Have you ever seen something inconceivable that has burned an image in your mind? Perhaps you visited a place or witnessed an incredibly impossible event and like a video, that captured image surfaces in your mind’s eye again and again during certain daily events. If you have, then you realize that a picture can be worth not only a thousand words, but a thousand thoughts as well.

This past summer, I had the opportunity of visiting the Grand Canyon of the South in the western part of Virginia. The rugged mountainous terrain was breathtaking. Off to the side of one of the overlooks, I spotted what appeared to be a tree growing out of solid rock. As I approached the seemingly impossible scene, I started recalling motivational quotes that I have heard over the years. The tree was growing in the crevice of rock. I had to take a picture to remind myself of nature’s example:  when faced with what appears to be an impossible situation, we can persevere, forge on and realize our goals.

Photos and graphics on websites have the same affect on visitors. Choosing the right photo to represent your company or organization is essential to capture the visitor’s attention and to make a lasting impression. With the mountains of websites in the Internet landscape, how will your website stand out from others?

R & R Web Design LLC is celebrating our 10th year during 2010, and as our gift to you, we are offering free perseverance photos of that impossible tree with a variety of motivational themes. Please feel free to use one on your website or blog. May they inspire you to press on when your goals and aspirations appear unachievable!  When the world says, “Give up”, let hope whisper, “Try it one more time”…. and like the tree in the rock, thrive!

Robin Strohmaier
R & R Web Design LLC

Robin Strohmaier is one of the “Rs” in R & R Web Design LLC, a Michigan web design company founded in the Chicago area in 2000.  The company specializes in custom web design, natural search engine optimization and website marketing for businesses and organizations.

A critical vulnerability exists in Adobe Reader and Acrobat version 9.3.3 and earlier, popular software to read or create PDF documents. This vulnerability was announced during the Black Hat conference in USA late July 2010. The problem “could lead to code execution,” which translates to attackers exploiting them to compromise a machine. Adobe is recommending that users apply updates for their product installations.

The “critical” label is Adobe’s highest vulnerability rating and could when exploited allow malicious native-code to execute, potentially without a user being aware.
Adobe’s security bulletin of August 19, 2010, Security updates available for Adobe Reader and Acrobat, announces the out of cycle security release. Affected software versions include:

• Adobe Reader 9.3.3 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX
• Adobe Acrobat 9.3.3 and earlier versions for Windows and Macintosh

Adobe recommends users of Adobe Reader 9.3.3 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX update to Adobe Reader 9.3.4. (For Adobe Reader users on Windows and Macintosh, who cannot update to Adobe Reader 9.3.4, Adobe has provided the Adobe Reader 8.2.4 update.) Adobe recommends users of Adobe Acrobat 9.3.3 and earlier versions for Windows and Macintosh update to Adobe Acrobat 9.3.4. Adobe recommends users of Adobe Acrobat 8.2.3 and earlier versions for Windows and Macintosh update to Adobe Acrobat 8.2.4.

To ensure that your software is up to date:

• Open Adobe Reader or Acrobat. In the top navigation, click Help > Check for updates or
• Go to Adobe’s Website and download the appropriate security update for your system: http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb10-17.html

Adobe products, similar to Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office, are used globally on home and business computers making these applications prime targets for exploits by cyber villains that discover security holes.

How to update Adobe Reader

Sources:

1. http://www.norman.com/security_center/security_center_archive/2010/91572/en
2. http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb10-17.html
3. http://thompson.blog.avg.com/2010/08/how-to-secure-adobe-reader.html
4. http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/203692/patch_critical_security_flaws_in_adobe_reader_and_acrobat.html?tk=hp_new

© R & R Web Design LLC, a Michigan web design company that specializes in custom web design, natural search engine optimization and website marketing.

Yahoo has officially announced today that the conversion of its organic search to Microsoft’s Bing is now complete. The search alliance between the number two and three search engines has been sealed. This historic landmark in search engine land comes more than a year after Microsoft and Yahoo reached a deal to partner on search.

