Morgan Todd Lewistown, PA

Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Others Launch Web Platform Docs, A Web Standards Documentation Site :   A number of leading browser vendors and other tech companies, including Microsoft , Google , Apple,  Adobe , Facebook, HP, Nokia, Mozilla, Opera and the W3C , just announced the launch of the Web Platform Docs project at WebPlatform.org . The project aims to create “a new, authoritative open web standards documentation site,” says Opera Software . The wiki-like site, says Opera, wants to ensure that developers can easily find “accurate, quality information on all the latest HTML5, CSS4 and other standards features across the multitude of available web-based resources.” Currently, the companies behind WebPlatform.org argue , developers struggle to find authoritative answers to their questions about modern web technologies and often, developers have to resort to figuring out the right solutions through trial and error (the Google team describes this as a “scavenger hu...

Microsoft Helps To Bring The Popular Mobile Game Contre Jour To The Web : Contre Jour, the imaginative mobile physics-based puzzle game launched in 2011, is now available on the web. Just like with Cut the Rope for HTML5, the Pulse web app and the recently launched Atari Arcade , Microsoft and the folks at Clarity Consulting helped the Contre Jour team to bring the mobile gaming experience to the (touch-enabled) web . As Microsoft’s senior director of Internet Explorer Ryan Gavin told me yesterday, the focus here was to show off Internet Explorer 10′s touch capabilities (“touch is the new fast,” Gavin likes to note). Just like Microsoft’s previous collaborations, Contre Jour obviously also uses some cutting-edge HTML5 and CSS3 techniques (including the use of multiple layers of Canvas and the open source 2D physics engine Box2D ) to make the experience as fluid as possible in the browser. Contre Jour, Gavin said, “is arguably the most ambitious use of HTML5 to date.” When the team...

Setting an icon on a Spark Button in Flex Hero by   Peter deHaan The following example shows how you can set the icon on a Spark Button in Flex Hero by setting the  icon style. The following example(s) require Flash Player 10 and the beta Adobe Flex Hero SDK. To download the Adobe Flash Builder 4 trial, see  http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/ . To download the latest nightly build of the Flex Hero SDK, see  http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Download+Flex+Hero . The following example requires Flex SDK 4.5.0.18623 or later. "1.0" encoding= "utf-8" ? > name= "Spark_Button_icon_test" xmlns:fx= "http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009" xmlns:s= "library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark" xmlns:mx= "library://ns.adobe.com/flex/mx" > > horizontalAlign= "center" verticalAlign= "middle" /> >   > <! [...

Victory by Inches: The Key to Auto Dealers’ Sales Success in a Social World : Social media is an increasingly relevant marketing tool for auto dealerships. Its ability to engage consumers where they socialize today -- and then pull them into the showroom -- is a growing reality. However, social media at your dealership doesn’t mean much if the sales team is forgetting the basics – those foundational socialization steps known as the road to the sale, customer follow up, and prospecting the household for additional opportunities. Soliciting friends and followers via Facebook, Twitter or dealer review sites is valuable, but it must be secondary to personal engagement on the showroom floor. As it has always been, selling cars is a process of engagement. Sales victory is earned by capitalizing on every inch of opportunity. Selling has always been a social process. Dealerships who embrace a culture of selling sociability: Engage every customer and are intentional about building ...

Need more of a Following? : You have a loyal group of  followers  right? They love the content you email out or blog about and share it religiously with their friends. Problem is, that loyal group of followers is pretty darn small. So how do you get your word out there? Recruit people with high influence on the Web to help get your word out to a larger audience. Yes, you need the cool kids. Danny Iny's Copyblogger  post titled "Four Proven Strategies for Finding a Wider Audience for Your Content," outlines the following tips so can help you do just that: Involve influential people in your project . First, brainstorm projects.Then, research which influencers would best suit those projects. In your proposal to these popular kids, discuss the benefits to them and their audience. Be available to answer questions, and be patient. If you can get an influencer to join in, you'll have a powerful person talking about your brand and content. Interview influencers.  "...

