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ipod 20gb

The ipod has become more then just a resource for mp3 music, no longer are you restricted to just playing music on your ipod, now, you can do almost anything you can imagine, play music, watch movies ...

Microsoft's Open Specification Promise Eases Web Services Patent Concerns

Microsoft has announced a broad irrevocable declaration promising not to assert Microsoft patent claims against anyone developing or distributing implementations for key Web Services specifications. The "Microsoft Open Specification Promise" applies individually to each of thirty-five (35) Covered Specifications, including many being developed at OASIS, W3C, WS-I, and elsewhere. The OSP addresses several concerns voiced by open-source software developers.

Linux or Windows?

Linux and windows differences The two main operating systems employed by the PC owner are windows and Linux. Although they appear very similar on the face of it there are fundamental differences in t...

Fortean Times #225

The latest issue of Fortean Times (#225) is about to roll off the presses, and is a special edition celebrating 60 years of UFOs. In the mag you'll find: An expert panel evaluates the last 60 years of unidentified aerial phenomena. Alan Murdie considers the folklore of 'lights in the sky' over New Mexico that preceded Roswell. A look at some ... (Read on Source)

Internal Server Error (NullPointerException) when invoking a Web Service

I'm using SOA suite 10.1.3.3 (incl the latest patch set) on Windows XP.

I've created 3 web services using the wizard interface out of 3 existing WSDL files. The Java code inside the web services is just dummy code.

I'm testing the web services using the Test Web Service functionality in Oracle Enterprise Manager's Application Server Control.

The moment I fill in the data and press invoke, I get back the following fault:
<env:Body>
<env:Fault>
<faultcode>env:Server</faultcode>
<faultstring>Internal Server Error (Caught exception while handling request: java.lang.NullPointerException)</faultstring>
</env:Fault>
</env:Body>

I know that control never reaches inside the services themselves.

I've even followed the online demo that shows users how to create, deploy and test a Web Service in JDeveloper to make sure that I wasn't doing anything silly.

What could be wrong? Please help.
Thanks in advance.

Sen. Vitter Sorry for Being on Alleged Prostitution List

Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter apologized Monday for his telephone number showing up on the old phone records of Pamela Martin and Associates, the allged prostitution ring run in the nation's capital by Deborah Jeane Palfrey.

PAETEC Holding Corp. Announces Second Quarter 2007 Results

... 100% year over year to $228 million. US LEC's operations, PAETEC's fast growing MPLS VPN product, and its integrated voice and data T1 sales all contributed to the positive ...

International Web Development Sponsors Pink Bedroom Party for Breast Cancer Research

The Pink Bedroom Party event, held to fund the Institute of Breast Cancer research at the Princess Margaret Hospital, will take place at The Liberty Grand on Friday, October 12, 2007. As sponsors to the event, International Web Development, who designed and developed the Pink Bedroom Party, have been invited to partake in the event. (PRWeb Oct 12, 2007) Post Comment:Trackback URL: http://www.prweb.com/pingpr.php/UHJvZi1DcmFzLVN1bW0tVGhpci1UaGlyLVplcm8=

F1: Motorsport and the great unwashed

Those F1 fans who mourn the days when it was possible to wander the paddock, getting up close and personal with the stars and their machinery, should spare a thought for NASCAR fans. (Read on Source)

Today's Tip: Start a Kids Care Club

Quaker Oats is sponsoring this initiative which encourages moms and kids to make giving back top priority. Check out their website for great volunteer ideas and learn how you can start your own Kids Care Club. http://www.kidscare.org/

CO2 Pollution Could Erase Coral Reefs

Scientists warned today that if carbon dioxide emissions continue along their current paths, coral reefs could vanish from the oceans, and would take millions of years to grow back.

ANCHOR'S AWAY

THE Feds have charged Philadelphia TV newsman Larry Mendte with illegally accessing the e-mail of his co-anchor, Alycia Lane, who was embarrassed when he leaked details of her private life to Page Six and Philly gossips. Lane's lawyer, Paul Rosen...

Online social networking sites are hacker playgrounds (AFP)

AFP - Computer security researchers on Thursday warned that online social networking websites are playgrounds for hackers who can easily take advantage of people's trust.

7 Common Wordpress Seo Mistakes And Their Easy Solutions

1. Problem: The homepage doesn’t target a specific keyword combination that people actually search for. Solution: Add specific keywords to the homepage title, use a plugin like ALL in One SEO Pack to rewrite the default wordpress titles.  If you don’t know any specific keyword phrases offhand that also sound good to use for marketing ... (Read on Source)

New PSP Model Shy of Brits

Gamesindustry

WalMarts Guidance Changes Reaction to Results

This is a classic. So just last month when WalMart came in at 3 comps and people...

