Worm Seizes 8 Million PCs in a Week

http://www.insidetech.com/news/articles/3831-worm-seizes-8-million-pcs-in-a-week?referral=IT_nlet_20090122

iStockphoto Tip of the Week - 01.15.2009 - Pixels vs Vectors

Here's a situation you may be familiar with. You've just snagged a valuable design contract and the first thing you need from the client is a vector of their logo to use in your print or web work. How often does your client truly know what you're looking for? If you're a design professional, you've probably seen more blown-up, pixelated raster images than the number of fonts on your hard drive you never use.

http://recp.rm05.net/servlet/MailView?ms=MTM3MzUxMQS2&r=MTAyMTk3MDQ2MgS2&j=MTQ2NzUxMjc2S0&mt=1&rt=0

Getting You Message Across: Key Email Campaign Considerations

E-mail is very effective for communicating with customers. According to a 2007 poll by MarketingSherpa, 86% of US adult internet users opened opt-in e-mails from companies, and 55% did so “always,” “very often” or “frequently.” With these statistics, it makes sense to employ an e-mail program. It’s easy to create, inexpensive to send, interactive with users and quantifiable. According to a 2008 report by the Direct Marketing Association, the ROI for e-mail was $45.06 on every dollar. So, how do you get your message across? Following are key points to consider when creating e-mails.

http://enews1.websitemagazine.com/m/ea4Gdlv-yzkHY0swUVzdB3-Yj7Anq2geRjYEleszVfbJJt5i6A

Designing Better Add-To-Cart Buttons

More than any other group of Web professionals, Internet retailers spend the most time focusing on individual page elements. They do this for good reason; each and every change they make (even small changes) produce a big impact. Sometimes it's not always for the better. That's why understanding best practices goes a long way towards getting your enterprise in the black.

http://enews1.websitemagazine.com/m/880Gd6hBEfwQzPIc4Tz7nTpvIhgnPEjkLFCWaZZukqkhxr7SPA

How to Use Video to Improve Google Ranking & Conversions

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/01/14/how-to-use-video-to-improve-google-ranking-reputation-and-conversions

Ecommerce Know-How: The Free Shipping Equation

In 2009, every major carrier in the United States will be raising shipping rates. Profit conscience online shopkeepers, therefore, should take pause and reevaluate whether or not offering "free shipping" is really a good idea. There is, of course, really no such thing as free shipping. The United States Postal Service (USPS), FedEx, and the United Parcel Service (UPS) all insist on getting paid for trucking or flying your wares across the country.

http://practicalecommerce.list-manage.com/track/click?u=fbe5f2f40f28348f9f57610b8&id=3c1bb4c31c&e=f4d75f1c4f

Improving Visibility: Succeeding with SEO

Guest author Michelle Wicmandy for ESX, Inc. interviews three top SEO's to get their thoughts on improving visibility and succeeding with search engine optimization. Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz, Aaron Kahlow of the Online Marketing Summit and John Alexander of Search Engine Academy share their insights on sensible solutions, building a foundation, overcoming obstacles and much more.

http://enews1.websitemagazine.com/m/616Gd2dsSCVNFKNYsFffYKrJgkQni0DZU9fryIFHh_zLm1SGiA

Why eBay Keeps Getting Shoppers

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/01/12/what-keeps-shoppers-going-to-ebay

Rapid mobile OS development hurting Windows Mobile

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=11426&tag=nl.e539

Top 6 Online Marketing Lessons Learned in 2008

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/926-Top-6-Online-Marketing-Lessons-Learned-in-2008

Intermediate Link Building Tactics and Resolutions for 2009

Last week's article on basic link building tactics and resolutions for 2009 discussed common tactics that each and every Web marketer should employ. Tactics such as press release distribution, guest authoring content, weblog commenting, leveraging donations and focusing on creating authority documents to share socially are all very practical, effective ways (not to mention well documented) to increase the number and quality of links pointing to your site. There are other (some would argue more sophisticated) tactics however.

http://enews1.websitemagazine.com/m/743Gd7MeOx2riePAxaJnTfmh4bAnahD1OC6b-wzeClwNzQX7wA

Ecommerce Know-How: Information Architecture

Taking lessons from two marketing disciplines, online retailers and their web designers can build a well structured Internet store organized into themes or categories that will make it easy for shoppers and search engines alike to find important information and product pages. In this Ecommerce Know-How, I will briefly define search engine optimization (SEO) and information architecture (IA), describe one of the many places where these marketing specialties intersect, and explain how easy and natural thematic structure and linking really is.

http://practicalecommerce.list-manage.com/track/click?u=fbe5f2f40f28348f9f57610b8&id=976373d8ae&e=f4d75f1c4f

Windows 7 Should be a Fixta Free For All

Jason Perlow: Face it: Windows 7 is Windows Vista Service Release 2. And since Windows 7 is essentially a performance and usability fix for a defective product, a Windows 7 upgrade should be free to anyone who was conned into buying Vista.

http://ct.zdnet.com/clicks?t=73438941-35d5bfe90abb2eb72e53be6f094c2664-bf&brand=ZDNET&s=5

Hot Chocolate

http://www.siennawebdesigns.net/PPS/HotChocolateHL.pps

Hackers Break SSL Certificates, Impersonate CA

Researchers have officially cracked the MD5 algorithm that certificate authorities like Verisign use to issue the SSL certificates that help secure web communications.

Find out how they did it, and what this crack means for Web security.

Thousands of legitimate sites SQL injected to serve IE exploit

Once again confirming the trend of having more legitimate sites serving exploits and malware than purely malicious ones, Chinese hackers have been keeping themselves busy during the last couple of days, launching massive SQL injection attacks affecting over 100,000 web sites.

Read more: http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2328&tag=nl.e550

PeC Review: Boldchat

Boldchat provides online communication software that allows Internet retailers to actively engage customers and potentially increase both conversions and profits. For the unfamiliar, live chat is the concept of having operators (real people) actively chatting with customers who are navigating a merchant's website. Good operators, communication and products are all key factors to developing a successful live chat campaign and are actually more important than any software solution. Nonetheless, the software a retailer uses to power his or her chat campaign should do its best to facilitate and never be a barrier. Boldchat does these things well.

Read the Article...

Four Point Basic E-Commerce Shopping Cart Review

Now that the holidays are over and the final items have been shipped, it's time to take a hard look at what worked and what didn't with your shopping cart. While the e-commerce "experience" continually changes (as do the expectations of users) it is essential to step back and measure the improvements made throughout the year to see what moved the needle in a positive direction. While it may not have been a banner year for all Internet retailers, understanding what worked will lead us towards making positive improvements over the coming year for ecommerce success. Here are five issues to discuss at your shopping cart review meeting.

Read more...