How to Promote and Optimise Your Business Website

So you've launched a new business website or you have an existing one.

You could just wait for search engines such as Google to index your web pages and hope that they give your pages a high ranking.

Alternatively, you could actively help customers find your site without the search engines, as well as optimising your site for better search engine performance.

Read on to

• find out the 5 main factors influencing your site's ranking in search engines.
• use our action plan to promote your site and optimise it for a better search engine ranking.
  

What determines how my site performs in the search engines?

How long does it take for the search engines to find and evaluate a website?

What should I do once my site goes live?

What determines how my site performs in the search engines?

Before you can begin to improve your business site's performance, it helps to understand the main factors influencing where your web pages are positioned in the search results:

1. The age of your web address. The longer your site has been on the Internet, the better, as it takes time for the search engines to index and evaluate your web pages and credibility.
2. The number and quality of inbound links that point to your website
3. The text content of your website
4. The level of competition within your industry, including the willingness of your competitors to pay for online advertising, search engine optimisation and off-line advertising.
5. The changing methods used by search engines to rank web pages. The search engines regularly update the algorithms they use to rank web pages. Whenever they do this, business owners may find that their sites rise — or fall — in the search results. This is one reason why you can't afford to rely solely upon the search engines to bring customers to you.

See our action plan to find out how you can increase your inbound links, improve your site's content and promote it.

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How long does it take for the search engines to find and evaluate a website?

New websites

It can take 3 to 12 months for the search engines to index a new website. It also takes time for the search engines to assess the 'worth' of your web pages and decide where to position them in the search results.

During this time, you need to promote your website off-line, improve your inbound links, advertise online and make your site as appealing to the search engines as possible. Your SiteSuite website management tools allow you to refine and update the content of your web pages, which is important for improving their ranking in the search results.

Existing websites

It can take weeks or months for the search engines to index and evaluate improvements that you make to an existing site, so it's important to promote your website off-line, advertise online and improve your inbound links so that people can find your business.

You can resubmit your site for indexing when you've made major changes, but don't do this more than twice a year, because the search engines will treat repeat requests like spam e-mails.

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What should I do once my site goes live?

Action plan for promoting and optimising your business site:

1. Submit your site to Yahoo! Search and Live Search
2. Promote your site off-line
3. Get good quality inbound links
4. Fine-tune your website content
5. Improve your page titles
6. Advertise online
7. Update your website content
8. Add interactive features to your site
9. Examine your site's statistics
10. Consult a Search Engine Optimisation specialist

1. Submit your site to Yahoo! Search and Live Search

When SiteSuite completes your business website, we submit it to Google for indexing. You can also submit it to other search engines, such as Yahoo! Search and Live Search. This is only a request to have your site included in the search engine’s index; the search engine will determine if and when they add you to their index. This is no guarantee that your pages will rank well in the search results, which depends on other factors.

Submit your site to Yahoo! Search

http://au.search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

Submit your site to Live Search (formerly known as ninemsn search)

http://search.ninemsn.com.au/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2

Resubmitting your site to Google

Don't do this more than twice a year. The most appropriate time to do it is when you've made substantial changes.

1. Log into your SiteSuite website
2. Go to 'Statistics / Promotion'
3. Select 'Google' and follow Google's instructions

How do I know if my site has been indexed (found and put on record) by the search engines?

1. Go to Google Australia, or Yahoo! Australia Search, or Live Search Australia (formerly known as ninemsn search)
2. Type this into the search field and hit Enter:

site:yourdomainname.com (or .com.au, or .net, or .net.au, or .info, etc)

• Don't include in the 'www.'.
• Remember to include your full domain name.

Example:

site:yellowpages.com.au

When you do this, if the search engines have indexed your site, they will display a list of pages from your site. They may not have indexed all of your web pages. The search engines have billions of pages to analyse and do not keep a record of them all.

If your site is only a few months old, you may find that the search engines have only indexed a single page. Over time, the search engines may index more pages from your site, particularly if you increase the number and quality of your inbound links. The search engines take time to assess your site's credibility because many unreliable, spam and short-term promotion sites spring up every day.

Back to Action Plan

2. Promote your site off-line

Don't rely solely on the search engines to bring people to your website. This is not a sound business strategy, as the search engines are constantly changing the way they rank web pages and search engine marketing is highly competitive.

Promote your site off-line by including your web address in all advertising, on your stationery, signage and vehicles.

Tip: Using SiteSuite's e-mail services, you can create e-mail addresses on your domain name (e.g. info@mybusiness.com.au). Every time you give people your e-mail address, you draw their attention to your website address.

