My Green Corner

Hi everybody.

We are now in March, and spring is in the air. I have worked a lot lately at MGC. I am trying to create a section where one can sell or buy wp themes, I am also planning to develop a css templates section and maybe I will integrate a forum. I wish to bring this site closer to your hearts, and to make it a valuable web resource.

It is very hot for this time of year. Although we are in March, there are +20 Celsius. It is very clear to me the Earth is warming up, I guess it will be a long hot summer this year. I want to use this opportunity to ask everyone that reads this to recycle more, to be extra careful and save as much energy as possible and to give a serious though about the future. How do you think Earth will be in the next 20 years? Is this the planet you wish for your children to live in? Think green, please think green…

Spring time brings green cheerfulness everywhere. It is time for families to take care of their gardens and the green grass often needs proper dressing with lawn mowers.

The “Power Lawn Mower” is one of the most unsafe tools around the home. The unsafe use of lawn mowers poses a serious public health threat and it results in more than 55,000 injuries every year due to that.

In such accidents, a significant proportion of the victims either lose a part of their toes or fingers or could face dislocated bones, burns or it might even prove to be fatal. According to the medical data, in almost 95 percent of such injury cases amputation and extensive reconstructive surgery was found to be inevitable.

The types of injuries caused by unsafe and improper use of power lawn mowers could include lacerations, fractures and amputations of the fingers, hands, toes, feet and legs. Thousands of unfortunate children not only suffer the physical injuries but also have to undergo the emotional and social problems associated with these kinds of injuries. Other type of injuries include being run over by a riding mower, any object being flung and striking the child, or the burns due to the gasoline or by touching the hot metal parts.

Most of the ‘lawn mower injuries’ occur on slopes, particularly when the ground is damp, in poor lighting conditions and among inexperienced mowers. Among the victims are usually the innocent bystanders, often children, injured or killed by someone else operating the mower. Fatalities usually occur during the following situations:

• When adults while moving the mower, allow children to stand on it or sit at the back of riding mowers while moving lawn mower.
• Children try to operate the mower themselves, when they are too young to do so.
• Sometimes even rocks or stones can be thrown by the mowers and they can hit the head or eyes of the children.
• Injuries also occur when the lawn mowers are placed into reverse and children moving behind them are not aware of it.

Lawn mowing experts and other health professionals including some medical societies recommend that virtually all of these injuries could be prevented if some necessary precautions are taken. An initial training would always be more beneficial because it will help in understanding the working of power lawn mowing machine and its operational guidelines. According to the expert’s recommendations, individuals and families should observe following precautions:

• It is important for one to familiarize oneself with the equipment before operating it and after checking that it is in proper working condition. It is always safe to go through the manufacturer precautions.
• It is recommended to use lawn mowers with guards and a cutoff switch and be certain that the cutoff switches should not be disconnected. All electrical connections must be checked properly prior to operating the machine. Any negligence could give you a shock.
• One should be extra ordinarily careful while operating the mowers on slopes and avoid mowing when the ground is damp.
• Other people, especially the children under the age of 6, should not be allowed inside the yard when operating a lawn mower.
• Kids should not be allowed to ride as passengers on mowers or let them be towed behind mowers. They should not be allowed to play on or around stored mowers.
• Children should not be allowed to operate the equipment unless they have strength and are totally aware of the know how of it. It is always better to keep them off instead of making them participative in this ‘adventurous activity’.
• It is dangerous to go barefoot while mowing. Sturdy shoes should be worn. Use your legs in movements with caution and more attention.
• Always wear protective eye gear, hand gear and footwear such as goggles, gloves and heavy rubber sole boots.
• It is advisable to pick up stones, toys, and debris from the mowing area. These objects can act as potential projectiles from the lawn and could hit back affect head, eyes and other parts of your body.
• It could be dangerous while pulling backward on a mower or mow in reverse. This should be done while looking carefully behind you before backing up a mower.
• It is advisable to start and refuel mowers outdoors, not in a garage or shed. Refueling should be done with the motor turned off and cool.
• While removing any objects from the blade, one should be extra careful as any negligence could result in to severe cuts and injuries.

