Entertaining Kids with the Internet

August 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Behind the scenes of the Sesame Street‎ Google...
Image by tsand via Flickr
The computer – and more specifically the internet – is one of the best short-term babysitters a parent or grandparent could ask for. Need to get Sarah or Joey out from under foot so you can finish vacuuming or get those cookies into the oven? Of course there are computer games, but the better alternative may be some of the wonderful kids’ sites out there – places where a child might actually learn something while being entertained.
One that’s sure to please is pbskids.org, which hosts games, videos, and other activities based on virtually every PBS show, including Curious George, Ruff Ruffman, Sesame Street, and more. (For example, “Dot’s Story Factory” enables youngsters to build their own stories, using the mouse to select pictures and words and to draw objects themselves.) As a result, any kid who has watched PBS enough to have discovered a favorite show or character will find him or herself among friends.
Muppet World, a Disney site, follows much of the same format, allowing kids to play along with their favorite puppets. It also features “in-depth interviews” with Miss Piggy, and allows other characters to build on their familiar TV personalities. It also offers a functionality that lets kids build their own FaceBook-style personal page, a feature certain to be a pre-teen favorite.
Among the more educational sites that kids might like are nationalgeorgraphic.com/kids/, which gears its adult fare for non-adults, and funfrain.com, although some kids will see through its thin disguise and realize they’re going to have to work to solve the puzzles and complete the games at this location. And, for the civics-minded kid (or the parent wishing for that), there’s timeforkids.com, Time Magazine’s contribution.
Seussville.com is another site that while still under construction, is definitely worth keeping an eye on. Based on the blurb currently posted, it will feature a newsletter, first peeks at new books from the Seuss Factory, games, and other “Seussian” fun activities.
For a list of other great kids sites, visit www.100topkid.com, but be warned, many of the sites listed there are highly commercial and aimed primarily at creating a purchase.
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Using Twitter for SEO

August 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

There has been a lot of controversy, disagreement, and hand-swatting fights within the SEO community on whether resources like Twitter can be used appropriately for direct optimization purposes. This controversy is dwindling, however, as more and more search engines are keeping up with Twitter posts and updates, allowing for real time results that will direct traffic to your site through Twitter. The nail in coffin was Google Caffeine, Google’s new search engine indexing process which batches countless sites in real time, including Twitter. So, with the confirmation Twitter can now be used to great effect in SEO, how should you use it?

Awesome Use #1: Meet Your New PR Hub

Let’s face it. Even if your company is completely fantastic, you’re going to get some negative PR at one point or another. If you haven’t gotten it yet, it probably means you aren’t very well established or haven’t had a lot of clients. In order to make sure that what your future clients see is good PR, you will want to get good information about your name on the web as much as is possible.

If you name your Twitter account after your exact brand name, it’s more than likely to come up when people search for your company’s name, giving you an excellent public relations resource.

Awesome Use #2: Your Tweets Are Totally Above the Fold

We all know that the answer is forty-two. However, the question in this case is “how many characters in your tweet matter for SEO?” Those first forty-two characters will be read as the title of your tweet by the search engines, allowing you to get well ranked results that are keyword heavy.

Awesome Use #3: Get Found on Twitter

Twitter itself shouldn’t discounted as a tool. By optimizing your entire Twitter page, including your biography, name, location, and so forth, you will be found by more people on Twitter itself. This opens your audience up to relationship marketing, but it also creates more internal links from Twitter to your page, which will help it get found by the search engines.

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Downloading Software Files

February 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Whether you have a Broadband or DSL internet connection, you may have noticed that it takes a long time to download large files such as programs, videos, and music. Typical problems that users encounter are interruptions and slow download speeds. You probably think it’s your computer’s fault, but more often than not, slow speeds are caused by network-related problems. In addition, most people feel it’s beyond their control, but don’t fret; there’s always a solution.

The following are a few ideas to help resolve most software download problems:

1. It may seem obvious, but the first thing to do when you download software is to follow the instructions on your screen (step-by-step).

2. If you don’t have one already, it’s a good idea to purchase and install a download manager program. The Internet offers several free download manager programs, and you can choose the one you want.

3. If nothing seems to work, sometimes it helps to re-visit the website at a later time. For most websites, certain times of the day draw heavier traffic, making the download process much slower than usual.

Have you ever downloaded a software program that doesn’t seem to work at all? Although it doesn’t happen often, sometimes you’ll download a software program that doesn’t work. If this is the case, you can always uninstall the program. Setup packages that you download from the Internet usually come equipped with un-installation options.

If you use Windows, go to the Start menu, choose Settings, and then Control Panel (to open the Control Panel dialog box. From the dialog box, double-click the Add or Remove Programs icon to open a dialog box that contains your currently installed programs. You can scroll through the list of programs and select the one you wish to uninstall. Once you’ve found the program, simply highlight it, and then click the Remove button. It’s always good to know that you can remove unwanted programs that clutter your hard drive and slow your system down.

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