Back to Action Plan

3. Get good quality inbound links

Good quality inbound links are extremely important for improving your search engine ranking and also help customers find your business on the Web via other websites, blogs and directories.

Read our detailed article on inbound links to find out what they are, which ones give the best results and how you can increase the number and quality of your inbound links.

Back to Action Plan

4. Fine-tune your website content

The search engines use inbound links and the text information within your pages to categorise them and give them a ranking.

For detailed tips on providing better information for your customers in a format the search engines can understand, see our article, How to Create Search Engine-Friendly Content.

Back to Action Plan

5. Improve your page titles

Getting your page titles right is important for search engine optimisation. You can edit them by using your SiteSuite website management tools. Learn how to select and edit your page titles.

Back to Action Plan

6. Advertise online

You can advertise your business via websites, blogs and online directories (e.g., the Yellow Pages) and through the search engines. Advertising through the search engines is called Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC advertising). You may also have heard PPC ads being referred to as Sponsored Links. You set a daily advertising budget and pay each time someone clicks on one of your ads. You can run a PPC campaign yourself, or hire a search engine marketing company to do this for you.

Advertising through Yahoo! and ninemsn Sponsored Search

Advertising through Google AdWords

Back to Action Plan

7. Update your website content

It's tempting to take a 'set and forget' attitude towards your business website once it goes live, but it pays to update the text often and to add more informative text because the search engines reward this.

Why? Firstly, the search engines are trying to deliver the best, most up-to-date information to people searching the Web. Secondly, the search engines can't 'read' images and graphics, so they can only evaluate the text on your site.

Back to Action Plan

8. Add interactive features to your site

Encourage customers to return to your site and tell others about it by giving them the opportunity to contribute comments, ask questions, submit product reviews, vote in a poll, or forward links and images to friends.

Interactive features such as forums and blogs encourage your visitors to generate something that the search engines love: more text information (in the form of comments on your blog and posts on your forum).

Tip: If you are going to use a blog to drive traffic to your website, update it at least once a week and link your blog posts back to relevant pages of your site, so that search engines and people who find your blog can follow the links to your site.

Back to Action Plan

9. Examine your site's statistics

Your SiteSuite website statistics reveal which sites and search engines are driving traffic to yours. The statistics also show which pages within your website are the most popular.

• If you have paid to have your site listed in a particular directory (e.g., the Yellow Pages online), check your website statistics to confirm if that directory is driving traffic to your site.
• If you are paying to advertise through the search engines (Pay-Per-Click advertising), check your site statistics to see which search engines are driving the most traffic to your site.

Back to Action Plan

10. Consult a Search Engine Optimisation specialist

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO (the ongoing process of increasing your inbound links and refining your web pages in order to improve their search engine ranking) is a specialist industry and we recommend that you consult an expert.

SiteSuite has formed a partnership with Melbourne IT, a major web services company, to provide specialist SEO services. Melbourne IT can also run your pay-per-click advertising campaigns, if you don't have the time to do this. SiteSuite clients are eligible for discounted pricing for Melbourne IT's SEO services. Please call 1300 130 875 to be referred to Melbourne IT for a quote.

Using Google AdWords to Drive Traffic to Your Website

Visit Their Web Site

Google AdWords is an excellent way to drive traffic to your website and attract potential clients. With so many graphic design portfolios online, targeting customers in your area with keywords specific to your design focus can help grow your design business.

How Google AdWords Works
With Google AdWords, you pay only when your ads are clicked on, not when they are just displayed in search results. You set a monthly limit on your account, so you can easily limit your Google advertising budget. Creating an AdWords account is easy… simply create the headline and description for the ad itself, choose keywords and phrases related to your business, limit your ads by geographical location (if desired), and set the budget. More advanced users can bid on keywords for better ad placement.

How and Where Ads Appear
Google ads appear in the right column of search results, within search results that contain your selected keywords. Your ad contains a title, short description, and link to your website. If you choose, you can have your ads show in results only for people searching from specific geographic locations. This can be done by country, region, or even within a customized radius you define. This feature is extremely useful in targeting customers in your state, city, or even your town.

Improving Advertising with Statistics
To track your advertising, Google offers a “placement performance report” that shows impressions (views), clicks, costs, and other data related to your AdWords account. Google offers tips on how to use this report to improve your ad campaign. Google also offers a free keyword tool, which shows how often words are searched for. This tool is helpful for identifying keywords that are common on Google, or even for identifying words that are less common which can result in more frequent or targeted results for your keywords. Finally, adding Google Analytics to your site shows what keywords people are searching that lead them there, and ties in with your AdWords account.

