WHAT’S HAPPENING IN ECOMMERCE?
Magento announces Magento’s greater focus on the German market with the launch of a new German-language website and localized content. The new German-language site provides more comprehensive support, including localized website experience, case studies and data sheets. German visitors will automatically be redirected to the localized site experience. If you’re not in a German locale and would like to check it out, visit http://de.magento.com.
A new open source eCommerce platform from a one-time Magento engineer claims it can change online selling for small and mid-sized merchants with a new set of easy-to-use features, mobile-by-default design, and rapid modular development — although details are scarce – “Sellvana” received $5 million in seed investments. Read the full story.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN .NET DEVELOPMENT?
Here comes ASP.NET Project “Helios”! It allows more frameworks and components break their strict dependency on System. Web.dll. This new design promises to allow us to ship new functionality fully out-of-band and to avoid surprising developers with unwanted behaviors. Finally, there is a supplemental post available with further information available for more advanced developers. That post discusses performance and resource utilization in more detail. It also discusses using the Helios APIs directly without going through OWIN.
Microsoft is pleased to announce an update to ASP.NET DynamicData and EntityDataSource control, so that they work with Entity Framework 6. What’s in this preview?
- DynamicData provider for Entity Framework 6
- EntityDataSource control for Entity Framework 6
Check out some recent updates-
Announcing new Web Features in Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 CTP2
Announcing the Release of ASP.NET MVC 5.1, ASP.NET Web API 2.1 and ASP.NET Web Pages 3.1
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN CREATIVE?
What’s new for web designers in February, 2014? New web apps, icons, color resources, webmaster tools, graphics programs, CSS frameworks, JavaScript resources, and some really great new fonts. Check out!
Adobe announces that they’re integrating their Digital Publishing Suite with Adobe Experience Manager, in an effort to capture a larger market share of this growing sector. Adobe believes that the integration of the two platforms as part of the Adobe Marketing Cloud, together with the combination of Adobe Analytics will streamline delivery, speeding up production and reducing costs for thousands of digital content publishers worldwide.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN SEARCH?
Last year, Google introduced Shopping campaigns to a limited number of advertisers as a new, retail-centric way to manage and promote your products on Google. But, recently Google announced that Shopping campaigns are now available to all advertisers around the world. Based on feedback from early adopters, Shopping campaigns also now allow you to bulk edit your product groups at scale. API support and a bid simulator are coming soon. Google will continue to build out support for Shopping campaigns, working closely with external agencies and search management platforms as well. Know more.
Google Adwords launches flexible conversion counting. Flexible conversion counting is an improved way for you to count conversions that really matter to you. Now you can better measure the value of each click that turns into business results. Click to know more!
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN MOBILE?
AdRoll announced a private beta launch of a new mobile retargeting offering that enables marketers to retarget users across devices. The mobile retargeting solution allows marketers to identify high-intent desktop users and target them across mobile devices to promote app installs and conversions on mobile optimized sites. AdRoll, currently the only ad tech that integrates with both Facebook and Twitter, enables advertisers to retarget desktop site visitors as they visit Facebook and Twitter on their smartphones and tablets. Know more.
In a new global Mobile Media Consumption report, ad network InMobi asserts that “60 Percent Of Internet Access Is Mostly Mobile”.
Local directory and advertising provider Hibu published a study on small businesses (SMBs) and mobile marketing in the US and UK. The survey found that a whopping 45 percent of US and UK SMBs still didn’t have a website let alone a mobile optimized site. In both cases only 6 percent of respondents with websites said they were mobile optimized. Explore the other findings of the survey.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN SEO?
As much as small business owners may miss the simplistic link building days, all data indicates that SEO is now a much more complicated activity. While still strongly profitable, SEO in 2014 is integrated with social and PR in ways never before seen. See how and why?
Google released released a new Scraper Report form where webmasters can submit scraper sites that has copied their own content by providing Google with the source URL, where the content was taken from, and the URL of the scraper site where the content is being republished or repurposed, and the keywords where the scraper site was ranking on. Read more.
In the latest Google webmaster help video, Google’s Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts discusses whether EXIF data from pictures is a ranking factor in search results. The answer might surprise you, and will get many more webmasters looking into EXIF data and how they should be utilizing it within their images. Read the full story!
