“Designing Search Engine Friendly Websites” by Greg Hill from Excellira
A detiled look at SEO from a designer/developer-oriented perspective.

Then to follow this up, more SEO

“The SEO Toolkit” by Jim O’Neil
A good look at the brand new Microsoft SEO appliction tool kit

So do not miss this SEO packed meeting.

Plus a very exciting book giveaway from O’Riely books: ” SEO Warrior” by John I. Jerkovic.

Keep checking on our blog for more info about this meeting and I will do a more detail quick review of the book as well: http://bostonwebsites…

Part 2 of 2

Discover some modern tools and techniques that can help you to rapidly create UX for your projects. Whether you create Web interfaces, applications, media players, or widgets you’ll have something to learn as they take you through wireframing and prototyping tools and techniques using Illustrator, Photoshop, Expression Blend, and Sketchflow. Jennifer Smith is the author of the Adobe Creative Suite for Dummies and the Adobe Photoshop Digital Classroom, and is also an expert Expression Blend user. Her colleague Jeremy Osborn is the author of the Dreamweaver Digital Classroom and an expert on Sketchflow and Expression Web. They work at American Graphics Institute located in suburban Boston.

More at: http://www.meetup.com/Boston-WebsiteSpark-Group/calendar/12831601/

Discover some modern tools and techniques that can help you to rapidly create UX for your projects. Whether you create Web interfaces, applications, media players, or widgets you’ll have something to learn as they take you through wireframing and prototyping tools and techniques using Illustrator, Photoshop, Expression Blend, and Sketchflow. Jennifer Smith is the author of the Adobe Creative Suite for Dummies and the Adobe Photoshop Digital Classroom, and is also an expert Expression Blend user. Her colleague Jeremy Osborn is the author of the Dreamweaver Digital Classroom and an expert on Sketchflow and Expression Web. They work at American Graphics Institute located in suburban Boston.

More at: http://www.meetup.com/Boston-WebsiteSpark-Group/calendar/12831601/

Now, this is what you get when you combine the 2 together… you get 4 giant simultaneous nerdgasams!

Go change your pants!

Well, TechCrunch brings us the news of a major development in the world of Internet search technology with far reaching implications across what is currently the most hotly contested area for advertising dollars in the world.

A small Israeli company was able to successfully apply for and receive a patent for a specific type of search techology that giants like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all rely on.  More importantly, it looks as though the patent is being backdated to 1998 when the company’s CEO reportedly created the technology, meaning that all of the search companies have been using the technology free of charge for the past twelve years.  Expect that to change…

If in fact it is determined that these companies have been using the technology without paying it’s owner for all of these years, expect a massive judgement in favor of Netex Corporation, the Israli company that now holds the patent.  Just imagine how many searches have been made on the “big three” search engines since 1998.  I don’t know that there is even a word in the English Language to calculate that number.  And if a court decides that Netex should be compensated at… oh, I don’t know… 1% of one cent for each of those searches, we could still be talking hundreds of billions of dollars.

I really need to invent something.

Um… no.  The lawsuit appears to be charging $200M in damages – no small sum – plus another $40M in damages for “Willful Infringement” of i4i’s patents.  The lawsuit centers around the use of XML – a very high-end programming language – integrated into the Microsoft Word program.  i4i is charging that Microsoft used their patented XML Tagging Features without their approval when they released Word 2007 and the brand new “.docx” file format.

Ultimately, what is likely to happen is that Microsoft will pay the $240M in fines with the pocket change in Bill Gates’ couch.  Then, they’ll immediately purchase i4i as a company so that they will have full access to the XML features that Microsoft needs in order to keep churning out Word 2007.  A purchase of a company like i4i would likely cost Microsoft another $200M+, so this little error could cost the company almost half a billion dollars when it’s all said and done.

• Vizio VBR100 Blu-ray player. To get one, currently only available at Wal-Mart. [Engadget]
• A look at the Motorola Morrison Android phone. [Engadget]
• RF remote without wall limitations [Engadget]
• Here is a video on the Zune HD inferface. [Engadget]
• Toshiba went Blu-Ray… finally! [CrunchGear]

Now, here’s the difference.  Whereas you might expect to pay a lot less for anything from Sony, JVC, Mitsubishi, Samsung, etc. while on the Pacific Rim, you might not expect to see major discounts in American-made products while travelling abroad.  Remarkably, that seems to be the case.

Microsoft is licensing new copies of it’s Office products for just $29 in China, slightly less than the $300+ retail tag for a copy of Office 2007 here in America.  And the reasoning?  Apparently, Microsoft was losing too much money to pirating in China – where it is estimated that 95% of all MSOffice software on computers is pirated – so they decided to slash the price by some 90% in order to try and earn a legitimate market share.  Looks like it’s working – Microsoft is reporting a jump of almost 800% in sales since dropping the prices.

Of course, that means that somewhere in the neighborhood of 60% of all MSOffice is still pirated in China, but at least Microsoft is making progress.

But why reward a market where people would clearly rather steal than pay full price?  If Microsoft can still turn a profit by slashing their prices to ridiculously low levels in the largest market in the world then why can’t they lower the price here in the US, where people generally fork over the money instead of pirating?  Simply because… people in the US will generally pay up instead of pirating.  No major company is going to “kill the golden goose” as it were.  If Americans are still willing to pay $300 for software that could easily sell for $50 or less and still allow the company to make a healthy profit, they why should that company cut their profits by 5/6?

To put it another way – if you ran a company and consistently sold out of a product at $300, making you boatloads of money, why would you ever consider lowering the price?  If anything, yo’d be more likely to raise it and see just how high it could get before people would stop paying…  You know what?  Forget I said anything.

Seriously, do I have to write several paragraphs extolling the virtues of a 50% discount? GO PRE-ORDER WINDOWS 7 NOW! Word on the street is that it’s a limited offer, though no one seems to know where the cutoff will be. All the more reason why you should be pre-ordering already.

Dammit, go pre-order!