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“Search Engine” and “Web Directory” are two different search concepts. Normally, the users tend to use search engines by typing in keywords into a search box. It is a quick and easy way to locate any specific information on the internet. Although these two terms reflect the similar connotations but they differ from each other significantly.

‘Search engines indices’ are built up by robots or crawlers while the ‘Web Directories’ build up their indices through human editors. There exists a mix where search engines and directories contain both a computer-generated index and a human generated index. Such types of ‘mixed-indices-configuration’ are known as the “hybrids”.

“Search Engine” and “Web Directory” are two different identities related to the search services available to the Web community. Many times both these terms have been understood as reflecting the same meaning and this becomes confusing.

Understanding ‘Search Engines’ becomes easier with some popular names like ‘Google’, ‘Inktomi’, ‘AltaVista’, and ‘AlltheWeb’. These are forms of search engines. These search engines write programs known as robots, crawlers, and spiders that have the three major functions. The first function is to locate web pages. Second function is to read the contents of the web pages and the third major function is to report its findings back to the search engine’s indices or databases.

Normally the search engines plan to update their index either on a bi-monthly or monthly basis. When web searchers use a search engine to locate web sites that are relevant to the keyword search, they are actually searching the search engine’s index. A search engine with a larger and more up-to-date index therefore is a better representation of the information available within the website realm and it gives out the most relevant and most recent search results.

‘Web Directories” on the other hand, can be best understood with a visualization of popular names including ‘Yahoo!’, ‘dmoz.org’ (Open Directory Project), and ‘Gimpsy’. These all are forms of ‘web directories’. These web-directories use human editors to review different websites that are submitted for submission to the directory. Directories, unlike search engines, use a hierarchical tree structure to organize their database.

Another common differentiating factor is that a directory tends to list websites with specific reference to the root directory of a site or homepage whereas a search engine will list web pages in reference to the individual pages of a website. Because of their dependency on the manual processes of adding sites to a directory, the web directories normally require to supplement their search results with a search engine partner to increase the relevancy of the produced search results.

Working of the web directories does not involve all those complexities like algorithms, robots, search spiders, and crawlers and this makes them comparatively simpler in operation. Search engines, on the other hand, have to be understood properly regarding their working mechanisms.

Search engines necessarily have their own confidential algorithms that determine which Web pages are to be shown first. The algorithms assign weights to certain components or variables that it finds within a page. Some specific search engines consider the text within the title of the page as determinants. Title of a page becomes important to search engines in such search environments and the search engine gives it a higher weight. There are three major reasons. Firstly, it is displayed on the top of the menu bar in the search browser. Secondly, the title is displayed in the search engine results page and thirdly the title is displayed in the search browser bookmarks when this particular page is added as the “favorites” or “bookmarks”.

The particular weights priorities enable the search engine’s algorithms to synchronize and show one Web page over another, determining the page ranks. The specific variables and the suggested weights assigned to those variables are for a separate article. If a webmaster intends to promote his website and want users to find his site, it must be ensured by the webmaster that a search engine spider makes an access to his site and read the respective code. Once this is ensured a webmaster should proceed to make efforts in ensuring that content is written in contextual manner and contains targeted keyword specific language.

Search engines and Web directories have different technology and business practice bases. “Search Engines” use complex algorithms to facilitate the end user to find and locate the answer they are seeking out of a particular search operation. On a different note, the “Web Directories” use a hierarchical tree-like structure to navigate the end user to the information of interest. Both are valid methods to search and both have their pros and cons. They both however have the same basic objective, to help the end user locate a site of interest.

“Web Directories” require a browsing through their hierarchical structure instead of the searched structure. Humans assign titles and descriptions that might not be within the source code of the page. Web directories may also have a submission fee for adding a particular website to a particular category classification on it. The submission fee is to cover the costs of having the human editors review the site. Most directories will only add a new site if it has unique content that is presented in a professional manner by a legitimate company. However, the number of web directories with no submission fee or subscription fee is growing as a new concept.

“Perl”, a dynamic scripting language, introduced a new and improved version, the first in over five years.  This is the first update since 2002 to the “practical extraction and report language”. “Perl 5.10″ adds both new language features and an improved Perl interpreter, according to community site Perl Buzz.

“Perl” is a dynamic scripting language widely used in everything from Linux system utilities to Web servers to full-blown graphical enterprise applications.

