10 Ways to Build Traffic to Your Site

Below are some ways to help maximize your site’s traffic.

SELF-PROMOTE
To help secure readers, add a favorites or bookmarks option so visitors can add your Web site to their reading list. Along the same lines, add an “e-mail this” and “share” tab at the bottom of each post. You might also try creating a weekly newsletter that highlights your best content. Blast it out to readers who sign up.

Comment on online forums and blog posts and link to your Web site each time. Make sure your comment adds to the conversation. Do not spam. Also add your blog or Web site to your e-mail signature, Twitter, Facebook and other online accounts. Claim your blog on Technorati and look into submitting content on StumbleUpon and Delicious. Also, create a “lens” or page on Squidoo.

DON’T WAIT ON GOOGLE
Be proactive. Send your site to Google and other search engines. If you rely on them to crawl your content, you may be waiting a long time.

WRITE USEFUL, ORIGINAL CONTENT
This sounds obvious, but it bears mentioning. Attract readers by writing well and regularly. Then keep them interested by continuing to do so. When you’re building a base, try to post new, original content at regular intervals. Use blogging software that lets you set an automatic publishing time so you don’t have to physically get up early in the morning, for example, to manually post your content at that time. Also pay attention to your headlines. Use simple keywords to describe the subject of your posts.

BRING ON GUEST BLOGGERS
Another way to increase traffic is to use an established name to bring the desired traffic to you. Find someone who writes well on your topic and ask them if they’d be willing to contribute to your Web site or blog.

MAXIMIZE TECHNOLOGY
Don’t just rely on text to attract readers. Use video, podcasts, slide shows and other multimedia to create dynamic content.

LINK AND TAG
Link to other sites within your post and ask other blogs to link back to you and add your Web site to their blog rolls. Another option is to submit your site to blog directories.

Use headers, title tags and meta tags to optimize your site for search engines. Use keywords to describe what your Web site is about. Also make sure that your site’s content matches your meta data and other tag phrases. HitTail is one service that helps you home in on key words. Don’t forget about your images. Make sure they, too, are search-engine optimized.

ENGAGE THE READER
Respond directly to e-mail and comments. Even a short mass e-mail message will begin to open a two-way dialogue. Showcase your personality by sharing personal anecdotes where relevant so that you can establish a rapport with your audience. Another option is to conduct a reader survey or poll so you can improve on your site based upon your readers’ preferences. Tracking and analyzing your statistics also helps. You might also try joining a syndication service such as BlogBurst.

PROVIDE AN RSS FEED
Feedburner and FeedDemon are two sites that can set you up with this.

THINK GLOBALLY
Remember, the Internet spans the globe. Even if your Web site is local in nature, it can still attract readers in another country, so don’t limit your base. If you’re able to add language options to your site, all the better.

DON’T FORGET THE OFFLINE WORLD
Sure, the Web is great for spreading the word about your site, but so is in-person communication. Use word of mouth and, if you can afford it, a well-placed print advertisement.

BE PATIENT
Building traffic takes time. Set short-term goals for yourself, but understand that this is a long term process.

What have I missed? What other ways can you get more people to check out your site? Comment away.

Even in Mobile Video, the Action Is on the iPhone

The iPhone has only a tiny share of the vast market for cellphones. Even among smartphones it is still outsold by Research in Motion’s BlackBerry line and, by some counts, the aggregation of phones using Microsoft’s Windows Mobile software.

But a conversation like the one I had the other day with Jeremy Allaire, the founder and chief executive of the online video technology company Brightcove, is a reminder that what Apple has created is in a different orbit than other phones.

Brightcove provides video publishing tools to many big media companies, so I find Mr. Allaire a great window onto how that world is evolving. Not surprisingly, he said, using video on cellphones is quickly moving into the mainstream. But it turns out that not all cellphones are part of the movement.

“It’s all iPhone,” he said, talking about the development work his company and its clients are doing to create more sites and especially applications for watching video over cellular and Wi-Fi networks. (One example is a new iPhone app for AMC’s “Mad Men.”)

