Making money from niche blogs in an inexact science. What works in one blogs, fails on another. I’ve launched over 200 websites since 1998 (mostly ecommerce) and about 30 blogs (technical). If your blog has a technical slant, for example, its target audience is technical writers, analysts, architects, or others micro-niche areas, then use some of these search engine techniques will increase your traffic.

29 Ways to Increase Traffic to a Micro Niche Blog

1. Monthly Interview – do a profile every month or a day in the life of your target audience. Rule #1, people like to read about people.
2. Company Profile – same as above but focus on how the company developed, what it’s doing right AND mistakes it made. Rule #2, people like to read how others solved problems.
3. Product review – don’t do a short review. Aim for 1000 words. Look at this review of Camtasia Studio. This will live long in the Google index and generate more backlinks. Short reviews melt like dew in the morning sun.
4. Guest articles – do them and take them. I take guest articles all the time (send me text files, please not Word). Make sure these people have a brain, i.e. that they remember to share the buzz on their site, their twitter, their Facebook page, and maybe on other Social Media networks. I’m still amazed at people who take the effort to submit, write and publish an article but forget to promote it.
5. Be the Hub – make your site the hub for your niche. This means others in the field will flock here to see what’s happening, who’s been hired, rates, buzz, gossip – whatever rocks their boat. And it’s ok to throw in the odd joke to lighten things up. Don’t take yourself too serious.
6. Deep Link – instead of linking to the main page, link to a page within a site. This increases the number of trackbacks. You can also do a Google search for sites that offer back-links and add these to your ping requests.
7. BusinessWeek – has a professional network that that accepts links, i.e. yours!, which get indexed v quickly by Google. You can also connect your account here with LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanwalsh)
8. LinkedIn – you use this, right? If not, sign up and join groups that match your target audience. Get involved. Be active. Ask and answer questions. Check in once a week. Link your RSS/blog to your profile. More back-links for little effort.
9. Connect with Startup blogs – while everyone wants to get on C Brogan, you’ll get further if you connect with people starting out. They appreciate the value and will share the link love. If they don’t, well… PS: here’s the right way to add a comment to chris brogan’s blog.
10. Google Adsense – not very fashionable these days but it still pulls in $750 per month, which pays for the Frappuccino, Cable, and Brazilian waxes. Ok, one of those isn’t true. It’s cable, isn’t it?
11. Calendar – use Google Docs to get it up. Simple way to create high-traffic pages.
12. Add Photos – don’t be shy. Show us your mug! Take photos whenever you go to an event, conference or client. Let others into your world. Remember rule #1.
13. Use Creative Commons – share. Make it easy for others to get your message out there. Why don’t you share?
14. Setup a Newsletter – use Aweber, not Feedburner, if you are serious about making money & getting the news out. The money is in the list. Share useful information. No one cares about your cat’s dysentery.
15. Reach out to Other Bloggers – mention other bloggers, writers etc in your articles. Why? They might pop over and leave a comment or respond in their blog. Don’t write in a vacuum.
16. Add Short Video – use YouTube to increase traffic, cross-links, and to establish yourself as an authority.
17. Offer Incredible PDFs – create PDFs of your best work, upload it to Slideshare and index it in your Sitemap. Why? Google indexes PDFs. Include links back to your site + you’ll see the page rank increase.
18. Create Unique Twitter Lists – create unique and interesting twitter lists. As Twitter has become a wall of noise, people use lists to share, aggregate, and curate information. Make your list as specialized as possible. Then link to the list, not your twitter page. See the difference? Twitter followers will go thru the roof!
19. Twollow – use this to follow others by keyword, e.g. follow those interested in video marketing. AND use it to un-follow deadbeats that don’t follow back.
20. Ejunkie – use this to sell digital goods, information products, online training, or ebooks. 100 times better than Clickbank. $5 per month. How can you go wrong?
21. Optimize Money Pages – log into Google Analytics. Find your top 10 posts. Go into each of these pages and fine-tune them over more. Add 1 product to each page. These are your MONEY pages. Start making money here.
22. Google Analytics – learn how Google Analytics works. ‘I know how it works’. No, you don’t, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this article! Spend 5 hours here. Do split testing, setup reports, check entrance paths, bounce rates and duplicate headers. All the heavy-weights do this.
23. Posterous – use this to publish your blog posts across all your Blogger, WordPress, Typepad, Flickr, YouTube with one click. Now you can add tags and use Google Analytics as well.
24. Contact Journalists – identify 5 journalists in your industry. Tell them what you write about and why they should read your blog, i.e. to give them material for their articles. See your PageRank shoot up if you connect with one high-profile journalist.
25. Create 2 Sitemaps – add an XML site for Google to read and a HTML one for the humanoids. Check this with Google Webmaster Tools.
26. Title tags – don’t do all the hard work and forget to add the correct title tags to each post. It takes 5 min to get this right but it’s worth the effort. Use SEO in a Box plugin to do this.
27. Google Webmaster Tools – like Google Analytics, spend 30 min in here every week and see how Google in indexing your blog. Look for duplicate headers (i.e. pages with the same title tags) as these lower your PageRank. Also check for crawl errors and others horrors.
28. Leverage Facebook – forget pigville and join groups, fan pages that compliment your business. Add useful comments, not just high fives. Say something that others have overlooked. Add videos, photos and RSS feeds to your pages.
29. Create a Publishing Process – saving the last til best. Develop a workflow for publishing your material. Don’t just write and hit publish. Stand back and see how you can gather information, identify your audience, focus on pain points (i.e. their problems), develop content that will be evergreen, source photos, respond to comments, and get busy promoting. No one knows about your site.

