Gerald Scott of Wall Street Analyst Forum approached us to redevelop his firm’s web site offering information and registration serivices for analyst conferences for NYSE/NASDAQ/AMEX corporations in New York, Boston and London.

We just relaunched the web site about a week or so ago. We strived to create a web site design that fits what Gerald had in mind for the redesign. He provided us samples of work that we were to emulate for his new design. He wanted a simple design that acts as a marketing site for the analyst conferences they hold. The site also needed to make it easy for both companies signing up to present and people planning to attend to get the information they needed and/or registered.

Check out the web site at Analyst-Conference.com and let me know what you think so far. Feel free to make any suggestions for improvement. Gerlad and I would really appreciate it!

Please contact us if you would like more information regarding our web design services.

Our Windows Plesk Hosting accounts have been upgraded to the latest Plesk 8 version. This will help ensure a more stable control in the future.

More on Parallels Plesk:

Parallels Plesk Panel is the leading hosting automation control panel on the market. User-friendly and with multiple login roles that cater to all users, the Parallels Plesk Panel can have your web site up and running in no time.

The following tools are available at Parallels Plesk Control panel:

• Create A Domain. Management of domain names.
• Create Mailname. Management of email accounts.
• Create a Web User Account. Here user can create accounts for website users.
• Create a Database. Create or remove a Microsoft SQL or MySQL database.
• Install a Site Application. 55 installable application on chosen user domain; web library to management tools for business entities.
• Manage Files on Domain. Users can access and manage files with a web based file manager.

Plesk hosting with us is only $99/year or $10/month. If you have any questions regarding Parallels Plesk or Plesk hosting, please contact us.

Advantage Creations is proud to announce that we have upgraded Cart32 to Cart32 V7.0! Below are just some of the new features in this new version:

• Integrated Payment Gateway (Cart32 Gateway)
• Virtual Terminal & Virtual POS
• Integrated Store Builder (Beta)
• Checkout By Amazon & Amazon Simple Pay
• PayPal’s Payflow Pro update
• Add your own admin users with custom restrictions
• New customization options
• Stronger encryption
• Support for split knowledge dual control key management (required by PCI DSS)
• Improved user interface
• AJAX features to improve speed and usability
• Many performance improvements, tweaks and minor changes

For all customers currently using Cart32 V6.4 with us… you are all automatically upgraded to Cart32 V7.0! You don’t have to do a thing and there is no additional cost to you. Login to the new administration panel and enjoy!

I’ve been looking at the new system and some of the new features that stick out to me as being really usefull are the following..

1. The integration of Store32 is really cool. This will enable you to generate and maintain your entire retail store within Cart32. Just enter your ftp information and generate your store pages within Cart32.  Store pages are uploaded to your domain, while the Cart32 checkout pages are located on Cart32′s own secure server to ensure a safe and secure checkout for you and your customers.
2. Ability to modify Cart32 templates within Cart32. In previous versions, you needed to modify the pages and upload them outside of Cart32. Now you can do all this within Cart32 itself.
3. Amazon Payments – With Cart32 V7.0, Amazon Payments is integrated into your installation free of charge (Google Checkout still requires an extra module to be purchased). I don’t currently accept Amazon Payments for my own retail websites, but I will be checking this out as I think it’s a good idea to provide as many payment options to your customers as reasonably possible.
4. Cart32Gateway is also included and they have some decent rates. Currently set at 2.17% plus .27 per transaction. The 2.17% is lower than my current rate but the transaction fee of .27 is higher than my current rate. It looks like I would do better with Cart32Gateway on orders over $20, but better with my current provider with orders under $20. However, the difference for orders under $20 is fairly small and it be more convenient to be able to do all my order credit card processing within Cart32. A really nice option to have.

When I heard about the new version of Cart32, I was first hesitant to upgrade as I was worried about any disruption or incompatibilities with existing store data, but everything went very smooth and everything seems to be running great with the new version.

