Interesting YouTube Usage Facts

For anybody who still has doubts over the uptake of video online here are some interesting facts about YouTube from the Mercury News.

• YouTube was the number one video site on the Internet as of January – with 67.5 million unique users in the U.S., according to Nielsen NetRatings.
• The site also was the 6th largest Internet destination overall, Nielsen determined.
• People watch hundreds of millions of videos a day on the service.
• Every minute, 10 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.
• Of the 9.5 billion online videos watched in the U.S. in November last year, 2.9 billion of those were watched on YouTube, according to Comscore.

Web Safe Fonts or “Why can’t I use my favourite font on my website?”

You may be wondering why you are limited to only using a certain number of fonts on your website for the content text when you have a larger number of fonts on your computer that you would prefer to use.

The main reason is that your site will be viewed by various operating systems using various browsers that will each display your site differently.
Browsers – Internet Explorer 6 -7; Firefox 1-2; Safari.
Operating Systems – Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista; MacOS X 1.0 – 10.5; Linux.

Browsers can only use fonts that are installed on the computer/operating system of your site’s visitor. The chances of your visitors having all your favourite fonts installed would be rare and if you do use a non web safe font the user’s computer will default to a substitute font which will then change how you intended your site to look. Read more

Landing page load time to impact AdWords quality score.

One of the toughest things for a small-business owner to get their head around when using Google AdWords is making sure that they are taking care of the different elements that can increase and decrease the quality score of each advertising campaign.

Over the coming weeks we will go into more detail as to what elements can make a difference in increasing your quality score (and ultimately the amount you have to pay to keep your ads running), but thought that it would be worthwhile referencing a change that Google has announced will be integrated into their quality scoring system in the near future. Read more

Protecting Yourself from Online Scams

An unfortunate facet of modern society is the amount of people that are quite prepared to fraudulently rip off unsuspecting (and often overly trustworthy) small-business owners.  With the Internet still being such a new phenomenon that many people still don’t feel confident with there is no end of scam artists lining up to fleece your hard earned savings.

A great resource that the Australian government has put together is a website called Scam Watch.  This Web site provides Australians with a wealth of information regarding current scams that they are aware of.  A couple of handy tips that they provide for protecting yourself from on-line fraudsters include:

E-mail Best Practices

• Do not open suspicious or unsolicited emails (spam): delete them.
• Do not click on any links in a spam email, or open any files attached to them.
• Never call a telephone number that you see in a spam email.
• NEVER reply to a spam email (even to unsubscribe).

Protecting yourself on the Internet

• If you want to access an internet account website, use a bookmarked link or type the address in yourself: NEVER follow a link in an email.
• Install software that protects your computer from viruses and unwanted programs and make sure it is kept up-to-date.Beware of free websites and downloads (such as music, adult sites, games, movies). They may install harmful programs without you knowing.
• Check the website address carefully. Scammers often set up fake websites with very similar addresses.
• Never enter your personal, credit card or online account information on a website that you are not certain is genuine.
• Never send your personal, credit card or online account details through an email.
• Try to avoid using public computers (at libraries or internet cafes) to do your internet banking.
• Do not use software on your computer that auto-completes online forms. This can give internet scammers easy access to your personal and credit card details.
• Choose passwords that would be difficult for anyone else to guess.

The best advice I can give you is to always be sceptical of anything that turns up unexpected and make sure that you keep your virus and spyware software completely up-to-date.

If anybody else has any tips or advice on protecting yourself online please feel free to chime in through the comment section below.

266,000 .asia Domain Name Applications in first 24 hours

iTWire has reported that 266,000 .asia domain name applications have been submitted in the first 24 hours of its landrush phase.  With the opening of any new domain name extension there is sure to be plenty of speculators hoping to cash in on the lucrative domain name reselling market. Read more

Google AdSense Update Sign in Routine

We have been using Google AdSense on a number of Web properties for a few years now and find it a pain free solution to earn a few extra dollars from advertising.  It’s been a couple of weeks since last signing in to check on my account and upon doing so was happy to see that Google has finally incorporated AdSense into their all in one Google account structure.

This means that you are now able to access AdSense from the same account login details as you do for there are other services (such as AdWords, Gmail, Analytics etc).