A Fine-tooth Comb To Measure The Accelerating Universe

Astronomical instruments needed to answer crucial questions, such as the search for Earth-like planets or the way the Universe expands, have come a step closer with the first demonstration at the telescope of a new calibration system for precise spectrographs. The method uses a Nobel Prize-winning technology called a "laser frequency comb," and is published in Science.

Incentives Key to Mobile Marketing Success

Incentives can help mobile users overcome their initial negative reactions to mobile advertising , according to survey data released by ABI Research. 37% said incentives would increase their response to a text-based ad 11% said incentives would have no impact ?We think that in general, advertisers and operators must tread carefully when ... (Read on Source)

West 42nd Street/Times Square Subway Art 2

tags: West 42nd street/Times Square Subway Art , The Return of Spring , subway art , NYC through my eye , photography , NYC The Return of Spring. Artist: Jack Beal (1999). West 42nd Street/Times Square glass tile mosaic art #2 [Detail 3] as seen on the mezzanine for NYC's Times Square stop at Broadway and 41st for the 1, 2, and 3 trains. Image: ... (Read on Source)

Zend Teams With Adobe to Marry PHP and Flex

Adobe and Zend are teaming up to bring make Flex and PHP play well together. The first key deliverable of their partnership will be an Action Message Format component for the Zend framework first proposed in July. (Read on Source)

51 Creative Business Cards That Will Make You Look Twice

Most business cards are dull, boring, and don’t say much about the person. These business cards tend to be forgotten, which is why then are ineffective. Here are 51 business cards that say a lot about the person: (Read on Source)

The SEO Failings of Major UK Highstreet Retailers

Posted by Tom_C

I recently read a couple of posts on e-consultancy about the state of play with major UK retail brands and how they perform online. First was 10 things Asda could do better online, which while I enjoyed didn't touch on any of the SEO failings of these companies. Kevin's Supermarkets ignoring SEO for major keywords post touched more on SEO which was nice but I wanted to go into a few more meaty things so here's my review of the state of play with SEO for major UK highstreet retailers.

While the point of this post is to highlight common mistakes and not to call out individual brands, inevitably I've mentioned specific names as examples. This isn't an attempt to cause offence and I appreciate that even if you know what the right answer is it can be difficult to implement using legacy systems.

Keyphrase Targeting

Who said keyphrases were important? Sometimes you're just too cool for school. Don't listen to all those other guys telling you how important keyphrases are - surely it can't be that important can it?

Ignoring the fact that you can't find the Boots website on the first page of Google.co.uk for a [boots] search take a look at their make-up page. Their title tag reads, and I quote:


Well I could think of a few improvements there.... The most amusing/crushingly depressing (delete as appropriate) thing about this is that many of these brands are paying a lot of money for PPC campaigns while at the same time ignoring organic traffic. Waterstones for example bid on the term [cookery books]:


And they have a perfect landing page for a cookery books search, the only problem is that their title tag for the page (and in fact every page on their site) is as follows:


Ah. I see. Not interested in the free traffic then, those pesky raggamuffin organic visitors always screwing up my analytics, BUYING THINGS and what not. Such a pain in the neck.

Homepage Redirects

This problem happens an unbelievable amount. Take a look at the following pages:

http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategoriesDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10001&catalogId=10151

http://www.missselfridge.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategoriesDisplay?storeId=12554&catalogId=20555

http://www.topshop.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategoriesDisplay?storeId=12556&catalogId=19551

Want a quick and easy way of reaching those URLs? Try clicking on these links:

http://www.halfords.com

http://www.missselfridge.com

http://www.topshop.com

Yep - that's right, all those nasty URLs are the default URLs you get redirected to when you visit the domain. Sheesh. Sometimes this redirect is a 301 but it's not uncommon to see redirects through a 302, meta-refresh, or javascript!

Note that a clean, user-friendly homepage URL helps users AND search engines. You can bet that this is causing more than a few indexing issues for some of these sites.

