PCI Compliance: Frequently Asked Questions

Payment card industry compliance potentially affects every merchant that accepts credit card payments. Failure to understand the PCI compliance standards could result in higher merchant account fees and fines from the credit card issuers. Here, we sort through PCI compliance issues with Tim Erlin of nCircle, a security consulting and compliance firm.

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/1028-PCI-Compliance-Frequently-Asked-Questions

10M Worm-Infected PCs Prepare for April 1 Conficker Update

Conficker, the toughest, most virulent worm around has already infected more than 10 million systems. And it's about to get worse. According to security researchers, Conficker will receive an update tomorrow that should make it even harder to eradicate. We've got the latest on the worm's evolution.

http://www.insidetech.com/news/articles/4416-10-m-conficker-worm-infections-prepare-for-april-1-update?referral=IT_nlet_20090331_members

Researchers score Conficker detection breakthrough

Just days ahead of an April 1st activation date for the Conficker worm squirming through the Windows operating system, security researchers at the Honeynet Project have scored a major breakthrough, finding a way to fingerprint the malware on infected networks.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=3043&tag=nl.e539

New Google SERP Features

Cater to Intent-Based Search

Google recently announced 2 new improvements to Google Search. The first is an expanded list of related searches, and the second is the addition of longer search result descriptions.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/03/24/new-google-serp-features

Is Google Playing Rope-A-Dope With Social Media?

Go ahead, Microsoft, wear yourself out

Regarding social media, the best you can say about Google is that the company has merely dabbled in it. Google's absence in this space becomes as glaring as Godot's when chief rival Microsoft is busy funneling money toward the hottest new products, products created even by former Googlers.

That leaves us with two options: Google's either planning something or avoiding it altogether. Recent events-or maybe better, non-events-suggest the latter.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/03/25/is-google-playing-rope-a-dope-with-social-media

Competing (and Thriving) Against The Freemium

Web entrepreneurs have a difficult choice to make with the release of every new service - should it be offered complimentary to bring in streams of users or should we charge for it with an aim of shortening the road to profitability? Let's look at the challenges of the freemium model in greater detail and what Web entrepreneurs can do to get people to buy paid versions today.

http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/pages/competing-and-thriving-against-the-freemium.aspx

Gartner: Businesses don't need to wait for Windows 7 SP1

Windows 7 hasn’t even hit the Release Candidate test phase, but already analysts at Gartner are advising business users they shouldn’t plan to wait for Service Pack 1 (SP1) to arrive before planning deployments.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2350&tag=nl.e589

Majority Use Social Media Marketing, Still Have Questions

Report Highlights Interesting Statistics on Social Media Marketing

Author and WebProNews Blog Partner Michael Stelzner, has put together an interesting report based on a survey of 900 marketers. The report looks at the state of social media marketing. Interesting stats from the report include:

- 88% indicated they were employing social media for marketing purposes
- 72% have only been using social media marketing for a few months
- 64% of marketers are using social media for 5 hours or more each week
- 39% are using it for 10 hours a week

- 81% say the number-one benefit is generating exposure, followed by increasing traffic and building new business relationships
- Over half saw a rise in search engine rankings
- Out of social media tools marketers most wanted to learn about, social bookmarking sites ranked highest followed by Twitter.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/03/23/majority-use-social-media-marketing-still-have-questions

Oops...Microsoft accidentally confirms Windows 7 RC date

The Windows team is doing its best not to talk specific dates in advance of delivering any of its milestone builds. Then Microsoft goes ahead and posts prematurely a download page for the Windows 7 Release Candidate.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2369&tag=nl.e539

Amazon Web Services: No Open Cloud Manifesto for us

Amazon will join Microsoft as two big cloud computing players not signing on to the Open Cloud Manifesto.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=15341&tag=nl.e589

Website Magazine - Feb '09 - Psychology of Design

http://www.websitemagazine.com/scripts/sub/digital.aspx?issue=14

Where Social Media Fits Into the SEO Equation

Where Social Media Fits Into the SEO Equation

We hear a whole lot of talk about social media marketing these days. There is plenty of evidence that there are great benefits to this medium, but there are still many questions about it as well.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/03/25/where-social-media-fits-into-the-seo-equation

April deadlines loom for Windows XP, Office 2003 product support

Next month marks the deadlines for support for a handful of older Microsoft Windows and Office products. Microsoft is ending free support for Windows XP Home and Professional, as well as Office 2003 suite, on April 14. It also is retiring Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1. Here's a look at what products will be retired, when.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2365&tag=nl.e539

Shocker: Facebookers Not Happy With Redesign

CEO fixes unbroken social network

Here’s your scenario: You’re the CEO of an immensely popular social network with 175 million registered users, or just shy of the population of Brazil. Your users are passionate and tend to protest over the slightest changes. Just recently they got really mad about a terms of service change—so mad it was on the evening news and you had to change them back.

