Google plans to penalize overly optimized sites because they want to level the playing field for other websites who do not concentrate on such efforts. Basically there are sites out there that completely focus their efforts on SEO and not content and those results would rank higher than sites that don't focus on SEO.

Google Engineer Matt Cutts explains the following: "We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect."

The search engine at Google is about to go through a major overhaul and de-prioritizing sites with heavy SEO is just a small part in the big picture to bring better search results. The changes to the search engine will be coming in the next few months.

Here at Balian Design we think IT"S ABOUT TIME!

Higly optimized sites with no real content or relevance have been cloging up SERPS for far too long.  I can't wait to see what happens.

Source:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57399425-93/google-plans-to-penalize-overly-optimized-sites/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title

Amongst the beautiful covers and pinned posts, there's one glaring disadvantage of the new Facebook Timeline for Pages redesign. Pages can no longer display one of their custom applications as their default landing tab that non-fans first see when they visit. This powerful marketing feature let Pages set up a welcome app that teased special content like contests or coupons, but required users to Like the Page for access.

Without default landing tabs, non-fans have to actively click through the little app tiles overshadowed by a Page's cover. Many won't, and it will cost marketers Likes as well as email signups, contest entries, and other key performance indicators.

I guess we can only complain so much.  We obviously dont own facebook, they can do whatever they want with their website.  However alot of people have created businesses around landing tabs and reveal pages.  

How do you justify the cost of work performed for clients that is undone by this change?  We created a custom landing tab for a client just a few months ago.  

Source(s):

http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/29/death-of-the-facebook-default-landing-tab/

http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/02/29/new-facebook-timeline-for-brand-pages-lose-landing-tabs/

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/02/facebook-unrolls-timeline-style-pages-for-brands-and-businesses/

The Apache Foundation finally got off their butts and released the first major update to their market dominating open-source web-server in more than a half-decade. Apache 2.4 is slated to deliver superior performance to its 2.2 predecessor and better compete with the growing-popularity of the NGINX web-server.

Besides much faster performance, among the many enhancements to the Apache 2.4 HTTP Server is better asynchronous support in its core, run-time loadable MPMs, reduced memory usage compared to Apache 2.2.x, several new modules, enhancements to existing modules, and much more.

For those web administrators out there, details on some of the new Apache 2.4 features are available from the Apache documentation. The brief official announcement is available here.

You want to learn how to use your DSLR properly, play with this for awhile. Its not perfect, but it shows you how to use the manual Light Meter.

It's no secret that email problems cost companies big money every year.  A recent study by Forrester Research looks at the cost of outlook vs gmail.

For typical information workers, Forrester estimates that it costs a company $25.18 per user per month for an on-premise e-mail system, including the hardware, labor and other costs associated with managing e-mail in-house. Alternatively, for companies using Google’s fully Web-based Gmail, it costs a mere $8.47. Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft’s version of a fully cloud-based e-mail, isn’t quite as cheap as Gmail but rings in at $20.32 per user per month.

Facebook is a powerful tool for business.  In this post I will show you how to automatically add your blog or other content to facebook using RSS feeds.

Go to Facebook.

1. Search for RSS Graffiti, and install the app.
2. Once it is installed it will take you to the app page.
3. In the left column of RSS Graffiti you will see a list of all the pages that you control.  Click on the page that you want your articles to be automatically posted to.
4. Now click the "Add Feed" button.

We're lucky enough that we've actually had a few of these!

The dream client:

1. Trusts your knowledge and experience.
2. Has genuine feedback.
3. Can clearly articulate their goals.
4. Can compromise desired functionality for required functionality. 
5. Provides materials in a timely manner.
6. Dedicates the resources necessary on his end to complete the project quickly.

And the award for most confusing sentence in an email from a client is:

She likes the menu style/colors for that module's webpage.

Part of our Job is taking phone calls from panicked people who almost scream into the phone "MY WEBSITE HAS BEEN HACKED!"

We deal with this often enough to realize it's usually not a huge deal.  Don't get us wrong, it's definately not a good thing - but data loss is very rare in these cases.  Generally defacement of the home page is the most common outcome, followed by meta hacks inserting pharmacy keywords into the site.  

So you've been hacked, now what?  I'll share our strategy for diagnosing these issues.

Outlook.  MacMail.  Eudora.  Thunderbird.  

These words all make me wince.  We deal with a lot of companies, and without fail very often the entire company is still using Outlook.  

We generally always try to steer our customers to using Google Apps for business, but we get alot of resistance.  It's actually very surprising to us how many people use email and have no understanding how it works.  In this post I would like to talk about the disadvantages of using an email client,  and when is the right time to use one.