The new phone will be available on more than 70 carriers in 100 countries by year-end and in [...]]]>

iphone-4s

Apple has officially announced its fifth generation handset, the iPhone 4S. The new device, which retains the iPhone 4 form factor, will be available for pre-order on Oct. 7 and available to purchase on Oct. 14.

The new phone will be available on more than 70 carriers in 100 countries by year-end and in the United States will be available on Sprint, Verizon and AT&T.

Like previous versions of the iPhone, the iPhone 4S will retail for $199 for a 16GB model and $299 for a 32GB model. A new 64GB model will sell for $399. These prices include a two-year contract. It isn’t clear at this time what pricing plans the carriers will offer existing customers. Historically, AT&T has allowed existing customers to upgrade at the new customer rate as long as they sign a new contract.

The iPhone 4S sports a dual-core A5 processor, an 8-megapixel camera and features iOS 5.

In years past, Apple has had a hard time keeping up with pre-order demand for its phones. With three carriers, let’s hope that this tune changes.

The nature of the web is such that sharing and republishing content is common — and often even encouraged. The problem is, we increasingly store bits of our data on various [...]]]> If you want the hands-down, easiest way to embed practically anything on your blog or website, have we got a tool for you!

The nature of the web is such that sharing and republishing content is common — and often even encouraged. The problem is, we increasingly store bits of our data on various services scattered across the web. Aggregating that content into one centralized personal hub can be time consuming — requiring user to manually copy text and links or upload files and photos — or fiddling with RSS feeds trying to make content automagically appear.

Twitter released a very cool tool to allow publishers to embed tweets in their blog posts, but the process is overly complex for most users, with plugins needed to streamline the process. Why can’t you just paste a link to a Twitter status in a blog post or webpage? It turns out, you can.

A Quick Introduction to oEmbed

A technology called oEmbed, in existence for a number of years, was built to solve the embeddable content problem. oEmbed is an open format, designed to let web publishers easily embed content such as photos, video, rich content — and automatically display other content by typing in a URL. Providers like YouTube, Hulu, Flickr and Vimeo all support oEmbed, meaning that pasting a URL for one of those services into a system with oEmbed support should allow users to quickly embed rich media.

WordPress, the world’s most popular CMS, has had basic oEmbed support since WordPress 2.9. Plugins for most other popular platforms exist, too. The problem is, keeping an updated list of the providers that support oEmbed and keeping libraries up to date isn’t a streamlined process.

Embedly: Secret Sauce to Web Embed Fun

In March, we wrote about the startup Embedly, which has developed a platform for converting URLs into embeddable content. Embedly is already in use by companies such as Storify, bit.ly and TweetDeck.

Embedly uses the oEmbed spec to add embed functionality to a growing list of services — 218 at the time of this writing — by interfacing just with the Embedly API.

Embedly, focused on how third parties can use Embedly to provide rich-media previews in their own apps or to create their own embed targets. Embedly Pro also lets its users bring rich embeds to mobile users.

Still, the basic free Embedly service is extremely powerful. In fact, when paired with a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, Drupal or Joomla, it makes embedding rich content a snap.

How to Use Embedly

Embedly has libraries available for a host of different client and server-side web languages, including jQuery, Python, Ruby and PHP. For users who don’t want to mess with writing their own tool, Embedly has built its own JavaScript tag and WordPress plugin. Community-developed plugins for Drupal and Joomla also exist.

Since the WordPress plugin was developed by Embedly itself (and we use WordPress at Mashable), here’s a brief overview of how easy it is to use Embedly to bring rich content to your website.

Install the Embedly Plugin

The first step is to download and install the Embedly plugin. Activate the plugin and you can select what services you want to enable from the Embedly menu in the WordPress dashboard.

Embedly frequently updates its service list, and you can run an “update services” command to get access to more libraries.

Paste URLs Into Your Posts

The next step is to simply enter a URL on its own line into your posts or web pages. Each service has slightly different parameters for how URLs should be entered, but in general, the base URL is all that is needed.

To embed a Twitter status update, for instance, you just need to enter in the URL to that update. The Embedly API page has the parameters for each service supported by Embedly.

Enjoy Rich Media Embeds

That’s it. You can now enjoy and share media from 200+ web services across your site.

The Tumblr support is one of my favorite features — simply entering the URL for a post will embed the content of that post. If it’s a photo, the photo is displayed; if it’s a video, you’ll see the video in its player, and so on.

On the Twitter end, Embedly’s Blackbird Pie implementation is a lot easier than any other method we have seen. The company even has basic support for Twitter Photos.

You can take a look at an example page created using Embedly on a test blogs.

Source:Christina Warren

Because of the importance of search [...]]]> For millions of websites, publishers, and online businesses, search is still the king. While social media may have the media’s attention and Twitter and Facebook are garnering a lot of the hype, search still trumps them when it comes to driving traffic and being discovered by potential new customers.

Because of the importance of search traffic to online business, there is an entire industry dedicated to improving websites’ visibility in search engine results: Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

SEM is a complex topic that focuses on search engine optimization (SEO), but also includes the use of paid advertising and contextual advertisements in order to bring a website’s articles or product pages to the top of search engine result pages (SERPs).