Now, get out there and tell them.

Ok, that’s how I do it. What did I miss?

Photo: invisiblekid

What do you want to see in Microsoft Office 2010? Arpan Shan, who has access to the beta versions at Microsoft, shares his favorite 10 Office 2010 features.

Some of these you may already know, but he highlights some nice ideas that seem to be coming through. In Word 2010, for example, you will have an in-built screen capture tool that takes screenshots of whatever apps you have open. Interesting to see how Techsmith, the makers of Snagit, will respond to this.

Also, Scott Stiles, the head of the Program Management team for Word, describes the aims and objectives that Microsoft has for this new release.

1. Office Web Applications

He says that “the other advantage of Office Web Applications over a service like Google Docs/Spreadsheets is that not only will consumers be able to use this on Windows Live, but Enterprises can deploy Office Web Applications on their own SharePoint servers”.

Nice for corp users but doesn’t really help the little people.

2. Screen clippings

Here you can insert screenshots of applications that you open right from within Office. This saves you having to use Snagit or other screenshot applications. Not sure if you can crop or edit the screenshot. But if you just want a basic screenshot app, this will be useful.

3. Image Background Removal

He adds that previously he had to use other applications to make the background transparent but can now do this within applications like PowerPoint 2010.

4. Outlook User Experience

There are many UX enhancements in Outlook 2010. For example, when you receive meeting requests, you can see your other scheduled appointments inline.

You also have tips throughout Outlook 2010 that tell you if you’re above your quota, you’re going to send an email outside your organization, etc.

5. Video editing

In PowerPoint 2010, you can now insert and edit video. Not only can videos be inserted, but they can be modified. You can trim the video, set the image cover for the video, add borders, add other effects like reflection as well as other special effects.

PPTX files will increase in size (dramatically, I assume) when you add images and videos.

After trimming the video correctly in PowerPoint 2010, you can compress the media size to improve performance and reduce the size of the file.

6. PowerPoint Broadcasting

PowerPoint 2010 has a new broadcasting feature that lets you share PPT presentation.

You can either use a public “PowerPoint Broadcast Service” (you need a Live ID and it’s free) or an internal SharePoint server.

This lets you email a URL to a group of people and they can watch you deliver your PPTX from their browser.

