Microsoft on Tuesday said that there are just 100 working days to go before it stops supporting Windows XP, its 12-year-old operating system. Around 30 per cent of computers used by businesses still run Windows XP and after April 8, 2014, no anti-virus software will be able to protect these, Microsoft said.
In India, PSU banks and financial institutions face the largest risk, as many of them run Windows XP on around 40 to 70 per cent of their computers, according to a Microsoft-funded study conducted by Ascentius Consulting. According to the report, 34,115 PSU bank branches face a security threat due to their reliance on Windows XP.
Amrish Goyal, Microsoft India's general manager of Windows Business Group, said that many of the 45 Indian banks using XP have shown little intent to switch completely to Windows 7 or 8.1. "State Bank of India has around 1.35 lakh PCs still running Windows XP and they are looking to upgrade these. The good thing is that around 40 to 50 per cent of their computers are running Windows 7," Goyal told The Indian Express.
However, some banks have been proactively upgrading their computers. For instance, Goyal said, Indian Bank has completed migration to Windows 7 and Canara Bank is about to finish it soon. The banks that do not upgrade will face heavy maintenance costs. An IDC report titled 'Risks of Staying with Windows XP: The Financial and Business Imperative' says that the cost of support for Windows XP machines post the end of support deadline could be as high as $300 (Rs 19,000) per PC, as opposed to $95 (Rs 6,000) for upgrading to a newer OS. Upgrade cost is even low for PSU banks till January as Microsoft is offering around 50 per cent discounts for upgrades to Windows 7, apart from assistance with migrating vital software and hardware to support modern operating systems.
Government authorities are aware of the risk of continuing with Windows XP, as evident in a memo issued by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) on June 25. The advisory says, "It is recommended that users and organisations using Windows XP... should immediately plan for upgradation... and test applications well before April 2014."
One of the SSL certificates used on www.barackobama.com, the President Barack Obama's political campaign website, has expired. Your browser will warn you not to visit the site now.
Hat tip to Netcraft for reporting that an SSL certificate for barackobama.com and *.barackobama.com has expired.
barackobama.com is the political campaign web site for the President. Currently it is registered to and used by Organizing For Action, a non-profit organization that promotes the President's agenda.
The certificate was issued by GoDaddy in September 2012 for one year. As the error message below indicates, best practices state that sites with expired certificates are not generally trustworthy.
The expired certificate was issued for barackobama.com and as a wildcard for *.barackobama.com, but it's not the only certificate on the site. A Comodo certificate forwww.barackobama.com will expire at the end of October, 2013.
Netcraft also points out that several government certificates have expired, ui.tn.gov for example, and with the government shutdown they may stay expired for some time. Other sites are worse off: www.nasa.gov now redirects to notice.usa.gov.
US Senate approves sales tax on online retailers, IBM retail tweeted
The bill is shocking for United States Leading E-commerce giants like ebay, amazon, jcpenney and many others.
The US Senate has passed the ‘Marketplace Fairness Act’ that would impose sales tax on online retailers by 69-27 vote. The detailed news story has been covered by fibre2fashion news desk India
At present, only companies with brick-and-mortar stores in the US have to pay online sales tax. However, retailers with physical presence would not immediately get “a level-playing field” with Internet retailers, as the bill would now be sent to the House of Representatives.
If the bill becomes a law, it would only apply to retailers who sell over US$ 1 million worth of goods online during a year.
If it comes into force, the new law would make online retailers like Amazon, eBay and others to pay sales tax, even in those states where they do not have offices or distribution centres.
The proposed legislation states that sales taxes would be collected by different states and sent to the states where the buyers live.
The bill co-sponsored by Senators Mike Enzi and Dick Durbin also expects states to set up a single entity to pool in Internet tax revenue.
“Today’s action in the Senate is a significant step for sales tax fairness and we look forward to a robust debate in the U.S. House of Representatives,” National Retail Federation (NRF) President and CEO Matthew Shay said in a statement.
NRF Chairman of the Board Stephen I. Sadove said, “Retailers compete for customers on many different levels, distribution channels and fronts, including service and selection, but they cannot compete on sales tax. Congress needs to address this sales tax disparity and allow retailers to compete freely and fairly.”
Facebook introduces ‘Want’ button for clothing items to help online retailers and ecommerce site owners and Brands Testing Facebook's Want Button Especially Apparel Retailers.
The trend of online shopping is increasingly becoming popular among the Internet savvy generation today. Many e-commerce websites, offering a vivid array of products ranging from clothing to electronic appliances, have been introduced in the past few years.
Following the trend, popular social networking website Facebook has created a new feature called ‘Want’, which enables its users to make wish lists of home furnishings, clothing and other retail items with the click of a mouse.
The wish list column, officially named as ‘Collections’, would further allow people to click and buy the items directly off Facebook.
