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Hotmail Easier Than Yahoo Mail Beta

My Mom is just now trying to understand email and I really needed to find the simplest yet most powerful email client available to assist her. Our parents generation is technologically challenged. Some people my parents age have jumped on email as a way to connect with kids and grandchildren and others have really hit a brick wall and refused to embrace the technology that keeps them connected to others.

So, based on that what is unequivocally the easiest email application for the technologically challenged. Hotmail has the others beat hands down. For my Mom to try to even explain how to use Outlook Express and set up a mail download is way complicated. So I decided to set up an online mail service that she could check from any where, but it had to be simple.

My sister said, get Yahoo beta mail, it’s great, but oh boy for the technologically challenged, the interface is way complicated. Enter Hotmail. Super simple, clean, no clutter, intuitive controls, super easy configuration, one click actions and voila, my Mom is using email.

So if you have a parent, friend, grandparent, aunt, or uncle who needs to embrace the information age, try Hotmail first. What seems so incredibly simple to those of us who use the computer every day is like rocket science to others.

One sidebar on this, I found that I needed to even take time to instruct my Mom on how to use the mouse. As you help your relative, you may want to make sure that you cover this simple yet very important step, they may not even know to ask.

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Do You Own Your Blog Content

If you are employing a ghost blogger for your blog, you should ask “do I own my content?” You may or you may not. This may be a hot topic for some clients and for some ghost bloggers, but it is important to know what ownership rights you really have.

Currently we do not retain rights on our blogging content when we do it for others, we consider it a work for hire, but that may change.

What are your doing with your ghost blogging content do you license it, sell it outright, or retain ownership?

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Best Practices on Content

It should be said that there really is a best practice to quoting content on the Web. If you did not know it already, all content on the Web is covered by copyright laws.

One can not simply copy an article in entirety and then paste it into a blog or web page even with credit to the original author. One can copy one or two paragraphs, quote it, and then link to the full article on the original author’s website, but to copy and paste the full article into your own web page on your own website is a big no-no.

Unique content on your website and blog are important. There is simply no way around copyright laws or taking the time to create good content.

We routinely check to make sure that our content is protected and properly documented and linked back to our site on the Web. If you were not aware, there are even free online services that will scan the Web for content that matches your own pages. Don’t get yourself in trouble needlessly, make sure that you are following the best practice when it comes to content.

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Google Algorithm Change This Past Week

I follow SitePro News. This is super e-newsletter. You can get the feed by clicking our post title. In the recent newsletter a very savvy author was speaking about the algorithm change on Google that just started this Thursday.

In the article, he mentions that Google has created a trust factor that is placing site’s with older domains preferentially above new domains. He also mentions changes in the weighting of PageRank shown on the green bar on the Google Toolbar or within the Google Sitemap control panel and also inbound links.

Clearly in the next several days we will continue to see a shakedown and mix up in the index. Are all of these changes good things? Well to scrap the PageRank indicator in the Google Toolbar is a good thing. PageRank has been an area that can be gamed by search engine optimizers and so to get rid of that I personally feel is a good thing. It appears that TrustRank may be the next big factor and this may be a better indicator of real value of a site and therefor a strong indicator of good organic search placement.

Although this newsletter is not online yet on the SitePro News site, when it is in the next several days, it is a must read. The title is “Google Algorithm Update Analysis” and is written by Dave Davies. You may not agree with everything that he has to say, but if you have been following the various Google patent disclosures over the last several months to one year, what he says makes sense based on the technology that Google has been actively patented.

From my viewpoint all of this information just reaffirms that excellent and unique content on your website is important. If you take time to create and build a great site, it should not stop when you launch, new content, a blog, an e-newsletter that are done on a regular basis build new content and authority over time.

There is no quick fix for great organic site placement on search engines, but once it is achieved, you have hit a tipping point and your business and market presence increases dramatically because of it. So specifically working to improve organic placement is crucial for all growing businesses.