7. PowerPoint Transitions

Some stylish new transitions are on the way. Let’s wait and see.

8. Copy/Paste

In current versions of Microsoft Office, you often end up using paste, look, undo, paste special, etc.

In Office 2010, there’s copy and paste live preview.

This lets you preview how different paste options will look without having to undo, paste, undo paste.

9. SharePoint Workspace

SharePoint Workspace (formerly Groove) lets you work with SharePoint content.

You can take SharePoint lists & libraries offline, provide a rich client UX and background syncing with SharePoint which helps with performance especially in low latency situations.

10. Sparklines

Excel 2010 introduces Sparklines.

This lets you show data trends in a one data cell.

It’s very useful when you’re analyzing numbers over time across a number of time periods. There are many forms sparklines can take from lines to columns to more yes/no type options for win/loss data.

Screenshots and more examples on MSDN

Of all the features here, the two that interests me the most are the screenshots and the copy/paste options.

Why?

Well, because these are two activities that I do all day. Some of the others, like video editing in PowerPoint don’t interest me – I‘ll use Camtasia instead anyway.

But, improved screenshot capabilities would make a huge difference, especially if I can work on the screenshots, maybe add arrows and explanatory text.

How about you? What do you REALLY want to see in Microsoft Office 2010!

Outsourcing is not going to go away. Our recent Technical Writers survey showed that US companies are now outsourcing technical documentation projects big-time to India, Poland and Portugal. This is not going to change. It’s just a business decision.

Feeling bad/sad/mad about it won’t change it.

But what you can do is make it work for you. Here’s how I did it.

3 Ways to Turn Outsourcing to Your Advantage & Travel the World

In 2005, my technical writing team in Ireland was told that there would be changes. Clouds on the horizon.

Over the next 6 months we trained a lovely group of writers in Bangalore to take over our technical writing duties, showed them the style guides, and held their hands while they took over the reins.

Then we were all let go.

Some found other work, a few struggled and moved into other less-paid fields — I moved to Asia.

Difficult but great.

Life-long dream to live in the Orient, learn a new language (getting there…) and escape the depression of life back home.

And yes, we have offspring. More on that later.

So here are three ways to make outsourcing work for you:

1. Learn a language.

It’s naïve (and lazy) to think that everyone has to learn English. Now it’s your turn to learn a language.

The boom areas are in the Middle East and Asia.

If you learn one of these languages, coupled with your current expertise, you stand a great chance of developing a great business — and moving away from the current dilemma you’re in.

I can’t do it!

This is just being lazy.

If millions of people can learn to speak Russian, Arabic, and Japanese — well, so can you!

2. Mentor technical writers in other counties

I work with companies in Asia that don’t have an experienced technical writer. They can’t afford me full-time, so we arrange conference calls and I guide their team through the larger projects.

I do it all from home.

No setup charges. We use Skype and Google Docs.

3. Setup a specialist online service

It has to be very precise and almost impossible to replicate.

For example:

1. Convert obscure file formats, e.g. PageMaker files into Microsoft Word
2. Translate technical documents into Arabic or another language where there is a shortage of these skill-sets
3. Perform technical edits on business critical documents, such as business proposals that must have perfect English

Outsourcing is not all going to India

What surprised me when I did the survey is that outsourcing is not going to India, which is what I’d expected, but Poland and other eastern-European countries, such as Latvia and Estonia.

Most of the writers there are English graduates and judging the samples that they have produced, can produce quite good documentation.

Some of the wording and phrasing is a little awkward— but on price they can’t be beat.

The trend towards outsourcing technical documentation is now a fact of life.

I’d be interested to hear from anyone in the field —that means you!—who is either working with offshore companies or has identified ways to protect their career.

What I’d like to know is how it’s affected your career prospects and how you can take ADVANTAGE of this situation.

Another thing

I think Programmers have more to fear that Tech Writers when it comes to outsourcing.

Looking for a simple writing tool that automatically hides your desktop so you can concentrate on your writing? Anil Atluri on Digital Inspiration has this great tutorial on how to make Google Docs your perfect free writing tool.

