Blog - Software Marketing Resource

Spring is a great time to reach out to the magazines that include CD Covers, suggest including your evaluation version on a future CD cover. You might be pleasantly surprised by the results.

Sharon Housley - NotePage, Inc.

I'm working a great issue for March's SMR newsletter. The newsletter will include reactions to the recent articles on Digital River and Tucows. If you have comments you'd like included please contact me.

Sharon Housley - NotePage, Inc.

There is some confusion about the engine that Yahoo is using to produce their results. It was thought that they were filtering Inktomi results, however, webmaster logs have showed visits from "yahooslurp". Another indication that the results are not pure Inktomi is that notices were received from ink paid submission lists that after april 15th webmasters could "upgrade" their Inktomi submission to *include* Yahoo. Its unclear what exactly this means for website currently performing in the Yahoo directory.

Sharon Housley - NotePage, Inc.

There have been minor changes with this year's Shareware Industry Awards and the People's Choice Awards. The following is an excerpt from a post by Mike Callahan.

The "Best Graphics" category has gotten extremely crowded with all of the programs that deal with modifying the desktop and dealing with photos. So, for 2004 I'll be adding a "Best Desktop Enhancement" category that will cover all programs that modify the desktop - things that change the appearence of Windows, screen savers, toolbars, wallpaper changers, "skins" for Windows, and the like. There will also be a "Best Photo Program or Utility" category. This will include any program designed specifically to work with digitial pictures. Programs for organizing, sharing, printing, publishing to the Web, creating photo thumbnails, and the like. Programs in these two, new categories will no longer be eligible in the Best Graphics category. These same categories will also be added to the SIAF People's Choice Awards. I'm also considering the introduction of one or two categories that would honor programs utilizing .NET

Sharon Housley - NotePage, Inc.

Microsoft sent out warning letters threatening legal action against anyone who downloads, posts, or shares the leaked Windows source code making its way around the web. In addition, Microsoft said it had "instituted the use of alerts" on several peer-to-peer sites where sharing of the code had taken place. "These alerts are designed to inform any user who conducts specific searches on these networks to locate and download the source code that such activity is illegal," the company said.

Sharon Housley - NotePage, Inc.

Great resource for submitting blogs can be found at Ari Papaparo. The comments regarding other submission locations are also quite helpful. I also tripped over something on Yahoo that appears to indicate you can submit content to Yahoo to be syndicated but I haven't quite got my head around it yet.

Sharon Housley - NotePage, Inc.

In addition to changes in their licensing agreement Google has added new ad formats. There are new towers, banners, inline rectangles, and a single-ad button - examples of all of the formats are displayed on our 'AdSense Ad Formats' page at https://www.google.com/adsense/adformats. Be sure to customize the ad colors to integrate with your page design.

Espotting has announced an amended merger agreement with FindWhat.com. Together they will create a global PPC (pay-per-click) vendor, operating across 3 continents, in 12 countries, with approximately 100,000 clients.

Sharon Housley - NotePage, Inc.

If you have press or news related to monitoring software send it along and it will be posted to http://www.monitoring-software.net ! The new format will allow for product announcements to be posted on the front page of the website.

Sharon Housley - NotePage, Inc.

Yahoo has finally started using Inktomi's results, officially dumping Google. This has caused quite a change in results appearing.

It also appears that the prediction regarding changes at Google were spot-on. According to sources the "Brandy" update is similar to results prior to the "Florida" update, but Google sources insist that it is not a database roll back.

From SoftwareCEO's website -A recent letter from one of our subscribers encouraged us to create a new membership program; we're calling it SoftwareCEO Scholarships. If you or someone you know would benefit from a SoftwareCEO Site Membership but lacks the cash to cover our annual subscription fee, let us know: we'll consider them for a scholarship. Once each quarter, we'll award a free annual Site Membership to one deserving nominee. We're going to keep the ground rules somewhat open on this, because we want to see what kind of nominations we get. You don't have to be a student to receive one of our scholarships, but you do have to tell us a bit about your background, describe what advantage you expect to gain from SoftwareCEO, and explain why you need the scholarship-i.e., what's preventing you from paying our measly $195 annual fee?

Sharon Housley - NotePage, Inc.

We've located another new PAD enabled download site SoftTester .

Shareware Industry Conference
July 15-17 in Rochester, NY
Until April 1st early conference registration is only $99, after that conference registration is only $129! Walk-in registrations at the door will be $149. Conference registration includes admittance to all conference activities including educational sessions and evening receptions. Luncheon and banquet dinner admittance is additional. Register now and save money!

Sharon Housley - NotePage, Inc.

I personally was very surprised by the lack of response to the Tucows article. Certainly, I received a number of personal, private emails but overall the volume of public posts was insignificant. I expected the article to generate a more public reaction. I'm assuming the vast majority of developers just took the information in, and while they feel it was unethical they don't choose to say anything public.

Sharon Housley - NotePage, Inc.

Microsoft Corp. says incomplete portions of the source code for some versions of its Windows computer operating system were leaked over the Internet, but analysts caution it's too early to say how much damage the leak may cause. Microsoft spokesman Tom Pilla said Thursday that some pieces of source code - the tightly guarded blueprint of its dominant computer operating system - for its Windows 2000 and Windows NT4.0 operating systems had been "illegally made available on the Internet."

Developers will need to be aware of any new security patches that Microsoft releases and test their software for compatibility.

Sharon Housley - NotePage, Inc.

It appears that Google is back to boogeying, not quite sure how this will shake up the recent Google results.

Another software download site, Software Basket is live.

Sharon Housley - NotePage, Inc.

A new article has been posted and I really hope that people really understand that my intent. I'm wrote the article not with the intent to hurt Tucows, but with the intent to help small developers. The article deals with unfair competition and abuse of power.

I would welcome feedback from developers or other industry professionals.

Sharon Housley - NotePage, Inc.

Sharon Housley - NotePage, Inc.

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