The Lounge

Hide your Email Address from Spammers

I'm always amazed at how many people volunteer their email address on forums and comments sections. I suppose no one told them spammers use programs that crawl the Web in search of email addresses, or perhaps they just don't care. As a site owner, I often hesitate about posting my email address publicly, but sometimes it's inevitable.

I've used different tricks to deter spammers, like using graphics, contact forms, or spelling out the entire email address (yourname [at] yahoo.com), but somehow, those accounts still manage to get spam. You're probably familiar with CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) since most websites with logins and forms use them, but until now I haven't seen one for individual email addresses.

The folks at Carnegie Mellon University have created an application called Mailhide to help you hide your email address. Users have to enter their email address and copy a piece of code that displays a partial email address wherever it's posted. If a person really wants to find out what the entire email address is, they'll have to solve one of the two CAPTCHAs the application displays. HTML code is also provided for website owners.

The words can be hard to read, but once solved, the visitor is taken to a page that shows the complete email address (here's an example). It's a bit tricky, but it keeps spammers from collecting your email address.

B2B Spotlight

Mike Waltsen |Owner
Injury Scout
www.injuryscout.com

Industry: Sports Media
Company Size: 1
Target Market: On-line Fantasy Sports and Sportsbook Players

What invaluable tools do you recommend to other businesses that would help them market more effectively?

Identify and target niche markets

How will your website contribute to your overall success?

The website is the sole business entity 

How do you plan on growing your website over the next year?

Affiliate marketing, ever-changing focused site content, press releases, SEO. 

Why would your services be of interest to other Webtivity clients?

Our site content would be of interest to other Webtivity clients if they, 1) play fantasy sports, or 2) bet on sports. 

The Tech Report

The Importance of Inbound Links

The days of reciprocal linking (put my link on your website I’ll put your link on mine) are over.  Search engines realized that everyone was linking to everyone else and it quickly became an irrelevant way of measuring a website’s viability.  In the pursuit of providing only the most useful search engine results, the major search engines now weigh one-way inbound links as a major determining factor in ranking websites.  Why?  Think of it this way: If your website has such important content on it that other websites are willing to link to you and not request a reciprocal link, you must have some pretty important content!

Your focus as a website owner should be to get your website linked on as many good websites as possible.  How can you do this?

• Publish Unique Content on the Internet- you can do this by creating Blogs and writing articles for publishing on other websites.
• Press Releases- press releases picked up by media outlets should ultimately make it on their website… with a link to you.
• PayPerClicks- PPC advertisements create links back to your website and can be helpful.
• Link to Yourself- if you have several product websites or company divisions, linking your websites can be useful.  Don’t create a bunch of websites just for the purpose of creating more inbound links- ultimately it will hurt your rankings.
• The Old Fashioned Way- the most time-consuming and difficult way of getting inbound links is to contact companies and ask them to place a link to you from their website.  You can make arrangements to track traffic from their website and compensate them for visits or maybe some other financial arrangement that will make it worth their while.

Max Media

Quick, Clean and to the Point

Innumerable. Multitudinous. Sundry. These are some of the words used to describe the amount of websites up and running in the world today. With over 168 million websites and blogs identified in May by Netcraft, these words seem very fitting. More than 2.7 million websites were added since April, bringing us to the staggering figure of over 90,000 websites and blogs added EVERY DAY. With this myriad of information and thoughts coming at the click of a button it seems nearly impossible to think that you can reach someone with your idea and product. However, getting through the haze is much more plausible than one might think.

The majority of these sights are merely pouring out information and thoughts without concern as to their audience or their outlet venue. People generally do not surf the web in order to read a novel's worth of information on a topic. It is estimated that 80 percent of the people surfing the web are doing so to peruse their topics of interest. Therefore, with the sea of information available to them, it is essential that you stand out, having written your content the right way. 

Straightforward. Compact. Decisive. These need to be the description of your content,  of your information, of your advertising, in order to reach your audience through the haze that we call the World Wide Web. In other words, your content needs to be:

            C oncise:     Do not say in two hundred words, what you can say in twenty. 
            R elevant:    Do not let your content get stale.
            I ncisive:     Keep your content focused.
            S tructured: Keep it organized in thought and layout.
            P ithy:         Have something worth writing about

Webster's Dictionary defines the word crisp as being, “marked by the use of few words to convey much information or meaning”.  In the sea of over 168 million web sites  make yours stand out by being Concise, Relevant, Incisive, Structured, and Pithy.
           

For more information check out these other website content writing tips
(http://www.entheosweb.com/content_writing/tips.asp)   

1775 - Battle of Bunker Hill Begins
1912 - Universal Founded
1951 - T-Top Patent is Issued
1967 - Aretha Franklin Tops the Charts
1979 - Solar Energy in the White House

Please select an event name for more information, pricing, and availability.
Not all events may be open to the
general public.

Sarasota Chamber

www.sarasotachamber.com

First Monday
Mon | 6/02/08 | 5:30 PM

Power Networking Lunch
Event times and places vary.

Good Morning Greater Sarasota
Wed | 6/04/08 | 07:30 AM

Meet Lori White
Thu | 6/05/08 | 8:00 AM

New Member Briefing
Tues | 6/17/08 | 4:00 PM

MANATEE CHAMBER

www.manateechamber.com

Power Connection
Wed | 6/04/08 | 11:30 AM

Business After Hours
Tues | 6/10/08 | 5:00 PM

Small Business of the Year Awards
Fri | 6/13/08 | 11:30 AM

New Member Reception
Wed | 6/18/08 | 7:45 AM

MYPower Lunch
Wed | 6/25/08 | 11:45 AM

Longboat Key Chamber

www.longboatkeychamber.com

Small Business Week
Mon| 6/2/08 | 12:0 PM

Business After Hours/Table Tops
Tues | 6/3/08 | 5:30 PM

Wake Up Wednesday Member Breakfast
Wed | 6/25/08 | 8:00 AM

Venice Chamber

Monthly Calendar

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Click on the image to view the funny

The Lounge:
10 Practical Ways to
Expand your Business
 
B2B Spotlight:
Steve Himmel (Owner)
Indigo Reef and Grill

The Tech Report:
Branding Your Website

Max Media:
Make your Website Famous

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