Turn Google Docs into a Writing Tool

Follow these steps:

1: Create a new document in Google Docs and choose “Edit CSS” from the edit menu.

2: Paste the following code into the CSS Box and save.

body {

font: 16px “Courier New”;

color: #00ff00 !important;

background: #000 !important;

width: 800px;

margin: 10px auto;

}

3: Press Ctrl + Shift + F to remove the menu bar in Google Docs and then hit F11 to turn your browser into full-screen mode.

Read more at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/google-docs-for-distraction-free-writing/10538/

Free Google Docs writing template

You can get a nice writing template over here from the same team: http://docs.google.com/

Do you use Google Docs for writing your tech documents?

What’s the one thing that would make you give up using Microsoft Word?

Chris Brogan (read and bookmark!) just hit a new milestone.

He’s now getting over 600 emails a day on average. 50% were people asking me his time, 25% were “really nice people,” 20% were business opportunities, and 5% were friends. A quick bit of math: if he answered 1 email a minute, 600 emails would take me 10 hours to answer.

The thing is, we’re all busy. We all have tons of email. We have no time to get it all handled.

But what will you do to get your email answered (for the most part)?

I’ve got a few thoughts, and this relates to some of what Julien Smith and I talked about in Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust.

If you want to improve your chances of an email being answered by someone (like me), here are some thoughts and ideas.

How to Get Your Email Answered

1. Brevity.

I have no time for huge rambling emails. Lead with what you need from me. Fill me in on the backstory (if you feel you must), and then end again with what you need from me. (Most imporant part: lead with what you need from me).

2. Connectivity.

If you talk with me on other platforms (like comment on my blog or talk with me on Twitter or Facebook), then I’m much more likely to know who you are.

3. Skip the flattery.

PR types: starting with “I love your blog” and then pitching me something I could care less about is a bit of a mismatch. You clearly don’t understand my blog if you’re pitching me stories that don’t relate to what I’m doing.

4. Get right to it.

Most emails have about 200 words of throat-clearing. Feel free to just be brief and to the point.

5. Make it mutually beneficial.

It’s very nice that you want me to help you get attention, but it’s rare that this does anything for me. Is there anything you’re going to do for my community to make this more worthwhile for them to care about you?

6. Make every email about resolving to a close.

I hate open-ended emails. Examples: “what would you like for lunch tomorrow?” Instead, how about, “I’m thinking about either tapas or Korean BBQ tomorrow. Do you have a preference?” One makes things close faster. The other makes the message linger.

7. Give the right lead time.

Asking me for something today is probably not going to happen. Asking me for something in three months is going to be forgotten. Think more in terms of two weeks for a typical response, or two or three months for something involving travel. Make sense?

8. Equip a trust agent.

It’s easier to get some kind of response by having someone who knows your target person introduce you.

What else? What else do you think will help?

By the way, since I started my contact form, I’ve found that I *love* responding to information that goes through it. It resolves to a Google spreadsheet, and I can bang out several dozen answers a minute on the form.

Get Your Email Answered: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/get-your-email-answered/

Read: Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust

Posted from ivanwalsh’s posterous

The Zoho Plug-in for Microsoft Office lets you work offline on your documents and spreadsheets with Microsoft Word/Excel and then have these changes reflected directly in your Zoho account when back online online. The plugin bridges the gap between online and offline office productivity.

Which Zoho Services are available with this Plugin?

1. Zoho Writer for documents (.doc/.docx)
2. Zoho Sheet for spreadsheets (.xls)
3. Zoho Share for publishing your local .doc/.xls files.

Use this plug-in to

1. Create, edit and save documents & spreadsheets directly to Zoho Writer/Sheet from within Microsoft Word/Excel.

2. Open and edit Zoho documents & spreadsheets in Microsoft Word/Excel and

3. Save it back to Zoho services (Writer/Sheet).

4. Publish local offline documents/spreadsheets for the Internet using Zoho Share.

How do I publish my offline documents using Zoho Plugin?

