Backlink Obsession, that is. No, I didn’t coin the term, but it is used in a recent posting by Matt Cutts, which is a very worthwhile read for anyone with even a mild interest in PageRank. Last week, a new set of PageRank values were exported to the Google data centers, which means that some of you may have noticed … Read More

This is surely a sign of things to come. Tesco, the largest retailer in Britain, has announced that it’s launching a range of budget own-brand software. The supermarket giant will be selling six different packages by the end of this month, including office and security software, and each title will cost less than £20. It’s not surprising, really. Like most … Read More

Warning: Friday rules apply to this posting. Terms and conditions apply. When I was a young boy, growing up in Manchester (England), the summer holidays from school went on forever. Everyone knew everyone else around them by name, the streets were safe, there was no real crime, and people never used to lock their front doors. Nowadays many of us … Read More

There’s a good chance that most of the people reading this entry already know who Sharon Housley is. Whether because of FeedForAll, SoftwareMarketingResource, the Shareware Industry Conference or any of her other (many) projects and commitments. In this exclusive interview, Sharon reveals her thoughts on the most effective marketing areas for software developers, how she alleviates her workload, her top … Read More

There are times when I feel as though I live in a slightly different reality. A few examples. (1) Knocking imagination on the head. One of the companies that we work with sells Windows Automation Software. It’s a great piece of software that’s been around since 1997, but they’re always looking at new ideas. Recently they decided to post a … Read More

Rightly or wrongly, the appearance of an application can make or break the sale. You’re already familiar with the concept. You arrive at the website, and the product looks good. You click on the link to the screenshots and: – shudder. It would have looked old and tired in Windows 95. Clunky icons, bad colour scheme, odd layout. The whole … Read More

If you’re interested in social bookmarking sites, but unsure which ones are worth your while, have a look at this post over at Read/Write Web. They’ve compared the most popular sites, in terms of features as well as user number estimates. Well worth a look. The Social Bookmarking Faceoff

For a while now, there’s been an ongoing debate about whether or not keywords in URLs and file names can help with search engine rankings. I’ve been of the opinion that although they might add some benefit in certain cases, they can also look incredibly spammy, and it’s hardly ever worth changing the name of an existing, indexed page in … Read More

Seth Godin has caused me to raise my eyebrows again. “Marketing (the use of time and money to create a story and spread it) works. Human beings don’t make rational decisions, they make emotional ones, and we’ve seen time and again that those decisions are influenced by the time and money spent by marketers. So, assuming you’ve got no argument … Read More

Is there are difference between running a business-to-business site and a business-to-consumer site? Probably, yes, although it depends on the site. But essentially, it all comes down to reaching the individual, human, site visitor. And people tend to behave like people, whether they’re browsing at home or at work. This is what I’ve always thought, and over at UIB, Jared … Read More