59% of Under-35 Auto Service Customers Want Communications Via Mobile Apps : DMEautomotive survey reveals auto service customers open to variety of communications platforms; BUT majority of younger demo want contact through ALL platforms Key Findings: Over a third of consumers are open to receiving communications from their automotive service providers via each platform Eighty-nine percent of those under 35 welcome contact via email; 85% via mail; 64% via text; 62% via live calls; 59% via mobile apps and 56% via recorded calls Under-35 servicers use more forms of media, more intensely: 3 to 6 times more likely to scan QR codes, have a service provider mobile app, and turn to social networking sites, online video, blogs, etc. for maintenance research Daytona Beach, FL – October 22, 2012  – DMEautomotive (DMEa), the leader in science-based, results-driven automotive marketing , today released its second report on how (and how frequently) auto service customers want to be conta...

Old Habits Die Hard: Cross-Zone Scripting in Dropbox & Google Drive Mobile Apps : Recently, as part of a broader research into mobile application security, I discovered a security vulnerability in several file-sharing mobile apps: App Name Vulnerable Version DropBox 1.4.6 (iOS) + 2.0.1 (Android) Google Drive 1.0.1 (iOS) Exploiting this vulnerability, an attacker could steal arbitrary files from a DropBox / Google Drive user by tricking him into viewing a malicious HTML file inside the mobile app. By abusing the way in which these app render HTML files, an attacker could bypass Same Origin Policy restrictions and read files that are accessible to the app itself, including sensitive user content and application confi guration. Cross-Zone Scripting was once quite common in Desktop environments until it was mitigated by browser vendors. Unfortunately, this vulnerability type has been carried on to the Mobile world, where it is still a threat. As always, it...

A Fun Way that Dealers can Improve their SEO and Touch the Community : When the topic of SEO comes up, many people envision HTML code and meta tag adjustments. They think of keyword stuffing. They consider the bounds set by the OEM of what they can and cannot do with their websites and how far they can push the boundaries to extend their market reach. They don't usually imagine finding cool images and videos of epic cars or amazing places, but that's one activity that dealers and SEOs can do to affect their overall search rankings as well as reach out to their communities with amazing and sharable content. Today, social has become a tremendous SEO tool. Content is the key to true social interactions. The best content is informative, fun, or both. You should see where I'm heading with this, but just in case... Step 1: Find Content that YOU Enjoy There are two connections between our virtual world and the real world that need to be noted. On one hand, you have the ...

Search Queries Alerts in Webmaster Tools : Webmaster level: All We know many of you check Webmaster Tools daily (thank you!), but not everybody has the time to monitor the health of their site 24/7. It can be time consuming to analyze all the data and identify the most important issues. To make it a little bit easier we’ve been incorporating alerts into Webmaster Tools. We process the data for your site and try to detect the events that could be most interesting for you. Recently we rolled out alerts for Crawl Errors and today we’re introducing  alerts for Search Queries data. The Search Queries feature in Webmaster Tools shows, among other things, impressions and clicks for your top pages over time. For most sites, these numbers follow regular patterns, so when sudden spikes or drops occur, it can make sense to look into what caused them. Some changes are due to differing demand for your content, other times they may be due to technical issues that need to be resolved, su...

A new tool to disavow links : Webmaster level: Advanced Today we’re introducing a tool that enables you to disavow links to your site. If you’ve been notified of a manual spam action based on “unnatural links” pointing to your site, this tool can help you address the issue. If you haven’t gotten this notification, this tool generally isn’t something you need to worry about. First, a quick refresher. Links are one of the most well-known signals we use to order search results. By looking at the links between pages, we can get a sense of which pages are reputable and important, and thus more likely to be relevant to our users. This is the basis of PageRank , which is one of more than 200 signals we rely on to determine rankings. Since PageRank is so well-known, it’s also a target for spammers, and we fight linkspam constantly with algorithms and by taking manual action. If you’ve ever been caught up in linkspam, you may have seen a message in Webmaster Tools about “unnatural links”...

How to Find Core Keywords For Effective Online Marketing : by Stoney deGeyter There are many angles and avenues for researching keywords for your online marketing efforts. Some people focus on numbers such as search volume or keyword competition. Others might focus on the tools you use to dig up obscure keywords to target. While these may be good keyword metrics to consider, focusing on the keywords themselves should be the most important focus. You can optimize difficult or easy keywords and high or low search volume phrases, and each will help you reach different levels of success. But choose the wrong keywords and you'll see your marketing campaigns go a whopping nowhere! Why Core Terms are Important Using the research tools available, it's not difficult to come up with lists of hundreds or even thousands of keywords on any given topic. But before you dig too deep, you need to first get your keyword foundation. This foundation is the "core terms" that wil...