Serious Security flaw in Microsoft IE 7

So far Firefox (FF) is considered as a secure browser, here is one more feather in the cap of FF.

As per wikipedia, here is a market share comparison among web browsers -

Internet Explorer: 70.72%
Firefox: 20.27%
Safari: 6.77%
Chrome: 0.78%
Opera: 0.73%
Netscape: 0.48%
Other: 0.24%

Adding to the security woes, CNN reports a serious vulnerability in Microsoft IE.

Here is the news:

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Users of Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) Internet Explorer Web browser could be open to attacks from criminals hoping to glean passwords and financial information as the software giant works to fix a security flaw.

"Microsoft is continuing its investigation of public reports of attacks against a new vulnerability in Internet Explorer," said the company in a release on its Web site.

The attack on Internet Explorer differs from many in the past that were successful only when users downloaded attachments that could exploit security cracks in the browser. In this case, victims' computers could be taken over simply by going to an infected Web site.

"This type of attack has been happening for a while, what's new is the unpatched IE tips off and draws attention that this sort of attack is working," said Cross Research analyst Richard Williams. "Ordinarily, by the time the news hits, the flaw has been fixed."

Microsoft said it is only aware of attacks on the Windows Internet Explorer 7 version of the browser, though all versions of the world's most popular program for surfing the Web are potentially vulnerable.

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Microsoft released an urgent security update today for Internet Explorer on all currently supported versions of Windows.

How to get the updates
If you are using Windows Vista you can manage your updates through the control panel. For more information, see Windows Vista: How to update your operating system.

To manually download available updates, go to Microsoft Update or in Windows Vista go to your control panel. After your computer has been scanned to see which updates it needs, click the Custom button to find and choose the update you want to install. We recommend you install all High-Priority Security and Critical updates immediately.

Microsoft Update is a new service that brings you all the features and benefits of Windows Update plus downloads for other Microsoft applications including Office.

As per the official site, there are much benefits to use Microsoft Update plus downloads,

Benefits :

Improve your computer’s health and security.
Regularly update your computer with the latest software from Microsoft to boost the security and reliability of your Windows PC.

Easy and flexible.
Microsoft Update is easy to set up and use. Download and install updates automatically, or customize the choices that are right for you.

New features, better performance.
Every month, Microsoft releases new drivers and software that increase the performance and functionality of your Windows-based computer. Get enhancements as soon as they are available using Microsoft Update.

The below URL can help you find your appropriate service packs and updates from Microsoft :

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-078.mspx

What Search engines think of your site's unavailable page?

Response Codes and website optimization:

Sometimes we find expected pages, that may or may not be advertised , but shown as links on part or even at the Index page of the site.
With sheer excitement and an urge to learn more or to buy something the user clicks and what does he find ( not so often for professional webmasters!)

Error 404
Page Not Found!

This happens due to improper link navigation or due to spelling ( sometimes spaces can be a killer for a website linking)

Now question comes what is the Error 404?
This is one of the HTTP status code (server's response code, which provides information about the status of the request) for the availability of the "said" page name (URL).
for example:
If there is a link "Guaranteed Top 10 Ranking" to your SEO page, the user wants to get to the top and ultimately clicks that. Then if the page is giving a 404 ( page not found) error, do you think you will get the client??
The answer is simply NO , unless you are too lucky or the visitor is very optimistic to contact you further.
Here comes the role of the webmaster to check the incoming and outgoing links via "broken link analysis". There are many FREE web based softwares who do that including Xenu and W3C Link Checker among others.

HTTP status codes
When a request is made to your server for a page on your site (for instance, when a user accesses your page in a browser or when Googlebot crawls the page), your server returns an HTTP status code in response to the request.

some popular codes are:
200 for "OK"
404 File not found
301 "Moved Permanently"
302 "Moved temporarily"


What is the dis-advantage of non-available web pages or in other words from SEO point of view, how to utilize the error code for better optimization of a website?

From an end user's point of view, the impression gets bad, he / she "may not" return to your site again or will have an assumption that the site is either incomplete or not being managed properly. Which will lead to brand awareness confusion. You need a professional company to manage your website if you want it done properly.

How it works?
Let's say that in the link to "Visit Google Apps" above, the link is broken because of a typing error when coding the page.

More info from Google Webmaster Central Blog

From the search engine crawler's view, a 404 status code is a link end or the search for deep crawl stops there itself , limiting your link indexing.

According to Google's Adwords guidelines, if you are a adwords publisher, the target / landing page should not be one with a 404 code.

From adsense publisher point of view, definately the potential income is at risk, if not detected those pages and optimized properly as per "real" theme.

How to use 301 / 302 redirect for outdated URLs or website address for maximum SEO advantage?

Well if you dont ever want the site / webpage URL to restore again in the sitemap or the website navigation, use 301 "Moved Permanently" option while if the change or URL forwarding is a temporary one, go for 302 "Moved temporarily" This lets the search engine bots to understand the navigation type and aim.

How to do a 301 / 302 redirect ?

This can be done from your website's control panel, under http headers option. Contact your webmaster for more details how to do it.

