Although a weakened economy will hinder the broader advertising market as a whole, 2008 willl again see a double digit growth rate of Internet advertising.

According to the full-year forecast by TNS Media Intelligence, Internet display advertising will continue growing at double-digit rates in 2008, with Cable Television experiencing single digit gains. Magazines and Newspaper print advertising will see single digit declines for the seventh consecutive year.

Jon Swallen, SVP Research of TNS Media Intelligence, says “The Internet will continue to gain share, principally at the expense of newspapers… Our projections for the 2007-08 cycle indicate television will maintain it’s shares, while the Internet will move past radio.”

The growth trend of Internet advertising is expected to increase exponentially, and by 2011, Internet advertising is forecast to be the dominant advertising medium.  
“Internet advertising is expected to become the largest ad segment in 2011″, states the VSS Communications Industry Forecast 2007-2011. ”In what would be a watershed moment in communications history” according to the VSS website, “Internet advertising will replace newspapers as the largest ad medium in 2011″.

Internet advertising provides audiences with increased consumer control and multitasking. The impact of advanced technology on conventional media models is revolutionizing how end users access advertising. As advertising audiences migrate to Internet and digital media, leading national advertisers have accelerated the converstion of traditional print and broadcast media to Internet and alternative digital media. As the demand for digital workflow tools that improve efficiency and boost performance are realized, the growth of Internet and alternative advertising and marketing will become extraordinary.

Here are answers to some common questions about using feeds (RSS).

What is a feed?

A feed, also known as RSS feed, XML feed, syndicated content, or web feed, is frequently updated content published by a website. It is usually used for news and blog websites, but can also be used for distributing other types of digital content, including pictures, audio or video. Feeds can also be used to deliver audio content (usually in MP3 format) which you can listen to on your computer or MP3 player. This is referred to as podcasting.

How do I know if a website offers feeds?

When you first view a website, Internet Explorer will search for feeds. If feeds are available, the Feeds button  will change color and a sound will play.

How do I view a feed?

When you visit a webpage, the Feeds button  will change color, letting you know that feeds are available. Click the Feeds button, and then click the feed you want to see. To get content automatically, you should subscribe to a feed.

How does a feed differ from a website?

A feed can have the same content as a webpage, but it’s often formatted differently. When you subscribe, Internet Explorer automatically checks the website and downloads new content so you can see what is new since you last visited the feed.

How can I automatically get updated content?

You can receive content automatically by subscribing to a web feed. When you subscribe to a web feed, you set the interval at which Internet Explorer will check the website for updates. Once you’ve set an interval, Internet Explorer will automatically download the most up-to-date web feed list. Click Related Topics to learn how to subscribe to a web feed.

Does a feed subscription cost money?

No, it’s usually free to subscribe to a feed.

How can I view my subscribed feeds?

You view feeds on the Feeds tab in the Favorites Center. To view your feeds, click the Favorites Center button , and then click Feeds.

Can other programs display my subscribed feeds?

Yes, Internet Explorer provides the Common Feed List to other programs. This allows you to subscribe to feeds with Internet Explorer and read them in other programs, such as e-mail clients.

What does RSS mean?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and is used to describe the technology used in creating feeds.

What formats do feeds come in?

The most common formats are RSS and Atom. Feed formats are constantly being updated with new versions. Internet Explorer supports RSS 0.91, 1.0, and 2.0, and ATOM .3, 1.0. All web feed formats are based on XML (Extensible Markup Language), a text-based computer language used to describe and distribute structured data and documents.

Quotation marks  “ ”  are used to identify text content that represents quoted or spoken language. Quotation marks also identify the titles of things that do not normally stand by themselves; short stories, poems, and articles. Usually, a quotation is separated from the rest of the sentence by a comma; however, the typography of quoted material can be confusing.

In the United States, periods and commas go inside quotation marks regardless of logic.

There are peculiar typographical reasons why the period and comma go inside the quotation mark in the United States. In the days when printing used raised bits of metal, “.” and “,” were the most delicate, and were in danger of damage (the face of the piece of type might break off from the body, or be bent or dented from above) if they had a ‘”‘ on one side and a blank space on the other. Hence the convention arose of always using ‘.”‘ and ‘,”‘ rather than ‘”.’ and ‘”,’, regardless of logic.