Cart32 hosting with us is only $120/year or $15/month (or $99/year or $10/month without Cart32). If you have any questions regarding Cart32 V7.0 or regarding Cart32 hosting, please contact us.

Bing.com is Microsoft’s new version of their search engine that replaced Live.com and MSN.com. Recently, Microsoft made a deal with Yahoo.com to merge some of their operations to better compete against Google.

Personally, I’m not sure how much the deal will help Yahoo get more traffic as I’m not sure why people would switch to Yahoo just to use Bing? Why wouldn’t they just go directly to Bing instead? It appears that Yahoo is just giving up on trying to compete in search like they did year’s ago when they made a similar deal with Google, which I believe contributed to making Google the powerhouse they are today. Yahoo essentially told the public “Google can handle search better than we can, but please come to Yahoo to do your Google searches” and the public asked why should I and just started going Google.com instead.

Here’s the breakdown of the deal…

First, Bing will take over management of Yahoo.com’s paid search ads. This most likely means that once the transition is made you will go to your Adcenter account to manage paid search ads for both Yahoo and Bing, which should save time. That’s the good news. The bad news is that this will most likely result in higher ad costs for ad clicks on Bing.com as Yahoo’s network is larger than Bing’s network and this means the average per click cost is likely to be higher as the competition for bids will be much higher for clicks on Bing.com’s website. That is if both users are consolidated together, which isn’t clear yet if that is what they intend to do, but it would definately make sense to that from Yahoo and Microsoft’s viewpoint to generate more revenue.

Second, Bing will take over management of Yahoo’s search. This most likely means that if you are ranking well in Yahoo’s natural search results now, it may not matter once the transition goes through. You will need to make sure that you are ranking well on Bing.com. Fortunately for us most of our clients web sites and our own web sites are actually ranking better on Bing than Yahoo, so this change will be a great benefit to us. However, the transition is not expected to go through for up to 24 months AFTER the deal gets regulatory approval.

Click here for a full press release: Bing/ Yahoo Search Deal

Action Steps to take:

1. If you don’t have a Microsoft Adcenter account, set one up (or have your internet marketing person do it) so that you can have ads ready and take part in the current cheap ad rates. However, I imagine that if the deal goes through and Yahoo and Microsoft will provide an easy way to merge the two accounts.

2. Check your Bing.com search rankings. If they are higher than your Yahoo.com rankings, congrats! You are in great shape for the transition. If they are significantly lower, have your SEO person look into why and take steps to fix this. However, it’s possible that your rankings may fluctuate as Bing.com is new an may still be tweaking their search algorithm. Also, there is plenty of time until the transition goes into affect.

If you would like help with your internet marketing, please contact us regarding our internet marketing services such as pay-per-click and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Question: Just wondering what you think of Bing – new search engine from Microsoft. Any thoughts about switching from Yahoo to Bing?

Answer: You shouldn’t remove yahoo paid search in favor of Bing, both are working independently for the time being. The deal between Yahoo and Bing is not certain yet as they are awaiting regulatory approval and then after that it could be up to 24 months before the merging of their natural and paid search systems.

At this time, I would suggest setting up a Microsoft Adcenter account and copying your existing ad information from your Yahoo/Google accounts to Microsoft Adcenter (since you don’t have an existing Microsoft Adcenter account).

Then, having all three accounts (Google, Yahoo and Adcenter) running concurrently bringing in the maximum amount of traffic. When (and if) the deal goes through, I’m sure they will provide more details about whether they plan to merge the accounts or not and how to proceed, but again, we have some time before you need to worry about that.

Stuart Hotchkiss of Hotchkiss Construction Services approached us to create a web site offering woodworking services and a full line of building and building restoration services in the northern New Hampshire area.

We just launched the web site this week. We strived to create a web site design that fits Hotchkiss Construction Services’ existing marketing materials for branding purposes.

