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Graphics Software: Xara Designer Pro – Powerful Yet Easy to Use

ProWebs

When it comes to marketing and advertising websites online, and customizing the website designs, here are some pretty cool XARA software programs for handling graphics for all types of Web apps including sales, marketing, and advertising applications. The programs are very useful for adding some creative graphics for various online publishings, website designs, dropdown menus, company brochures, graphics flyers, newsletters, ad creatives, animated GIFs, Flash outputs (without having to know Flash), and export picture file types including: JPEG, TIFF, PNG, .HTML, BMP, PDF, SWF, and all the other file types that you can imagine.

I have been using a number of these products for years, including the Xara Designer Pro software, to quickly and easily customize graphics, images, and creatives for websites, ads, and some cool text designs. The software is extremely easy to use when compared to other graphics software programs such as Photoshop and others. In essence, you don’t have to be a graphic designer in order to use the software. It is very intuitive to use, with instruction videos to go along with the help files.

The Xara Designer Pro version has all the bells and whistles you can imagine. Designer Pro is for both the novice as well as the graphic designer expert to work with. In fact, it is quite fun to use, and will be amazed at what you can do with it. I really suggest taking a test drive today.


Try out the award-winning graphics software from Xara. Xara offers a graphics creation solution for all skill levels.
Find out more
Xara Designer Pro: 

Xara Designer Pro (formerly Xtreme Pro) is our top of the range product and includes all the features and templates of Web Designer and Photo & Graphic Designer. Plus it adds extra features that Pro designers need including support for PDF/X, PANTONE® and color separations, multi-core processor support for extra speed, enhanced import/export filters, a pro version of the photo panorama tool and more.

Find out moreRetail: $299
Xara Menu Maker: 

A dedicated tool for creating top quality graphical NavBars with DHTML menus. Simply choose from the collection of professionally designed NavBars, then customize the wording and font, the color and size to exactly suit your site. Add rollovers and DHTML menus with easy one click actions – all the JavaScript and HTML is automatically created for you and optimized for export to the Web. Integrates directly with Macromedia Dreamweaver and Microsoft FrontPage.

Find out moreDownload: $24.99
CD: $29
Xara ScreenMaker 3D: 

A 3D screensaver maker that’s fast, fun and easy to use. Create animated 3D text message screensavers with your own personalized message. Or put any images of your choice onto the sides of a 3D, tumbling cubes . It’s the perfect way to share messages or images with friends, family or colleagues – from family photo screensavers to business screensavers with corporate logos.

Find out moreDownload: $14.95

Professional Web Services is here to get your business and website found online. Let “search” bring you more sales for your business with an Internet marketing plan for success. Gain more qualified leads, more customer conversions, and more brand recognition in your target markets today. Don’t wait. Now is the time to get your business discovered online. Contact Professional Web Services today.

Get Your Business Discovered Online

Internet Marketing Forces

J. Warholic

You will be magically transported to another dimension. A dimension that is built on the Internet marketing forces beyond the great divide. A place where only those that dare travel can realize their force upon the planet.

So where is this great divide? Take me to the great divide. Let me see the Internet marketing forces now. OH no, you’ll have to click the Internet marketing forces link yourself.

In the meantime, enjoy this movie:

MiniTru, Chicken Chair by Bassam Kurdali made in Blender 

Consider the video that you just viewed and how this can be applied on your own professional B2C or B2B business website. Imagine having an introduction about your company, or better yet, if you manufacture machines or other products, a video is a great way to show off your company online.

Get your business plugged into the Internet. Contact Professional Web Services today to find out more information about Internet marketing services.

How We Snatched Our Domain Name

J. Warholic

Good domain name news.
Yay, we got our ProfessionalWebServices.net domain name!

I thought I would share this story with everyone about the case of registering an expired domain name.

Just to give a little background information, it is important to understand my thought process in picking the name of Professional Web Services, Inc. in the first place. When I first got involved with Internet marketing, I felt it was important to portray in our name the type of company that we consider ourselves to be. That is, we always take a professional approach to everything we do online and with our customers. Sure, we have some websites that are fun and have a Fridays entertainment value to them, but when it comes to the business of Internet marketing for our clients we honor their trust they place in our services by always giving 100%, to not only publishing the best website possible for them, but also in the ethics aspect of Internet marketing.