Initially the ‘Want’ feature will be available only for the social networking website’s US users, Facebook said.
Nearly seven retailers, including Pottery Barn, Victoria's Secret, Neiman Marcus, Michael Kors, Smith Optics, Wayfair and Fab.com, have partnered with Facebook in this new venture.
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Google Announces News Keywords Meta Tag For Publishers in their latest post in Latest Google News Blog. As Value of Social sites and actions are increasing hence Meta Keyword Tag was lost, but it seems like with Google Announcement of News Meta Keywords Tag will bring the future back....
Many SEO's and Digital Marketers are looking for tactics to add news keyword meta tags in their page source code. Keywords and search queries values in Google News for Publishers.
News Keyword Meta Tags Are Back Again
Keywords are the best and effective way for your website content classification. If you create an information-rich site that clearly and accurately describes your topic, you will improve your chances of appearing in our search results for relevant queries by adding words related to the specific news item normally known as keywords. Google crawler also makes use of a Google specific metatag to help determine classification of your story content. By implementing the news_keywords metatag you can specify which keywords are most relevant to your articles. For example, in an article about the World Cup you could add the following code to help Google News better understand the nature of your content: <meta name="news_keywords" content="World Cup, Brazil 2014, Spain vs Netherlands"> Keywords could also be used to help disambiguate between related terms. Again, if this particular publisher wanted to specify that this article reported on soccer’s World Cup -- as opposed to rugby’s World Cup -- then they could try the following: <meta name="news_keywords" content="World Cup, Brazil 2014, Spain vs Netherlands, soccer, football"> Use a comma to separate each phrase or group of keywords. (Commas are the only punctuation allowed in the field.) You can add up to ten phrases for a given article, and all keywords are given equal value. For instance, the first keyword is not considered a stronger signal than the tenth keyword.
Here's is the complete guide, How to use the Google news_keywords meta tag, what it's for and discussion on the implications for websites and SEOs. Click Here to read the latest updates on news keyword tags for publishers. For more help on how to successfully implement news meta keywords tag follow Help Article Image Source: tumblr.com
Choose Which Type of Cards You'd Like To Show for Your Tweets from Summary, Photo and Player; by default Twitter Summary Cards will be accepted if not assigned value.
""If the last few months of ranking changes have shown me anything, it's that poorly executed link building strategy that many of us call white hat can be more dangerous than black-hat strategies like buying links. As a result of well intentioned but short-sighted link building, many sites have seen significant drops in rankings and traffic. Whether you employ link building tactics that are black, white, or any shade of grey, you can do yourself a favor by avoiding theappearance of link spam.
It's become very obvious that recent updates hit sites that had overly aggressive link profiles. The types of sites that were almost exclusively within what I called the "danger zone" in a post about one month before Penguin hit. Highly unnatural anchor text and low-quality links are highly correlated, but anchor text appears to have been the focus.
I was only partially correct, as the majority of cases appear to be devalued links rather than penalties. Going forward, the wise SEO would want to take note of the types of link spam to make sure that what they're doing doesn't look like a type of link spam. Google's response to and attitude towards each type of link spam varies, but every link building method becomes more and more risky as you begin moving towards the danger zone.""
Before you move to read on, This is blatant try to kill SEO, however it is not going to be, the author didn't left any practice which will help to increase search ranks. Please Note, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and many more except Google+ and Linkedin are nofollow, they don't have any significance in SERP boost.
Yes You can rely on Google, share, but when it comes to SMB's it becomes difficult to engage for services and products. So my suggestion is everything is good if it is going to be done in proper manner... From my personal experience as well as recent news that General Motors Doesn't "Like" Facebook, Drops Ads
17 Types of Link Spam to AvoidDON'T TRUST THIS ARTICLE, Rubbish views by this author on SEOMOZ, I wonder why this author went crazy. Author Carson Ward just wanted to say don't do link building, left it for me on SEOMOZ Blog. I've Posted This article to spread awareness. If you've any questions regarding it, you can reach me on twitter at @patelchaitanya
"As Facebook closes in on the 1 billion users milestone, the social network is quietly testing a feature that will require users to open their wallets to bring more attention to themselves.
Likely related to proving Facebook’s revenue potential prior to the IPO, the social network is testing out a new feature that charges users to highlight a recent post among their friends. Within the example pointed out by Stuff, the user could pay $1.80 to bring extra attention to a specific Facebook status update, photo or video. The user would pay by credit card or Paypal to complete the transaction, however there is no indication that the user will be able to see metrics like how many of their friends actually saw the post. According to Facebook, the company is testing a variety of price points including free, but the free sample may just be an attempt to attract more users into the program."
It may happen very soon to that make you paid for highlighting posts on Facebook. Bad attempt, still lets see how it can work for business, it just in a testing procedure.
To Read more how facebook will charge users to highlights posts on fb.