Visit Their Web Site

Search Engine Submission

Search engine submission is not necessary any more for major search engines like Google, MSN, Yahoo! Search. However, it is still worth adding your site to major directories (see below).As for auto-submit services? Don't bother!

Search Engine Submission
based on article Submit Your Site To The World by Steve M Nash

SUBMIT YOUR SITE TO 10,000 SEARCH ENGINES!!!

NO, don't bother! It's a waste of time, and you'll probably just receive lots of unwanted email.

You don't even have to submit your site to major search engines like Google, Yahoo! or MSN these days. Just make sure your site gets links from sites already listed on these search engines.

Instead, hand-submit your site to important directories (i.e. DMOZ and a few others), monitor your results, and resubmit only if your site isn't listed yet.

Repeat this process for any new content you create. (Make sure all new content is listed on your site's sitemap, and that a link to the sitemap can be found on the homepage.)

DON'T Submit Your Site To Google, Yahoo!, MSN

Nowadays, your site must be listed on Google, Yahoo! and MSN, agreed! These three search engines are now *the* dominant search engines on the web, and account for the majority of search engine traffic that your site is likely to receive.

Submission to these search engines is easy and you need only submit your home page. Other pages, linked to from the home page, will then get added to the search engine's database over time.

Actually, you don't have to submit your site to Google, MSN, and Yahoo! (The search engines prefer that you don't). It may well find your site anyway, especially if another site (already on Google, MSN, or Yahoo!) has links to your site.

It is worth reading what these search engines says about getting your site listed, though:

- Google Search for Webmasters

- MSN Search for Site Owners

- Yahoo! Submit Your Site

Do Add Your Site Here!

Once your site is listed on the major search engines, you should hand-submit your site to these other major search directories, also:

• Open Directory Project (DMOZ)
  
• Yahoo! directory
  
• Strongest Links Directories - Listed by Alexa traffic ranking.
  

Note: regional (and maybe more appropriate) versions of the above search engines exist too.

Don't Use A Search Engines Submission Tool!

AddMe.com has a free search engine submission tool.

The free tool - the first auto-submit tool I ever used!! - submits your site to 13 major search engines. Whilst the paid-for professional tool submits your site each month to 2000 search engines and classifieds
- http://www.addme.com/submission.htm

However, I recommend you don't use it! But it's your choice!

Search Engine Submission Basics

I suggest to you that search engine submission is as simple as 1 - 2 - 3:

1. Create quality web pages that your site visitors like AND that the search engines (and directories) like - visit this search engine optimisation page
   
   
2. Find at least one site listed on the major search engines, and get an inbound link from that site to your site (find out how here - about reciprocal linking.)
   
   
3. Slowly, over time, add your site to the important directories too

As long as your site is indexed on search engines like Google, then there's no need to keep on submitting new pages. Just make sure you maintain a site map, that is accessible from the home page, and add your new pages to the site map as and when you create them. (Read this article to find out how to promote new site content.)

Monitor Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS)

After a month or so, check to see if your site exists on the major search engines. (Do a search for your website URL; e.g. do a search for www.yourwebsitename.com .)

If it isn't then put more effort into getting a site to link to you that does exist on the search engine. (If your site is not yet on a directory, and it should be according to their terms and conditions, then contact the directory owner with a polite email asking them when your site is likely to get added.)

Get People To Link To Your Site

Link building is more important than ever, and this article details several effective ways to get people to link to your website. Use these ideas to think of your own. Be creative! Create an online resource that other site owners can use and that includes a link back to your site (think Google Maps).

Top 10 Ways To Get People To Link To Your Web Site!
Article by Larry Dotson

1. Offer other web sites free content to post on their web site. Include your link on all of your content. The content should relate to your web site because it will be in front of your target audience.

2. When you visit a web site you've enjoyed a lot, write a review for the site. Write about the benefits you gain from the web site. Tell them they can publish it on their web site if they link to your web site.

3. Allow other people to publish your e-zine on their web site. Include your web site's ad and link in each issue you publish. This may also help you increase the number of people that subscribe to your e-zine.

4. Market your web site as a free web book. Design your web site with a title page, table of contents, chapters, etc. Just allow other people to give away the web book by linking to your web site.

5. Give your visitors an instant article directory. Tell your visitors they can instantly add a free article directory to their web site by linking to yours. Just place your ad or banner ad on top of the article directory for your main web site.

6. Allow other web sites to use your discussion board for their web site visitors. Just have them link directly to the discussion board. Include your web site's ad or banner ad at the top of the discussion board.

7. Start a members only web site. Tell visitors what's in your members only site and what it costs to gain access. Offer them a free membership if, in exchange, they link to your web site.

