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Enjoying the Season

You know, you can actually work too much! Some of my customers disagree with this, but I feel that you can. I personally am making an effort this year to be off when my kids are out of school or out of school early. I feel that balance between work and family is hugely important particularly around this time of year.

I find that having time with my kids and husband provide the power charge that I need to be able to go full throttle in my business. Without their energy boost, I know that I could easily burn myself out by working all the time. I have clients all around the world so there are phone calls up to late at night and sales I could be making if I didn’t put constraints on my work schedule to have time for my husband and family.

So keep this in mind when I tell you that I will not be working between Christmas and New Year’s this year. I want to take my family snow tubing in the mountains in northern Maryland, go to the newly opened Smithsonian Museum of American History, and take my family to Hillwood Estate museum in Washington where I just became a member.

What will you be doing this holiday season? Working? Traveling? Hopefully you can take a respite from work and enjoy your family while they are on break and get your batteries recharged too. From all of us here at McCord Web Services, we want to wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

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Vista Microsoft’s Black Eye?

Ever since Microsoft Vista has come out it has had problems. Problems like phantom crashes, inability to read ink levels in older printers and pre-Vista software doesn’t always seem to work. Printer drivers are a large problem because Vista will not display the printer tool box so you can never tell what your ink levels are. You’re always sitting there thinking, “should I give it one more try or throw out the ink and run the possibility of throwing out half the container?”

Even the Enterprise systems are having trouble. Their workers are unable to log onto the Intranet system. I have seen first hand this problem from military persons I know. Since the Navy has not upgraded the systems to be Vista compatible, Navy reservists who use Vista at home are unable to log onto their accounts from home. One officer I know personally has to run two machines one for Vista and one for XP.

Now, I on the other hand have had minimal problems with Microsoft Vista. I have a newer printer so all my printer drivers’ work perfectly. I, too, have had problems with some older programs I have running on Vista. Some don’t work and some barely work or crash when loading. Some even cause my computer to crash and it takes a few moments to recover. But these are only a few problems. I feel the good out ways the bad with Vista.

I happen to be a college student and at school we have all the latest and greatest software, including Microsoft Vista. I enjoy having the sidebar so I can check on the weather in the morning and when I’m just sitting at my computer I always have the slide show going on in my sidebar. It’s also nice because I use it to keep track of my CPU usage as well as my RAM usage.

Vista’s  file management system has been improved. Microsoft Vista gives you many options where you can now store your files with one click including Pictures, Downloads, Music, etc. instead of just the My Documents folder. None the less, my favorite part of Vista would have to be its beautiful layout with shadows and the invisible windows edge.

There seems to be no middle of the road when it comes to Vista, you either love it or you hate it. I for one love it!

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What Can You Expect to Pay for Organic Optimization

I am going to provide a simple answer to a very complex question, but I do get asked all the time “how much does organic search optimization cost?” Typically for a site that is 10 to 25 pages, you can expect to pay $1600 to $2800 for organic code optimization (this is an estimate).

Prices will be higher if new content needs to be created for your website, but it is important to understand that organic code optimization is not inexpensive. Some SEO firms will additionally charge you for link programs, monthly monitoring and reporting, and additional tweaking, but the bulk of the work revolves around laying hands on the website’s source code.

Improving organic optimization takes time. Results are typically not immediately apparent. Organic optimization does not stop with updating and improving the keyword density and source code, promoting your website with a blog, press releases, and article syndication keeps the push on and will improve overall results.

Another big thing to remember is that no firm can guarantee results on any engine – no way, no how! If you find a firm who does, you should be careful and proceed cautiously. The key to Google’s, Yahoo’s, and MSN’s search algorithm is such a highly guarded secret. If the key to placement was divulged, SEO firms would work to exploit the key to garner placement for their clients. So only Google, Yahoo, and MSN know what exactly they are looking for in regards to placement. Here’s one tip, Google looks at over 150 different factors alone to determine where a website falls in the organic results.

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Upgrading to WordPress 2.7

Screen shot of WordPress 2.7
Screen shot of WordPress 2.7

I just upgraded my blog from WordPress 2.6.1 to WordPress 2.7. Whew it was hairy and took 1.6 hours to do, but I have successfully upgraded my blog platform.

You the user can most likely see no difference, but in the control panel, the differences are huge. For me the reason that I wanted to upgrade was (1) so many clients are asking me should they upgrade? and (2) Flash Player 10 has broken my ability to easily add photos to my blog and I wanted to see if upgrading would help to get me back in business.

Well I am here to say that yes for images I am back in business, thank goodness. Darn that Flash Player 10 for making it so hard for me with WordPress.

So do I like the interface of WordPress 2.7? Well, it is very different than 2.6 that is for sure.

So far for me all my plugins have worked and my settings have carried over. Do I recommend doing the upgrade? If you have the time and money, I would recommend it. One of the improvements I see is the ability to block specific users from commenting, I have one guy who spams me all the time, and the ability to from now on auto upgrade WordPress as new versions come out. I liked WordPress version 2.6 but I think that I will like version 2.7 better.