“Perl” has a long 20-year history now and during all these years it gained massive popularity by assimilating the syntax from many predecessors, making it really easy to use for anyone already versed in ’sed’, ‘awk’, ‘grep’, ‘csh’, ‘C/C++’, ‘Lisp’, and so on.

Perl’s syntactical flexibility sometimes makes perl scripts challenging to read. On the other hand, the languages like ‘python’ with its rigid syntax structure have arguably gained ground in recent times over ‘Perl’, for applications that are developed collaboratively.

In addition to that, scripting languages specially-made for use on the Web, like’ PHP’ and ‘Ruby’, have eroded some of perl’s once formidable share of the dynamic Web server scripting scene.

One of the most attractive feature of the ‘Perl 5.10′ is the new ‘or’ operator, //, which is a “defined or” construct.

For example, the following statements are syntactically equivalent:

$foo // $bar

defined $foo ? $foo : $bar

An expert would definitely identify that the first line is much more compact and more readable. This clearly means that it is “$foo defined”. Therefore, an equal sign also can be placed like;

$bar //= $foo;

It is almost the same as writing;

$bar = $foo unless defined $bar;

Another praiseworthy new feature of this programming language is its “smart match operator”. ‘Perl Foundation’ described this as “a new kind of comparison, the specifics of which are contextual based on the inputs to the operator”.

This remarkable “smart match operator” appears to be aiming at making Perl’s relatively strong typing easier to work with. The “~~” operator apparently guesses the type from context, allowing lazy comparisons.

Of this new feature, ‘Perl Buzz’ comments, “The result is that all comparisons now just do The Right Thing, a hallmark of Perl programming”.

For instance, to find if scalar $needle is in array @haystack, it would now require to apply the ” ~~ operator”;

if ( $needle ~~ @haystack ) …

‘Perl 5.10′ has a specific support for the named “regex statements”. Programmers will now be in a position to avoid the hard to decipher dreaded lines of $1 $2 etc. It will be easier to understand what’s going on in complex ‘regex scripts’ such as the ‘Markdown’.

Perl guru Ricardo Signes highlighted its new language features that include a ’switch statement’ said to go “far beyond” those found in C, C++ or Java and Regex improvements which is a “Named captures” aimed at reducing the need for positional captures along with Recursive patterns said to be useful in parsing.

All new features can be upgraded without breaking the existing scripts simply because these features have been turned off by default. It has been enabled for progressive upgrading the scripts with the “use” syntax.

Scott Gilbertson explains this in a better way. He advises to add the line use feature ’switch’; prior to a block of code where you’d like to take advantage of the new switch statement in Perl 5.10 and then turn it off after upgrading that block of code using the statement no feature ’switch’;. New features can be enabled by name or as a collective group using the statement use feature ‘: 5.10′.

Apart from this ’switch statement’ there is also a new ’say statement’ “which acts like print() but adds a newline character and a state feature, which enables a new class of variables with very explicit scope control” says Scott Gilbertson.

‘Perl’ is an interpreted language instead of being just a compiled language. This unique characteristics of ‘Perl’, makes it a human-readable code that can easily be interpreted a ‘Perl Interpreter’.

“With the 5.10 release, the interpreter gains speed, while shedding weight”, ‘Perl Buzz’ claims. Other interpreter improvements include ‘Relocatable installation’ for more file system flexibility, more portable Source code, and fixing of many small bugs.

‘Perl 5.10′ has several other interesting improvements including a faster interpreter with a smaller memory footprint, and better error messages. Many experts in programming have found that “Perl 5.10’s new features are definitely worth the upgrade and a must have for anyone who uses Perl on a daily basis”.

Notebook computers are on their way to exponential growth world wide. Owing to its customized configuration, handling conveniences, and enhanced mobility advantages, it is going to change the present scenario very soon. Market experts have projected that this exponential growth in the production and sale of notebook computers will definitely cross the number of desktop computers in the year 2009.

We are observing oncoming of the ultra-thin, ultra-low cost system options that are being introduced by various manufacturers including the major players like Apple, Sony, HP, Dell, Fujitsu, Acer,  just to name a few. Some of the market analysts however are a little skeptical about this horizon of acceleration in the growth with its probable undercutting of the profit margins.