In addition to the above precautionary steps adopted by the consumers, it should be made necessary for the lawn mower manufacturers to include a safety manual with every lawn mower sold and imprinting safety instructions on all machines. There should also be awareness campaigns among the public so that such injuries could be prevented, contributing to a decline in costs on health care as well as eliminate suffering to the injured.

“Lawn mowers severely injure thousands of children every year. So many of these tragic injuries could have been prevented with just a few precautions”, says AAP President Dr Jay. E. Berkelhamer.

Lawn mower injuries are a seasonal threat to children and the leading cause of amputations in adolescents, say specialists from the ‘Johns Hopkins Children’s Center’, Maryland’s designated pediatric trauma center where the most severe injuries are treated.

A new innovative development is knocking the doors of internet world for past few months now. Various businesses and companies are now taking up creating “Business Blogs”. Many of the professionals and executives have been inspired and promoted to write ‘business blogs’ or ‘corporate blogs’ for specific businesses and companies.The business community across the globe including many of the Fortune 500 companies are now feeling the warmth of these ‘business blogs’.

The term “blog” is no new to the common people now. Many professionals from varied sectors including journalism, technology, and health adopted the ‘blog-mode’ to express themselves in more creative and innovative way. We also observe that the teenagers have flooded the blog world with their presence.

The business world simultaneously explored and discovered plenty of advantages of the ‘blogging’ in order to boost their business activities in many ways. ‘Business blogs’ are extremely good, flexible, reliable, and almost inexpensive tools for promoting any idea, product, and service.

Business Website: A Pre-Requisite

One of the pre-requisites for having a ‘business blog’ is having a fully customized business website first. Such business website must be properly optimized by someone who is an expert Search Engine Optimization professional having an extended vision and experience. These expert SEO professionals must also have a deep understanding of the search engines and the specific business environment and needs.

‘Business Blogs’ never intend to replace the full fledged website of any company. It is basically an added feature to the business website that keeps all the updating and latest news with all other future visions and conceptualizations of the company.

Business Blogs and Search Engines: New Friendship

‘Business Blogs’ are the new friends of search engines. Majority of the  ‘search directories’ and popular search engines including Yahoo!, Google, Alta-Vista, MSN, Alexa, AOL, and several others crave for fresh, latest, and new information. Blogs are the best resources for such requirements as they are continuously updated with new posts. Frequency of these posts varies from once a week to even many posts a day.

‘Business Blogs’ normally contain numerous links in addition to the fresh content. These links are also a preferred source for the search engine indexing. Links and the content on the blogs propagates everywhere on the web. There are many targeted news and other websites that require listings of such blogs and their blog posts.

Search engines have enabled their search spiders with many more algorithms targeting blog searches. Most of the search engine spiders now are taking traverses throughout the blog world for several times a day in order to pick daily and updated fresh content. This situation clarifies one more aspect projecting a bright future for ‘business blogs’. The more fresh and updated content these search engine would require, the more will be visits by search spiders on ‘business blogs’. It is not tough for anyone to understand the basics of this simple equation. A well managed and updated business blog having all relevant information and powered data would result in to a high search engine ranking for sure. Considering this importance of the ‘business blogs’, no one would perhaps wonder if these business blogs are a passing fad.

Google is undoubtedly an omnipresent and one of the most preferred search tools across the globe. The company was smart enough to foresee and develop a vision about future of the blogging technique. We all witnessed incoming of the Blogger by Google in the beginning of the year 2003.It was a pioneering effort introducing the classic ‘blogging software’ by Google. A public statement in the New York Times read, “They do not even know how they are going to use the company, but they will certainly have some potential use for it”.

