Hightide Web Resources Articles, News, and Reviews

by Brian Kindsvater

RSS feeds are the latest craze. Supposedly, they will replace email and RSS does have its advantages. However, it is time to put theory aside.

In the real world RSS feeds can be used with email. This powerful combination has been overlooked by many webmasters and Internet users.

Unfortunately, many websites have shifted to RSS entirely when it comes to delivering the latest news or information to their visitors.

They have used RSS to replace email, ezines, and emailed newsletters. Everyone is concerned about spam, and the deliverability of email can be hampered by anti-spam filters.

With RSS, you know your message has been delivered because the person receiving the RSS feed is using software to get their feed from you.

However, the bigger question is how many people are getting your RSS feed?

That is the real question. If your email deliverability rate is 90% to 1000 customers, and your RSS feed deliverability is 100% to 10 customers, then you’ve really missed the boat if you sacrificed email for RSS feeds.

Did I say just 10 customers? Is that an unfair comparison?

Nope. The fact is, hardly anyone uses RSS feeds to get information, but everyone uses email. The most common use of RSS feeds seems to be webmasters using each other’s RSS feeds to create content for their websites.

A recent poll on a major Internet marketing forum bore this out. These are people on the cutting edge of technology and those most likely to use RSS feeds.

They do, to get content for their websites. But it turned out hardly anyone was using RSS feeds to read information and keep abreast of the latest news. They were using email for that.

While that poll was certainly not scientific, it is illuminating.

That has not prevented many online businesses from blindly jumping on the RSS bandwagon and making new company information only available via RSS.

The solution to this problem: online businesses making new information available by RSS feed, but online visitors using email to obtain new information they want to read, is obvious:

Deliver RSS feeds by email.

Surprisingly, there are only a couple options available for this, almost all of which are encased in techno-geek, difficult to set-up, and just plain are not adequate for the average consumer.

Testing at Internet Profit University fortunately did find a couple good options. One of which really stood out: RSSGecko.com.

This online service is free, and it allows you to simply enter the RSS feed you are interested in, your email address, and that’s about it. Very simple, but extremely powerful. The RSS Gecko service also has a unique option allowing users to select the days and times when they want to receive updated information from their RSS feeds.

If you use the web, and we all do, an RSS to email service is extremely valuable. Everyone is already using email, and setting up another program to access, add RSS feeds, just to read the latest news is unnecessary.

Combining RSS feeds with existing email technology is an excellent way to easily get current information from your favorite websites.

About the Author
Internet Profit University is always looking for excellent online tools. RSS to Email by RSS Gecko is free and will deliver any RSS feed into your email box.

by Dmitry Baranov

Podcasting is a new format for distributing audio and video content over the Internet. From the technical viewpoint, podcasting involves nothing new - it’s just embedding of multimedia-content (audio or video) into an RSS feed.

It is not difficult to create a podcast. There are both specialized web services and desktop applications for the task. Structurally, a podcast is an RSS file that contains links to enclosure files. Apple has developed iTunes - an RSS extension for use with podcasts. iTunes significantly improves upon the capabilities of RSS by providing additional fields (such as keywords, duration etc.) for use in describing enclosures.

The most popular way of getting audio files for podcasting is to record them from the microphone and compress the file into MP3 format. There is a free program called Audacity, which does this rather well. To create and publish the RSS feed, you can use the Feed Editor software, which is extremely easy to use.

When all multimedia files and the RSS feed of the podcast are ready, they must be published on a web-server in order for the users to be able to access them.

Podcasting is rapidly becoming more and more popular. More and more users become aware of it every day. This can be explained by the so-called “iPod phenomenon.” In 2005, “podcasting” became the “Word of the Year” of the Oxford Dictionary. Podcasting is used in very different fields: mass media, marketing, production and even religion.

Many people predict that podcasting ultimately will replace radio. For instance, if you are traveling on subway, you usually cannot listen to the radio. Even if you can, the number of radio stations is rather limited. In the best case, you might be able to learn about world events, but not about, say, the features of new RSS readers.

Now imagine getting up in the morning and taking your mp3 player (or connecting it to your automobile audio player) and while on your way to the office being able to listen to the news published on your favorite website, just like you used to listen to the radio. The news segments were downloaded and synchronized with the player automatically when plugged into your computer overnight. Fantastic? No. Reality! This is the possibility that podcasting provides.

So, as you can see, podcasting combines the best of the two widespread methods of distributing information: Internet and radio. You can subscribe to the pieces (podcasts) that you are interested in and listen to them when and where you want.

Isn’t that the future of radio?

About the Author:
Dmitry Baranov is the editor of the http://www.rss-specification.com website, and the author of a series of articles and reviews related to RSS, podcasting, marketing and programming.

by John Leith

We live in a world so jam-packed with excitement and new technology that at times it seems hard to believe. But this technology is designed in such a way that even the newest online business owners can make use of user-friendly web tools that make functions only a web programmer could have dreamed of doing just a few years ago into simple tasks.

And that is fantastic, right? Well actually it’s not. Quite the reverse is true.

You see, the accessibility and ease of use of such web tools has resulted in hundreds of “junk” websites being produced that are so poorly planned that the web surfer is totally confused.

Some of these web pages have as many as 7 or 8 individual things going on at the same time -flashing header graphics, an opt in form, Google Adsense ads, numerous paragraphs of content, affiliate links, audio buttons and more!

Don’t be attracted to make such glaring mistakes. It is doubtful if many web visitors will be able to successfully find their way through such a site. There are far too many choices to make. And the content is totally lost among all the technology and advertising.

So, what is the answer?