8. Offer your visitors a free sign up to your affiliate program. Pay them commission to sell your products or services. Just give them an affiliate link to track their sales. People will link to your web site to make extra money.

9. Create your own award site for other web sites. Give the winners a graphic or text link to place on their web site when they win. This will link your web site to theirs and draw more traffic to your web site.

10. Are you an expert on a particular subject? Offer people free consulting via e-mail if, in exchange, they link to your site. People will consider this a huge value because consulting fees can be very expensive.

Quick Intel® Core™ i7 platform tuning

By David Mackay (Intel) on February 23, 2009 at 1:46 pm

I hope you are all enjoying the new Intel® Core™i7 platforms. Most people are very pleased with the performance of these new platforms. I hope all of you software developers are regular VTune Analyzers users too (but I know not all of you are). One of the great advantages of VTune Analyzer’s event based sampling feature is that it doesn’t just show you where your code spends the most cpu time, it helps you understand why. When you understand why you can better make changes that will improve performance. Dr. Levinthal wrote an excellent guide on tuning for our Core™ microarchitecture. As one of my professors once said, “this new case is exactly the same as the old case, just different.” I won’t say Core i7 processors are the same as Core 2 processors but they share a lot in common. The event names change and there are new instructions and events. We have published a new tuning guide specifically for core i7 processors. Take a look at it: http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/using-intel-vtune-performance-analyzer-to-optimize-software-on-intel-core-i7-processors/. For those of you who have been using VTune for a while, this should be a good quick reference for you in getting started on Core i7. For those of you new to performance tuning using event based sampling, this is a great time to get started. Read the tuning guide. Download an Intel® VTune™ Performance Analyzer evaluation and try it out. Let me know what you discover.

Microsoft DreamSpark for High School Students

By Doug Holland (Intel)

Microsoft DreamSpark is now also open to High School students allowing them free copies of the following Microsoft products:

• Microsoft Visual Studio Professional.
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008.
• Microsoft Expression Studio 2.0.
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008.
• Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008.
• Concurrency Coordination Runtime (CCR) and Decentralized Software Services (DSS) Toolkit.
• Xna Game Studio 3.0.

Details of the program can be found here.

IE8 Reliability Update for Windows 7 Beta Now Available

We wanted to let you know that an update was released earlier today that will improve Internet Explorer’s reliability for users running the Windows 7 Beta. The update is now available via Windows Update, and can also be downloaded via Microsoft Update.

In this post we’ll discuss how we used the information that we’re receiving from Windows 7 Beta customers to determine the reliability fixes to include in this update.

We use the term “reliability” to broadly encompass all types of stability problems including crashes, hangs, memory leaks, etc. When we measure reliability we rely primarily on instrumentation built into Internet Explorer 8 and Windows 7. For example, the Customer Experience Improvement Program enables us to better understand how customers use our products, and Windows Error Reporting provides detailed information about the problems customers encounter. Shortly after the Windows 7 Beta became publically available these systems began to send information back to Microsoft.

After a week of monitoring this feedback we felt that we had reached a representative sampling of our customers. We found that approximately 10% of customers who had downloaded the Windows 7 Beta had experienced some type of reliability problem in IE8. We also found that a small number of users were experiencing crashes on a more regular basis and that about 1.5% of all Internet Explorer sessions had encountered a crash. This is relatively good for a pre-release version of Internet Explorer running on a beta operating system. We were also pleased to see that the new IE8 Crash Recovery feature was successfully helping customers recover from these crash situations 94% of the time.

One of the approaches that we use to analyze this data is called a failure curve. A failure curve is essentially a bar chart where each bar represents a unique failure (crash, hang, etc.). The height of the bar represents the number of occurrences in the last 30 days. Below you can see the failure curve for Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7 Beta. The color indicates whether the failure is caused by Internet Explorer or a 3rd party toolbar or extension running inside of Internet Explorer.

As you can see about 40% of our reliability problems were caused by Internet Explorer and about 60% by 3^rd party components. Another interesting point is that 17 unique issues account for 50% of all reported reliability problems. Because users generally have lots of toolbars and extensions installed, it’s common to see this many 3^rd party components at the top of our failure curve.

Once we had the failure curve set up we began investigating each unique issue starting from the top of the curve. We started to understand the technical details of our own issues and developed fixes for them. For 3^rd party problems we worked closely with our partners to address each issue either through an update to the 3^rd party code, by working around the problem inside of the Internet Explorer code base, or as a last resort by preventing the 3^rd party component from loading.