We are now in the process of working with Stuart on formulating a search engine promotion strategy. We suggested a strategy involving both pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimization. Marketing for the site will use a more local focus.  For example, we may target terms such as “new building construction”, “high lift” or “building restoration”, but for our pay-per-click campaigns we would limit ads to only the New Hampshire area, which is the area they intend to serve, and for search engine optimization we would target terms such as “building restoration new hampshire” or “building restoration nh” instead of just “building restoration”.

Check out the web site at HotchkissConstructionServices.com and let me know what you think so far. Feel free to make any suggestions for improvement. Stuart and I would really appreciate it!

Please contact us if you would like more information regarding our web design services or if you need help with internet marketing.

BURLINGTON, VERMONT - February 11th, 2009

Advantage Creations, a Burlington, Vermont based web development company, is proud to announce the launch of the Hotchkiss Construction Services web site, offering woodworking services and a full line of building and building restoration services in the northern New Hampshire area.

URL: http://www.hotchkissconstructionservices.com/

“We are getting positive feedback on the new website. Good job!” stated Stuart Hotchkiss, founder of Hotchkiss Construction Services.

“With this web site we did our best to match the look and color scheme of the the client’s existing marketing materials.  It’s important that you have a consistant look across all your materials for branding purposes.  We think it came out great and the client has the ability to login and manage the pages themselves or call on us if needed.” stated Jeremy Ryan of Advantage Creations.

About Hotchkiss Construction Services

Hotchkiss Construction Services LLC. is located in the White Mountains of New Hampshire on Mount Starr King. Services include new building construction, building restoration, high lift, custom wood furniture, and custom home interior work.

About Advantage Creations

Advantage Creations offers a full line of professional web site services including Web Design, Internet Marketing, $99/year Domain Hosting and Registration, and Web site Management. Advantage Creations backs up their services with one of the strongest guarantees in the business. Clients must be absolutely satisfied or they don’t pay.

Jeremy Ryan, founder of Advantage Creations, has a degree in Marketing and 5 years of experience in e-commerce. Jeremy Ryan owns and operates successful retail websites including JLRyan.com and ChamplainCoffee.com and manages Hamlens.com and WildcatProducts.com

Contact:

Jeremy Ryan
Advantage Creations
53 Avenue C
Burlington, Vermont 05408
Phone: 802/735-2149
Web: http://www.advantagecreations.com
Email: jeremyryan@advantagecreations.com

Stuart Hotchkiss
Hotchkiss Construction Services
329 North Road
Jefferson, NH 03583
Phone: 603/586-7969
Web: http://www.hotchkissconstructionservices.com/
Email: hotchkiss@hughes.net

For the last couple days I’ve been trying a different instant messager called Digsby. So far, I’m quite impressed. For years now I’ve been using Trillian to consolidate all my different IM accounts into one messager such as Yahoo IM,
AIM, ICQ, etc. and Trillian has worked quite well for this.

However, Digsby goes a step further and includes most emails (which Trillian does too), but also popular social networking tools such as Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and LinkedIn.

You can even manage your email and social networking accounts within Digsby.

Digsby also saves a copy of all your chats if you like right on your computer for easy archiving.

Oh, and you can embed the Digsby Widget on your web site to allow visitors to

chat directly with you from your site. You can also customize the widget to fit the look of your web site as you can see to the right.

If you have a bunch of IM, social networking, and email accounts, you should give Digsby a try. Download Digsby.

Wishing you all a happy and safe Christmas and new year!  Below is a animated Christmas Card and a great light show… enjoy!

A Christmas video card below…

Animated Christmas Card – The best home videos are here

Christmas lights sequenced to Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Christmas Eve Sarajevo

Awesome Christmas Lights – Amazing videos are here

We have now completed the transfer of all websites hosted with us to a brand new Dual Quad Core Xeon 5420 64 bit server. All websites and email should now experience better, faster performance, just in time for the holiday season!

If you have any questions regarding the migration or wish to sign up for website hosting with us, please contact us.