Tech Minutes

I do apologize for that awful pun, but the Google Panda update has caused a huge stir in the SEO world. Google updates their algorithm all the time, but every once in a while they have a big update that completely changes the game. Google Panda was a massive update by Google to their search engine to limit content scrapers (people who steal content and host it on their own sites in the hopes of getting revenue from ads). Many legit sites saw a major drop in traffic and ranking, and Panda has changed (drastically even) the way SEO works. The latest update is starting to clear the fog, and Google has been explaining their reasoning behind the Panda Update.

Believe it or not, IT companies like DirectiveSHORT work a lot like other businesses.  We have many of the same needs in our business; from accounting to organizing data to marketing ourselves.  As an IT company, yes, we can manage your workstations, servers, and network, but there are other solutions we have up our sleeves that our clients can take advantage of, that just make sense for an IT company to provide, no matter what.

With all the fancy content management systems out there making it easy for users to manage and update their website, suddenly creating new content and pages on your site becomes a snap, and anyone can do it. While CMS's like Joomla empower those outside the professional web design field to completely turn their website into a living, breathing dynamic canvas, there are still a few simple best practices that one might not know without a little experience. One of the big ones that often get missed are images.  In this article, we'll show you how to work with images for the web so you get the best results possible when putting pictures on your website.  This will apply to blogs, social media, and just about any other method of publishing on the web.

Everyone who uses the Internet has used a Search Engine.  It’s nearly impossible not to.  Google, the leading Search Engine, has practically integrated itself into the English Language; it’s not uncommon to swap the words ‘search’ and ‘google’ (don’t know something?  Just Google it!) when talking about using a search engine.  The other leading search engines are Yahoo, and Microsoft’s latest incarnation, Bing, but there are countless others.  Search Engines generally work the same way, but we’ll use Google for example:

Despite the increasingly vast trust we put into the Internet to keep our personal and business information safe and secure, many users take their passwords very lightly. In an analysis studying over 32 million passwords from RockYou, a company that develops software for social networks, it's been discovered just how little effort is put in to keep things secure. The results are shocking.

Everyone is talking about Social Media and using it for their business.  The benefits are pretty clear; you should be using social networks to market your organization, but how does that affect your search engine ranking?

Links from relevant and important sites have always been a great way to get traffic & acceptance for a website, but how does Google rate links from platforms like Twitter and Facebook to your website?

In a world where we are always connected, always wired into the system, it's incredible to think how much information about us is being broadcasted into the void.  Everyone's doing it; Taco Bell wants you to call them toll free to chat about your experience, Facebook wants your full name, as opposed to a fake screen name, Microsoft wants to gather information about your computer every time something crashes.  Is our privacy really being invaded?  We'll talk about privacy, and the popular Palm Pre phone that seems to be taking Data Collection too far.

It's more likely than you think.  This month, video advertisements will be showing up for the first time ever in traditional paper magazines.