The placement of puncuation marks other than periods and commas should be placed outside the closing quotation mark.

Using punctuation around quoted speech or phrases depends on how it fits into the rest of your text. If a quoted word or phrase fits into the flow of your sentence without a break or pause, then a comma may not be necessary

What do you think of Robert Frost’s “Design”? and
I love “Design”; however, my favorite poem was written by Emily Dickinson.
Further, punctuation around quoted speech or phrases depends on how it fits into the rest of your text. If a quoted word or phrase fits into the flow of your sentence without a break or pause, then a comma may not be necessary:

The phrase “lovely, dark and deep” begins to suggest ominous overtones.
Following a form of to say, however, you’ll almost always need a comma:

My father always said, “Be careful what you wish for.”
If the quoted speech follows an independent clause yet could be part of the same sentence, use a colon to set off the quoted language:

My mother’s favorite quote was from Shakespeare: “This above all, to thine own self be true.”
When an attribution of speech comes in the middle of quoted language, set it apart as you would any parenthetical element:

“I don’t care,” she said, “what you think about it.”
Be careful, though, to begin a new sentence after the attribution if sense calls for it:

“I don’t care,” she said. “What do you think?”
Convention normally insists that a new paragraph begins with each change of speaker:

“I don’t care what you think anymore,” she said, jauntily tossing back her hair and looking askance at Edward.
“What do you mean?” he replied.
“What do you mean, ‘What do I mean?’” Alberta sniffed. She was becoming impatient and wished that she were elsewhere.
“You know darn well what I mean!” Edward huffed.
“Have it your way,” Alberta added, “if that’s how you feel.”
In proofreading and editing your writing, remember that quotation marks always travel in pairs! Well, almost always. When quoted dialogue carries from one paragraph to another (and to another and another), the closing quotation mark does not appear until the quoted language finally ends (although there is a beginning quotation mark at the start of each new quoted paragraph to remind the reader that this is quoted language). Also, in parenthetical documentation (see the Guide to Writing Research Papers), the period comes after the parenthetical citation which comes after the quotation mark” (Darling 553).

In reporting “silent speech”—noting that language is “said,” but internally and not spoken out loud—writers are on their own. Writers can put quotation marks around it or not:

Oh, what a beautiful morning, Curly said to himself.
“Oh, what a beautiful morning!” Curly said to himself.
Some writers will set such unspoken language in italics or indent it in order to set it off from other “regular” language. That’s probably not a good idea if there is a lot of it because the indents can be confusing and italics can become tiresome to read after a while. The decision will probably depend on the amount of silent speech within the text. Probably the best way to handle silent speech is to find an author whom you like who does a lot of this—Graham Swift in his novel Last Orders, for instance—and copy that author’s style. Consistency, of course, is very important.

Be careful not to use quotation marks in an attempt to emphasize a word (the kind of thing you see in grocery store windows—Big “Sale” Today!). Underline or italicize that word instead. (The quotation marks will suggest to some people that you are using that word in a special or peculiar way and that you really mean something else—or that your sale is entirely bogus.)

The American Medical Association Manual of Style (9th ed, 1998) calls misused quotation marks like this Apologetic Quotation Marks and says:

Quotation marks used around words to give special effect or to indicate irony are usually unnecessary. When irony or special effect is intended, skillful preparation can take the place of using these quotes. Resort to apologetic quotation marks or quotation marks used to express irony only after such attempts have failed, keeping in mind that the best writing does not rely on apologetic quotation marks. (p 220)

We do not enclose indirect quotations in quotation marks. An indirect quotation reports what someone says but not in the exact, original language. Indirect quotations are not heard in the same way that quoted language is heard.