According to the observations, Google really cares for the sites having no broken links as it will help in easy navigation of the search bots as well as the visitors.

Yahoo! adopts OpenID specifications

What is an OpenID?

According to Wikipedia,

OpenID is a decentralized single sign-on system. Using OpenID-enabled sites, web users do not need to remember traditional authentication tokens such as username and password. Instead, they only need to be previously registered on a website with an OpenID "identity provider" (IdP). Since OpenID is decentralized, any website can employ OpenID software as a way for users to sign in; OpenID solves the problem without relying on any centralized website to confirm digital identity.

OpenID is increasingly gaining adoption among large sites, with organizations like AOL and Orange acting as a provider. In addition, integrated OpenID support has been made a high priority in Firefox 3 and OpenID can be used with Windows CardSpace, which is part of .NET Framework version 3.0 (the .NET Framework version 3.0 comes with Windows Vista by default and can be downloaded for Windows XP).

Now the latest news from Yahoo! is related to the future oriented thinking for using OpenID 2.0 norms. Here is a news from Yahoo to look at::

Yahoo is moving in a big way to embrace the new OpenID 2.0 specification, which eliminates the need for Web surfers to create separate IDs and logins at each of the Web sites, blogs and profile pages that they may visit during an online session.

Beginning Jan. 30, Yahoo's 248 million active registered users worldwide will be able to use a new beta test version of Yahoo ID to seamlessly sign in to hundreds of OpenID-compatible Web sites, the search engine giant said.

Google Video Site maps :: New!!

Google has introduced Video Sitemaps to its existing set of protocols.
This will definately enable it to attach the video tools and utilities to the existing XML site maps.Although the new video-specific sitemap makes the entry, the XML sitemap standard is not taken off. Webmasters can now specify what videos / video files are a part of the website hierrachy and need to get crawled.

A search friendly video-site map is definately going to make searches better with a better reach and new variety.

How to create a video-sitemap ?
Refer Google's webmaster world's for more.

Video-specific tag definitions

	Required	The tag specifies the landing page (aka play page, referrer page) for the video. When a user clicks on a video result on http://video.google.com, they will be sent to this landing page.
	Required
	Optional	The URL of the actual video content.
	Optional	A URL pointing to a player for the video. The most common case for this is with Flash video. The URL of the SWF file that plays your video should be specified in and the URL of the FLV (actual video file) would be specified in . The required attribute allow_embed specifies whether Google can embed the video in the search results on http://video.google.com. Allowed values are "Yes" or "No".
	Optional	A URL pointing to the URL for the video thumbnail image file. If you don't provide a thumbnail image, Google will automatically generate a set of representative thumbnail images from your actual video content. Using this allows you to suggest the thumbnail you want displayed in search results.
	Optional	The title of the video. Limited to 100 characters.
	Optional	The description of the video. Descriptions longer than 2048 characters will be truncated.
	Optional	Whether the video is suitable for viewing by children. Allowed values are "Yes" or "No".
	Optional	The duration of the video in seconds. Value must be between 0 and 28800 (8 hours). Non-digit characters are disallowed.

Eye Tracking - A Behaviour Analysis Tool

If you are not using Eye Tracking as a real time user behaviour analysis tool, surely you are missing one important way to enhance the visitor experience and for an e-commerce site this can be a boon if used effectively.

Sample data collected by using visual location ( screen point) aids of net surfers, users in a lab or measurable observatory, can lead to amazing stats and can just point out what is working and what exactly is not working for you.

Example here from enquiroresearch.com shows the heat maps mechanism for what visitors prefer ( and obviously click) on popular search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

The area which is seen mostly is a triangular shape and also known as "Golden Triangle". Golden Triangle shows why Organic listing is more important for visitors than the paid one !!

The next thing is analysis of the data, using the prime locations of heatmaps and then optimizing the website for the most advantages.

Experience may differ as per demography, season and recognition of websites but more data you collect, more closer you reach to a perfect trouble shooting stance.

Web Based Presentations Free from Google

Online Presentations for Free from Google

With European Govt. taking Microsoft on a ride for its Monopolistic mood, Google on the other hand has hit another nail this Monday..

Adding a new tool Google Presentations to its online app offerings, this completes the office group which already consists of Gmail, Docs, Spreadsheet.

The beta version of Presentations,is Google labs release and a Web-based clone of Microsoft Powerpoint.

Google has announced this back in April when some hints were given about launching a hosted version of presentation software as part of Google Docs.

This new worry for Microsoft is a Web-based competitor to PowerPoint and great news for all is its FREE.

Google Presentations Beta was showcased in TechCrunch 40.

What will be next move?
What will the Office Giant (MS) do ?

Web Standards and Implementation

Web Standards:

An ideal site built with Web Standards should be clean, light, CSS-driven, accessible, usable and search engine friendly.

Advantages of implemening Web Standards

• Expand your Audience
• Easier to Maintain
• Cheaper Hosting costs
• Better Search Engine Ranking
• Increase your Organization’s profile
• Cross-Browser compatibilty
• Improves Accessibility
• Simplified updating of Look and Feel
• Seperation of Presentation from the Content

Source: Vijay Nair's Homepage