Business Blog: The Rationale

There could be many reasons to start a ‘business blog’. Aims and objectives would definitely differ from business to business. Many of the internet experts still believe that blogging is no fad and it will last for a longer period and the future will see many more new versions and innovative inclusions therein. Businesses aspiring for a higher ranking for their business websites in search engines like Google will have an added advantage with a business blog concurrently. It is remarkable tool for such an achievement.

Many of the businesses do have their dedicated business websites but are not getting the results they hoped for. The Return on Investment (ROI) from tools like the banners and various other ecommerce techniques including email marketing may not be satisfactory for such businesses. ‘Business Blogs’ would be of immense help in dealing and coping with such downfalls. Above all, the most important feature of a ‘business blog’ is its timeliness. In business, relevancy of the information and its right timings are two important factors that often decide the profitability of a business. A ‘business blog’ serves both these purposes well. All current and relevant information at the perfect time can easily be placed on these blogs. Search engines would have their feeds at the right time and thus the potential customers would receive the pertinent information at the right time in their hands.

Business Blogging: Intelligent Selection of Tools

The internet is riding on a new wave of rushing business blogging software and many more applications are specifically facilitating business blogging with more ease. All these tools are available to give a thrust to the business and propel the business website towards the top search engine rankings. Numerous other developments and researches are on their way and would definitely come up with innovative concepts adding more profitability to the business blogging.

Selecting the most appropriate software and other supportive tools would need a careful study, analysis, and evaluation of all the products available in the market. An intelligent selection with due diligence becomes always easy with the help of SEO professionals.

Business Blogging: Parallel Benefits

Business blogs extend numerous parallel benefits to the businesses and their websites. It is one of the smarter ways to achieve higher search engine rankings without any paid submissions. One a higher ranking in a couple of major search engines is achieved the probability of obtaining higher rankings in other search engines is automatically enhanced. Advantages of programs like “Pay per Click (PPC)” are definitely worth appreciating but the business blogs provide an opportunity of free marketing with an infinite Return on Investments (ROI). Sharing the concurrent information with all the customers create an extended visibility of the business websites. It takes just a week or so for Google to show up the fresh content. A business blog facilitates other business bloggers to point numerous prospects towards the business website and the business blog and it costs nothing.

Business blogs are not like a magical stick that would solve all the business related issues in a moment. Companies should not take the concept singularly. An ideal winning combination would be the addition of business blogs with the business websites as a parallel activity instead. Addition of a well conceptualized business blog is a nice tool to establish effective and timely communication with the existing and prospective customers along with achieving the higher search engine rankings.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques are facing big challenges thrown upon by the globally operating business websites. There are large global organizations and companies addressing specifically targeted audiences and customers. Websites of such organizations and companies are normally accessible worldwide. Such a typical and complex mix-up of the requirements make the SEO tasks even more complex and intricate.SEO experts need to address the global and local requirements at the same time and their success depends totally on the success of the positioning of the website.

Global launching of the business operations for a company may be overwhelming news for everyone but for SEO experts developing a global as well as country specific strategy is no joke. When the companies are going global and making their presence felt internationally, it is high time that the SEO experts must start thinking and acting globally. In fact, the working on such a website project should have been based upon carefully designed strategy to address the international and local search engine requirements from the day one itself.

Optimization depends on the nature of the website and its outreach. A global website therefore needs a global optimization. Website management and technological inputs must ensure the global concepts in order to meet any challenge regarding global strategy formulations. It is also vital to imbibe processes of constant changes.

Language: Global and Local Perspectives

Search is search after all and relevancy is the key factor in search. Therefore, at the same time, relevancy is relevancy in its true sense. These two fundamental equations prevail and hold true across the globe. Conclusively, it becomes clear that the search engine algorithms act in the same manner across the globe. There is hardly any reason for the core algorithms to be dependent on geographic locations and any other place and location specific criterion. But when we try to analyze the perspectives of a user we find that the search performance has to be specifically localized. Language is the one such important factor that needs to match with all other localization criteria. 