According to the projected estimations, the notebook shipments are expected to touch a figure of 136 million notebook computer units in the year 2008 itself. This would be a jump of almost 25.6% from the last year’s numbers. On the other hand, this increase in the number of notebook computers will make negative impacts on the sale of desktop computers. The effect has started showing with declining numbers now. Alex Yang, an analyst at the ‘Lehman Brothers’ says, “Desktop shipments will decline about 1.3 percent from 2007 to reach 143 million units”.

The growth rate graph for both of these products has been showing drastically different trends. Worldwide desktop unit sale demonstrates a single-digit growth while the notebook computers unit sale is enjoying a healthy growth rate of more than 20% per year and this is for several years now. Market specialists also believe that the notebook manufacturing companies will be enjoying the year 2008 as one of the most prosperous year ever in their history. On the contrary the desktop manufacturers will have to shift their attention to a “corporate replacement cycle”. Many of the speculators say that it will begin sometime in the last quarter of this year.”We expect rapid notebook PC price erosion to continue generating new demand, and the narrowing price gap between notebooks and desktop PCs should also help increase the pace at which notebooks replace desktops,” expects Alex Yang.

Low cost notebooks will now have a new phase in the markets. Its growing demand has compelled many of the manufacturers to concentrate their efforts on designing the technologically advanced and affordable notebooks. One of the big unknowns of the notebook market in 2008 is going to be the beginning of a new era with notebooks that will cost below $400. Taiwan’s “Asustek Computer” is now almost ready to be on the shelf with its first such notebook, the “EeePC”. The systems are expected to begin with the “shipping by midyear and be broadly available from a variety of companies by the end of 2008″, according to the company.

This new low cost notebook sub-sector has strong possibilities to change the market standards. This sub-sector is also expected to expand as the demand is abnormally high .This demand will be a pushing factor for the growth engine to meet with the required penetration rate in the markets. Once the sub-sector is entered in to the markets and is established, it will change the face of the existing notebook market also. Alex Yang says, “The latter would be bad for the entire notebook industry but we believe that it is more likely that this new sub-sector will expand the notebook market”.

Latest technological inventions and new development in the hardware technology will bring in new types of machines in near future. The year 2008 will also be witnessing the introducing of new operating systems and processors that will help in boosting the notebook productions .New nano-technology based dual-core notebook processors and the quad-core chips from Intel would be completely changing the notebook outlooks. This is expected to happen by the end of this year only. Similarly, a timely updating of the Microsoft’s ‘Vista’ would certainly indicate the onset of a new era of “corporate replacement cycle” by the time this year will approach an end.

Notebook manufacturers are facing an uncertainty over the supply and pricing of ‘LCD Panels’. This could however, be one of the big risks that the manufacturers would have to face at the same time. Another concern for the non-Chinese manufacturers is the production costs in china. These costs are affecting the world-markets in many ways and new markets are also coming up very fast. Such vitality of these emerging markets is also among the big causes of concern.

Chinese labor laws have recently been amended and this would make an impact on many manufacturers including hardware companies with hike of almost 25% in the labor costs. This rising factor in costs would in turn be an undercutting factor for the point off gross profits. Overall impacts of the slowing down of economy in the United States would also have related reflection in major developing economies like Brazil, India, China, and Russia. These countries are major computer market contributors and therefore could face such tremors.

Taiwan’s other major notebook manufacturers including ‘Wistron’ and ‘Compal’ would be among the top beneficiaries from this market growth, according to several market analysts .Shipments growth rate of both these manufacturing companies is rising at the rate of 60% and 30% respectively. ‘Quanta’ and ‘Compal’ were the big winners in 2007 with unit shipments up 62 and 56 percent, respectively.

Beginning with the “corporate replacement cycle” the notebook computer market will be witnessing sea changes and would also require adapting to new production and marketing strategies for all the manufacturers in near future.

Google is planning for the addition of a new technology to its top popular ‘AdSense Program’ sometime during the month of February this year. This technology will facilitate detecting “Domain Kitting”, a common practice among many of the domain marketers and domain registrants. Internet experts across the world have expressed their concern over the practice that is causing problems in many ways.

Numerous Internet marketers and domain registrants are making huge profits in the domain registration space business presently. This tremendous potential of this business has attracted many of the miss-users who find it as a good ‘get rich quick’ idea.

‘Domain kiting’ is extremely common and popular among the domain registrants across the globe. It is a practice to play with the standard five-day grace period at the beginning of the registration of an ICANN-regulated domain. This five-day grace period actually helps the registrants who mistyped domain names they acquired from being stuck with the wrong domain. Basic intention of this facility is to protect the interests of the genuine domain registrants.