In a recent Google Webmaster Hangout, hosted by Google’s John Mueller, John revealed that even if you move your penalized site to a new domain name and don’t redirect the penalized site, Google may still find it and pass along the bad signals. In the video, says if you do not set up 301 redirects or use the change address tool in Google Webmaster Tools, Google may indeed know that you moved from domain A to domain B and pass along all the signals. Read full coverage.
Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam reaffirms the significance of backlinks. While Cutts says there is no public version of the search engine that excludes backlink relevancy, he confirms his team has run internal tests to see what would happen. Watch video to know more!
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN WEB DEVELOPMENT (PHP / OPEN SOURCE)?
Linux gamers have too many options now! Previously, the only options were simple open source games and the handful of commercial ports that could still be obtained. By comparison, the present day has more and more options emerging, and it can feel like a full time job keeping up with developments. Well, it could be due to Local menus returning to Unity, and the release of VirtualBox 4.3.8. Know in detail!
Uhuru Software, a company specializing in delivering Microsoft platforms support for Linux announced the release of Windows support and a management console for Cloud Foundry to the open source community. The release includes Uhuru’s Cloud Foundry (CF) version 2-compliant Uhuru Cloud Commander (UCC), a BOSH automation tool, and support for Windows and .NET applications and Microsoft SQL Server services. Here’s the full coverage.
The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP 5.6.0alpha2 (source: http://www.php.net/ ). This release adds new features and fixes bugs. PHP 5.6.0alpha2 comes with a number of new features, including:
- Peer certificates are now verified by default when connecting to SSL/TLS servers
- An exponentiation operator has been added: **
- Output encoding handling has been simplified by using default_charset as the default character encoding
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN SOCIAL?
Twitter-
Twitter fights for more transparency! Twitter takes a public stand in support of increased transparency and Global Government Surveillance Reform. Read full story!
Google+-
Google+ Hangouts for business just got real! Vidyo, the company, whose back-end technology helps power Hangouts, is launching a tool that will fold Google+ Hangouts into existing systems, finally bridging the gap between Hangouts and the boardroom. See how?
Facebook-
Facebook finally announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire WhatsApp, a rapidly growing cross-platform mobile messaging company, for a total of approximately $16 billion, including $4 billion in cash and approximately $12 billion worth of Facebook shares. Read More!
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN ANALYTICS?
Google Analytics is happy to announce a deeper integration between AdWords and Google Analytics for Mobile Apps that will help advertisers make faster and better decisions about marketing their apps. Now, Any user of both AdWords and Google Analytics can have this set of reports by just enabling auto-tagging. link your AdWords and Google Analytics accounts and enable auto-tagging, and you’ll start receiving a new set of detailed reports on things like day parts, destination URLs and keyword positions. These automatic reports show exactly how your search and display campaigns are performing and offer rich insights into the kind of users they’re driving to Google Play. Check the official announcement!
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN CONTENT?
Recently, Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, has publicized that “Not all link building is bad.” Link building has significantly changed, and for the better, but the premise behind the concept remains the same. There are still many ways to build links to your content without being a spammer. Consider link reclamation, partnerships, sponsorships and even traditional marketing (press releases, radio, TV, etc.) that can result in a link. Read full coverage here!
Matt Cutts shared – “Cutts said that an accumulation of social signals may be able to give the search engine bots a clue as to whether your content is authentic and should be trusted, and could eventually affect search engine rankings. The only definitive thing about social signals, Cutts has said, is that social signals are not being used to rank content right now. ”
Cutts said that you do not need to worry about the grammar people use on your site. You should worry about your writing style and your grammar but there is no need to worry about how other people are writing comments on your site. Watch video from Google’s Matt Cutts addressing the concern over having third-party comments with poor grammar on your blog or site.
Content Strategy Gets Tactical! The editorial calendar is a must-have tool for any content marketing strategy, and one that can be adapted to varying needs. Check out a list of additional resources for the content “newsroom” that range from nice-to-have to must-have elements of content marketing initiatives, depending on the organization and goals.
Upcoming – Industry Roundup, March, 2014
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