So, you can see how we got the first word, “Professional.” The second word made sense from the Internet standpoint. The World Wide Web is all encompassing and growing steadily. I was one of the early pioneers of forging online. So, it was logical that the second word would be the “Web.” Then, the third word just fell into place naturally with the “Services” provided by: Professional Web Services, Inc.

At first, with any name that you choose, it is important to also see what type of domain names are available. This is an area online that is continually evolving into what some might see as a War of Names.

Common names and common words are some of the more interesting stories involved with domain name ownership. The dot com names have been taken for the majority of words in the English language. This is also true for many of the combinations of logical two word English phrases. Internet Marketing, Online Advertising, and Web Marketing, are some of the more highly sought after combinations of online words. Other words like the words for the day of the week have also been registered by various individuals or company organizations. For example Fridays.com is owned by TGI Fridays restaurant chain, but Fridays.ws is owned by me. I actually use Fridays.ws website as our Thank God It’s Fridays fun day outlet. Now, TGI Fridays restaurant chain does not have the rights to every single instance the common word Fridays is used on the Internet or in a domain name. In fact, there is no confusion between our Fridays and their Fridays. Our site even has a disclaimer that we are not affiliated with T.G.I. Friday’s® Worldwide Restaurant chain. However, if we were to go into the restaurant business, and started using the name Fridays as our restaurant name and the domain name, that would be an entirely different story.

As far as the use of Professional Web Services is concerned, there were a couple of individuals that had the .net and the .com names. So, we decided that we would register all the other uses of Professional Web Services that made sense for us. However, early on, we thought that having to type out the long name Professional Web Services every single instance of usage would be exorbitantly long and tiresome. Also, imagine the long email addresses that you would have with both a name and the long domain name attached (InternetMarketingServices @ ProfessionalWebServices.Net). That is where it made logical sense to also grab pwebs.net, and use this one for the website to begin with.

This thought process actually worked out very well, but because of the physical size and amount of information at pwebs.net it also made sense to establish another website, with different information related to our business. We have a very generic placeholder website at pwebs.org which has a short synopsis overview. Not sure at this time, what we intend to do with this domain name for the long haul, but felt it was important for the future.

So, getting back to the story of ProfessionalWebServices.net. GoDaddy.com has a back-order service for monitoring domain names that are taken but if they ever come back into the pot and become available or change hands, this service lets you know by email and in the case of an expired domain name, tries to register the domain name for you automatically. Once this option was set in place, there was nothing more for us to do except wait.

It is important to note, that if the domain had many suitors it might have gone into an after market bidding area online. However, in the case of our name, since we are incorporated as Professional Web Services, Inc. and most of the other domain names are owned by us, we thought it would be unlikely that there would be any type of bidding on this name. Additionally, under domain name laws, U.S. federal law known as the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, a person or company that tries to capture an already established domain name for some corporation or entity that is not rightfully theirs could be considered to be Cybersquatting. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price.

If the domain name had the potential to be in an after market bidding war, then there are other services online to try and secure a domain name. There was an excellent story by: Mike Davidson: How to Snatch an Expiring Domain, in which he goes into great detail about his quest for a domain name.

Well, back to our story. So I knew that the previous owner of ProfessionalWebServices.net did not renew the domain name and the time frame for reintegration into the domain name pool was coming due. So I set up the GoDaddy backorder service and just waited to the drop date. It was on this drop date that we were hoping to here from GoDaddy that we had gotten the domain name. However, with a sad face I must tell you we did not get the name.

We’re sorry, but the following domain name(s) that you back-ordered was not captured successfully:

PROFESSIONALWEBSERVICES.NET

Changes made to a domain take at least 24 hours to update in the WhoIs database. If you perform a WhoIs lookup on the domain to verify registration information or the status of the domain before 24 hours has passed, the information may appear to be incorrect.

OH well, it was not the end of the world. But, it was not the end of the story either.

Four days later I get another automatic email with this message.