Despite those numbers, despite rabid user loyalty, you’re losing money, so much money you got delisted from Forbes’ Masters of the Universe Billionaires list. At the same time another social network, much smaller than yours with less functionality and more questionable future, is gaining a lot of buzz and membership.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/03/19/shocker-facebookers-not-happy-with-redesign

Viable Alternatives To Google Analytics

Microsoft shut the doors on its analytics offering recently. While not too many Web professionals are scurrying around looking for an alternative yet, there are certainly plenty out there. Google Analytics is a fine solution for those looking to gather some insights from the consumer traffic moving through their websites, but with so many other (some might argue better) options in the market, where will Web professionals turn?

http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/pages/analytics-solutions-master-list.aspx

IE8: The focus is on usability

The ultimate improvement in browser performance is not making a page load faster but making it unnecessary to load the page at all. That's the guiding principle behind some of the most interesting interface changes in Internet Explorer 8 -- officially launched during this morning's Mix '09 keynote.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=731&tag=nl.e539

Top 10 Converting Retailers, What We Can Learn

Nielsen Online and Marketing Charts released a report of the top 10 converting online retailers. Clearly, they are hitting the mark with consumers. Let's look at their Web pages and learn some valuable lessons.

http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/website_magazine_consumer_corner/archive/2009/03/18/top-10-converting-retailers-what-we-can-learn.aspx

The Ins And Outs Of Tweeting

A Twitter How-To Guide

Though the initial, pressing Twitter question a while back wasn’t “what are you doing?” but “what’s the point?” people are finding lots of uses for it. In this installment of the ongoing what-Twitter-is-good-for news brigade, we’ll focus on how people are tweeting their way out of some things and into others. Ready?

Good.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/03/18/the-ins-and-outs-of-tweeting

IE 8 final bits ready for download on March 19

Microsoft is proclaiming Internet Explorer 8 (IE 8) finished and will be releasing the final bits for download on March 19.

Microsoft plans to make the bits available as of 9 a.m. PT on Thursday. Interested parties will be able to grab them from the Internet Explorer 8 Web site, officials said.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2318&tag=nl.e589

Measuring SEO Performance

Measuring success in search engine optimization can typically be done in four ways: “Indexation,” “Backlink,” “Rankings” and “Traffic and Revenue.” This article explains each of the measurements, referred to as “metrics,” and explores the ways ecommerce merchants can put SEO metrics to work on their sites.

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/1014-Measuring-SEO-Performance

IBM's potential purchase of Sun: Here's why it makes sense

IBM is reportedly in talks to buy Sun Microsystems for $6.5 billion and the deal is long overdue. The companies mesh on the open source software front, Sun is struggling and IBM can consolidate some server market share.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=14817&tag=nl.e539

5 Resume Mistakes You Can't Afford to Make

It’s deceptively easy to make mistakes on your resume and exceptionally difficult to repair the damage once an employer gets it. So prevention is critical, especially if you’ve never written one before. We’ll take a look at some common resume pitfalls and go into detail about how to avoid them.

http://www.insidetech.com/benefits/articles/4281-5-resume-mistakes-you-cant-afford-to-make

Google Tips for More Conversions

Testing Designs Can Lead to More Sales

You can use every marketing strategy under the sun, but if they don't translate into conversions, it's all for nothing. Some methods take longer than others to lead to conversions, and there are hundreds of variables that come into play for the success of any campaign.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/03/16/google-tips-for-more-conversions

How To Kill The Music Industry

During The Pirate Bay trial, the music industry placed the blame for the decline in their revenues squarely on the shoulders of file-sharers. Their logic is clearly flawed, but it could sway the verdict if no alternative explanation is presented. So, if piracy isn’t to blame, then what is *actually* killing the music industry?

http://torrentfreak.com/how-to-kill-the-music-industry-090227/

Feature: Essential Moveable Type Plugins

There's more to the world wide Web of blogging than WordPress. Moveable Type is one of the most popular and installed software solutions ever released and bloggers that use the platform (either as a blog or as a CMS) often choose to stay with the solutions for its ease of use, powerful features and active support community - not to mention the many excellent plugins that provide some value-adds to both administrators and end-users. Let's look at a few now; perhaps you'll consider Movable Type over WordPress over your next install? Read more...

http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2009/03/12/essential-moveable-type-plugins.aspx

BrowserWars II

According to Wikipedia, "The term "browser wars" refers to the competition for dominance in the web browser marketplace. The term is used to denote two specific periods of time: the competition between market-dominating Netscape Navigator and its eventual defeat by Microsoft Internet Explorer during the late 1990s, and the competition from 2003 onwards between the dominating Internet Explorer and several other emerging browsers including Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera and, since mid-2008, Google Chrome." I couldn't agree more, so now it's time to look again at browsers and their respective performance. I hope you enjoy the results as much as I enjoyed putting it together.

http://techtalk.pcpitstop.com/2009/03/09/browserwars-ii/

Windows 7 vs. Vista vs. XP

How does the latest leaked build of Windows 7 (7048) compare to the beta 1 (build 7000), Vista SP1 and XP SP3 in terms of performance?

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3789&tag=nl.e589

Wolfram Alpha: 'A new paradigm for using computers and the web'

Another week, another Google killer. This week it's Wolfam Alpha, a "computational knowledge engine" targeting the big GOOG. The difference this time is that Wolfram Alpha has the pedigree, engineering heft and perhaps a better mousetrap to actually live up to the billing.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=14108&tag=nl.e539

Is MySpace Toast?

Officially googled by Facebook

If it's lucky, MySpace is the new Yahoo. If unlucky, and it is unlucky lately, MySpace is AOL. Facebook has supplanted it, and will continue to do so, in much the same way Google ran past Yahoo, and for many of the same reasons.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/03/05/myspace-is-toast

Tuna and Eggs Keep Your Brain Big

As if wrinkles weren't bad enough, turns out our brains tend to shrivelas we age, too. Could eggs and tuna be the key to less shrinkage?

http://www.realage.com/ct/tips/8196