Most of the issues that we discovered through the Beta are fixed in the Release Candidate 1now available for Windows Vista and Windows XP. We also wanted some of these fixes to reach our Windows 7 Beta users now. We decided to piggyback onto this first update for the Windows 7 Beta. which is

This update will address many of the top crashes and hangs from the Windows 7 Beta, which includes those caused by Internet Explorer as well as 3^rd party components like Adobe Flash, Adobe Acrobat, and several others. We have also included fixes to enable printing PDF files and an architectural change which improves cookie management. This update does not contain other changes introduced between the Windows 7 Beta and Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1.

We encourage everyone to download this update and provide feedback. Your feedback was the driving force behind many of the decisions we made and we appreciate your continued participation during the Windows 7 Beta cycle.

Download IE 8

Windows Server 2008 as Workstation

For years I've been working with windows server editions as my main development environments, the reasons are plenty and among of them you can find the stability and the lose of useless services at workstations versions.

Last week I've decided that enough it enough and I cannot stand Vista anymore and decided to downgrade to XP just before going through the downgrade I've received a notification from the Windows Server Beta that they finally made Windows Server 2008 RTM so I've decided to give it a try AND I LOVE IT !

The installation of Windows 2008 Server went much faster then i expected.

After the installation I've started modifying the base install and adapting the server for a high end workstation.

For anyone who might want to move like me here is my WIN2008Workstation list:

1. Disable shutdown event tracker
   Start->Run->"gpedit.msc" -> Administrative tools->System-> Display Shutdown event tracked -> Disable
   
   
   
2. Disable IE Security
   Start->Server Manager->Configure IE Sec->Off both options.
   
   
   
3. Enable Wireless Support
   Start->Server Manager->Features->Add Feature->Wireless LAN Services
   
   
   
4. Enable Audio support
   Start->Run->"Service.msc"->Windows Audio -> Automatic
   Start->Run->Services.msc"->Windows Audio Endpoint Builder->Automatic
5. Install hardware drivers
   I am using ThinkPad t60p so my driver list is here
   Note that mobility center is missing from windows 2008 server so there is no need to install it.
   IBM Network access connection will crash on you if you will not enable the wireless support (Look above)
6. Enable Vista Experience (look & feel including Aero, Media Player etc.)
   Start->Server Manager->Features->Add Feature->Desktop Experience
   
   More info including how to enable sleep support on windows 2008 server you may find over this kb: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947036)
7. Enable Themes
   Start->Run->"Service.msc"->Themes->Automatic
8. Enable .NET 3.0
   Start->Server Manager->Features->Add Feature->.NET Framework 3.0 Features
9. Enable Windows Search (for searching outlook emails)
   Start->Server Manager->Roles->Add Roles->File Services->Windows Search
10. Enable SuperFetch
    Start->Run->"regedit"
    
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters
    
    Add a new DWORD by the name of EnablePrefetcher and assign is the value of 3
    Add a new DWORD by the name of EnableSuperfetch and assign is the value of 3
    
    Start->Run->"services.msc"->SuperFetch->Automatic
    
11. Install Messenger
    Latest Live Messenger will not install on Windows 2008 Server, you should install a former version (8.1 and not 8.5) and then you may copy the Live Messenger folder from a working machine and work with it.
    http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d78f2ff1-79ea-4066-8ba0-ddbed94864fc&DisplayLang=en
12. Install Skype
    Latest Skype version will crash 2 seconds after login, you need to install a former skype version Skype 3.1.0.152 works great.
    http://filehippo.com/download_skype/2473/
13. Install Office 2007
14. Install Visual Studio 2008
    
15. Setting Processor Scheduling
    Start->Control Panel ->System ->Advanced system settings-> Advanced -> Performance -> Settings->Advanced->Adjust best performance->Programs
    update:
16. Changing DEP Mode
    Start->Control Panel ->System ->Advanced system settings-> Advanced -> Performance -> Settings-> Data Execution Prevention-> Turn On DEP for essential Windows programs and services.
    update2:
17. Fixing ASP.NET Development Server
    After installing visual studio you might want to start working with Casini, the asp.net dev server but it seems that the ie cant find it.
    Edit the hosts file located at: C:/windows/system32/drivers/etc
    
    comment the following line :
    ::1 localhost
    by replacing it with:
    #::1
    
    (the "::1" is use for the localhost for ipv6)

7 ways to Convert Windows XP to Windows Vista

These days there are so many tools available on the Net which helps you to Make Windows XP Look Like Windows Vista.

If you are the Windows XP users and Want a Vista Look on your PC then you have to try some App which helps you to Convert XP into Vista.

Below are some of the better free tools that can help you to make your Windows XP look like Vista. Just make sure you got a bit of spare RAM on your system.