Congratulations! The following domain name(s) that you backordered was successfully captured: 

PROFESSIONALWEBSERVICES.NET

I am not sure how this happened, but I am not one to question good fortune. This was Great!

Our plans for the ProfessionalWebServices.Net website are to really share a little about website customization and website design. PWEBS.NET will continue to focus on the main foundation of what our company’s focus is on, which is Internet marketing services, ethical search engine optimization, Online advertising strategies, and Web branding solutions for B2C and B2B businesses.

If you have a B2B or B2C business that needs help in any of these areas, Professional Web Services is here to help you. Contact us today for an Internet marketing evaluation and/or quote for a customized website design with a built in content management and blogging software system.

How Can RSS Feeds Help Your Business?

J. Warholic

What Are RSS Web Feeds?

RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. Many websites, blogs, and news feeds produce RSS feeds or webfeeds in an XML format. These are known as: “RSS feed”, “webfeed”, “RSS stream”, or “RSS channel”.

Atom feeds are also published by many of the websites and blogs. The Atom Publishing Protocol (APP for short) is another type of XML formatted HTML page.

The idea with both RSS and Atom feeds are, they can be subscribed to in a RSS/Atom online or local feed reader or aggregator. Many of the new web browsers such as Internet Explorer 7 are coming standard with the built in RSS readers. The beauty of this type of subscription is that when a website, blog, or news feed is updated, an automatic ping is sent out to let the world know that new information is available. Not only is the ping sent out, but the information can be sent directly to the RSS reader before it is ever viewed by the subscriber. This provides a means of collecting information about various news stories, products, or services provided by companies or a select group of industries.

New RSS subscribers are growing as users discover the potential for time savings and the convenience of subscribing anonymously. A subscriber can automatically be informed when new content is provided on a particular website, or when a new newsletter is published online. This is especially useful way of subscribing to online newsletters and ezines.

Just about anything can be converted to a XML RSS feed. News stories and Blogs are just a couple of examples of items that are producing feeds. Every page of a standard website could be converted or just a few select pages that might get updated quite frequently are good candidates for producing RSS feeds. Applications for this are quite diverse. Engineering data could be collected from various sources and merged into a single RSS feed. A private group Blog or Wiki (A website where anyone can edit the information) could be set up to produce an RSS feed. That way when one person makes a change in one area, everyone could be automatically sent the updated information to their RSS readers.

Taking Advantage Of RSS For Your Business Website

The Internet is about the sharing of information, business and consumer marketing, advertising, and sales. Many times websites are looking to syndicate their articles on other websites. Using RSS for syndication purposes is easier than you think. First off, I am not a lawyer. The use of copyright published material is constantly being tested on the Internet. Most information is copyrighted online and the taking of complete published works would be viewed as a copyright infringement. However, taking a snippet of information and giving credit to the source has been done since the beginning of published research papers. The search engines themselves fall under a category referred to the “fair use doctrine.”

The “fair use doctrine” and copyrights have gone through a number of challenges with one of the more recent challenges coming from AFP, a French News service provider. AFP took Google to court and did not like the fact that Google was displaying headlines, snippets of information, and links to AFP French News service. Belgium News also sued Google on the same context. A Belgian court ruling dictated the removal of the content from the Google News website and also required a posted copy of the ruling be displayed on the Google Belgium home page for some period of time. An interesting note, is that any news service provider can simply opt out of the Google News pages to begin with. So, in the opinion of this author, the Belgium lawsuit was somewhat of stunt by the Belgium press. Belgium may have won a battle, but they might have lost the war.

Let’s get back to the business of business. There are several ways a business can take advantage of using RSS feeds to market and advertise online. Any company can create a Blog, which outputs RSS feeds and have those feeds automatically published at other websites. For example, syndicated columnists often write their articles on their blogs and the information is automatically picked up by newspapers and online news services around the globe. These are then republished with the authors permission in other publications. If your business is a specialized business, consider writing content for technical publications in the company blog. Then have other web sites reproduce your works with a stipulation that the link back to your website must be maintained. Additionally, a very good way of promoting your company is to have these snippets of your technical publications on other areas of your company website. This is like adding fresh content to your pages on a regular basis, and the search engines love that.