Brightcove clients, he said, are paying attention to the iPhone because the iPhone is where users will pay attention to them.

“The App Store is like the Yahoo directory was in 1998,” Mr. Allaire said. (Maybe an analogy to the AOL home screen is even better, but his point still rings true.)

The other smartphone companies, despite frenzied efforts to build cool platforms and engaging app stores, have so far not been able to engage users and developers anywhere near as much as Apple has. But to Mr. Allaire, the iPhone alone makes for an attractive market for video.

“They’ll have 20 million users,” he said. “That’s more than Comcast.”

I asked about how reliable a platform Mr. Allaire expected the iPhone to be. After all, AT&T has been rather inconsistent on how much video it will support on the iPhone. The carrier recently banned Sling Media’s iPhone App, which can play video transmitted over the Internet from the SlingBox device in a home. Similarly, iPhone apps from Joost and CBS’s TV.com play videos only over Wi-Fi connections, not cellular networks. But other apps, including Apple’s own YouTube app, which has been on the phone since it was introduced, do allow video over cellphone connections.

Mr. Allaire said his clients did not feel vulnerable to capricious carriers as they spent money building iPhone video apps. He said that he assumed wireless carriers would simply upgrade their networks to be able to carry video, just as wired Internet providers have.

Apple, he said, appears to be committed to substantially improving the iPhone’s ability to be used as a mobile television. The 3.0 release of the iPhone operating system, due out next month, will include much more sophisticated technology for streaming video. Right now, video on the iPhone uses progressive downloads. That means the phone starts downloading a file and can start playing it before the transfer is complete. Streaming, which is more akin to broadcasting and uses less bandwidth, can start faster and can be used for live events.

I checked with Mr. Allaire to see if Apple had reached out to Brightcove, asking about what sort of video technology its clients needed on the phone or even to encourage Brightcove to use its latest releases. Of course not, he said. Apple is as stone-faced with him as with everyone else.

What was surprising, however, is that none of the other cellphone companies seem to be trying to exploit one of Apple’s potential weaknesses: its lack of communication. I might have expected that people from Google, Microsoft, Palm and the others would be all over people like Mr. Allaire trying to develop technology and cut deals that would make their phones a step ahead of the iPhone in the rapidly growing world of mobile video.

I was wrong. Mr. Allaire noted that in past years Microsoft was able to reach out aggressively to developers to build a vibrant community around its products. No one, not even Microsoft, is replicating that in the mobile world, he said, except for Apple — which has built a community that it barely speaks to.

Cellphone Makers Hope for a Blockbuster Summer

The hype machine started months ago. Opening weekends are upon us. High up in executive suites, the hope is that this summer’s new releases will cause lines to snake around the block.
he cellphone industry looks a lot like the movie industry nowadays. Some highly anticipated phones — including the Palm Pre, an updated iPhone and new phones using the Android operating system from Google — have focused the industry’s efforts on the crucial months between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

In the past, “nobody gave a darn about mobile phones — they weren’t headline grabbers,” said Charles Wolf, a cellphone industry analyst with Needham & Company. “This summer will be really interesting. It could be potentially the most exciting time in this market.”

The season’s releases began last week, when T-Mobile announced the introduction of the Sidekick LX and AT& T unveiled the Samsung Jack, ballyhooing it as “another hit crossover smartphone in the tradition of the Blackjack and Blackjack II.”

But the season’s most compelling phone drama will start the first week in June, when Sprint will begin selling the Palm Pre, people briefed on the company’s plans said.

Palm, a once-iconic device maker that has fallen on hard times, has been hyping the Pre for months as an iPhone killer, but the company has given few peeks to analysts and reviewers. Analysts say the stakes are high for Sprint Nextel, which has exclusive rights to the phone in the United States, but even higher for Palm, which is based in Silicon Valley.

“This is make or break for Palm,” said Mr. Wolf, noting that Palm, also the maker of Treo and Centro phones, lost about $98 million in the last quarter, consistent with losses in other recent quarters. “It’s not make or break for Sprint, but clearly Sprint is in trouble, too, and needs a hit.”

