Microsoft Weakening? Upcoming OS Battle

Now that Bill Gates has shifted his endeavors from monopolist Microsoft to his philanthropic foundation, once invincible Microsoft is now constantly threatened by the rise of Apple and Google. With its charismatic leader gone, Microsoft is no longer a leader in technological innovation and trends. Indeed, the Zeitgeist of technology is being dominated by Google and Apple. Microsoft is facing increasing challenges in multiple fronts, one of which is the Internet.

The Internet has become an integral part of modern computing. The Internet has a potential to become a new platform from which applications are delivered on demand. Google is dominating the Internet industry based on its lead in the search market, and expanding to other markets such as cell phone industry. So fascinated with Google, people are willing to follow the trends set by Google, buy the products from Google, and becoming bored with Microsoft. Facing the threat of Google, Microsoft is desperate to take over the Internet for which it has unsuccessfully spent billions of dollars and a decade.

Apple has also stole public spotlight from Microsoft. With the help of public craze over iPods and iPhones, Apple has set out a massive marketing campaign against Microsoft Windows operating system. Thus far, Apple is gaining in sales of Macs and MacBooks.

Microsoft is also facing oppositions from the open-source world. The open source trend has released a multitude of free software whose quality rivals most products from Microsoft. Among the numerous open-source software, we can find many fine software that can be used in place of Microsoft Windows. The main contenders for the operating system market are as follows:

• Microsoft Windows
  
  Microsoft Windows come bundled with most new personal computers. Still, many people in business stick with Windows XP, reluctant to switch to Windows Vista because of many problems posed by Vista.



• Linux
  
  Linux is gaining popularity especially in the network sector. Linux is also seeing increase in its user base who's trying to find alternatives to Microsoft Windows.



• OpenBSD
  
  Another group of contenders for OS market comes from the BSD camp. Besides the popular FreeBSD, I am fond of OpenBSD.



• OpenSolaris
  
  Sun Microsystems was once a dominant player in the network server market. However, after its market share dwindling, Sun decided to release its Solaris operating system free to the open-source community. Now people can experience the stability and solid performance of OpenSolaris. It will be interesting to see if OpenSolaris can become a formidable force in the OS market.

Forbes: How To Build A Killer Small Business Web Site

Forbes published an introductory article on building a small business web site. It gives some good tips such as:

• Provide detailed information on your products and service. Create a good catalog with an easy-to-use search function. Let people know what you are specialized in.
  
• When choosing a domain name for your site, go with direct names that are easy to remember.
• Design your site with easy navigation in mind.
• Establish credibility with your business personnel's background, accomplishments and head shots.
• Respectable client list and glowing testimonials can be smart marketing tools.
• Use graphics and Flash sparingly and only go for the highest quality.
  

That's not so hard to figure out on our own. But this article also gives insight on Search Engine Optimization. As you know, people use Google or Yahoo! Search to find what they want everyday. So making your site show up at the top of the search results can be critical of your business success. Search Engine Optimization techniques given by this article include:

• Select 50 to 100 keywords most relevant to your products, services and target audience and stuff your web pages with as many of them as reasonably possible. Go to Google AdWords to see which keywords are related to each other.
• Also include Zip code, city and region with your keywords.
• Placement on online local business directory can be helpful. Suggestion includes Yahoo! Local, Yelp.com, Craig's List and Insiderpages.
• Attach meta tags that include your top 20 keywords in order of importance.
  

Occasionally test your site design with tools like Web Trax or Offermatica.com . These tools measure click throughs.

Blogging for money

As a business student, I tend to look at things from business perspective. So as a new blogger, I began wondering whether it was possible to make money by blogging. I warn you I am not an expert on this. Let's say I am just brainstorming about blogging business.

Blogging is a type of journalism, specifically freelance journalism. You don't write for news media company but you post your uncensored writings to your blog site on the Internet.

Traditional journalism businesses like newspapers, radio and TV have most of their revenue generated from advertisement. To demand higher price for advertisement, they need to have bigger readership, audience or viewership. In order to have larger audience, they need good contents to attract more people. So, logically good contents is critical in generating more revenue for journalism business through advertising.

Now we live in Internet era. Internet is changing our daily life and also the business world. Internet had serious impact on traditional journalism business, especially newspapers. Nearly every newspaper company across America has lost more than half its revenue recently. Guess where people get their news from instead of reading newspapers. Of course, on the Internet.

People read news from major online News sites like Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal online. But besides major News sites, people also get news and latest buzz from blogs. Since Blog is a new type of journalism on the Internet, it also make sense to apply revenue generating mechanism of traditional journalism to Blog. That is to make money from blogs through advertising. In case you didn't know, online advertising is the most profitable business on the Internet. The richest Internet company Google makes most of its money from online advertising. Google does it by placing a little banner or column of text ads across all over the Internet. This ad system by Google is called AdSense.

So if you want to make some money off your blog, you would probably want to place some ads on your blog, such as AdSense. Every time people click on the ad, you make a few cents - I don't know how much exactly. You can click on the ads on your blog, but that's illegal and called click fraud.

However, if you want to make good money through ads on your blog, you need to draw a considerable number of people to your site. To make that happen, you should have good contents for your blog just like traditional journalism. Sure, you don't have to write trustworthy news like those on the newspaper. It can be celebrity gossip, political rants or anything interesting.

Even if you have good contents, you won't make money if nobody knows about your blog. You have to make your blog known. One way to do it is through Search Engine Optimization. What SEO means essentially is to make your site appear among the top search results from Google or Yahoo! Another way to make your blog known is to have your blog article voted in social news sites such as Digg or Yahoo! Buzz. I won't go deep into SEO or Yahoo! Buzz since I am not an expert on this.

So to make it short, I think it's possible to make money from blogging if you keep publishing good contents on your blog to keep your readers interested. Also you should know how to make your blog popular and draw traffic to your blog.