Posted on Tuesday 17th of June 2008 at 01:18 in HardwareI finally got around to reviewing Asus' lilliputian notebook the other day (the EEE-PC 701); something I'd been putting off for quite some time. I've had it for months but seldom use it, so it wasn't until last weekend that I was able to sit down with it and formulate a review. Ironically, the new EEE-PC 900 is out imminently but I can't see myself being an early adopter for it.Last week I was contacted by the PR company who deal with Asus, telling me they had a few review models available if I wanted to have one on loan. I had to politely decline due to time constraints but enquired about purchasing one when they're available. Today someone contacted me offering a 'special press price' for the machine and I was shocked.
What made the Asus EEE-PC 701 a successAsus sold lots of these tiny, Linux powered machines. They weren't powerful but they were quite stylish, but above all else they were cheap. We're talking £180 when laptops cost £290+. Comparisons with full featured laptops could be blown out of the water on both sizing and cost - after all you wouldn't compare a Ferrari to a Ford would you?
The new model is set to retail at around £330I wasn't expecting a price tag so high. I don't think anyone was. After all the machine hasn't advanced much; the screen has increased from 7" to 8.9", the SSD drive is now 12gb (with XP) or 20gb (with Linux) and memory has doubled (to 1gb). The CPU is still the same, 900mhz Intel chip. Sure the native resolution has risen from a tiny 840x480 to a more respectable 1024x600, but whatever they've done they've shifted the EEE-PC's price into an awkward range.
£330 is budget laptop territory; they're better than thisSuddenly because the price has been ramped up the EEE-PC only has one song in it's repertoire - it's tiny size (the one thing that caused me the most problems with the 701). It may be tiny enough to fit in your coat pocket but it does cramp up your hands after a while unless you've got your robe of Dexterity(+20) on.
All you need to do is look around the entry level laptop market and you realise that the EEE-PC might be too expensive. I found
an HP laptop with a standard 15.4" screen, 1gb of memory, 120gb hard drive and integrated DVDRW drive with a 1.6ghz CPU for only £270. There are several machines on the market of a similar spec for a similar price - all less than the EEE-PC 900.
Suddenly all Asus' little machine has left is it's size. You know, I don't think they're going to fly off shelves like the 701 did; anyone who wants truly mobile computing will save themselves £100 and buy the original EEE-PC, anything else and you might as well buy an entry level laptop. I think Asus have missed the point massively this time... read more and comment Posted on Sunday 15th of June 2008 at 14:13 in SEOWithout getting drawn into the whole 'conventional SEO vs LSI' argument once again (read my post explaining what LSI is), it's easy to see why having a decent vocabulary is going to offer sizable SEO gains and there are two good reasons for this.
Having a decent vocabulary is an important factor for anyone attempting to 'make it big' as a blogger; not only does it allow you to convey your thoughts more accurately but it can tie in to two key SEO practices (as well as making your content more readable and adding authority to your words...). Before I start getting too cryptic, let me explain what I'm on about.
Increased vocabulary vs Keyword density
This is where I always get dragged into the 'conventional SEO vs LSI' debate. One of the most basic concepts of SEO is keyword density (how many times a specific keyword/phrase appears on a page), with the basic premise that the more times 'kitten' is on a page, the more likely the page is about 'kittens'. Therefore if someone searches for 'kitten hospital', your page that has 17 instances of 'kitten' might rank rather favourably. However, I'm favour a more keyword rich approach, using a lot of synonyms and varied language to convey my point - and that means I'm dancing the dance of LSI (latent semantic indexing).
LSI is an algorithm that is able to rank content based on how varied the use of language is around a specific keyword/keyphrase. The idea behind this is that one could game the search engines by abusing keyword density, but pages that rank highly under LSI should actually provide the user with decent levels of information. The premise for this is that pages with 'good' content should talk about the subject in a more rounded way than targetting specific words with ruthless commitment.
But if LSI isn't here yet, why should I care about my vocab?
True, LSI isn't really used much (if at all as far as I can tell) but I honestly believe it's coming soon and it is the future. So, not only would it get your content in ship-shape for when things finally start to change but it allows you to tie in to a vital part of conventional SEO - the long tail.
The long tail?
The long tail is something you're already using but you're not aware of it. Okay, so using my example above, you have a page about kittens and common illnesses. The most obvious search terms will be "kitten" but the long tail constitutes all the less obvious things that people actually search for, like "my kitten is ill" and "common kitten illnesses in Australia". These are real terms and while targetting a specific keyword can be pretty profitable, ensuring your content is keyword rich should ensure you more gains in the long run.
The long tail is more profitable because the obvious keywords are always really competitive, whereas the long tail is harder to predict.
Therefore it is my belief that if you write your content using a varied and interesting vocabulary, then your content will benefit in SEO terms. Keyword density is a thing of the past and while it may work very well for some people, the chances are that you'll want to rank for a particulary contested keyword and you won't have much chance of winning (unless you game the system like John Chow did with his 'make money online' effort).
Use your language well and your readers will like it more and the search engines should deliver more love your way.
read more and comment Posted on Monday 2nd of June 2008 at 00:00 in BloggingAlmost every website in the world has a purpose, whether you're a photography blogger or an online store you have a purpose. Have you ever thought about how obvious that purpose is to someone else? Rule #1 of advertising is to make the consumer very aware what product you're selling; if you're trying to sell shoes and your advert has no shoes in it then you won't see sales - true enough. So what about your website? What is it you're trying to sell? Is it an idea? Maybe it's an actual product; but how obvious is your intention to a new user?
Most websites seem to only convey this message with a title or strapline ("John's Shoes: making shoes since 1884") but that's actually a really poor piece of real estate to latch on to. Most users don't look at the header for more than a few seconds, so hoping to convey something as critical as your core business through that medium alone might be losing you big piles of cash.
Always always have pictures of what the user would be buying - no one spends money without some visual guarantee of what they're buying (Not convinced? Go and look on eBay and see the difference between items that have photos and those that don't).
"But some of the big websites don't tell you what they're selling"
This was beautifully highlighted recently by Honda's marvelous "Difficult is worth doing" campaign that resulted in a live advertising slot where skydivers spelled out "HONDA" live on TV (
watch it on Youtube here). A lot of people criticised the advert for not showing anything that Honda sell, but indeed they missed the point.
Major brands such as Honda and Coca Cola don't need to state what they're selling you because 99% of the world already know. There's a massive line between product promotion and brand awareness. A lot of major corporations just need to increase visibility of their brand instead of promoting a specific product.
You however as a web-author need to promote whatever you're selling. Don't forget, you can be selling an idea (your content) too so make sure that every single visitor to your website knows exactly what the website is about. Not sure how to do this? Just get a few friends/associates who have never visited your site before to have a look and tell you what they think your website is about. You might be quite surprised.read more and comment