Most successful webmasters today will tell you that the answer is a clean, simple, easy to understand website. It needs to be designed with the best interests of the end- user in mind, not yours. You need to make it a pleasant experience.

Successful websites focus on 3 basic features: simplicity, clarity and speed. In other words, you need a site that is visually appealing, but at the same time downloads promptly and is simple to navigate.

To design a site that has visual appeal, you can make use of simple graphics, color and text. At all costs, keep away from flashing computer graphics and fussy backgrounds.

In fact, if you want the bulk of your visitors to be able to read your text easily a white background with black text is definitely best.

It isn’t crucial to be an accomplished graphic artist to design a visually pleasing content site. Get a couple of photos from a free stock photo site such as www.sxc.hu, add some colored text and a tagline using a graphics program like Windows Paint or Paint Shop Pro.

That’s all that is required for a header. And that’s presuming you want a header in the first place as some studies have shown that some niche markets achieve better results without any headers or images at all.

Navigation should be simple text links or buttons, either across the top, straight under the header, or down the left or right side of the screen. Make sure the text labels plainly show what the user will find when he or she clicks on them.

An optin form and one or two simple ads can also be placed in the left or right columns, with your content in the center of your site so that it attracts the reader’s focus.

Clean and simple web design applies to the layout of your content too. Text is most legible when it is in “chunks.” This means brief sentences and paragraphs of no more than 2 to 4 sentences each.

Make generous use of colored subheadings and bullets. Sprinkle a graphic or two per page to break up the text and add visual curiosity.

Also use borders (padding) around your text, so that it doesn’t end up against the edges of your navigation or ad panels. Plenty of white space is essential.

In summary, many brand new webmasters (and even some more experienced ones) think that cramming as much as they can possibly fit into every page is the right method. It’s not.

What will keep folks on your site and keep them coming back is a clean, simple, easy to navigate design that doesn’t give them a headache each time they visit your page.

About the Author:
I’m John Leith. I own http://www.bettermarketingtoolbox.com/software - “Better Tools for Better Marketing”. For more articles, visit my blog at http://www.bettermarketingtoolbox.com

by Andrei Mikrukov

ColorImpact is an award winning software for creating harmonious color schemes. The program is based on the color wheel used by artists for centuries. The artist’s use of complementary colors, or colors opposite on the color wheel, creates an exciting painting.

There are a lot of great tools in ColorImpact, such as Matching Colors Wheel, Color Variations, Color Blender and Test Patterns. The Main Menu area is like a control center for this program and lets you explore the color tools.

The color tools let you adjust colors in the palette in order to better suit your needs. For example, the Color Variations panel lets you add and modify variations to the colors in the color palette, while the Color Blender gives you the power to create intermediary colors between any two end colors.

But the most useful tool for niche website builders is the Color Composer, that allows you to experiment and see how your color schemes look when used on real web page designs.

Color Composer

The Color Composer is an advanced color scheme designer for web pages. The flexible user interface allows you to combine one of several html templates with a number of predefined and user defined color formulas or preselected colors.

Want a quick set of pleasantly looking and harmonious colors for your new website? Simply launch the Color Composer and pick a Formula Base Color. The base color window pops up. It is a flexible color picker that gives you full control when selecting the base color.

Pick the base color, and the Composer will instantly give you color suggestions for the following main elements of a webpage:

* Page Header: Background, Logo and Top Bar
* Sidebar: Background, Heading, Heading Background, Menu Item and Menu Item Background
* Content: Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, Text, Background
* Links

Play with it! Pick colors from the Base Color circle and see how good the Composer is in selecting the best matches for webpage elements. When you’re done, click File > Export Colors… and save you color scheme as a CSS file.

Creating a color scheme for your website has never been this easy!

Note: This review intentionally refers to an older version of the ColorImpact, known as ColorImpact Classic. Although, ColorImpact version 3 is available, in my opinion, the Color Composer in the Classic version is easier to use and more intuitive. Moreover, the ColorImpact Classic costs $20 less.

15-day trials are available for both versions of the program. The trials have no features disabled, so you can take advantage of them all while testing it. ColorImpact has a well organized and intuitive user interface and an extensive help documentation.

ColorImpact website: http://www.tigercolor.com/

About the Author:
Andrei Mikrukov is the author of free Virtual Real Estate Toolbar for IE and Firefox. The toolbar provides over 100 tools to build and promote your niche content websites.

by Alan Zunec

Have you ever wondered why certain web pages go to the top of search engines, why others never get found? Well that is why it is important to understand and educate yourself about the search engines and what they can do for your business. With more and more businesses turning to an online presence, you really need to add this to your marketing mix. Search engines like GOOGLE, YAHOO and MSN, can do a wonder for your results. There are millions of Internet users around the planet and often they will use a search term to find a product or service that they need.

What is the value of search engines? Well, it is like having an employee work for your every day. Plus with your web presence you automatically build credibility to your end user. Having a web presence allows your customers to come back to help you build your bottom line of contacts. Just imagine how much referral business potential is out there, if you utilize the power of the Internet. This product is only becoming more superior then ever. Many companies hire search engine experts to help get their companies ranked on the popular sites.

As with any business, you really want to see the results that are required. As everything else, it will take time. A search engine is a top-notch tool if utilized accordingly and you definitely can reap the benefits. Understanding how they work is half the battle. A good web team can definitely help you strategize and make things happen. All things take planning and good execution. The power of the search engines can bring a potential of thousands of new customers to your existing business every year that will definitely keep you busy.

About the Author:
Showing you how to be successful online with web building tools thru http://www.broadwavestudios.com/ and giving you tips on search engines via http://www.broadwavestudios.com/Client-Success.html.

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