The miss-utilization of the beneficial ‘Domain Kitting’ facility is growing at a much faster speed among the people who want to earn money by playing below the margin lines. Registrants repeatedly delete a domain name during the grace period and re-register it without ever paying for it. They perform this registration-deletion-registration  operations many times during the grace period of five days. Repeating this again and again in order to make profits and generate good money from the number of advertisement hits the successful domains get, has now become an epidemic almost. It is becoming an irritant for all those who have genuine business interests and want to have a fair website for conducting their business operations.

Such types of successful domains become capable of generating considerable amount of online advertising revenue. The reason behind this revenue generation is simple. All such type of successful domains actually remains active in all the search engines, such as Google for a period of five days at least. This  five-day life of a particular domain helps the registrants to makes millions from partners that taste domains with ‘AdSense for Domains’. Expert domainers and registrants who have sufficient expertise in all these popular techniques know the nuts and bolts of this game.

This game of ‘Domain Kitting” spoils the chances of fair deal and transparency for the genuine business owners. The honest registrants who intend to make use of a particular domain name for the legitimate business reasons do not get the desired domain names because these are already tied up with the ‘kitting’. Such a situation not only affects the genuine business interests of many of the business owners but also affects the concurrent business interests of the advertisers, search engines, and lastly the viewers. Imagine the millions of dollars that goes as shear waste as it does not serve the basic purpose of advertising. It never serves the reader or the viewer because it never reaches to them. All advertisements are lost in between on such types of ‘five-dayer- domains’ and the add-revenue drops in wrong pockets. This type of “Kitting” is therefore completely unethical from the fair business point of view.

According to an announcement made by Google, on February 11 this year, the company will install a system for preventing registrants from making ad-revenue from kitted domains using ‘AdSense’ for Domains. Google however, will not disclose the details of this new addition. The exact reasons of not disclosing the details are however not available but it seems that Google intends to maintain a definite level of secrecy in the interests of itself and the domain registrants across the world. This secrecy would perhaps save the system from cyber criminals including hackers.

Google claims that it has always discouraged the practice of ‘Domain Kitting’. “If we determine that a domain is being kited, we will not allow Google ads to appear on the site”, said the official spokesperson of Google. The company anticipates that such a policy in place would make positive impacts both on the users as well as the domain purchasers around the globe. It is clear from this stand of Google that it is taking care of the business interests of its advertisers also.

Quashing the ‘kitting’ business has some business interests of Google involved. There might be some lawsuits filed in near future against the vendors who enable the ‘Domain Kitting’. The company’s objectives regarding this infringement of genuine domain registrant’s interests, if obstructed by any person or vendor by the means of breaching the code of conduct would land up in legal battle.

One should not misunderstand the two related concepts here. Domain Kitting  as a matter of fact is quite different from the ‘Domain Tasting’, though seems to be similar. “Tasting” is actually a facility given to a prospective purchaser to ‘taste’ the domain for five days and then buy the domain, according to Danny Sullivan.

Google has clarified that it is not targeting the “Domain Tasting.” But the industry specialists observe that the new system from Google will definitely affect the ‘tasting’ also. The tasters who are earning huge profits and think that this is a perfectly legitimate business process will also create a backlash for Google, many experts feel.

It is going to be the beginning of a new phase in domain business sector. It will also be worthwhile to watch the turns and rounds that the Google and the ill-motive domain game players would be going through in times to come.

Business activities thrive on several concurrent techniques and mechanisms. Internet marketing and web-oriented business is taking new shape and new dimensions are gaining importance. Small and medium businesses (SMBs) across the globe have started experiencing the need for adopting improvised technological strategies and more ‘Information Technology (IT)’ based approaches.

“Personalization” is one such aspect that has witnessed sea changes during past many years. Maintaining constant contacts with the customers, visitors, and viewers has become a vital factor in maintaining the profitability of the business. Sometimes, it becomes obvious and necessary to resell a product or service and make the previous customers understand that why they were offered the first chance in first place. Repeated orders and re-orders are quite often much more profitable in comparison to beginning a new business activity. This strategy helps in reducing the acquisition costs and advantages the discount offers.

Some of the best websites and blogs are what Buzz Bruggeman describes as ‘intelligence agents’. These information media generally have constant updating of contents and current posts that would be of beneficial interests to their target audience, in their understanding.