MS Office users who wanted to publish their documents/spreadsheets, residing in their local drive & offline, can do so now with this version of Zoho Plugin.

When you open a document or spreadsheet in Word/Excel, it will display "Publish in Zoho Share" in the drop-down menu when you click on Add-Ins followed by Zoho Writer or Zoho Sheet tab.

Here’s how publish in Zoho share works:

1. Open a new or an existing offline document/spreadsheet residing in your local drive or desktop in MS Word/Excel.

2. Click on "Publish in Zoho Share" option from Add-Ins >> Zoho Writer/Zoho Sheet menu. You will be prompted to save the document in case they are publishing a new un-saved one.

3. A pop-up box will come up asking the user to accept the declaration and Terms of Service for publishing local documents.

4. Once You are done with agreeing to Terms of Service, they will be asked to choose the license type for the publishing document. Default is "All Rights Reserved"

5. Click Upload to publish the document in Zoho Share. The document will be public and can be viewed by anyone.

6. Once the document is successfully uploaded to Zoho Share, user will get a status message that says "Document Published Successfully".

How to install Zoho Plugin?

Download it from Zoho.com. The file name ‘zohoplugin.exe’ will be saved to your preferred location on your local machine.

TIP: Close all your MS Office applications before you install this plug-in. After the initial check is over, double click on the ‘zohoplugin.exe’ file to begin the installation process.

How do I use Zoho Plugin with MS Office?

Once the installation process is over, the Zoho Buttons will show up within the Add-Ins tab on the Office (Microsoft Office 2007) toolbar.

You need to have a Zoho account to make use of the plug-in.

Currently you can sign in to any of the Zoho services – Sheet (http://sheet.zoho.com) or Writer (http://writer.zoho.com) and start using the plug-in.

There is also an option to create a new Zoho account from the Zoho Plugin credentials page. Click on the “New Zoho User? Sign Up” link to set up an account with us. This is for the users who have downloaded the plugin but are yet to sign up for Zoho Services.

Overview of Zoho Plugin:

1. Option to keep a local copy

Keep a local copy of the existing document/workbook that is available in Zoho Writer & Sheet. To achieve this, just need to enable the check box “Keep a local copy” when logging in to access their documents from within Microsoft Word/Excel.

2. Added a new tab – Local Documents

Now that the You can have a copy of the online document/workbook in their local drive, there is a new tab “Local Documents” added to the “Add-Ins” option in Word/Excel.

You can access the local copy by clicking on this particular tab. Locally downloaded documents/spreadsheets are password protected now. You are asked to provide Zoho account password when opening a local copy of the document/spreadsheet.

The enhanced security is to prevent unauthorised access. You also have the option to delete the local copy. Click on local documents tab from Add-Ins, select the document & choose delete button to perform the above operation.

3. Offline editing of documents/workbooks

User can now edit their documents/workbooks offline using the local copy and can sync up the updated offline version with the online version of the document/workbook in Zoho Writer/Sheet by connecting to the internet, signing in to their Zoho account from the Add-ins tabs in Word/Excel and then choosing the option “Save in Zoho Writer/Sheet”.

4. Multi-user Support

Our earlier version of Office Plugin did not allow the guest user of Windows to access the documents/workbooks. Now guest You (as opposed to only allowing You with Administrator privileges previously) who have an account with Zoho can access & edit their documents/workbooks in MS Word/Excel.

Tip: If you are working on an offline version of the document/sheet in MS Word/Excel and that is the most updated version, you can sync up the updated offline version with the online version of the document in Zoho Writer by connecting to the internet, signing in to your Zoho account from the Add-ins tabs in Word/Excel and then save the document once by clicking "Save" or "Ctrl+S" from your keyboard. Once you do the above process, both the offline & online version of the document/sheet will be in sync.

Specs

Zoho Plugin is compatible for Microsoft Office version 2000 & above and currently supports English Language versions of Office only.