There are a number of free and commercial programs available for including RSS feeds into websites. Several software programs that are worth looking into for a website are rss2html, CaRP, and FeedBurner. To obtain the maximum value of having the articles and links included into the website from a search standpoint, it is best to use a program that outputs a feed to PHP format or a Server Side Include feed output. Both of these require specific web page file types to include the feed into the web page. Javascript is another available option for just about any type of page, but will not provide the same search benefit as the others. This is because search engine spiders do not place the Javascipt sections into the search catalog database and will not pick up the keywords in those sections.

If all of this sounds Greek to you or would like to have a business blog set up, or output your website in an RSS feed then send us an email today. Professional Web Services provides Internet marketing services, online advertising strategies, ethical search engine optimization, professional blogging services, and web branding solutions. Contact Professional Web Services and ask for your free Internet marketing website evaluation.

Web Development Time

J. Warholic

Do you have the time?
by: Jim Warholic

Yesterday, my favorite watch, the Casio DW-290-T, that I have had for ten or more years decided that it had had enough. It started out with, getting dimmer when the electro luminescent backlight was pressed. So I figured it was time to get a new battery. Driving over to the local Target store at 8:30 pm on a Saturday evening, it would simply be a matter of installing a new battery. As “Murphy’s Law” would have it, when dealing with time, this was not going to be the case.

My first clue that this was going to be an extended visit should have been when I approached the watch counter and asked for a battery for my Casio watch. The clerk behind the counter asked me, “do I know the battery model number?” “Well sure, just let me borrow your small phillips screwdriver and I can give you the battery model number,” I said. The sales clerk said, “we no longer have any tools to work on the watches.” “OK…, let me see if my trusty Leatherman multi-purpose tool had anything that would work,” I said.

Fortunately, the screws on the back of the watch were both slotted and phillips style. I had a small screwdriver on the Leatherman that worked just fine. After I got the back cover of the watch off, the clerk was able to see the battery number. She provided a new battery at the cost of four dollars and some change. I thought this would be great. I’ll be back in time… Foolish me.

While I was assembling the watch back together, the clerk asked if she could recycle the old battery for me. I said, “sure.” Big mistake. The new battery would not work in the watch. Or, should I say the watch would not work with the new battery. Making sure the battery was in properly, pushing buttons, taking it in and out again several times, had absolutely no success in getting that stupid watch to function again. Now my favorite trusted timepiece became a stupid timepiece.

The sales clerk during this time was helping out other customers and would occasionally come back to my counter area. She felt bad this had happened. I assured her it was not her fault. I stated to her, “Let me try my old battery, at least that one was functioning before I took it out.” “Well, um, let me see if I can find it,” she said. At that, she went over to the container of old batteries, which contained about a hundred or more of various types and sizes of batteries. She said, “I think it is this one. The one on top. But, I can’t get it out.” So, I start digging, and digging. Getting frustrated, I dump out the whole jar on to the counter. Seperating the same style battery as mine into a pile. Only a dozen or so of that style batteries were present.

I start trying battery after battery with no luck. No display at all. Murphy’s Law finally took its toll on my time. Time to move on. Get a new watch. OH, how I hate shopping for watches. This one had too many buttons and was hard to figure out. Another had a display that could barely be seen, unless you had the eyes of a 18 year old. I just couldn’t seem to find the right timepiece.

“How late are you open,” I asked the clerk. “10:00 pm,” she responded. “OK, I might be back,” I said.

Trudging over to the local Longs, where I had remembered that they also carried watches, I decided to give them a try. I finally found a watch that I could see, the buttons were just the right touch, and it did not take a rocket scientist to figure out how to operate it.

I am sure that many of you can relate to the time story. What is interesting is how this time story relates to matters on the Web. The Internet is a media outlet for B2B, B2C, and C2C. It is a marketing, advertising, and sales channel that really is difficult to encapsulate. Many B2B and B2C businesses want a website presence without doing much work. They want instantaneous gratification with an immediate website presence, that their website is showing up in the top search results for their marketing keywords, and the website becomes a powerful sales tool for their sales people to use. Time and time again, Presidents, CEOs, owners, and management of both large and small business fail to realize the amount of time it takes to develop a web presence.