• The President said that NAFTA would eventually be a boon to small businesses in both countries.
• Professor Villa told her students the textbooks were not yet in the bookstore

Occasionally — very occasionally, we hope — we come across a sentence that seems to demand one kind of punctuation mark within quotation marks and another kind of punctuation mark outside the quotation marks. A kind of pecking order of punctuation marks takes over: other marks are stronger than a period and an exclamation mark is usually stronger than a question mark. If a statement ends in a quoted question, allow the question mark within the quotation marks suffice to end the sentence.

• Malcolm X had the courage to ask the younger generation of American blacks, “What did we do, who preceded you?”

On the other hand, if a question ends with a quoted statement that is not a question, the question mark will go outside the closing quotation mark.

• Who said, “Fame means when your computer modem is broken, the repair guy comes out to your house a little faster”?

If a question ends with a quotation containing an exclamation mark, the exclamation mark will supersede the question and suffice to end the sentence.

• Wasn’t it Malcolm X who declared, “Why, that’s the most hypocritical government since the world began!”

A single question mark will suffice to end a quoted question within a question:

• “Didn’t he ask, ‘What did we do, who preceded you?’” queried Johnson.

In the United States, we use single quotation marks [ ‘ ’ ] to enclose quoted material (or the titles of poems, stories, articles) within other quoted material:

• “‘Design’ is my favorite poem,” he said.
• “Did she ask, ‘What’s going on?’”
• Ralph Ellison recalls the Golden Age of Jazz this way: “It was itself a texture of fragments, repetitive, nervous, not fully formed; its melodic lines underground, secret and taunting; its riffs jeering—’Salt peanuts! Salt peanuts!’”

British practice, again, is quite different. In fact, single-quote marks and double-quote marks are apt to be reversed in usage. Instructors in the U.S. should probably take this into account when reading papers submitted by students who have gone to school in other parts of the globe.

In newspapers, single quotation marks are used in headlines where double quotation marks would otherwise appear.

• Congress Cries ‘Shame!’

In some fields, key terms may be set apart with single-quote marks. In such cases, periods and commas go outside the single-quote marks:

• Sartre’s treatment of ‘being’, as opposed to his treatment of ‘non-being’, has been thoroughly described in Kaufmann’s book.

When the term is case-sensitive, capitalization remains unchanged despite placement in the sentence.

• ‘tx_send’ determines whether the signal will be output through TX Output Port.
• If the constant REG_RESET is set, then resets will be registered.

Although a copyright notice is no longer required to protect a work under copyright law, it still should be placed on all published works. For any work published after March 1, 1989, the copyright notice is not mandatory. It is entirely up to the author of the work.

There are reasonable benefits for placing a copyright notice, though. It puts potential infringers on notice that the work is protected, it prevents anyone from claiming innocence if they do infringe, and it identifies the author and year of publication if someone wants to make contact for permissions.

An official copyright notice has three elements: A copyright symbol(), the year the work was published and the name of the copyright owner. If the work is unpublished the copyright notice should read, “Unpublished work,” followed by the year and the copyright owner’s name.

The copyright notice should always be attached to the work in such a manner that it gives reasonable notice of the copyright claim. In bound published work, it usually goes on a title page. On CDs or disks, the copyright notice goes on the CD or is programmed to display when that CD is placed in a play drive.

Whether you choose to display the copyright notice or not, it is always best practice to register the copyright with the Library of Congress through an application. The fee is $45 and the copyright is effective from the moment you file the application.

For all copyrighted works bar those that are first published in a handful of North American and South American countries, the assertion “All rights reserved.” in a copyright declaration is now irrelevant. Moreover, for copyrighted works that are first published outside of North America and South America, the phrase has always been irrelevant.
 

The question of which operating system is faster is often heard in Windows vs. Linux debates, but unfortunately, these debates can produce opinions that do not reflect the facts. What is surprising is that even information sources that you might consider somewhat professional can be wrong in their representation of the facts, often failing to be objective in defense of the operating system they favour. It’s common to read statements that Linux versions such as OpenSUSE or PCLinuxOS 2007 require far less resources than Windows Vista or XP. So which one is really the best performing or least resource hungry?
In making a Windows vs. Linux comparison we have to be specific in the comparison. Linux comes in all shapes and sizes, and actually Linux only refers to the kernel itself, while various Windows editions have been released as well. Therefore we are comparing performance of systems designed for similar uses, focusing on modern desktop Linux distributions in comparison to Windows XP and Vista.