Here are the List:

1. Vista Start Menu

It will have the options for user to configure how the Vista start menu look like. In term of user friendly, Vista menu show the entire necessary shortcut key for user when there press the Start button. With Vista Start Menu, you just open the menu and click the program icon. If you need supplemental files installed together with the program, just move the mouse pointer over the icon and you will see a submenu where you can find all you need.

2. VistaMizer

VistaMizer changes the look of your Windows XP desktop, making it more appealing. It’s highly customizable and changes lots of stuff. What’s really good about is that it will keep backup of all the changes (so that you can easily revert it) and won’t replace/overwrite anything that would risk destabilizing your system.

With VistaMizer you are now able to transform your Windows XP, MCE or Server 2003 by giving it the look of Windows Vista. Therefore over 380 files with new Icons, pictures as well as videos are modified.

3. WinFlip

The WinFlip application was desigend to enable the ‘Flip 3D’ function for Windows XP. It provides an alternate window-switcher to the standard Windows Alt-Tab. Winflip displays all open windows in a 3D stack, which the user can flick through and select using either keyboard or mouse.

WinFlip is really simple to use. Simply install it and set your keyword combination. Now, once you have a bunch of windows open, simply trigger WinFlip, and you’ll see a stack appear on screen. Continue to tap the trigger keys and the stack changes. The top window flips to the bottom, revealing the next window. Keep doing this until you see the window you want, release the key and that window is now your forefront window.

4. ViStart

If you are using the Windows XP and want the Windows Vista Start menu, than Try this small app ViStart. ViStart is a perfect start menu replacement for Windows XP. ViStart will now index all personal files and program files and give *ACTUAL instant results* that’s 4 times faster then the real Vista start menu.

5. Vista Transformation Pack

The Vista Transformation Pack is for Windows users who want to replicate the look and feel of Windows Vista on their Windows XP or Windows 2003 systems. After using this desktop enhancement to modify your Windows interface to look like Windows Vista Ultimate, no one will notice you’re using the same old Windows XP operating system.

6. RocketDock

RocketDock is a smoothly animated, alpha blended application launcher. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. With each item completely customizable there is no end to what you can add and launch from the dock.

Now with added Taskbar support your minimized windows can appear as icons on the dock. This allows for better productivity and accessibility.

7. WindowBlinds

WindowsBlinds is not a program specifically designed to Vistalize your system. It’s more a tool for applying different visual theme on your entire current Windows environment: changing overall look and feel, title bars, push buttons, start bar, start menu and more. Similar to the above RocketDock, it claims to be memory-friendly, so it shouldn’t slow down your system. Once installed, you can either apply one of the default visual themes or download one from the WindowsBlinds gallery (over 1000 themes).

See Also: Free Windows Vista Desktop Themes
See Also: New Windows Vista Themes
See Also: 101 free Windows vista themes

So these are best App to turn your XP into Windows Vista, Don,t Forget to Subscribe our Feeds for Daily Updates.

7 ways to Convert Windows XP to Windows Vista

These days there are so many tools available on the Net which helps you to Make Windows XP Look Like Windows Vista.

If you are the Windows XP users and Want a Vista Look on your PC then you have to try some App which helps you to Convert XP into Vista.

Below are some of the better free tools that can help you to make your Windows XP look like Vista. Just make sure you got a bit of spare RAM on your system.

Here are the List:

1. Vista Start Menu

It will have the options for user to configure how the Vista start menu look like. In term of user friendly, Vista menu show the entire necessary shortcut key for user when there press the Start button. With Vista Start Menu, you just open the menu and click the program icon. If you need supplemental files installed together with the program, just move the mouse pointer over the icon and you will see a submenu where you can find all you need.

2. VistaMizer

VistaMizer changes the look of your Windows XP desktop, making it more appealing. It’s highly customizable and changes lots of stuff. What’s really good about is that it will keep backup of all the changes (so that you can easily revert it) and won’t replace/overwrite anything that would risk destabilizing your system.

With VistaMizer you are now able to transform your Windows XP, MCE or Server 2003 by giving it the look of Windows Vista. Therefore over 380 files with new Icons, pictures as well as videos are modified.

3. WinFlip

The WinFlip application was desigend to enable the ‘Flip 3D’ function for Windows XP. It provides an alternate window-switcher to the standard Windows Alt-Tab. Winflip displays all open windows in a 3D stack, which the user can flick through and select using either keyboard or mouse.

WinFlip is really simple to use. Simply install it and set your keyword combination. Now, once you have a bunch of windows open, simply trigger WinFlip, and you’ll see a stack appear on screen. Continue to tap the trigger keys and the stack changes. The top window flips to the bottom, revealing the next window. Keep doing this until you see the window you want, release the key and that window is now your forefront window.