For such websites and blogs, the golden rule applies, “Try to put yourself in your reader’s and customer’s shoes and figure out how you would want to be treated”, says Edward Craine. It is a “Top to Bottom” approach. “If you don’t do proper things, you’re bound to fail,” he says.

Benedict J.frederick, President of ‘Frederick Realty’ in Baltimore has positive believes about this. In his views it is really helpful to develop “some unique knowledge”. A good blogger must find its niche and should go deep in to that niche and then he can become an invaluable resource to people.

Personalization is one such aspect for any web based business in which taking a few extra steps would always be beneficial for both the business as well as the reader. It helps a reader to remain in constant touch with the business owner.”My goal is always to leave clients with more than they expected. It is not just that I do the job but that they really get value from what I do”, says Deborah E. Harry, CCIM, President of Deborah Harry & Associates in Elverson, Pa. “I believe in building relationships. It is for the long time, not for just once”, she says.

Personalization strategies ensure build up the reputation of a website or a blog. Next step would be to advertise this reputation. Future readers and visitors are more likely to believe certain reputation advertising through the “word of mouth” if they happen to know that somebody just like them has already experienced it. A website always grows exponentially with the help of such reputation and experience stories.

Referrals, testimonials, and recommendations are some of the other important tools for the success of a website that helps in ensuring the coming back of a visitor. “when I asked people to write them for me, a trend was established. The writers felt that I made them look good to their clients”, says Harry. She now asks for a letter of recommendation. “I’ve found my readers are very supportive and happy to help me”, Harry Comments.

For bloggers, no matter how glowing a word of mouth recommendation is, it is still necessary to keep the blog and blogger’s name in front of past and future visitors. A nice combination of well planned marketing activities and updated informative posts would definitely of much help. Craine explains this concept lucidly,” people have an understanding that when you’re just freely giving information, you’re a person they want to stay in touch with. People love them. They want to know when the next story is coming”.

‘Feedback Surveys’ from the readers are of immense help in improving a website. Constant feedbacks keep the business owner always on its toes. An online survey is one of the easiest, fastest, most convenient, and almost inexpensive mode of gathering information about the reader’s choices and the changing trends.’ A Note of Thanks’ in response is as mandatory as anything else. It will further strengthen the inter-personal bonds between the website and the reader. A feedback always makes a customer feel special for its contribution.

A blog is the true reflection of its creator. It demonstrates the creator’s concepts thoughts, vision, and communications, to the entire internet world. Bloggers often reveal so many things about themselves without opening even a single word about them.

A good blog and a well organized website tell the whole story in itself. We find many websites having just a jumble of images and text imposed as momentos. But a well designed, well conceptualized and well managed website will always be more beneficial to the business objectives. Just a collection of links, ads, banners, and some irrelevant text posts would lead to nowhere in web-based business.

Updating the website therefore becomes a key factor. All links on the website should be properly placed and comfortably opening for the visitors else the visitor will just move on. A neglected website or a blog would never be a profitable or popular concept.

“Create the best website that you can with the knowledge that you have. You will never be finished, as there will always be more to say and show”, says Richard Lowe, Jr.

There are varieties of means to ensure continual updating of a website. You could place a message board to start virtual conversations with your visitors. You can also adopt a weekly column or an associated ‘eZine’ as an innovative idea in order to get people to come back. Even if you’ve said everything there is to say, perhaps you can add few pictures, sound and videos or change the layout or presentation. “What’s New” section on a website will definitely serve visitors and customers and they will come back again and again just to see what you have added new.

Periodic ‘eZine’ helps maintaining contacts with the readers and communicating them about new happenings. Similarly, the ‘newsgroups’ and ‘email discussion lists’ such as ‘egroups’ and ‘topica’ are also gaining popularity among the internet marketers and readers both. Posting pertinent information at such communicative platforms helps people to visit back to the website for further exploration of their interests.

“If you want people to come back to your website, you had better be keeping it up-to-date, accurate and adding new content all of the time. Otherwise, your readers will grow and move on to greener pastures”, says Richard Lowe Jr.

‘Personalization’ is therefore an extremely beneficial technique that helps making a visitor come back. If a website or a blog welcomes with smile each time a visitor or reader comes back, a friendly positive tone is automatically established between the two. It is one of the most customer-pleasing features that can be added to the web -business and above all, it costs nothing but the efforts only.