After extensive testing last month, the decision was made to consummate the union. Shashi Seth, Senior Vice President of Yahoo! Search Products, refers to this alliance as a milestone event:

“With this week’s milestone behind us, Yahoo! will continue to drive technology innovation in the search experience to bring more value to users and advertisers alike”

“We are focused on creating rich, immersive experiences that foster serendipitous discovery for people across the Yahoo! network. As we shared last week, we are also working hard on finalizing our revenue model for the Yahoo! Search BOSS program going forward, and will be offering other search-related tools for publishers in the months to come.”

If you are located in the United States or Canada and search Yahoo!, using its web, image, or video search, you will be served ‘Bing like’ of “Bing-ified” results. The companies still have work to do as they proceed with the shift of the more complicated paid search portion of the business and to expand internationally. The full global transition of Yahoo’s search results to Bing isn’t expected to be complete until 2012.

For the Microsoft announcement, please see:

Exciting News From Bing and Yahoo!

© R & R Web Design LLC, a Michigan web design company that specializes in custom web design, natural search engine optimization and website marketing.

Apple Inc., is spreading the love in a concentrated endeavor to incorporate multi-touch gesturing in all of its product lines from the iPhone to the iPod touch, iPad and MacBook laptops that have touchpads to enable various hand/finger gestures to control and move items on the screen. The innovative company has introduced a device that will now allow the Mac desktop users to enjoy the same touch screen technology.

The Magic Trackpad (available at www.apple.com/magictrackpad) is available from Apple for $69.00. The tool is basically a freestanding touchpad that integrates the multi-touch feature on Mac desktops, which do not have touch screen technology. The Magic Trackpad connects wirelessly to the machine through Bluetooth to any Apple desktop machine that has the latest operating system, Snow Leopard. It may be used instead of a mouse or in addition to the mouse.

System requirements include:

• Bluetooth-enabled Mac computer
• Two AA batteries (included)
• Mac OS X Snow Leopard v10.6.4 and latest software update

For a review by the Wall Street Journal:  A Review of the Apple Magic Trackpad

A professionally designed website is your Internet vehicle for your business. It is equivalent to your business having a delivery vehicle (truck, van, car or plane). It is an essential method of delivering products and/or services to your potential and current clients. Without one, how does your business reach your prospective and existing clients on the Internet? Five reasons why your business needs a professionally designed and optimized website include:

If you would like to find out more about a professionally designed and search engine optimized business website, please contact us or call 248-889-0266 to schedule a FREE Consultation.

© R & R Web Design LLC, a Michigan web design company that specializes in custom web design, natural search engine optimization and website marketing.

PRESS RELEASE – July 28, 2010 – comScore – a leading company that specializes in the measurement of the digital world published a global analysis on the Internet usage of women entitled, Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet.  The report presents an in-depth analysis of the female Internet user, highlighting key trends by Internet activity, worldwide region and digital channel. The results revealed that social networks reach a higher percentage of women than men globally, with 75.8% of all women online visiting a social network in May 2010 versus 69.7% of men. Worldwide, the findings show that women spend 30% more time on social networking sites than men. FULL ARTICLE @ COMSCORE

Yahoo sent out an email to advertisers recently that includes important portions of the phase of the Yahoo and Microsoft Search Alliance, paid advertising and organic search results. The company announced that they are performing the essential testing to “ensure that all of the many complex, logistical pieces are in place.”  The Sunnyvale, California search pioneer stated that advertisers do not need to take any actions to prepare for the testing, however, they did want them to be aware of the following:

• Though much of our testing is already happening offline, this month we’ll also test the delivery of organic and paid search results provided by Microsoft on live Yahoo! traffic
• Testing volumes will fluctuate during this period, with paid search volume in particular kept low enough to help minimize any potential impact to your account

Paid Advertising Search Results

Advertisers – those who pay fees via adCenter for advertisement were assured that Yahoo’s goal is to provide a quality transition experience in 2010 for the U.S. and Canada. Yahoo! also reassured advertisers that the holiday season would be protected during the transition. The email stated with regards to the testing,

“However, please remember that, as we continue to go through our series of checkpoints, if we conclude that it would improve the overall experience, we may choose to defer the transition to 2011.”

