20 of the Best SEO Plugins for WordPress

 

With more than 120 million blogs in existence, how do people find YOUR content on the Internet? The key starts with great search engine optimization (SEO), which is an art and a science that helps search engines discover your content and understand how relevant it is to specific search queries.

You can blog your heart out, but if you don’t have good SEO, then odds are you won’t have many readers.  Luckily, the WordPress plugin community values SEO and has developed a number of plugins to help. Here are 20 of the best SEO plugins to help you choose the right tags, tell search robots what to work on, optimize your post titles and more.

Have another SEO plugin to recommend? Tell us more about it in the comments.

What Windows 7 might have looked like

In a presentation at last week’s Mix 09 event in Las Vegas, Microsoft designer Stephan Hoefnagels traced the evolution of the company’s new Windows 7 operating system.

“This was a pretty wacky brainstorm that we had early on,” Hoefnagels told the crowd. But, he said, it wasn’t just a bunch of designers going crazy. Even these early sketches represented a collaboration across the technical and design ranks. “In this brainstorm for instance, all the disciplines were involved…developers, program management, user research. Everybody was coming up with these crazy ideas.”

  

Who cares if XP support is ending?

 

I wish I could agree with fellow ZDNet blogger, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, that the April 14th demise of free XP support from Microsoft would help bring people into the open source fold and encourage them to look at Linux when 7 still isn’t widely available and Vista is still a sad little OS. Unfortunately, I just don’t think it matters at all.

XP still dominates here in Ed Tech. Sure, we have lots of Macs and Linux has made some inroads in our market, but we all know where the lion’s share of the market sits. And in some ways, why not? XP is easy, there is a huge install base, it keeps most of our users happy with no training (assuming we can keep the malware at bay), all of our software runs on it, and it’s been around long enough that most of our students can support it, let alone IT staff.

Windows 7 release schedule

                        

A page accidentally published on TechNet earlier today leaked some interesting information about the Windows 7 RC (Release Candidate).

Note: As you might expect, the page is no longer available.

What we have here is:

• A publish date (set to may 2009)
• An expiry date of June 1, 2010
• System requirements

Published:  May 2009

Skype 3.0 Beta for Windows Mobile released and available for download

First mentioned by the folks over at Skype more than one month ago, Skype 3.0 Beta for Windows Mobile is now available for download, coming with two important new features.

The first one is the application’s ability to send and receive files (of up to at least 50MB).

The second new feature of Skype 3.0 Beta for Windows Mobile is the support for SMS: you can now send text messages anywhere in the world, via Wi-Fi, at Skype-like low rates. You can send messages even if you’re not in a Wi-Fi zone, but data charges may apply.

Microsoft touches more on Windows 7

 

   

 

Microsoft has already gone into plenty of detail about the touch features in Windows 7. In fact, touch was the first thing that the company shared when it came to how Windows 7 would look and feel.

But for those that really want to go deep, the company on Wednesday posted an even more detailed look at the thinking that went into building touch into Windows 7.

Skype for iPhone to Be Released as Early as Next Week

    

Exclusive Heads up: A few months ago, I asked Skype CEO Josh Silverman when was he going to launch the iPhone version of the P2P voice and IM service that has now been downloaded more than 405 million times. He smiled and said, “Stay tuned.” And so we did.

Google Mobile App for BlackBerry Allows Search by Voice, My Location

     

Google Mobile App for BlackBerry now allows users to search using their voices and with Google’s My Location application. Google has been making substantial inroads with its mobile apps, even as a number of mobile device makers gear up to produce Android-based smartphones.

 

Google Mobile App for BlackBerry now allows users to reduce typing on the Research In Motion smartphones by carrying out mobile Web searches for a location using their voices or the search giant’s My Location application, or both.

April deadlines loom for Windows XP, Office 2003 product support

 

Next month marks the deadlines for support — in some cases, free support, in other cases, paid — for a handful of older Microsoft Windows and Office products.

Microsoft is ending mainstream (free) support for Windows XP Home and Professional, as well as for its Office 2003 suite, on April 14, 2009. It also is“retiring” Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1), meaning it will no longer provide support for that four-year-old release.

Windows 7 Upgrade Program shifts to June 26, 2009

   

TechARP has come up with a new revised schedule of Microsoft’s Windows7 Upgrade Program. The Upgrade Program shifts to an early date from June 28, 2009 to June 26, 2009 now.

According to the new schedule, end users who purchase PCs pre-installed with Vista between the dates June 26, 2009 to January 31, 2010 are eligible for a free Windows 7 upgrade. According to TechARP, this slight adjustment was done at the request of many OEMs to allow for better sales over the first weekend of the Program.

Quick and easy read and display PDF documents!

Perfect PDF Reader is a good alternative for Adobe Reader, it has also some more functions. You can export pages from PDF file as the images (BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, Metafile) with different resolution. There is a possibility to fill forms and to save filled file.

Live Mesh version update: bug fixes, new features

If you have Live Mesh for Windows installed, today you should be receiving a version update, to 0.9.3432.31, according to a post on the Live Mesh forums.  Included in the update are both bug fixes (including optimized MOE CPU/memory use) and some new features:

• Added option to hide the Live Mesh folder shortcuts on your desktop.
• Live Mesh now remembers the last location used in the folder synchronization dialog.
• Live Mesh News will now display the date (as well as time) for all news items, even older ones.
• Curtain mode now properly supports multiple-monitor computers running Windows Vista

The update has already been pushed here, so depending on your settings you should either be prompted or have the update automatically install.

Via[liveside.net]

Click to Access Live Mesh

Is this Windows Mobile 7?