URLs, URLs, URLs

Along the same lines as the above point - nasty URLs abound on these websites. Take a look at a few of these non-semantic, non-keyphrase-rich, un-usable URLs:

http://www.homebase.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=20001&partNumber=1601776&c_2=2|cat_10307968|Bath+suites|10481051&c_1=1|category_root|Bathroom|10307968 (Homebase bath product page)

http://online.vodafone.co.uk/dispatch/Portal/appmanager/vodafone/wrp?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=templateBlank&pageID=VIRTUAL_HOME (Vodafone homepage)

http://www.burton.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?beginIndex=0&viewAllFlag=&catalogId=20553&storeId=12551&categoryId=113901&parent_category_rn=&productId=720470&langId=-1 (Burton cardigan page - just for you Ciaran)

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/4061423/c_1/1|category_root|Kitchen+and+laundry|10198386/c_2/2|cat_10198386|Vacuum+cleaners|10198408.htm (Argos vacuum cleaner page)

And my personal favourite - the curry's "washing machines" page:

http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/store/cur_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0738042494.1222078553@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccekadefejmhgddcflgceggdhhmdgmi.0&page=ProductList&category_oid=-30549&fm=4&sm=0&tm=0&show_all=true

Compare this to Comet's page for washing machines:

http://www.comet.co.uk/shopcomet/category/49/Washing-Machines

Now, take a wild guess as to which one ranks top 5 in Google for a [washing machines] search.... Hint: it's not Currys (though Currys do pay for PPC on the term washing machines)

Duplicate Content

Duplicate content can crop up in many different guises - from URL parameters to having more than one domain resolving to the content. Mostly this won't hurt you too much unless of course you happen to pass internal link juice to both versions - then you're in trouble. For example, look at the following two product pages, both of which have internal links pointing to them. It's the same page (almost) only the breadcrumb is different since the product is contained in multiple categories:

http://www.debenhams.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_10001_10001_64439_428661_-1

http://www.debenhams.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_10001_10001_63165_428661_-1

Information Architecture

If you get the information architecture wrong on a site then there's often more implications than simply SEO as it often impacts your usability too. Consider the following situation:

http://search.next.co.uk/nav3/cat/02men/sub/ttoshirts/0

Now, ignoring the fact that we've somehow ended up on a sub-domain away from the main site, this is far as you can drill down on the site when looking at men's tshirts. If you wanted to browse the tshirts you can sort by price but that's it. There's no option to sort by 'designer' or 'poloshirt' etc. By leaving these sub-sub-category pages from their site they make it difficult to browse tshirts as well as not having a page which is capable of ranking for 'polo shirt' (assuming of course that the rest of their site was well optimised).

Because Sometimes One URL Just Isn't Enough

Since all of the brands I'm talking about are recognised by any UK citizen they obviously need to own all the different variations of their domain names. Once you own them however, you should always look to redirect them into the site. If you don't then you can end up with duplicate content issues. For example, www.thecarphonewarehouse.com and www.carphonewarehouse.com both resolve to the same site.

Sometimes however this is taken one step further and there are two separate sites on multiple domains, serving the same content. Check out the difference between these two pages: littlewoods, littlewoods direct. It's a good bet that if a user isn't sure which version is more authoritative that the search engines will be struggling too.

And then finally we come to some situations which are presumably just mistakes, though that doesn't make them any less critical. Try visiting http://www.bodyshop.com. Ideally you'd end up at http://www.thebodyshop.co.uk/ but not so!


While you might think that it's no big deal, that domain has over 2000 links so you can be sure that they'll be missing out on search engine rankings and visitors because of it!

Conversion Rate Optimisation

I'm not going to talk in too much depth here as e-consultancy has already done this quite a bit, but seriously guys - what were you thinking? A call to action to abandon my order? Are you insane?!


That's ignoring the fact that I ended up with 7 pairs of jeans in my basket before I figured out how to actually get to the checkout. Other common mistakes include:

Not taking you straight to the basket when you add a product to your cart. Sure, it gets annoying every now and again but it's a lot LESS annoying than spending 5 minutes trying to find your basket...

Forcing users to sign-up before they buy. The more forms the better. Fact.

Making the 'buy-now' button say something obscure like 'register'. Because 'buy-now' just seemed a little too, oh I don't know, effective?!

The below is a screenshot which fails both of these criteria - forcing you to sign up AND calling their buy-now button 'register':


Adding bright red text to the checkout pages which tells you how much you HAVEN'T saved with this purchase. Gee - thanks guys! These guys even tell you twice in red font that you've saved nothing:

Outstanding Award For Lack Of Interest In the Internet

And finally we come to some sites which just seem designed to confuse. There really is no explanation for this. Clarks, a major shoe retailer in the UK has one of the most bizarre and baffling websites I've ever come across from such a large brand. Even a list of a 100 or so online high street retailers went so far as to give Clarks the label of "difficult site".