Organic Search Results

The email also covered another extremely important aspect of the Yahoo/Microsoft search alliance: the organic search results. The organic results are those sites listed in the main body of the search result page. Revealing that testing is in process, Yahoo stated:

“Assuming our testing continues to yield high quality results, we anticipate that our organic search results will be powered by Bing beginning in the August/September timeframe.”

Yahoo also gave pointers for those who rely on organic search results for website referrals and recommended the following for preparation for the change:

• Compare your organic search rankings on Yahoo! Search and Bing for the keywords that drive your business, to help determine any potential impact to your traffic and sales
• Decide if you’d like to modify your paid search campaigns to compensate for any changes in organic referrals that you anticipate
• Review the Bing webmaster tools and optimize your website for the Bing crawler, as Bing results will be displayed for approximately 30%* of overall search query market share after this change

For more information:

• Yahoo letter to advertisers
• Yahoo! Transition Center

© R & R Web Design LLC, a Michigan web design company that specializes in custom web design, natural search engine optimization and website marketing.

Firefox 4 Beta 1 is now available for downloading and testing according the Firefox’s blog post:  Firefox 4 Beta 1: Tell us what you think!  Developers are welcoming feedback and will be releasing updated beta versions every two to three weeks.

What’s new in Firefox 4?

The most noticeable upgrade will be the design of the browser for Windows PC users.  Developers rearranged the tabs by placing them  on the top to enable users to focus their attention on web content and to make it simpler to navigate the tools in the Web browser.  Notably, in Windows Vista and Windows 7, the menu bar has been replaced with a “single Firefox button so you can get to the most used options with just one click”.   There are plans to make similar changes for Mac and Linux operating systems.

Firefox 4 additional updates include:

• New Add-Ons Manager
• HD Video
• Privacy improvements
• Crash Protection
• Improved Performance

Have you had the chance to preview and test Firefox 4 Beta 1?  If so, please let us know your thoughts.

Have you ever viewed a web page and clicked way because it appeared that something was missing or the page looked like elements were jumbled? The problem may have been caused by a website that was not tested on a variety of the top Internet browsers to ensure that the web page viewed properly on each.

When a website is designed, it is essential that it is tested on the leading browsers to make sure that it is multi-browser compatible. What may look great in Internet Explorer 8, may look different in Firefox or Chrome. It is an essential design step to test websites on the most popular browsers to ensure that the site renders properly. If your service or product has a global reach, it crucial to consider and test websites on the most popular global browsers to make certain that your audience is presented with the website and information that you intend to promote.

Global browser statistics are a vital tool for determining worldwide browser trends. One company that specializes in gathering and analyzing browser trends is NETMARKETSHARE by Net Applications. For the month of June 2010, the company’s stats indicate that the Internet Explorer browser family accounted for 60.32% of the global population. In second place was Firefox with a global share of 23.81%, followed by Chrome with 7.24%, Safari with 4.85% and Opera with 2.27%.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer garnered an increase in the U.S. according to Net Applications, and gained .57% globally in June across all operating systems with Internet Explorer 8.0 gaining .86%. The highest gains for IE were in Europe with a .88% increase and Asia with an increase of .81%. The improvements are attributed to Microsoft’s IE8 marketing campaign that advertised the browser’s security features coupled with an escalation in Windows 7 PC sales which comes with the browser installed.

Firefox (-0.5%) and the Norwegian Opera (-0.2%) both saw a market share decrease according the Net Applications and the remaining contenders, Google Chrome (+0.2%), and Apple’s Safari (+0.1%) both gathered moderate increases.

The most popular global browsers for June 2010 according to Market Share are depicted in the following pie chart.

About Market Share by Net Applications

Market Share by Net Applications is headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California. The company statistics have been utilized by leading companies including: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, InformationWeek and more.

© R & R Web Design LLC, a Michigan web design company that specializes in custom web design, natural search engine optimization and website marketing.

If your Internet marketing strategy includes promoting your Web site globally, it is essential to analyze the world’s leading search engines to achieve your global Internet marketing goals.