 

                                 

                                

 

A kind tipster send us this screen shots of what purports to be Windows Mobile 7. The latest inside rumours put the OS as being available to OEM’s by the end of 2009 and out on devices by Spring 2010. 

From what I have heard so far, it sounds worth the wait.

 

Via[wmpoweruser.com]

Google tweaks search engine results reporting, Two new additions to search technology

Google has announced it is adding two new features to its main search engine to improve the ease of searching.

The first is a new technology that has been installed to improve the suggested related search information that appears at the bottom of a search page. The new application broadens the scale of related searches to related concepts within the search term.

“For example, if you search for [principles of physics], our algorithms understand that “angular momentum,” “special relativity,” “big bang” and ” quantum mechanic” are related terms that could help you find what you need,” said Ori Allon, technical lead of Google’s Search Quality Team, on the Google blog.

How to Install MySQL

  

In the first of a series of MySQL articles, we will discover how easy it is to install the database system on your development PC.

Why MySQL?

MySQL is undoubtedly the most popular and widely-used open source database:

• it is simple to set up and use
• it is recognised as one of the fastest database engines
• most Linux (and many Windows-based) web hosts offer MySQL
• MySQL is closely integrated with PHP, which makes it an ideal candidate for many web applications.

phpMyAdmin 3.1.3.1 MySQL management

                

phpMyAdmin is a tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the Web. Currently it can create and drop databases, create/drop/alter tables, delete/edit/add fields, execute any SQL statement, manage keys on fields, manage privileges,export data into various formats and is available in 50 languages.

Serv-U Corporate Edition v8.0.0.1 FTP Server

Serv-U is a powerful and easy-to-use File Server. Serv-U supports the FTP, HTTP, and SFTP (via SSH2) protocols to ensure maximum compatibility with the widest range of transfer client software. With support for industry-standard SSL encryption, Serv-U protects your data while it’s in transit. A powerful Web-based interface allows administrators to remotely access and configure the File Server from any Internet connection in the world using their Web browser. Serv-U also includes a built-in transfer client allowing users to upload and download files from their Web browser. Combined with advanced photo sharing capabilities, Serv-U is an excellent solution for sharing images with friends, family, and colleagues. By licensing FTP Voyager JV with Serv-U, a full-featured transfer client becomes available to all users with no extra installation required. Because FTP Voyager JV is written using Java technology, it’s a cross-platform solution for enterprises.

Floola 5.0 Final，copy songs to iPod

                                                    

Floola is a freeware application to efficiently manage your iPod or your Motorola mobile phone (any model supporting iTunes except iPhone and iPod touch). It’s a standalone application that can be run directly from your iPod and needs no installation under Linux (any GTK2 distro), Mac OS X (10.3.9 or newer!) andWindows (98 or newer, including Vista).Manage Music, Videos, Podcast and Photos all in one simple app, anywhere on any computer.

Features

Floola supports almost all features offered by iPods including photos, artwork,podcasts and smart playlists!

It automatically converts any incompatible audio or video file so that you can copy almost any file to it. It allows adding youtube and myspace videos with a single click. Now it even makes it possible to keep your Google calendars synched!  

Take a look at the feature list to find out what it can do and feel free to suggest anything that might be missing.

Cross plattform
Works on any Windows (98 and above), any Mac and any linux distribution with GTK installed.

 Portable
Put the application on iPod and launch it on any PC, immediately.

 Copy
add and extract songs to and from iPod.

 

 Playlists
Easily manage, import and export (m3u, pls) playlists.

 Last.fm
Join the social music revolution.

 Podcasts
Join the social music revolution.

 

 Web videos
add files to iPod just copying the page url

 Localization
Available in different languages.

 Lyrics
Lyric support even on older iPods (3G and above).

 Search for duplicates
Easily find duplicated songs on iPod.

 

 Search lost files
Easily find songs lost in your iPod.

 Artwork
Add artwork to your songs easily.

 Videos
Videos can be added to iPod.

 Convert
Convert audio and video incompatible formats

 Google Calendars
Synchronize them easily 

 Export to HTML
Create HTML files containing list of your iPod files

 Fix iPod
Did a software mess up your iPod? Fix it!

 Notes
Manage notes.

 Growl support
(Mac version only) Get beautiful system notifications.

 Snarl support
(Windows version only) Get beautiful system notifications.

 Music
Play iPod’s music.

 Photos
Freedom to simply add photos to iPod.

 

Download Now 

Floola v5.0 for Windows

Floola v5.0 for Linux

Floola v5.0 for Mac

 

 

 

 

Is the geek love affair with Firefox waning?

 

I remember a time not that long ago when most geeks agreed that Firefox was the best browser (oddly enough, I was still using IE because I wasn’t impressed by Firefox’s stability and resource usage). Since then things have changed a lot. All the major browsers have become a lot better, and as a result of this some who were previously loyal Firefox users are making the switch to other browsers.

Keir Thomas of PC World has the following to say:

This is an exciting time for Web browsers. Google Chrome is now available in alpha for Linux, and I downloaded it for Ubuntu. Despite the fact that I was running it on my rather underpowered Dell Mini 9, it started in the blink of an eye. Additionally, any JavaScript-heavy sites like Gmail or Google Docs were so responsive that it’s almost unbelievable.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11: Lots of Tech but Short on Polish

 

   

At first glance, Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (SLED 11) isvirtually indistinguishable from the company’s Free/Open Source and community supported Linux distribution, openSUSE 11.1. But does SLED 11 have the extra polish and the value add to justify its position as Novell’s premier enterprise desktop OS?