4. ViStart

If you are using the Windows XP and want the Windows Vista Start menu, than Try this small app ViStart. ViStart is a perfect start menu replacement for Windows XP. ViStart will now index all personal files and program files and give *ACTUAL instant results* that’s 4 times faster then the real Vista start menu.

5. Vista Transformation Pack

The Vista Transformation Pack is for Windows users who want to replicate the look and feel of Windows Vista on their Windows XP or Windows 2003 systems. After using this desktop enhancement to modify your Windows interface to look like Windows Vista Ultimate, no one will notice you’re using the same old Windows XP operating system.

6. RocketDock

RocketDock is a smoothly animated, alpha blended application launcher. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. With each item completely customizable there is no end to what you can add and launch from the dock.

Now with added Taskbar support your minimized windows can appear as icons on the dock. This allows for better productivity and accessibility.

7. WindowBlinds

WindowsBlinds is not a program specifically designed to Vistalize your system. It’s more a tool for applying different visual theme on your entire current Windows environment: changing overall look and feel, title bars, push buttons, start bar, start menu and more. Similar to the above RocketDock, it claims to be memory-friendly, so it shouldn’t slow down your system. Once installed, you can either apply one of the default visual themes or download one from the WindowsBlinds gallery (over 1000 themes).

See Also: Free Windows Vista Desktop Themes
See Also: New Windows Vista Themes
See Also: 101 free Windows vista themes

So these are best App to turn your XP into Windows Vista, Don,t Forget to Subscribe our Feeds for Daily Updates.

New Windows 7 Build (7022) released

Its true there’s a new build out in the wild! Here is whats new:

• The RC1 of Internet Explorer 8 is now integrated
• Samples of video and music tracks were added
• The design of the side panel was again adjusted
• New views of the Control Panel (Category, large icons and small icons)
• A few minor changes to the design of the Windows Media Player
• Through the programs and functions option you can now uninstall Media Center, Windows DVD Maker and Windows Media Player

Plixer International Releases Flow Analytics Version 2.0

Posted in General, Scrutinizer on February 18th, 2009 by Jon Mills

Plixer International Inc. today announces the release of Flow Analytics version 2.0, an add-on module for their Scrutinizer NetFlow & sFlow Analyzer tool. Flow Analytics works to ensure network health and stability by analyzing NetFlow data and alerting IT administrators on potentially hazardous traffic patterns.

Plixer has utilized various resources to create a pool of known compromised hosts on the internet, which no host on the network should be communicating with. The list is updated within Flow Analytics every single hour. Flow Analytics scrutinizes every flow, as it comes in, to ensure that there is no communication with any of these potentially dangerous hosts.

Version 2 of the Flow Analytics module brings a host of new in-depth network traffic reports, found in easy to configure Scrutinizer gadgets.

New gadgets include:

• Top Inter-network Traffic, which shows subnet to subnet traffic.
• Top Applications, with the ability to alert for applications which should not be on the network.
• Top Transport, with the ability to alarm for protocols (e.g. TCP, UDP, IGMP, etc.) which should not be on the network.
• Top Sending and Receiving Countries
• Top Sending and Receiving Domains
• Network Volume, which reports on the number of unique hosts or applications in the last 5 minutes versus the last 30 hours.

Each report runs across potentially hundreds of routers after deduplication, not just per interface/per router.

There are also new network behavior analysis algorithms, which sift through network traffic looking for illegal scans such as NULL, FYN, SYN, Invalid Subnets, XMAS Tree, and more; all of which can lead to worm attacks.

In support of the new Flow Analytics module, Plixer has also released Scrutinizer NetFlow & sFlow Analyzer version 6.0.5. This new version includes minor bug fixes, user interface enhancements and improved support for Flow Analytics.

High Performance Computing

High performance clusters running technical applications place extreme demands on storage systems. Performance requirements are typically in the multigigabyte-per-second range, and capacity can scale into the petabyte class. High performance computing (HPC) applications such as seismic processing, digital image creation and rendering, electronic design automation, genomic research, media hosting, and other data-intensive applications demand the ability to scale storage capacity and performance to extreme levels while reducing management complexity.

The Solution
The NetApp Data ONTAP® GX system is a highly scalable, multinode storage solution that exceeds the demands of most HPC applications for extreme performance, management simplicity, and excellent reliability. The system is based on the Data ONTAP GX operating system and two or more FAS system nodes, and performance is scaled linearly. Clustered file system technology, delivered via the FlexVol® High Performance Option (HPO), enables extreme levels of throughput, even for a single file or volume.