We could write dozens of articles on the art of search engine marketing and SEO, We are going to focus on some of the key issues and best practices for optimizing your site for search.

Defining SEM

Before we dig into search engine marketing, it’s important to note that not everybody agrees on the definition. This has caused confusion among search professionals for years.

Essentially, there are two ways of defining SEM: either it is an “umbrella” term that encompasses SEO, paid search, contextual advertisements, and paid inclusions, or it only covers paid advertising, inclusions, and search and is separate from SEO.

Organizations such as Forrester Research and the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization believe that SEM is an umbrella term that encompasses both SEO and paid search. For the purposes of this article, I’m using that definition.

Making Your Website SEM-Optimized

Defining SEM is fine, but what matters is this: what simple things can you do to make your website search-optimized?

Here is a short list of tasks that can quickly boost your website for SEM.

1. Familiarize yourself with SEO: The most important component of search engine marketing is making your site easily discoverable in search results, and that requires a basic understanding of SEO. You don’t have to buy a book or take a class on the subject, though: SEOmoz has a fantastic beginner’s guide to SEO that will get you up-to-speed.

2. Grade your website: We offer a Free SEO Report, which will provide you with a quick assessment of where your website is optimized for SEM and where it is not.

3. Make the quick fixes: While you could spend months optimizing your website for SEM, make sure to get the little things out of the way first. Focus on what the SEO Report says you’re lacking (e.g. meta tags, keywords in your title tags, etc.) and then go from there.

4. Use SEM-optimized CMS software and plugins: Unless you’re a large company with the money and need to customize every aspect of your website, you’re likely using a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, Drupal, or Zen Cart. The good thing about using one of these tools is that they come optimized for search engines.

Do your research: choose software with good SEM features and a plug-in system so you can enhance it. For example, WordPress has the All in One SEO Pack, a great plug-in for optimizing your website. If you run an ecommerce website, Wikipedia has a good comparison of SEO features for different shopping cart software.

5. Test your PPC and landing page strategies: Another major component of search engine marketing is PPC, or Pay Per Click advertising. By putting your ads in search engines, you can drive traffic to your website. Even if you have good SEO and organic search, paid placement still helps. However, that’s only half of the story: you need to convert those visitors into customers or regular users.

It’s a smart idea to test which keywords and advertisements drive the most traffic (keep track of the stats), and it’s just as important to track what happens once those visitors arrive. Google offers tools such as Google Analytics to help you track those visitors and see whether they are staying on your site or bouncing away.

6. Inbound links are still king: According to a SEO Expert in Google Quote-

“I would love to say that the most important thing to get a site to rank well is having superior content, or standards compliant HTML, or even a magic percentage of certain keywords, but I can’t. Unfortunately, you can overcome a lot of really basic flaws with any website if you have enough inbound links (with the right anchor text) pointing at the site.”

The truth of the matter is that inbound links are still the top way to boost your rankings in search results, so partnering with other websites, asking for links, and creating great content that others want to link to should be your top priority.

This Is Just the Beginning

These tips will only help you get started. Search engine marketing is a constant process that requires trial-and-error and self-education. People stay on websites because of great content or great products, but if they can’t find them, it’s essentially useless.

Including devices [...]]]> In a dense, 87-page report, Morgan Stanley analysts have charted the most important online trends and predicted the future of the Internet. In addition to forecasting more online shopping and showing the geographical distribution of Internet users, the study also shows a dramatic shift toward mobile web use.

Including devices such as the Kindle, Ipad, the iPhone and other smartphones, web-enabled tablets, GPS systems, video games and wireless home appliances, the growth of the mobile web has been exponential — and we’re still just at the beginning of this cycle. Morgan Stanley’s analysts believe that, based on the current rate of change and adoption, the mobile web will be bigger than desktop Internet use by 2015.

The mobile wealth creation/destruction cycle is in its earliest stages. The proliferation of better devices and the availability of better data coverage are two trends driving growth; having better services and smaller, cheaper devices has led to a huge explosion in mobile technology that far outpaces the growth of any other computing cycle.

And speaking of coverage, global 3G penetration is expected to hit 21% this year. In Japan, where the U.S. looks to find its mobile roadmap for the future, 96% of mobile subscribers already have 3G coverage. In Western Europe, the penetration is around 54%, just slightly above 46% in the U.S. In developing and/or economically depressed areas, including the Middle East, Africa, parts of Asia, Eastern Europe and South America, 3G penetration is still in the single digits. Morgan Stanley identifies 3G access as a key point in the success of the mobile web.

Finally, mobile e-commerce is ramping up faster than online e-commerce, now making up 4% of total retail sales. In certain categories, such as computers, consumer electronics, music, movies, tickets, video games and books, online sales account for between 45% and 20% of the total retail market. Japan’s Rakuten shows how the mobile share of e-commerce is growing as well, from 10% of e-commerce in 2006 to nearly 20% now.