When Linux fans are ranting about Windows XP’s performance, they tend to forget that it was released back in 2001. This means that it works with the hardware of that time,which of course were very modest in comparison to the PCs today. Minimum system requirements were 233MHz CPU and 64 megabytes of RAM. You can run XP on 233MHz CPU, but 128 MB RAM is more realistic.

On system boot the WinXP consumes around 60-80 MB of RAM, and with a little tweaking you can go below 70. Now if we start comparing to modern desktop Linux distributions introduced in 2007, their average memory consumption after system boot to Gnome or KDE desktop seems to be around 120-170 megabytes. Therefore, modern Linux releases are not easier on resources than Windows XP. Of course there are special light weight Linux versions that can achieve this goal, but that is not the point of this comparison.

So obviously Windows XP will fly if you use it with modern powerful hardware. Of course installing resource hogging software like Norton’s security suite will slow down your system considerably. Too many software applications starting up on system boot to only standby in the system tray is will also drain your computer’s performance significantly. But these factors are user error, not the fault of Windows. On the other hand, if one has processing power and memory to burn, Linux is much better at making use of these resources, especially RAM. Linux consumes all available RAM for useful purposes such as caching, which improves the performance.

Windows Vista on the other hand is a different story. The system requirements have grown to 800MHz and 512 MB of RAM, but the figures are seriously optimistic. I’ve seen a Vista installation crawling on a brand new budget PC with 1.2 CPU and 1GB of RAM. So, if you compare Vista to modern desktop Linux versions, it really makes Linux look good.

So definitely Windows XP is less resource hungry than typical desktop Linux of today. On the other hand, Linux can make better use of your system resources if you have plenty. Vista is a different story as it has turned out to be a resource hog, and is easily outperformed by Linux.

So what is the verdict – is it true that Linux is faster than Windows? Yes it is, especially when we are comparing the latest editions, which means that we are looking at Vista and not XP.
I am talking about both operating systems running on the exact same hardware. Linux will still run faster than Windows, and I am including Vista under the Windows umbrella. I am also not talking about the fluff and thunder of the window managers and desktop finery. I am talking about the guts of the operating systems. The parts that do the real work. The parts that make the real difference in how fast your bucket of bits run.

There are many factors which effect the speed at which an operating system runs. For starters I am going to remove the hardware out of the equation. Both operating systems run on exactly the same hardware. The difference between the two operating systems is  the underlying design philosophy that went into creating these essential parts of our computing experience.

In the beginning of the Windows road to Vista the operating system was a single tasking architecture. Then it started out with co-operative multitasking then moved on to a preemptive multitasking model. It isn’t however as good as the Linux preemptive multitasking model which has been designed into the kernel from day one. Windows still manages to get itself into a bind when trying to do too many things at the same time. Linux is a bit more intelligent in its allocation and the total impact on the system is less.

While that makes a noticable difference in speed under heavy loads that does not contribute a lot to the total big picture. Another difference between the two is how, under Linux, all devices are treated as files. This makes programming and access to both normal files and device files easier and standardised. The result of this is programming is simpler and simpler programs run faster and use less memory.

This brings me to the biggest reason Linux runs faster than Windows. That is memory usage. Linux is far more efficient at handling memory than Windows is. Even Vista with its SuperFetch technology still hasn’t got it right yet. Windows is still too much hard disk bound to be ever able to realise its true speed potential. It still leaves too much memory free that could be cached and runs its caching procedure at inopportune times as well as trying to swap memory out at any and every opportunity. Linux on the other hand uses memory like it should be used. Virtually all of the available memory is used for both programs and disk caching. Fast changing temporary files are written to virtual directories mounted in memory. Swap disks are only used when needed and how aggressively those swap disks are used can be set in a simple configuration file.

For example Linux Kubuntu runs fine on a Pentium III 733Mhz with 512MB of ram. There is no way that Vista will work on this machine. Even XP is a pig on it.