Link: http://www.zoho.com/zohoplugin/home.html

The Zoho Plug-in for Microsoft Office lets you work offline on your documents and spreadsheets with Microsoft Word/Excel and then have these changes reflected directly in your Zoho account when back online online. The plugin bridges the gap between online and offline office productivity.

Which Zoho Services are available with this Plugin?

1. Zoho Writer for documents (.doc/.docx)
2. Zoho Sheet for spreadsheets (.xls)
3. Zoho Share for publishing your local .doc/.xls files.

Key Features

1. Create, edit and save documents & spreadsheets directly to Zoho Writer/Sheet from within Microsoft Word/Excel.

2. Open and edit Zoho documents & spreadsheets in Microsoft Word/Excel and save it back to Zoho services (Writer/Sheet).

3. Publish local offline documents/spreadsheets for the external world to see using Zoho Share.

How do I publish my offline documents using Zoho Plugin?

MS Office users who wanted to publish their documents/spreadsheets, residing in their local drive & offline, can do so now with this version of Zoho Plugin.

When you open a document or spreadsheet in Word/Excel, it will display "Publish in Zoho Share" in the drop-down menu when you click on Add-Ins followed by Zoho Writer or Zoho Sheet tab.

Here’s how publish in Zoho share works:

1. Open a new or an existing offline document/spreadsheet residing in your local drive or desktop in MS Word/Excel.

2. Click on "Publish in Zoho Share" option from Add-Ins >> Zoho Writer/Zoho Sheet menu. You will be prompted to save the document in case they are publishing a new un-saved one.

3. A pop-up box will come up asking the user to accept the declaration and Terms of Service for publishing local documents.

4. Once You are done with agreeing to Terms of Service, they will be asked to choose the license type for the publishing document. Default is "All Rights Reserved"

5. Click Upload to publish the document in Zoho Share. The document will be public and can be viewed by anyone.

6. Once the document is successfully uploaded to Zoho Share, user will get a status message that says "Document Published Successfully".

How to install Zoho Plugin?

Download it from Zoho.com. The file name ‘zohoplugin.exe’ will be saved to your preferred location on your local machine.

TIP: Close all your MS Office applications before you install this plug-in. After the initial check is over, double click on the ‘zohoplugin.exe’ file to begin the installation process.

How do I use Zoho Plugin with MS Office?

Once the installation process is over, the Zoho Buttons will show up within the Add-Ins tab on the Office (Microsoft Office 2007) toolbar.

You need to have a Zoho account to make use of the plug-in.

Currently you can sign in to any of the Zoho services – Sheet (http://sheet.zoho.com) or Writer (http://writer.zoho.com) and start using the plug-in.

There is also an option to create a new Zoho account from the Zoho Plugin credentials page. Click on the “New Zoho User? Sign Up” link to set up an account with us. This is for the users who have downloaded the plugin but are yet to sign up for Zoho Services.

Overview of Zoho Plugin:

1. Option to keep a local copy

Keep a local copy of the existing document/workbook that is available in Zoho Writer & Sheet. To achieve this, just need to enable the check box “Keep a local copy” when logging in to access their documents from within Microsoft Word/Excel.

2. Added a new tab – Local Documents

Now that the You can have a copy of the online document/workbook in their local drive, there is a new tab “Local Documents” added to the “Add-Ins” option in Word/Excel.

You can access the local copy by clicking on this particular tab. Locally downloaded documents/spreadsheets are password protected now. You are asked to provide Zoho account password when opening a local copy of the document/spreadsheet.

The enhanced security is to prevent unauthorised access. You also have the option to delete the local copy. Click on local documents tab from Add-Ins, select the document & choose delete button to perform the above operation.

3. Offline editing of documents/workbooks

User can now edit their documents/workbooks offline using the local copy and can sync up the updated offline version with the online version of the document/workbook in Zoho Writer/Sheet by connecting to the internet, signing in to their Zoho account from the Add-ins tabs in Word/Excel and then choosing the option “Save in Zoho Writer/Sheet”.