Developing a good web presence encompasses so many aspects of a business’s soul. Time is the one item that will definitely be at the forefront of setting up and maintaining a website, marketing and advertising online, and web branding the company across a wide area of online channels. If the company is involved in a vary narrow vertical market or technical engineering area of expertise, then writing from company staff will be a prerequisite for developing a website. Good Internet marketing companies can provide immense help in the area of editing content for selected keywords, fine tuning from a search engine optimization and web branding perspective, online advertising strategies, search engine marketing, customizing and/or designing search engine friendly website templates, and web branding strategic marketing ideas. But, it still comes back to the business of sharing knowledgeable information in a customer centric way through good writing and online communication skills.

Talk with Professional Web Services today for information about Internet marketing services, ethical search engine optimization, search engine marketing, online advertising strategies, and web branding solutions. Contact us for B2B and B2C marketing Internet marketing services, strategies, and solutions.

Internet Marketing Is Like Sudoku

J. Warholic

A new study came out that studing the game of Sudoku and the logic involved with processing the variables could gain valuable insight into the world of artificial intelligence.

What is Sudoku?

Sudoku (??, s?doku?), also known as Number Place or Nanpure, is a logic-based placement puzzle. The aim of the puzzle is to enter a numerical digit from 1 through 9 in each cell of a 9×9 grid made up of 3×3 subgrids (called “regions”), starting with various digits given in some cells (the “givens”); each row, column, and region must contain only one instance of each numeral. Completing the puzzle requires patience and logical ability.

Reference: Wikipedia : Sudoku


Play the game of Sudoku

Princeton profs plum secrets of Sudoku
Why Sudoku makes your brain ache

In another study conducted by Professional Web Services, Inc., it was discovered that playing Sudoku helps in your Internet marketing intelligence. A daily dose of Sudoku helps the brain create new neurons to increase the level of understanding, through neural linking, into what is taking place on the Internet. EEGS have shown the brain has a heightened spike in the level of increased electrical neural activity immediately during and after playing the game. The residual memory affect on high level brain functions is a 75% increase in the baseline after one hour of playing Sudoku. 24 hours later, the baseline is maintained at a 25% increase from the first evaluation. Thereafter, on subsequent 24 hour measurements, the level of drop is not as great as the first day drop in the baseline. Measurements show only a 10% decrease from the previous 24 hour period measurements. Seven days after the initial test, the subject is still at a 7.7% increase from where they initially started.

Further Internet marketing intelligence studies are ongoing at the Internet Marketing Industry Blog.

Professional Web Services, Inc. offers strategic Internet marketing services, ethical SEO – Search Engine Optimization, online advertising strategies, blog marketing services, and Web branding solutions. Get your business discovered on the Internet. Contact Professional Web Services today to get a free online marketing evaluation.

The DMOZ Report

J. Warholic

The Open Directory Project (ODP), also known as dmoz (from directory.mozilla.org, its original domain name), is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links owned by Netscape that is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors. Cite: wikipedia.org

As many of you know, getting a website listed in the ODP DMOZ has provided in the past, an increase in the page rank weight factor in the search engine algorithms. In meeting with a couple of Google engineers at the 2006 Google Dance involved in improving search engine results, the weight factor given to certain categories of the ODP project have been limited in the search results algorithm. There was a Google Dance attendee present that spoke with the engineers about a certain DMOZ category that was severely limited from any other websites being added because the editor for this particular category had a conflict of interest. In fact, the editor was one of the website owners listed in this category and was preventing anyone else within a small group to be added to the list.

Google engineers have started taking more notice of this type of activity and are now taking a more proactive stance by what sounded like a change in the search algorithm to give less credit for links in this group.

One of the factors that is important to understand about the DMOZ is that other websites take the feed results from the DMOZ and produce it on their website. This has the effect of creating additional links for any website that is listed in the project.

We at Professional Web Services have tried for years to get listed in the Internet marketing area of the ODP. This has been a very frustrating experience and what we have read from others is in fact the typical reaction of most people trying to get their websites listed. The submission guidelines are very clear, however, once a website is submitted there is absolutely no follow-up emails from the ODP, or ever an indication that the website is ever reviewed.