Entirely in flash, it took me one blocked pop-up, 10 clicks and a good few minutes waiting for various pages of the site to load before I found a shoe page (any shoe page!) which has a picture of a shoe and a price next to it. Great. Except that page has zero call to action. There's not even a link to find your nearest offline shop, let alone a phone number to use their telephone ordering (which they have btw - there's a call to action for telephone ordering from their homepage). Why spend so much money on a "nice" flash website which serves absolutely no purpose?

Honourable mention for this award of course goes to Tie Rack who's website is 5 pages big and they have a call to action to email them to find out where your nearest offline shop is. EMAIL them?! Because sometimes searchable lists just don't quite cut it:

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Looking for water on Mars

Looking for water on Mars (Read on Source)

International stock funds tumble hard in an unforgiving quarter

Many investors like to think of international-stock mutual funds as a part of their portfolio that can offer respite from domestic market troubles. But results this year are disproving that idea with alarming force.

Good news for NC pier anglers, bad news for society?

Make sure to visit Jennette's Pier at Milepost 16.5 in Nags Head, North Carolina (NC) in 2010: The head of North Carolina's aquarium agency says he hopes a rebuilt pier on the Outer Banks will be open for use by 2010. North Carolina Aquariums director David Griffin said the agency... (Read on Source)

Five Things You Should Know About GBC Velobind Binding

If you are looking for a new binding style for your office, you may want to consider GBC Velobind. Velobind provides a highly professional look and feel to your presentations and proposals while minimizing the number of supplies that you need to keep on hand. It uses a thin strip along the bound edge of the document that is either riveted or is snapped in place. This strip includes a "Comb" that has a number of prongs and a "receiving strip" for the back of the document. If you are considering choosing Velobind for your documents here are a few things you might like to know. 1. There are actually several different types of Velobind binding systems. The two most common types of are Hot Knife Systems and Four Pin Recloseable Systems. Hot Knife systems use heat to permanently rivet the binding spine in place while the four pin Recloseable system simply has pins that snap into the receiving strip. Two other types include six-pin and one-eleven binding. However, although six pin and One Eleven strips are still available, binding equipment for these systems is no longer available. 2. Depending on the type of Velobind system that you have the number of pins on the "Comb" will vary. Hot Knife systems use 11 pin strips with smooth pins. The V50 and V110e use four pin strips. The One Eleven Binding Machine (now discontinued) uses eleven pin strips with serrated pins and the Personal Velobind System (now discontinued) uses six pin binding strips. 3. One of the greatest advantages of the Velobind binding system is that the number of supplies that you need to stock is smaller than with almost any other system. Binding systems for Combs , Coil and Wire require different sized supplies for different thicknesses in books. However, with Velobind you can buy one size binding strip and you can bind any document up to that thickness. Using the System Three you can use a 3" binding strip to bind any document from 2 pages up to 3". This greatly cuts down on the space required to store your binding supplies. 4. Velobind is one of the only binding style that offers the availability to handle documents that are larger than two inches. Plastic Combs, Spiral Coil and Thermal binding all offer the ability to finish documents up to 2" thick. However, with the System Three you can bind documents as thick as three inches. This added capacity is perfect for law offices, accountants and government agencies with extra large reports that need to be completed. 5. Depending on the system that you select, Velobind offers either the security of a permanent bind or the convenience of easy editing. Hot Knife systems permanently rivet the strips into place providing a secure tamper proof bind to your documents and proposals. Or, if you are looking for a binding style that allows for easy editing of documents on the fly, Four Pin Velobind allows for easy addition and removal of pages. The best thing is, if you have a Hot Knife System , the 11 hole pattern will work for use with four pin strips so you don't need two different machines. Although there are lots of other great things about this type of document finishing, hopefully this list of five things you might want to know about Velobind will help you in your quest to choose the right style for your office. Just remember, if you have a question, it never hurts to ask.

Jeff McRitchie is the designer and Director of Marketing for MyBinding.com.He has written over 500 articles on binding machines,binding covers,binders,laminators,binding supplies,laminating supplies,paper handling equipments,index tabs, and shredders.

Introducing the Linux-based Moxi

... really happy with the popular open source kernel. Continue reading to learn more about this ... of the Moxi product. Digeo specifically chose Linux as the underlying operating system because of ...

Flick Fishing 1.2 update expands fish, modes

Freeverse has published Flick Fishing 1.2, an update of its fishing game for the iPhone and iPod touch, in which players flick their wrist to cast a fishing line and reel it in. New features in this version include an unlockable night-fishing location, lures and spinners now working without floats, and various secret power-ups to help with larger fish. Four new fish types have been introduced, inc...

 

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