Benefits

• Highest performance. Data ONTAP GX systems meet the performance demands of high performance computing environments. As nodes are added, performance scales linearly, resulting in multigigabyte levels of throughput. With FlexVol HPO, volumes are striped across any or all of the nodes in the system, enabling gigabytes-per-second throughput to be delivered for a single file or volume.
• Simplest to manage. Data ONTAP GX systems provide a new level of management simplicity for scale-out storage by using the global namespace capability. This feature enables data movement between controllers or different storage tiers; all clients can view all storage and physical storage changes that are fully transparent to the users and applications. In addition, no client-code software is required, because communications are handled through standard NFS and CIFS protocols.
• Highly reliable. Data ONTAP GX systems deliver excellent reliability relative to other scale-out alternatives. Data ONTAP GX leverages the same core system software (WAFL®) that has been proven in over 94,000 installations and similarly leverages other proven technologies from the widely installed NetApp Data ONTAP 7G. In addition, key high-availability features such as double parity RAID (RAID-DP™) and transparent node failover provide robust data availability.

Next-Generation Network Service Architecture

Automatically isolate and correct root causes of network faults and performance issues for end-to-end management of IP, MPLS, and optical networks.

The EMC Smarts Next-Generation Network Service Architecture solution provides automated service management across all infrastructure domains. Our Next-Generation Network Service Architecture solution—highly scalable and rapidly deployable—leverages patented analysis and automation technology to help you operate more effectively as a service provider. Use cross-domain correlation of faults and performance issues within multiprotocol label switching (MPLS), virtual private network (VPN), Internet protocol (IP), voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), and optical networks for service assurance within next-generation networks and to measure the business impact of issues.

Key Benefits

• Fast mean time to repair — Discover, model, and correlate network, server, storage, and application data in real time to pinpoint root causes of performance issues.

• Visual diagnosis — Generate screen displays of network problems for easy diagnosis and proactive resolution of root cause problems.

• Alarm management — Improve productivity of maintenance personnel by filtering out false alarms so operators can immediately start to work on problem resolution.

• MPLS-based IP support — Gain unprecedented business impact insight into extended MPLS-based IP VPNs.

• Business continuance — Ensure ultra-high availability, exceptional speed, and optimal performance of distributed networks and service applications without down time.

Business Examples

• Advanced Network Management - EMC Advanced Network Management solutions automatically isolate and identify root-cause availability and performance faults in advanced and multi-domain networks, as well as protocols.
• End-to-End Service Management - EMC End-to-End Service Management solutions enable you to increase end-to-end service availability and performance by automating management from the perspective of service objectives and the user experience.
• IPTV and VoIP Service Management - EMC IPTV and VoIP Service Management solutions enable you to correlate infrastructure and application interdependencies, protocols and services, and automatically isolate service-impacting events to their root cause.

Intelligent Service Optimization Solutions for Enterprise Networks

To ensure that a business's mission-critical applications run smoothly at all times without interference, network managers must have a clear view of all application traffic running on the Internet, the Wide Area Network (WAN) and the data center. Allot solutions grant enterprise network managers a clear and precise depiction of how their bandwidth is being utilized in real-time and over time. Using Allot solutions, network managers are able to optimize network performance by guaranteeing bandwidth for critical application traffic and wan optimization, limiting the capacity of ‘nice-to-have’ applications and even removing non-business applications completely if required. To complete the package, Allot provides long-term reporting options on the use of the Internet and WAN applications – vital for capacity planning and trend analysis.

Allot's comprehensive portfolio of products is based on cutting-edge Layer-7 Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology. Looking deep into each and every packet and into packet flows traversing the network, they help in application acceleration and identify and prioritize applications according to defined policies, offering enterprise networks the unique combination of the following:

Allot solutions optimize performance and Quality of Service on Internet, Data Center and WAN links

Allot solutions for enterprise networks include:

• Network Visibility solutions deliver the application awareness and network intelligence that is needed to understand how broadband resources are being consumed by users and applications across the entire network. Providing both real-time and long-term monitoring and reporting, Allot solutions enable fast and efficient troubleshooting as well as informed capacity planning based on accurate usage statistics and trend analysis.

• Sophisticated Bandwidth Management solutions allow network managers to control costs and optimize network performance by efficiently managing the utilization of bandwidth resources dedicated to Internet links, data centers and WANs. As a result, the enterprise network becomes more supportive of your business.

• Wide Range of Solution Options: Enterprise networks may be facing application performance problems on the Internet links, within their data centers and on their WAN links. Allot's broad portfolio of products scales to support from 100Mbps to 10Gbps throughput, allowing wan acceleration and centralized management of the entire network with customized traffic policies suited to the needs of each network link.