What does this mean to the average consumer PC user? Most computer users are not likely to install a Linux OS on their desktop PCs. However, when choosing a hosting server for your website,  Linux servers are the more efficient and give you the most bang for your buck. Also, there is a plethora of enterprise quality open source (FREE) software for Linux servers, whereas licensing for comparable Windows software often costs thousands.

Razworks website editor PDF manuals:

A simple series of manuals about how to use the web page editor built into the WordPress content management system, upon which Razworks Sarasota website design is built.

Website Editor – Chapter 1: Getting Started

Hosting Center Manual – Chapter 1: Setting up recurring payment

Image Gallery Manual – Creating and displaying photo galleries and albums

Should you be concerned with whether visitors to your website must scroll the page? 

Everything that you want to present to a website visitor when they first access your home web page should be displayed within the immediate viewable screen space, without the need to scroll the web browser.

However, displaying supporting content after the scroll often helps retain visitors that normally would not go past the home page.

With the invent of blogs, and blog software like Wordpress, scrolling has actually become a common function in web design and web page browsing. 

Proponents of scrolling claim that scolling down a page is more efficient and user friendly than clicking through several pages. Opponents of scrolling present examples of how encouraging the use of the scroll can lead to exccessive volumes of content, resulting in a slow-loading webpage. Proponents always rebutt the previous claim with the currents statistics that 71% of Internet connected homes in America have broadband connections. Opponents counter by claiming that categorizing topics of interest into separate pages will create an organized hiearchy of information and minimize web page complexity and volume of content per page. 

This continual tug of war between Scroll Proponents and Opponents has driven web page innovation to the Blog. A blog can have a very lengthy scroll, yet be tighly organized into Categories and Posts, because they are both useful. The primary feature that has driven the popularity of blogging is that anyone with an Internet connection can publish a blog. At third party blog hosts, like WordPress.com, people can create user accounts and blog to the world.

When a web site designer selects a background color for a website design, first thing to determine is whether it will be a light colored background or a dark color. Light colors will use a black or dark shaded text, where dark colors will use a white or pale tint. Some colors are inherintly light or dark, yellow for example is inherently a light color. Black text reads perfectly over yellow, while white text can often be illegible on a yellow web page background. Over red, blue and green, white text displays more legilbly than black. So as far as web page backgrounds are concerned, these colors are dark.

Your intended emotional response should determine what colors you choose for your web site design. What is the message you want to market to your website customers. Do you want the web page design to set a mood or stimulate the viewer’s emotions? Much research has been completed and many books have been written about the science behind color psychology.  Black, for instance, is percieved by a website viewer as powerful and authoritative and helps promote a sense of drama and awe in a web design. White, on the other hand, tends to be perceived as innocent and pure. White provides the best contrast for reading black text and is neutral, so it can work with almost any website color theme. 

In website design graphic design and other visual advertising venues, a comp, which is short for composition layout, is an initial draft of a proposed visual design. A static design comp is typically presented to a web design client prior to any web site development to determine the relative positions of text and images before the specific content of those elements has been decided upon. A comp can be as simple as a pencil and paper sketch, or as detailed as the final production piece.

The image elements may incorporate the artist’s original artwork, stock photography, clip art, or other placeholder material that gives an idea of what should be visually communicated, before entering any negotiations concerning the rights to use specific images for the purpose. Photo agencies may encourage free use of certain images, in the hope that the comp image will end up being used in the final product. For this reason, it is sometimes mistakenly believed that “comp” is short for “complimentary,” as it is in some other promotional contexts.

Even in the age of rapid desktop publishing software, comps may be developed using hand rendering techniques and materials to avoid investing too much time on the computer before client approval of the idea, depending on the complexity of the production task. A hand rendered comp may be useful in helping the client refrain from nitpicking the production quality and focus on the design idea.

“Comp” can also stand for comprehensive layout.

Give me your critique of this website. Can anything be changed to provide a better Internet experience? How could it be easier? What does it need? Should something be removed? Feel free to be candid in your replies. All feedback, whether positve or negative, is valuable knowledge. It allows Razworks to adjust processes, techniques, practices, etc. to produce a superior end product for the user.