In the past week, I am proud to announce that we have launched another 2 new websites by DW Web Solutions!

Our first launch was for Boland Recreation in Marshalltown, IA.

Our second launch of the last week was for JMAR Property Inspections in Indio, CA.

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I read China Loses 10,000 Domains to Quake, an interesting article from last week on Yahoo News.  Apparently…

Chinese domain owners lost about 10,000 domain names because of the earthquake that cut undersea cables off the coast of Taiwan last month

They also quoted a source as saying:

“Because the domain names are lost due to an act of God, enterprises and individuals involved may be appropriately compensated by the domain name server, but the scheme is still under discussion,”

First of all, I can’t begin to imagine the kind of headaches caused by something like this.  How awful to all of a sudden lost your own website’s domain due to something completely out of your control, but I really wouldn’t want to have this happen to my clients’ addresses!!!

I suppose the story also caught my attention because of the consideration being given to remedy the situation because the cause was “an act of God.”  That phrase always gets a rather visceral reaction from me for a completely unrelated reason.  I drove around for several years in a car that was as close to totalled as possible due to a deer-car incident on the highway here in Kansas.  I was told over and over again that insurance could not be held responsible or help me in any way because a deer running into the well-travelled highway on which I was going 70 miles an hour was “an act of God.”

So I guess instead of being bitter, I will just hope for the sake of these people that some compensation does come their way, if it’s not possible to restore their domains!

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Yes, even during the joyful holiday season, I am still plagued by that dang Google monster who seems to have taken up permanent residence under my bed…or desk for that matter. He’s still chasing me and nagging me to write more articles, put in an extra SEO effort, get more links, blog more frequently, etc.

Well, it doesn’t look like he’s going to be going anywhere anytime soon. According to a New York Times article,

Google, the search engine company, displaced Yahoo as the world’s second-most-visited Web site in November and closed in on the leader, Microsoft, a market researcher said yesterday.

Check out the article for all the specifics and breakdown of the numbers. But needless to say, it looks like Youtube was a big help to the big G.

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Just when I was starting to get a handle on my StumbleUpon addiction, I learned today that the folks over there have just launched StumbleVideo. Along the same concept as the original, you pick a category or “channel” and then stumble through clips in that category from YouTube, Myspace and Google Video. And just like it’s predecessor, you are given the opportunity to give each a clip a thumbs up or thumbs down. Over time, the system will learn from your rankings and send you video clips that based on your previous votes it thinks you will enjoy.

Who knows, this might just bring an influx of videos to the DW Web Solutions blog!

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I just came across an interesting story about Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.  This story on Yahoo News reports that:

Wikia, a commercial counterpart to the non-profit Wikipedia, will go even further to provide customers — bloggers or other operators who meet its criteria for popular Web sites — 100 percent of any advertising revenue from the sites they build.

Interesting idea.  They are willing to give you the software platform, free hosting and storage space AND you get to keep 100% of any advertising revenue generated from your wiki site…all for a simple link back to Wikia.

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Another great tutorial from Jennifer Kyrnin from About.com Web Design/HTML.  She took the time to take screenshots of each step of the process of running Internet Explorer 6 and 7 at the same time.  If you’re designing websites, make sure to check each site in both versions…wouldn’t be fun to have your site seemingly be functioning in your updated browser and falling apart for all those who haven’t upgraded yet…and your client’s probably wouldn’t be too amused either!

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Well, maybe not yet…but it does seem that we may be heading there.  I have always preached the importance of a web presence to small businesses.  In fact, I use the yellow pages comparison in “Why Your Small Business Needs A Website,” an article I wrote a few months back.

I firmly believe that having a website and online marketing plan is essential to all businesses today, so you can imagine how intrigued I was to come across “Yellow Page Usage Drops By Half” on at the Online Legal Marketing Blog.  Check it out for some interesting statistics on yellow page usage and advertising versus their online counterparts!

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According to an article at CNET today

Search engine rivals Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are teaming up to make it easier for Web site owners to make sure their sites get included in the Web indexes, the companies are expected to announce Thursday.

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