features for free... nice, isn't it. Obviously google doesn't provide source code of the search engine itself.

Instead, they provide with an API to build tools for interfacing with their Adword program for instance.

This is something we want to do with Jazar. But to be able to do that, one first needs to develop a solid framework, and that's exactely what we are working hard on.

Soon, our content management system will be released under a GNU license, allowing developers to build new modules, or even to fix bugs in the application itself (I am not sure about that though, the code is as clean as pure water, don't want to start messing around with exotic coding styles ... ).

start up a guide from a master

Was just reading this article, and found it quite inspiring:
http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html

Anybody who is involved in setting up a start-up will find something to eat there.

MSN to start paid listings

"Microsoft plans to start a service where clients will pay to be listed alongside its MSN search results, people familiar with the plans said. !

It will be similar to competing programs from Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. Microsoft will announce a pilot program March 16, said the people, who asked not to be identified. These paid searches auction off placement next to Web search results to companies with related products."

Their contract with Yahoo ends in 2006. Be ready for the new CPC provider.

Shopping Gender

America Online, Inc. announced a study that found women do most shopping online but men outspend them.

AOL's "Online Shopping Cities" survey found men plan to spend up to 15 percent more online this holiday season than women, 326 dollars for men vs. 284 dollars for women.

The survey uncovered these facts about men who shop online:
• Research or browse online an average of 31 times a month vs. 22 times for women
• Make 20 percent more purchases online each month than women
• 42 percent shop for luxury goods online vs. 35 percent of women

"Thanks to these survey findings, everyone now knows that men are closet shoppers, so long as they don't have to get out of their comfortable chairs to do it. While women do represent the majority of online shoppers, men are outspending them. And, more than that, they are no longer just shopping online for the convenience, now they are also researching and browsing and comparing prices," says Bob Hayes, vice president and general manager, AOL eCommerce.

eMarketing is now king

Here we go, hiring a web design company is not seen as "the must" & best option you have got to build a business online. go for eMarketing companies, such as Jazar Web services to get the best results!

Here is the article:
http://www.website2.com/articles/7waysbusinessonline.htm

A New F-Word for Google Search Results

A new study has added tangible evidence to the widely held view that top-ranking search results get the most attention from users, and that lower-ranking results are all but invisible to most people.

The joint study conducted by search marketing firms Enquiro and Did-it and eye tracking firm Eyetools examined the eye movements of users viewing Google search result pages.

The study found that most viewers looked at results in an "F" shaped scan pattern, with the eye travelling vertically along the far left side of the results looking for visual cues (relevant words, brands, etc) and then scanning to the right, as if something caught the participant's attention.

The researchers called this pattern a "golden triangle" at the top of result pages. The triangle extends across the top natural search result, then angles back to the left of the page down to the bottom-most "above the fold" result, typically in the third or fourth position on the page.

This area was viewed by 100% of the 50 participants in the study.

With both organic and sponsored search results, higher ranking results were viewed more often. Here are results for organic results (percentages represent the number of study participants viewing the listing):

Organic Search Results Viewed:


Rank 1 - 100%
Rank 2 - 100%
Rank 3 - 100%
Rank 4 - 85%
Rank 5 - 60%
Rank 6 - 50%
Rank 7 - 50%
Rank 8 - 30%
Rank 9 - 30%
Rank 10 - 20%

A similar, though smaller triangle effect was also observed for the sponsored listings on the right side of Google search result pages. In aggregate, fewer people looked at the sponsored listings; the exception to this was then sponsored ads were served at the top of a search result page as well as on the right side of the page. Ads at the top of the page were viewed by 100% of study participants.

Sponsored Listings Viewed (right side):


Sponsored listing 1 - 50%
Sponsored listing 2 - 40%
Sponsored listing 3 - 30%
Sponsored listing 4 - 20%
Sponsored listing 5 - 10%
Sponsored listing 6 - 10%
Sponsored listing 7 - 10%
Sponsored listing 8 - 10%
Here's a screen shot of the triangle.

These results are preliminary; a full analysis of the results will be available soon.

Organic Search Still Rules
The findings of this eye tracking study lend further credibility to the notion that organic search engine optimization is still critical to the overall success of a search marketing campaign. Last December, Jupiter Research released a report stating that algorithmic listings in search indexes generate an estimated six of seven commercially natured search referrals.

The eye tracking study offers a major reason why: People continue to favor organic listings over paid search listings, unless the paid search listing is at the top of the page.

And yet many search engine marketers are ignoring search engine optimization, opting instead to go the "easier" route of buying sponsored listings. The increasing body of research is very clearly saying that it's a mistake to rely solely on paid listings to drive visitors to a web site. A well-balanced search marketing campaign should incorporate both well-crafted search engine optimization efforts as well as paid listings to capture the full range of searcher behavior.

avoiding penalty

These are signs probably used by google (I have not tested them to be honest) to identify artificially built networks:
Same content verbatim
- Same cookie structure
- Javascript function names
- Linked CSS and JS files
- CSS class names
- Same contact information posted on websites
- Common name servers
- Same/similar images and/or graphics theme
- Site hosted on same IP/block
- Whois information matching
- Alexa contact information matching
- Interlinking of domains
- Common backlinks (indirect crosslinking)
- Same credit card used for anything
- Login from same IP to separate accounts
- Residual cookies from past logins
- Similar file names or linking/directory structures
- Code Comments

Quite a checklist. So, even if you are genuinely building a few websites for your clients, hosting them on the same reseller account, using the same page structure, etc ... and think that you may take the benefit of interlinking them together .... not a good idea. You actually take the risk to achieve the opposite of what you want, and get them all penalised.

google adds images

do a search for lenny kravitz in google. You get pictures! Just the case of a few results. Search for bread, jazar, chirac, porn, no picutres are displayed ...

what does it mean. Well, without stretching things to far, it just mean that results are manually handled, and can be modified according the topic.

Need an Accountant

When I set up Jazar (UK) Ltd, everybody told me to hire an accountant. and that's what I did. But always wondered what I could expect from him.

Here is a list of why you can expect from your accountant:
http://www.dti.gov.uk/bestpractice/assets/accountancy.pdf

yahoo free

It's now free to submit your site to Yahoo, at least ... in the UK and Ireland:
http://add.yahoo.com/fast/add

CSS examples

http://www.fu2k.org/alex/css

This is a great place to find the right css for your site. You can play with the layout engine, and you end up with exactely what you are looking for.

referrer spamming

wonder why you have got this site, or this other site in your logs, when you are pretty sure that you have nothing to do with these sites, and that these sites don't link to you?

These sites are "referrer spammers", and this is done automatically. they get then the curious webmasters to visit their site ...

Not a bad idea is it.

Creative Commons

Cette création est mise à disposition sous un contrat Creative Commons.

Feedster is cool for RSS. A new directory here, on AP!