all sorted  ) Was just a few issues in the way it was set up and file permissions.. but all good now!

have also enabled some option under the ‘writing’ tab so you can use the Wordpress App on iphone to make posts !

Link Popularity – great source for content, articles, social bookmarking all at reasonable prices.

content is pretty decent considering the price. The website and company are AU based… but the writers are US based

I tried to upload an image and I got this error?

Any ideas?

Unable to create directory C:\Inetpub\vhosts\pickupsticks.com.au\httpdocs/wp-content/uploads/2009/08. Is its parent directory writable by the server?

Well, Jordon would argue that it is not important at all… Which may be true however it can’t be ignored that “searching for images is one of the top search engine activities we see today”. This post is just a general rant about images online and in particular images & Bing. I have also created a category forImage optimisation…

Of interest: a study conducted by Microsoft Research shows that consumers can process results with images 20% faster than text only results. Making the role of images in landing pages even more important and particularly the need to split test the landing pages images to find which images are keeping people on the page longer, and which images are resulting in the desired action.

It is interesting that Bing has used a full page image for the home page and is updating the image regularly. The full sized image on the home page (and sometimes just the banner) is the fundamental visual difference between Google and Bing.

Other Images Notes:

- Bing has infinite scroll for images (just keep scrolling) and also a ‘find related images’ search function.

- Both Google & Bing allow image filter searches (including filter by colour)

Optimising Images for Bing:

Here’s what the top Bing image developer recommends (once again, nothing new here)

• Name image files appropriately – For improved relevance, make sure that the file name describes the image appropriately.
• Alternative image text (alt text) matters – For increased optimization, make sure photos are properly described with alternative text tags

Google is now starting to incorporate Google Map ads into Google Maps Street View

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/08/local-listings-come-to-google-street-view.html

Nothing that we do not already know, below are the results from 72 SEO’s who completed a survey on what they thought were the top 5 factors to influence ranks. Below are the results in order of importance.

According to this year’s survey, the top five ranking factors are:

1. Anchor Text from External Links
2. Keyword Use in Title Tag
3. Raw Link Popularity
4. Diversity of Linking Domains
5. Keyword Use in Root Domain

Read more here: http://searchengineland.com/search-ranking-factors-shows-how-little-seo-has-changed-24363

Have tried this with a promo code sent through for $50 trial.

Basically go to www.sponsoredtweets.com and login with normal Twitter account details. then set your ad text, url and bids and away you go. Kinda like facebook advertising – but on twitter. Interesting.

The big question is how do we optimize our websites for Bing? We all want to be ranked at the top of this new search engine, which has the potential to take on the other major search engines.

1. From my observations domain age plays a big role. Bing wants to see websites that are established and have been around for a long period of time.
2. Bing seems to like websites with tons of original content on the landing pages.
3. Make sure your page titles are keyword rich and appropriate for the subject matter. Bing loves titles with keywords searchers are using. Make sure to have a good, unique title for all your websites pages.
4. Unlike other search engines, linking out seems to be favored. This means linking to other sites from your own site is good for ranking. This may show to Bing that your site shares useful information with its users. This is not to say reciprocal linking is good, but linking to sites that your users may deem valuable is a good idea.
5. Sign up for an account with Bing, manage your analytics and start a pay-per-click campaign with them. Their PPC rates are significantly lower than other PPC campaigns because there is not as much competition and keyword dilution occurring. In a few months to a year PPC costs will begin to mimic those of the other search engines, but for now the prices are superb.

http://www.smashingapps.com/2009/07/08/21-free-business-web-apps-that-can-make-your-lives-easier.html

Very cool bunch of apps. I like the PDF to xcel program !

Taking Full Screenshots of Web Pages Was Never This Easy!

Do you want to capture a full screenshot of a web page without installing any software or browser extensions?

Well, here’s a simple trick.

Open the web page that you want to capture, go to the address bar of the browser and type “aviary.com/” just before the http:// part of the URL.

For instance, if your web address is something like http://labnol.org, the new URL will become aviary.com/http://labnol.org – hit Enter and there you have an editable screenshot image of that page.

Or add this bookmarklet to the bookmarks bar and you can even save yourself from typing aviary.com every time you want to capture a screenshot.

Check out aviary.com