The first step is to find a respected source that specializes in the collection and analyzes Internet data based on a large segment of users. Market Share by Net Applications is a leading resource of Internet behavior and gathers data from approximately 160 million visitors per month. The top global search engine for the month of May 2010 according to Market Share is the search giant Google with 84.80% of global searches. Yahoo came in second with 6.19%, Bing took third with 3.24%, Baidu (a Chinese and Japanese search engine) captured fourth with 3.16% and Ask rounded off the top five with .75% of the world’s search engine market share.

The search engine pie chart below shows the top six global search engines with the percentages of the global search share for May 2010 as reported by Market Share.

About Market Share by Net Applications

Market Share by Net Applications is headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California. The company statistics have been utilized by leading companies including: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, InformationWeek and more.

© R & R Web Design LLC, a Michigan web design company that specializes in custom web design, natural search engine optimization and webmaster services.

You have probably heard that link building is an essential key to rankings in the search engines. You may have searched and read many posts by various authors on how to build links to your website including strategies promoting “content is king” – creating quality content so that others will link to your site, submitting your website to directories, and the new push for social media. There are a great number of articles and research about how to build organic links to comb through. As an alternative to spending hours analyzing strategies, consider listening to the number one search engine in the world, Google.

Google Search Quality Strategist, Kaspar Szymanski, shared an informative blog post on Google’s Webmaster Central blog. The article provides a explanation of practical approaches to build links including:

• Community Involvement: Build a reputation by interacting and contributing in blogs and forums centered on your topic in a positive and helpful way.

• Offer long lasting, unique and compelling content: The verbiage “content is king” is still king. When your website offers value and your expertise shines, others will want to link and recommend your site.

• Offer short tutorials or a video providing a solution to a problem: These are other practical ways of creating value. Szymanski states, “Both methods grow your credibility in the community and increase visibility”.

• Social Media: Amuse your followers with humor and great one-liners. Yes, the king appears to value the power of social media such as Google Buzz to “viral marketing” technique to increase the visibility of a site”. However, they do not recommend “counting only on short-lived link-bait tactics”.

• Never give up: Long Term Legitimate Link Building: Szymanski clarifies that building links legitimately is a long term effort and warns against buying links or casually exchanging links that will most likely bring no positive results. A stern warning is included, “If your site’s visibility in the Google index is important to you it’s best to avoid them.”

• Directory Submissions: Although there are great, topical directories that add Internet value, there are many that do not. If one does choose to submit their website to a directory, if is advised that they submit to “on topic, moderated, and well structured” directories.

• Examine similar sites: It was mentioned that “following by example” may be beneficial. In other words, it may be beneficial to examine similar sites in different markets and “identify the elements of those sites” that may work well with your site. A word of caution is given to be careful not to simply copy success stories, but to adapt principles that they have used to bring value to your website.

• Make Linking Easier: Think about making it easier for others to link your website with social bookmarking such as Twitter or Facebook. This strategy can help “spread the word” about the valuable content on your website getting the word out and drawing attention.

Following the advice of Google, the king of the web, will save time and ensure that your link building strategies will be successful.

WordPress 3.0 is now available for download. The 26-year-old WordPress founding developer, Matt Mullenweg, states that the latest release is the 13th major release for the world’s most popular blogging software. A team of 218 contributors spent six months developing the newest version which includes 1,217 bug fixes and feature enhancements.

Significant new WordPress 3.0 features include:

• The ability to choose an Admin user name on a new installation.
• The new attractive default theme, Twenty Ten, that replaces the previous Kubrick theme.
• The integration of WordPress MU which allows users to host numerous blogs and Web sites with a single WordPress installation.
• The user interface is lighter and includes help documentation.
• WordPress Update Page: Streamlined plug-in update page to upgrade to newer versions of plugins from one page.
• Shortlink support for microblogging

Download WordPress 3.0

• To download WordPress 3.0, visit: WordPress – Blog Tool and Publishing Platform

