Attract Clients Now
The Online Newsletter from Valiss Internet Solutions,
Helping You Attract More Clients With Less Effort
In this week's issue
Internet Trends for 2006
Happy New Year to everyone. I've been out of touch for a while but I'm back and ready for a great year. 2005 definitely ended with a bang for me. My parents came to visit for 3 weeks around the holidays, yes 3 full weeks! I love my parents dearly but 3 weeks is a really long time to spend with anyone. On Christmas day my mother became very ill and ended up in the hospital for 4 days. We spent the next few days looking into assisted living for them because they're rapidly entering that phase of their lives. My life took a dramatic turn during the holidays and put a lot of things in perspective for me.
If that wasn't enough, it rained every day during my parents visit, ending with the largest storm in decades, We received over 8 inches of rain on December 30th and our entire town was flooded. Every store downtown was filled with 4 feet of water destroying everything inside the stores. A thick layer of mud covered the town after the water receded. Many of our friends had significant damage to their homes and the town came to a standstill. Most people didn't have flood insurance and the ones that had it soon learned that flood insurance doesn't cover your possessions. Businesses and homes were totally destroyed and people are starting over from scratch. Mother Nature really flexed her muscles all over the world in 2005 and we better start listening to her.
To see some pictures and videos of the San Anselmo flood visit http://www.parentheticals.com/archives/001366.html. It's nothing compared to Hurricane Katrina but it woke up our sleepy little town.
I'm still processing the events of the past few weeks and I'm not sure what to make of it yet. But I do know it's a new year, the sun has been shining brightly for the past few days and I'm moving on to bigger and better things. I have a lot of exciting new programs and services planned for Valiss this year that I'll be sharing with you soon.
Have a fantastic 2006!
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Internet Trends for 2006
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) just ended in Las Vegas last week and it's clear what the trends for 2006 are. All of the major internet players are positioning themselves to provide us content in every possible form. Music, video, news, movies, television shows, sporting events, sports scores, stock market data and any other information you can think of will be delivered to our computers, telephones, PDA's, Playstations, X-Boxes, and to the new devices that are being developed to keep us totally connected 24 hours a day. We're truly entering the next phase of the information age.
It's clear that Google and Yahoo are leading the way on this new frontier and Microsoft is working furiously to catch up. They're all trying to create relationships and partnerships with the media networks so they can have exclusive access to television programs and movies. It feels like the beginning of the dot com era all over again the way companies are trying to predict which technology and which wild idea will take off. The venture capitalists are opening their wallets again not wanting to miss out on the next Microsoft (or should I say Google?).
So how can you position your website and business for this next surge of internet technology? It's clear the latest trends for websites are video and podcasting. I'm seeing podcasting everywhere from my local newspaper, which provides podcasts from all of it's writers, to magazines and advertisements. More and more websites are providing video whether it's a brief introduction on their homepage to streaming video training programs.
It's not expensive to set up podcasting for your website. Podcasting is essentially a link that points to an mp3 audio file on your website. You can purchase a software package that lets you record in MP3 format on your computer for under $30 using a microphone connected to your sound card.
A podcast is a web feed of audio or video files placed on the Internet for anyone to subscribe to. Podcasters' websites also may offer direct download of their files, but the subscription feed of automatically delivered new content is what distinguishes a podcast from a simple download or real-time streaming. The content is published on the website using an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed. People can search for and subscribe to Podcasts by using a podcatcher or aggregator, which is software you install on your computer. The latest version of Itunes has a podcasting aggregator. A complete list of podcasting aggregators can be found at www.podcastingnews.com.
I've been playing around with podcasting for my website and I'll be launching my RSS feed soon. I'll be producing an audio version of my ezine so you can download it directly to your Ipod or MP3 player so you can listen to it on your way to work. I'm also getting ready to launch video on my website with an intro message on my home page.
Stay tuned for teleclasses that will teach you in depth how to add audio and video to your website.
Until next time,
Ted
Ted Prodromou
valiss-info@valiss.com
1-(415) 785-1796
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