Certain areas of the Internet have become like a closed knit group of individuals that go out of their way to prevent anyone else from gaining search exposure. Many of the large directories are simply no more than a link farm with old websites that are defunct. There is very little incentive for anyone or any editor to change the way it is currently being done.

We don’t have the answers, but we do know that this will become increasingly challenging for all the search engines to get a handle on. As the Internet adds websites at an ever increasing pace, the challenges facing other businesses to have their B2B or B2C websites found in the search engine results pages will become even more of an issue as time goes on.

Internet Final FrontierProfessional Web Services provides Internet marketing services, search engine optimization, online advertising strategies, and web branding solutions for B2B and B2C businesses online.

Contact us today for the 24 x 7 x 365 solution to get your business found when searching the Internet.

The Internet Can be a Landmine

ProWebs

The Internet is a dangerous place for those unaware of the landmines that exist.

Internet technology is a wonderful thing but placed in the hands of the enemy can wreck havoc on a business or individual. To be sure that the enemy does exist is to just look in your email box today and most people would have at least one or more forward looking scouts called the unsolicited email just waiting to report back to headquarters about the state of affairs of your computer domain. Many of these spam emails are disguised as Trojan Horses. They look wonderful on the outside but it is what is on the inside that counts.

Once a computer domain has been compromised through these forward looking scouts it is only a matter of time to another campaign is waged against individuals or corporations through hundreds of scams that try to rob an individual or business from just a few dollars to sometimes thousands of dollars. Other times there is more than money at stake. It is a person’s identity and in some cases it is even the business identity at risk.

Staying informed of the online perils is not an option any more. The Internet is going to become more prevalent in our world. Business owners and individuals need to be aware of the risks and have an understanding of the landmine areas online. Many of these Internet issues involve all types of unethical SEO marketing, advertising strategies, and sales activities all designed with the idea of preying on the unaware with grandiose Internet marketing promises and online advertising strategies to magically place you, with very little work on anyone’s part, at the top of the keywords search engine results for keywords related to your business. Don’t believe it! Or, don’t you believe it? See the Keywords Online Advertising Scam. Read how thousands of businesses have been taken in by this particular scam.

Getting to the Top of The Search Engine Results

More Sales For Your BusinessThere are no shortcuts on this path for any business to the top of the search engine results. All require lots of hard work in ethical Internet marketing and other areas related to SEO, search engine optimization. To be sure, it requires a much more strategic partnership arrangement with outside services, Webmasters, and through close confidential communications with the principals, top insider corporate individuals. This will require a strategic marketing approach to all aspects of a business; from not only the sales, marketing, and advertising but also to brand, customer and corporate communications, business planning, market research, public relations, and even investor relations. All are uniquely intertwined in developing a successful online web presence with a key understanding of where revenue growth will likely occur in the future. Capturing that revenue growth will be key to the success of a business.

Professional Web Services, Inc. Internet marketing services, online advertising strategies, and web branding solutions to provide more sales for your business.

Email us today for a new strategy to find your business online.

Reaching Global Customers

J. Warholic

Professional Web Services

Internet marketing gives a company an inside sales and advertising track on reaching global customers in a non-threating way if done properly.

Internet marketing seems to have many meanings depending on who you talk to. Typically though, it is about using the internet to promote goods and services ethically, using a variety of online tools for advertising and selling to other businesses (B2B) or consumers (B2C and C2C).

Understanding what an online approach can accomplish for companies utilizing the various subsets from Online advertising, direct marketing Email, E-mail newsletters, Blogs, publishing articles on the Web, content management, and Search engine optimization (SEO misnomer) will be covered in subsequent articles.

Approaching Internet marketing as though it is the business cure all for: not having a strong sales force, providing good customer service relations, having a strong or growing brand awareness, & advertisement of a company through other market channels would be a foolish assumption indeed. On the other hand, an exponetial integration of utilizing the online web applications tools into the overall business plan can have a dramatic affect on a company’s bottom line.

See how Professional Web Services can help improve your search engine visibility with web marketing today.