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Latest News from Opera! ... Also latest browser version!
Through the Opera Global Donations Program, Opera Software gives registered versions of Opera away for free to schools, kindergarten through the 12th grade, organizations representing physically challenged, as well as Web designer schools, companies or organizations. Call me 408-9075 for details!
"The Opera donations program emphasizes the vastness of the Internet and its need for more than one browser, while providing designers with a free browser to test Web pages,” says Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. “At the same time, this program allows us to give back to a community that has given us an abundance of support throughout the years."
Part of Opera's promise to the Internet community has been to provide unlimited accessibility to everyone, no matter their physical challenges. Opera always strives to adhere to the demands of this group and has become a better overall product because of its ease-of-use. By now offering the physically challenged free registered versions, Opera is able to give something back for the invaluable feedback it has received over the years.
"Educational institutions all over the world, especially in developing countries, struggle to prepare their students for a career that requires computer proficiency,” says Dean Kakridas, VP Desktop Products. “The future of a healthy Internet is dependent on young people learning both how to get the most out of their browsing experience and exposing them to all the great software that does not always come bundled on their computer."
More
ways to check your "Link Popularity"!
If you have been
keeping up with past articles, you know how important "Link Popularity"
is when some search engines determine positioning (Namely Google!). Here
is an easy way to determine "who is linking to you." It will only show
you who is linking to you from AltaVista, Google, Alltheweb, AOL, MSN,
HotBot and the Total, but it is also rather informative. You can list
your site, yours and your competitors, whatever you want!
SurfSafe.com,
Yahooligans & Ask Jeeves for Kids!
Here are a few search engines that are safe for kids to use. They are
all well researched and present a "no-pornography, no violence, no vulgarity"
theme. Each site has been carefully checked by an experienced educator
to ensure the content and links are appropriate for kids.
Latest
Virus! - W32/Klez.h@MM 
This virus remains
at a Medium Risk overall, however AVERT is still seeing many infections
reported from Home Users and is informing Home Users that they are STILL
at a HIGHER likelyhood of infection than corporate users.
HOME USERS SHOULD UPDATE THEIR DATS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE TO PREVENT
INFECTION
--- Update 4/18/2002 ---
AVERT has raised the risk assessment of this threat to Medium after
seeing an increase in prevalence over the past 24 hours. Home users
are at a greater risk of infection, as they tend to update their DATs
less frequently then corporations. As such, the risk of becoming infected
in a corporate environment is lower.
This latest W32/Klez variant is already detected as W32/Klez.gen@MM
by McAfee products using the 4182 DATs (23 January 2002) or greater.
- W32/Klez.h@MM has a number of similarities to previous W32/Klez
variants, for example:
- W32/Klez.h@MM makes use of Incorrect MIME Header Can Cause IE to Execute
E-mail Attachment vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer (ver
5.01 or 5.5 without SP2).
- The worm has the ability to spoof the From: field (often set to an
address found on the victim machine).
- The worm attempts to unload several processes (antivirus programs)
from memory.
May
- Search Engine News!From
www.searchengine-news.com
Google
announced May 1st, 2002 a multi-year agreement with AOL that will make
them the the search engine for AOL brands later this summer. This includes
AOL, CompuServe, AOL.com and Netscape. Google will also be the exclusive
provider of sponsored links for these sites with their Adwords Select
listings. Google recently modified the way it reacts to misspelled search
words. Whenever the search word returns zero results the engine attempts
to match up a word that represents their best guess. For example the search
"googggle" returned zero results and therefore was redirected to a search
for "google".
Alexa has released their new site powered by Google at http://info.alexa.com
and in their most recent version of the Alexa toolbar version 6.0.
Alexas' use of Google's search results has to be the most unique method
to date. Alexa uses a not so up-to-date website thumbnail image preview
for the first three results which we believe is provided by Google.
The main link in the search results drives visitors to a "Related Info"
page instead of to the site itself, so this new engine may not drive
much traffic to your website, but it does make for an interesting research
tool.
MSN has eliminated Overture listings for keywords under 16¢-a-click
from it's search results opting instead to place the 15¢-a-click LookSmart
listings closer to the top. The logical presumption is the change will
produce more revenue for MSN from what would otherwise be only marginally
valuable keywords and phrases.
HotBot - No significant changes at HotBot this month.
AltaVista updated it's index in April with many new, non-paid
pages. The good news is that we were fortunate in getting an extra 400+
pages included as part of the update. The less-than-good news is that
we waited over a year for these pages to show up in the AV results.
As one might expect, we've also seen an increase in traffic this past
month from AltaVista as a result.
Frankly, they still have a long way to go if they expect to be compared
favorably with the likes of Google in respects to user friendliness
and search relevancy but any improvement at this stage in the game is
encouraging. Hopefully, AltaVista will pick itself up, dust itself off,
and become a useful search engine again.
Lycos - No significant changes this month at Lycos
DMOZ - No significant changes this month at ODP.
LookSmart - Last month, when we reported they were slyly signing
up as company affiliates we thought that would be a tough act to follow.
After all, they set a precedent for loophole strategy that was creative
and original while putting the customer squarely in a "like-it-or-lump-it"
position. No other engine or directory had ever before pulled off such
a stunt as to charge for a listing and then charge a sales commission
too for sending traffic. Very creative, we must admit.
Little did we know that was only a warm-up for Act II which proved to
be a far more explosive exploitation of the rules.
Obviously hell-bent on out-doing themselves, in April LookSmart exceeded
all expectations by angering virtually every-single-one of their customers
in one fell swoop! ...we're dumbfounded -- all we can say is WOW.
Yahoo, in a surprise announcement, extended it's three year
extension with pay-per-click leader Overture on April 27th. We see this
as a "surprise" because Yahoo had previously stated they were planning
on operating their own pay-per-click service sometime in the future.
Maybe Overture threatend to sue them too if they started their own pay-per-click
service (see Overture section below for further explanation).
Overture offers the opportunity to get your site listed at
the top of the engines in as little as three to five days. For more
about this important strategy see the article Is GoTo.com becoming The
Best Search Engine Deal On The Net?
In April, Overture named Google in a lawsuit claming patent infringement
by the new Google AdWords service. Of course, they're also suing FindWhat.com
over, basically, the same issue.
Overture, apparently, believes they invented pay-per-click and they
appear to want exclusive rights to the PPC business model regardless
of what original wrinkles and subtle improvements the other players
might bring to the table.
336-408-9075
Rich@RichsWebDesign.com
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