Lynn Fox, a spokeswoman for Palm, played down the importance of the Pre itself, saying it was the first “in a long line” of devices that will use Palm’s new mobile operating system. “The Pre isn’t a bet-the-company device,” Ms. Fox said.

Because the smartphone market still has room to grow (according to Google, it is estimated that out of the four billion mobile devices in the world, only 100 million are smartphones), manufacturers hope there is room for more than one winner.

How is success measured for cellphones? A flop will sell fewer than 100,000 units, a hit at least one million, and a runaway success five times that or more, analysts say. In July 2007, the iPhone’s first month on the market, 80,000 people bought one. Apple went on to sell iPhones, including the 3G version, to more than five million Americans, according to comScore.

Big phone releases happen year-round, but there is a concentration in the summer. That way, phone carriers and manufacturers can take advantage of two crucial selling seasons: back to school and the holidays, said Mark Donovan, an analyst with comScore. As soon as June 8, just a few days after the expected release of the Pre, Apple may introduce a third version of its iPhone at the company’s annual conference for software developers. The phone could become available a month later, though analysts and Apple rumormongers say it might also come later in the summer.

Analysts generally agree that the phone will have an upgraded camera, a faster processor and better location services. Apple, of course, has less risk than other phone makers; its iPhone is already a blockbuster. That said, if the company fails to keep innovating, it risks losing its buzz. Jennifer Bowcock, an Apple spokeswoman, declined to comment on the company’s plans for a new phone.

Also in June, Samsung has said, it plans to release the i7500, its first phone based on the Android operating system, but it has not said when that phone will come to the United States. HTC recently released the Android-equipped Magic in Europe. And Motorola says it plans to start selling several Android phones this summer, phones the company is counting on, given its desperate need for a hit. Trickling into the market — though release dates are uncertain — are a host of phones using a new mobile operating system from Microsoft. Microsoft’s current mobile platform has not met expectations. The hope is that a new operating system, Windows Mobile 7, will reboot the franchise.

Mr. Wolf of Needham said that the concept of sexy phones equaling or superseding network quality as a selling point for consumers started in earnest in 2006. By then, carriers realized, most adults already had cellphone service and needed to be inspired to buy new phones or seduced into switching carriers.

An early example came in July 2006, when Verizon Communications introduced the LG Chocolate, which was preceded by a teaser advertising campaign that promoted a release date. In November 2007, Verizon began another big campaign, called “Next phones now,” that included the LG Voyager, LG Venus, Blackberry Pearl and Samsung Juke (not to be confused with the Jake, or the Jack).

Brenda Raney, a spokeswoman for Verizon, argued that blockbuster phones cannot exist without a great network. “Consumers know if you don’t have a good wireless experience, what good is the phone?”

Mr. Donovan of comScore disagreed. “No one’s out there saying the Palm Pre is going to be a hit because the call quality is magnificent,” he said. Consumers are increasingly focused on the latest devices, he said, and manufacturers have only a short time to draw consumers’ attention.

“Phones don’t stand the test of time,” Mr. Donovan said. “I look at my personal handset museum, and the coolest thing I had in my pocket eight years ago is laughable.” When it comes to phones, he added, “there are no ‘Citizen Kanes’ out there.”

Code-cracking and computers

By the end of WWII, 11 Colossus machines were in use

Bletchley Park is best known for the work done on cracking the German codes and helping to bring World War II to a close far sooner than might have happened without those code breakers.

But many believe Bletchley should be celebrated not just for what it ended but also for what it started - namely the computer age.

The pioneering machines at Bletchley were created to help codebreakers cope with the enormous volume of enciphered material the Allies managed to intercept.

The machine that arguably had the greatest influence in those early days of computing was Colossus - a re-built version of which now resides in the National Museum of Computing which is also on the Bletchley site.

