To help Google penetrate in corporate world with Google Docs and Spreadsheet, Google finalized a deal with Capgemini; an IT consultancy and outsourcing specialist. Microsoft Office package is a widely used office document management application. To pull it down few notches, Google has released Google Apps Premier Edition Suite that includes word processor, spread sheets, calendar, emailing service and instant messaging tools.

Google’s USP for Apps is the browser based nature of the applications. The documents are stored in Google’s server; anyone with proper access privilege can open the docs, share it and assign certain permissions to others.

Though Google Apps has some drawbacks too; it does not work with Opera and it lacks some Print set up that MS Office users can use easily. Also it relies a lot on Internet connection – no Internet connection results no work; which may be problematic at times.

Capgemini has also started promoting Google Apps through their website; Capgemini has released White Paper and Brochures for users as well.

However, Microsoft has started criticizing Google saying Google has a track record of releasing incomplete product. They have also pointed out the internet access issue. However, time is the best judge to tell who will have the last laugh!

Read more on Telegraph.

StumbleUpon, a social networking site, has already indicated that they are different from others. It is almost clear that StumbleUpon is no way going to be recognized as ‘just another social networking platform’. It will for sure leave a deeper footprint on the web world.

StumbleUpon understands the pain of people while searching information through search engines. With the increased number of bad websites it often becomes tough to reach to the right site that surfers look for. And that is the key concept of StumbleUpon. It allows users filter their searches through a ‘People Driven Technology’, yes that is the term they use exactly.

StumbleUpon members when find a good website they can vote for it; there are 2 options to cast vote: like or dislike. Members can also add review for the sites they prefer. Now when new members join and choose their favorite topics, StumbleUpon start showing websites which have received good feedback from other members.

New members can also make lists of websites they like and they dislike by simply hitting the thumb up and thumb down buttons on StumbleUpon toolbar. They can also add review for a particular site if they want. All the website reviews posted by a particular member, are shown in a blog-like pattern on the public profile page of each member.

StumbleUpon allows users to download a browser plug-in; the StumbleUpon toolbar which looks like the image below:

Once a member clicks on the ‘Stumble’ button, it starts showing quality websites from the niche as supplied by the member while registering with StumbleUpon. Members can also interact with co-members and see which websites others have rated and reviewed. Also, if a member adds a website that was not listed in the StumbleUpon database before; it goes to the ‘Discovered’ websites category for the member.

According to this social networking cum collaborative filtering site “Information on the Internet changes rapidly. StumbleUpon is a dynamic approach to keep on top of this ever-evolving pool of knowledge.”

Readers: why don’t you StumbleUpon w3guru-india.com? Let’s do it…

Links are good; paid links are not. If you really want to put your banner or text ads on a Mega PR site, ask the publisher to put rel=nofollow tag on your link, otherwise such links may cause put your site out of Google SERP even for the title of your site.It seems that Google has recently raided some of the directories that buy links and has de-indexed all the pages of these directories. These directories happened to appear at top in SERP for competitive keywords, but now they are no where. Even the directories are not showing up in Google for their own Titles.

According to a telephonic interview of David Eaves, the owner of Biz-Dir.co.uk, conducted by a WebProNews reporter Jason Miller, it seems that near about 75 directories have been penalized by Google for buying links. Though Google has not penalized Biz-Dir.co.uk and it is still holding good rank in Google, a lot of pages of Biz Dir have been de-indexed causing a sharp decrease in amount of traffic to this business directory.

As a remedy, David Eaves has started asking his Ad publishers to put the nofollow attribute on his ads. As David’s directory has got lots of natural links, the directory may be in a good position.

David has also commented that all the directories that have been penalized use a common PHPLinkDirectory script and has same link profile. It’s still difficult to predict whether Google has introduced a new algo that caught these directories or someone from Google manually checked those sites.

Though Google has started sending out emails to webmasters recently to inform if their sites have been penalized, none of these directory owners have got any intimation from Google.

The interview also predicts that all these directories have lost its link value. Hence sites listed on those directories are not more getting any link benefit.

SEO practitioners should be aware by now; you never know if Google is going to find out the sties listed on those directories and run a manual check as well.

Are you a passionate blogger? Are you looking for a free blog with WordPress? Please go through the TOS of WordPress carefully and follow it strictly, otherwise WordPress may ban your blog anytime. WordPress want their users to be careful about the TOS. Among 15 points under their TOS (as of today) the first highlighted block says:

the Content is not spam, and does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites, or to further unlawful acts (such as phishing) or mislead recipients as to the source of the material (such as spoofing);

Here comes the trick. Blogging has started to change its color of late. Starting the life cycle as Online Personal Diary, Blogs have come up as a means of corporate communications, online journalism, crowdsourcing and a way of earning as well. Let’s share some quotations about blogs:

“Blogging for Dollars: Giving Rise to the Professional Blogger” by Meg Hourihan says that Blogging was hindered due to lack of money.

Wikipedia says, “A corporate weblog is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals.”

With the increased popularity of “Work from Home” culture among Bloggers and Corporate Blogging, Blogger.com may gain higher grade by Bloggers as it never stops Bloggers to fetch traffic to a third party website or run ad campaigns.

You can say that WordPress is better known as a Blogging software provider, not as a Blog Host. Then a newbie Blogger should have a website first to use WordPress or they have to buy the hosting service of WordPress, which may cause new Bloggers to migrate to Blogger.com. Thus WordPress may continue to be a Blogging Software Provider only, not as a Heart-throb Blog Host!