4. Multi-user Support

Our earlier version of Office Plugin did not allow the guest user of Windows to access the documents/workbooks. Now guest You (as opposed to only allowing You with Administrator privileges previously) who have an account with Zoho can access & edit their documents/workbooks in MS Word/Excel.

Tip: If you are working on an offline version of the document/sheet in MS Word/Excel and that is the most updated version, you can sync up the updated offline version with the online version of the document in Zoho Writer by connecting to the internet, signing in to your Zoho account from the Add-ins tabs in Word/Excel and then save the document once by clicking "Save" or "Ctrl+S" from your keyboard. Once you do the above process, both the offline & online version of the document/sheet will be in sync.

Specs

Zoho Plugin is compatible for Microsoft Office version 2000 & above and currently supports English Language versions of Office only.

Link: http://www.zoho.com/zohoplugin/home.html

If you like speech-recognition software, look at Text2Speech. It uses NEO’s in-built infrared facility to allow writers to hear what they have written, letter by letter, word by word or sentence by sentence through headphones or speakers. You can customize it by selecting settings for automatic read-back, volume and speed.
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Text2Speech has a battery life of over 30,000 words from just two AA batteries.

It works with the documents setting within Google Docs, so you can access, store, edit and share documents.

This enables documents to be easily sent back and forth wirelessly between NEO 2 and the Google Docs website, which encourages collaboration and increases writing practice.

This development allows users to easily create assignments and track writing progress, facilitates peer editing and keeps them focused on writing.

NEO 2 also now supports Renaissance Learning’s MathsFacts in a Flash program, which offers students at all levels by providing valuable practice on their addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts. Other mental skills, such as squares and fraction/decimal conversion can also be practiced.

Link to: Speech Recognition Software

Did you ever stop to think just how does Google Ads work? Well, the good folk over at Google have put up a simple tutorial on how Google Ads works. It’s very high level but leads to other pages where things get more technical.

Google’s AdSense program tries to show ads as relevant as possible for each visit. The following example explains this new technology step by step:

Mary’s hobby is gardening. With Google’s interest-based advertising technology (i.e. Adwords), Mary will get more relevant gardening ads because she visits gardening websites. Here’s how that works:

1. When Mary visits websites that display ads provided by Google’s AdSense program, Google stores a number in her browser (cookie) to remember her visits. That number could look like this: 114411.

2. As many websites that Mary visits are related to gardening, Google puts her number (114411) in the "gardening enthusiast" interest category.

3. As a result, Google shows more gardening ads to Mary (based on her browser) as she browses websites that use AdSense.

Read more on Interest-based advertising: How it works – Google Ads Preferences

Thomas Claburn writes in Information Week,“Prism is a Firefox plug-in, and a stand-alone application, that allows users to generate desktop versions of Web applications. With the plug-in, Firefox users can select the "Convert Website to Application" command from the Tools menu and immediately convert a Web app like Google Docs into a stand-alone application.

The result is a Google Docs icon can be used to launch the application from the quick launch bar or to launch the application automatically at start-up. Generated Web apps of this sort can also be associated Web link actions, thus allowing mailto: links to launch a Prism version of Gmail rather than, say, a traditional desktop app like Outlook.

Link: http://www.informationweek.com/blog/

Are links in Google docs (either published or not) can be crawled and taken into account. SEO Journal discuss this, reporting that “people report seeing Gmail links to be used for discovery. The supporting arguments are as follows:

• Messages in Gmail email are automatically read: the proof is related Google ads shown for each message;
• With Google owning such a huge database of Internet private conversations, it would be strange if it didn’t take advantage of it in some way or another.

How Links in Gmail Might Be Used in Google Algorithm

Zoho has a million users, which is quite remarkable for a new company that hasn’t spent a dollar on advertising or getting a ton of PR. How did they do it? By releasing a suite of services for new workers. We’ll hear all about that, and more when Zoho’s evangelist Raju Vegesna visits us.

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