Men and machine

The Enigma machines were used by the field units of the German Army, Navy and Airforce. But the communications between Hitler and his generals were protected by different machines: The Lorenz SZ40 and SZ42.

The German High Command used the Lorenz machine because it was so much faster than the Enigma, making it much easier to send large amounts of text.

"For about 500 words Enigma was reasonable but for a whole report it was hopeless," said Jack Copeland, professor of philosophy at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, director of the Turing Archive and a man with a passionate interest in the Bletchley Park computers.

Bletchley employed thousands of code breakers during wartime

The Allies first picked up the stream of enciphered traffic, dubbed Tunny, in 1940. The importance of the material it contained soon became apparent.

Like Enigma, the Lorenz machines enciphered text by mixing it with characters generated by a series of pinwheels.

"We broke wheel patterns for a whole year before Colossus came in," said Captain Jerry Roberts, one of the codebreakers who deciphered Tunny traffic at Bletchley.

"Because of the rapid expansion in the use of Tunny, our efforts were no longer enough and we had to have the machines in to do a better job."

The man who made Colossus was Post Office engineer Tommy Flowers, who had instantly impressed Alan Turing when asked by the maverick mathematician to design a machine to help him in his war work.

But, said Capt Roberts, Flowers could not have built his machine without the astonishing work of Cambridge mathematician Bill Tutte.

"I remember seeing him staring into the middle distance and twiddling his pencil and I wondered if he was earning his corn," said Capt Roberts.

But it soon became apparent that he was.

"He figured out how the Lorenz machine worked without ever having seen one and he worked out the algorithm that broke the traffic on a day-to-day basis," said Capt Roberts.

"If there had not been Bill Tutte, there would not have been any need for Tommy Flowers," he said. "The computer would have happened later. Much later."

Valve trouble

Prof Copeland said Tommy Flowers faced scepticism from Bletchley Park staff and others that his idea for a high-speed computer employing thousands of valves would ever work.

Colossus kept valves lit to ensure they kept on working

"Flowers was very much swimming against the current as valves were only being used in small units," he said. "But the idea of using large numbers of valves reliably was Tommy Flowers' big thing. He'd experimented and knew how to control the parameters."

And work it did.

The close co-operation between the human translators and the machines meant that the Allies got a close look at the intimate thoughts of the German High Command.

Information gleaned from Tunny was passed to the Russians and was instrumental in helping it defeat the Germans at Kursk - widely seen as one of the turning points of WWII.

The greater legacy is the influence of Colossus on the origins of the computer age.

"Tommy Flowers was the key figure for everything that happened subsequently in British computers," said Prof Copeland.

After the war Bletchley veterans Alan Turing and Max Newman separately did more work on computers using the basic designs and plans seen in Colossus.

Turing worked on the Automatic Computing Engine for the British government and Newman helped to bring to life the Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine - widely acknowledged as the first stored program computer.

The work that went into Colossus also shaped the thinking of others such as Maurice Wilkes, Freddie Williams, Tom Kilburn and many others - essentially the whole cast of characters from whom early British computing arose.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Hackers 'launch attack' on Facebook

Facebook has been working to clean up its site after its 200 million members were targeted by hackers.

Facebook spokesperson Barry Schnitt wouldn't comment on how many accounts had been hit but he did confirm it was blocking any that had been compromised.

The hackers used a common "phishing" scam to get hold of users' passwords.

After breaking in to people's Facebook accounts they sent out emails to friends of members asking them to click on links to fake websites.

The sites are designed to look like legitimate pages from Facebook but have been set up and are controlled by the hackers.

Spreading spam

Then it's a simple case of tricking users into handing over all sorts of details from passwords to e-mail addresses.

All of this is done with the overall aim of being able to provide lists of addresses which can then be targeted to help spread spam.

It's not the first time Facebook has been attacked like this.

Last year a malicious virus called Koobface hit the site, tricking people into downloading it onto their computers by sending links pretending to be from friend's accounts.

Security experts say part of the problem is that members are using passwords that are just too weak, ones like family or pet names that are often on a person's homepage and so can be easily guessed.