Many internet marketers adopt the approach to hire a translation service or company in order to extend their brand presence in the global market. These translation companies generally prefer creating additional pages to obtain global popularity. Internet marketers will have to understand that this approach is not sufficient enough in itself. Such translation of website content has various limitations.

‘Content localization’ is necessary in order to introduce more effectiveness. There are several measures and approaches for doing this .Replacing an alternate spelling for a word, local vernacular that the locals use generally, and even using the local slangs that is very common in a particular geographic location or area are some of these popular measures. While translating the content or replacing selected portions these approaches are of immense help.

Globally operating businesses face a big challenge with the adjustment of the contents with local language on their websites. An element of carelessness would increase the risk of loosing either local or outside customers. There has to be a balance in the content of the website facilitating both the locals and the outsiders equally because such a global website would be searched upon by numerous people around the globe. Settling on one particular language may lead to several complexities. Addressing a particular group of audiences and viewers from a particular region would limit the versatility of the website. On the other hand, having multiple variations of languages for the same product or services could raise serious concerns about duplicity of the content and some other related issues. In such a situation work of an expert in Search Engine Optimization becomes much more complex. Should the same website be optimized for two stages? Or should the website be optimized by two different experts? These questions have no simple and straight answers.

At the same time an element of constant change is also worth considering.  Global requirements keep on changing and so do the county specific requirements and local requirements. The SEO expert would be required to keep pace with this constantly changing environment. Language is never static. It is a dynamic concept that changes according to the changed circumstances.

There are some options that anyone may consider though. Having a website with an international approach addressing to the requirements of multi-origin audiences is obviously a good option.SEO experts would be required to work real hard on such concepts.

Domains: Multiple Versions and Country Extensions

Organizations and companies having an international brand image and global business prefer skinning this cat in several innovative ways. Companies like ‘Apple’ and ‘Microsoft’ have created sub-folders for distinguishing between several versions of their websites that are language specific. One of the most recent trends is adopting country specific domains. Companies including ‘Sony’, Nokia’, ‘Google’, and ‘Mercedes-Benz’ are now using country specific domain extensions. Many companies use a coordinated blending of both these techniques. ‘Yahoo’ and ‘MSN’ have a mixed structure for their websites and are using country specific domain extensions or unique sub-domains.

Each of these approaches has their own advantages. Global companies, website Designers and the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Experts need to consider many factors while making decisions. Some of these decisive factors include technical constraints, content management system, and local requirements. Several other factors that are outside the purview of marketing concepts also need equal attention.

Development of a SEO strategy that is global is tough enough and not a matter of just one hit. It is in the best interest of the ever growing internet market and businesses to present an opportunity before the SEO experts to think and start acting globally.

A week ago, I implemented a complete redesign of my directory. My team and I worked about 2-3 months at it, and I must say I am more than satisfied by the result. There is a clean design, many more features, and big chances in our TOS. We are becoming much more then a directory.

Not only we offer more services, like web design, wordpress customization, and so on, but we are also filtering our database and delete sites that don’t comply with our new submission policy. We wish to maintain our web portal as clean as possible, containing only quality links. Also, I would like to apologize to some web masters that have submitted sites that don’t comply with our submission rules. I am sorry that we can not accept your sites, as this is how our policy works.

Also, we have launched the theme browser. You can now download, preview and upload any themes, as long as you respect the TOS. We wish to become the best online resource related to wordpress themes, and we know we have a long way to go. I encourage all web designers to submit their themes, it’s free and it only takes a second.

Our review fee for sites that want to become featured has increased too, but the fee is just a small way for you to say “Thank you” for this wonderful resource that we are trying to bring you. Nobody is trying to get rich here, all our gathered resources go back into our directory. I want to thank all our customers for choosing our services, we are doing our best for you.

Winter is coming, but My Green Corner is as green as ever.

Cheers