• To update current WordPress installations: Updating WordPress

• For detailed instructions on upgrading: Upgrading WordPress Extended

For a comprehensive list of WordPress 3.0’s attributes, visit: WordPress 3.0’s Codex and be sure to view the following video of one of the World’s most popular blogging software platforms:

Most Popular Blog Platform

WordPress is the most popular blogging software on the Internet with 78.84% of according to BuiltWith, a technology usage research company that has investigated over eleven million domains. It is an open source CMS most often used as a blog publishing platform that is driven by PHP and MySQL. The first WordPress release was in May 2003 by Matt Mulenweg and was utilized by 202 million Web sites globally in September 2009. The software may be hosted on a server or it can hosted for free at WordPress.com. Companies that use WordPress for blogging include: People, Martha Stewart and The New York Times.

How do I clear cache in Firefox? How do I delete the history in Firefox? These are questions that clients frequently ask when they cannot see edits to a web page.

Firefox is the second leading browser in the United States according to StatCounter.  The reason that one cannot see changes to a web page is a result of the browser’s cache.   An Internet browser uses cache, (pronounced “cash”) to store data from visited websites on a computer for quick retrieval.  To clear the cache in Firefox, use the following graphical instructions:

How to Clear Internet Firefox Cache
(History and Temporary Internet Files)

Step One View larger version Open Firefox Locate and open “Clear Recent History”.

Step Two View larger version Under “Clear Recent History”: Select the time range to clear: “Everything” Next, check the boxes next to: Browsing & Download History, Form & Search History, Cookies and Cache Click the “Clear Now” button.

© R & R Web Design LLC, a Michigan web design company that provides professionally designed websites that are intergrated with natural search engine optimization.

One situation that web designers experience on a regular basis is that after making changes to a web page, the client is unable to view the new edits and/or additions to their Web site on their web browser. This is due to their browser’s cache.

Cache, which is pronounced “cash”, has an entirely different meaning. Cache is data of previously accessed data that is stored on one’s machine . This data is stored to improve performance for frequently accessed information.

When a web browser visits a web page, data is cached on the machine’s local hard drive to speed up the access of a site access and at the same time reduces the bandwidth required to display the page for quick retrieval. To clear IE8 cache, follow these directions:

How to Clear Internet Explorer 8 Cache
(History and Temporary Internet Files)

Step One View larger version Locate and open “Tools” at the top of the screen. Open “Internet Options”

Step Two View larger version Under the General tab, locate “Browsing History” Click the “Delete” button

Step Three View larger version Check the boxes next to: Temporary Internet Files, Cookies and History Click the “Delete” button

© R & R Web Design LLC, a Michigan web design company that provides professionally designed websites that are integrated with natural search engine optimization.

Google announced on Tuesday that Caffeine is now live. Caffeine is the search engine giant’s newest web indexing system. Google reveals that Caffeine delivers web searches with 50% fresher results than the predecessor and that it is the “the largest collection of web content” the number one search engine has offered.

In Google’s blog post on the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog, Our new search index: Caffeine, Google reports:

Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before.

The Mountain View, California search giant went into depth on the reasoning behind the latest search indexing system. Several reasons for the innovative system include:

• Content on the web is blossoming. It’s growing not just in size and numbers but with the advent of video, images, news and real-time updates, the average web page is richer and more complex.
• People’s expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish.

Carrie Grimes, Software Engineer stated:

We’ve built Caffeine with the future in mind. Not only is it fresher, it’s a robust foundation that makes it possible for us to build an even faster and comprehensive search engine that scales with the growth of information online, and delivers even more relevant search results to you.  So stay tuned, and look for more improvements in the months to come.

Boston, US and Dublin, Ireland, Tuesday, 1st June, 2010: Usage of web browser Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) in the US and Europe fell below the 5% mark for the first time in May, according to web analytics company, StatCounter. The firm’s research arm StatCounter Global Stats reports that IE6 US usage has fallen to 4.7% from 11.5% 12 months ago.

Read the rest of the story at: IE6 Falls Below 5% for First Time in US and Europe

Do websites look the same on different browsers? This is a question that many people ask when contemplating the design of a new website. The answer is no. Different browsers interpret web pages differently. As new browsers are released, websites may render differently, even to the point that pages appear distorted forcing the need for edits to the design to make them view properly.

As a web designer, it is essential to test web pages on different browsers. When new browsers are released, it is essential to test again. A site that looks great on Internet Explorer 7 may not look the same on Internet Explorer 8.

How does one keep up the variety of different browsers that the general public is using? One avenue is to analyze data from companies that specialize in collecting Internet data such as StatCounter. In May 2010, StatCounter’s statistics that the five most used browsers in the United States are: IE 8.0, Firefox 3.6, IE 7.0 Safari 4.0 and Chrome 4.0. The combined versions of Internet Explorer – IE accounted for 51.87% of the total population, followed by the combined Firefox versions with 28.89%.

The pie chart below shows the top 10 browsers in the United States for May 2010 as reported by StatCounter.

About StatCounter
StatCounter was founded in 1999 and offers free online visitor statistics based on over ten billion page loads per month over a network of 3 million websites.

© R & R Web Design LLC is a Michigan Web Design company offering professionally designed, search engine optimized affordable websites Chicago, Illinois, Michigan and throughout the U.S.

Social media is exploding as companies grasp marketing power through Twitter tweets and business Facebook fan page updates. The newest trend in the social media marketing eruption is to sell directly to consumers from social networking Web sites with the addition of e-commerce.

According to the Wall Street Journal, online merchants are harnessing the power of Facebook and MySpace by incorporating e-commerce stores to their fan pages, with the anticipation that users will see products from items for sale to services. By advertising products and services on social networking sites, the ultimate goal is for fans to add items to online shopping carts.

The social networking e-commerce trend is another door of opportunity. It has been utilized by mega companies like Hallmark Cards Inc. and is currently limited to Facebook and MySpace. Twitter and LinkedIn do not offer the direct sale application platform at this time.

Social media ecommerce marketing’s success is based on an array of factors including a company’s fan numbers. Larry Chiagouris, a marketing professor at Lubin School of Business at Pace University in New York as reported by the WSJ said, “You’ve got to spend money on advertising to make people aware that [your fan page] exists.”

Online merchants interested in exploring the social media ecommerce horizon may also need to fork out fees for applications that provide the shopping carts. Examples of shopping cart applications include the Vendor Shopping Cart Application and Payvment E-Commerce Storefront.

The top five search engines in the United States according to Hitwise indicate that Google is still the search engine of choice by volume for the majority of those searching online with 72% for week ending May 22, 2010.

Search.Yahoo.com came in second with 14.58%, Bing.com accounted for 9.20%, Ask.com had 2.18% and AOL rounded off the top five with 1.06%.

The following chart shows the top U.S. search engines as of May 22, 2010 according to Hitwise.

About Hitwise

Hitwise is an Experian company that specializes in Internet competitive intelligence. Utilizing software and relationships with ISPs throughout the world, Hitwise anonymously captures online behavior of Internet users. The U.S. data collected is based on 10 million Internet users in the U.S.

R & R Web Design LLC is a Michigan web design company that specializes in custom web design that is integrated with natural search engine optimization and Web site marketing.

Social media marketing is exploding. Companies and organizations continue to evaluate and fine tune marketing plans to decide where marketing dollars will be spent. Social media advertising is a growing and impactful avenue to capture online sales and awareness through online ads on social media websites.

Marketing budgets are tight. It is essential that both businesses and organizations spend money more wisely than ever to maximize ROI. When considering how advertising money will be spent, it is important to evaluate the targeted audience and the best vehicle to advertise with. What websites are your potential clients visiting? What is the most effective way to spend advertising dollars?

The constant evaluation of the top social networks is an important consideration on an ongoing basis. With comprehensive data, a company or organization have the essential tools to launch a social media advertising campaign. The top five U.S. social networks for week ending April 17, 2010 according the Hitwise are Facebook, YouTube, with MySpace Twitter and Tagged.

The following pie chart depicts the top five social networks as reported by Hitwise.