Season’s Greetings Thank You Gift from ZZ News and Satire…

Rockbridge Designs, one of our affiliate partners in conjunction with PayLoadz Downloads, is allowing us to offer a free download of their 90+ Flash Arcade Game bundle pack all through the month of December. This is our way of saying thank you to our subscribers over the holidays.

The download contains  some 90+ fun arcade style games that can run stand alone on your PC simply by double clicking on the game’s .swf file. Full instructions are included in the download. We have actually used these on our site (see our right hand margin) as a fun way to help attract returning visitors. So now you can use these as well on your site or just to have fun on your PC or laptop.  You don’t even need to subscribe to ZZ News and Satire to download it.  This is our way of saying thanks and attracting more subscribers. The free bundle pack is the first in an existing series of three Flash Arcade Bundles I II and III. There are NO time limits, special registrations or any annoying pop ads in these games.  If you like them of course there are others downloads at ridiculously low prices at their site but this free package from us is our way of saying…

Thank You and Happy Holidays from ZZ News and our affiliate partners.

You can find the free download at the Rockbridge Designs Payloads Store.

This has to be among the best call center comeback phone calls ever…

Too funny for words… We thought it was worth sharing with you considering all the insanity that surrounds us lately.

New Free Website Uptime Monitoring Service

Website Monitoring Alerts

If you have a website or blog running under ANY publishing platform it’s always a good idea to be alerted if your site is down for any reason! Rockbridge Services LLC has introduced a new website monitoring system that can provide you that notification. We have added some links where you can go directly to their site and test it out. You can also sign up your website for free and then try out their notification service in real time before subscribing. They offer both a free version as well as a professional premium upgrade – It’s YOUR choice which is fine with us…

This new service is worth checking out if you don’t have any method of monitoring your website’s uptime and want to be alerted to your cell phone or Blackberry if your site goes down…

Don’t Let Downtime Ruin Your Business! 1. Know problems earlier 2. Fix problems earlier 3. Improve your uptime dramatically Sign Up FREE · Learn More · Demo

Here is some additional information taken from their website…

Rockbridge Services provides: Website monitoring, web server monitoring & server monitoring from worldwide locations. Receive downtime alerts via SMS & Email directed right to your cell phone or any of your key email account(s).

	Features
	Monitoring Network
	SMS/Email Notification
	Quick Test

During a harsh government crackdown following the disputed Iranian elections, the Twitter social network has become something of a lifeline for the people of Iran. The Iranian government may have blocked or shut down various communication mediums – like phone lines, the Facebook social network, YouTube videos and even text messaging – but people are still sending photos and information from Iran in short 140-character bursts.

“Social media is empowering the masses to connect, share and organize in ways of incredible scale and speed that are much harder, if not impossible, to control,” said Dangson. “The situation in Iran is illustrating this phenomenon where government and media outlets are no longer the gatekeepers to news. The man on the street is now the reporter in the field covering the situation in Iran thanks to the penetration of connected devices and availability of social messaging applications.”

– Computer World

Before gadget geeks around the world get too excited, one should take this all with a grain of salt. The twittering door swings in both directions. Free openly blasted annonymous content can also be used to spread mis-information by cleaver evil anti freedom factions as well.  Once has to take all their twitters with a grain of salt.  Nonetheless, this is awesome.  Its been said “Life will always find a way — Jurrasic Park “….  so to freedom and liberty.

Bling for ‘ Bing ‘: Microsoft to spend $100m branding new search engine !! — National Business Review

Microsoft is in the final stages of deciding between two names for its search engine – Bing being the front runner. The winner will be backed by a $US100 million brand campaign. From leaked memos and employee blog posts, it seems Microsoft is now trialling a new-and-improved version of its search engine, Live. While little known in these parts, or anywhere, Live is central to Microsoft’s plan to chase down Google’s huge lead in search, and search ads. The company’s ex-pat CFO, Chris Liddell is one who agrees that “Live” isn’t working, telling the Seattle Tech Report: “We have to think about things like a new brand, and marketing that.” Now, Advertising Age says Microsoft will spend $US80 million to $100 million advertising its re-launched search engine… — NBR

Tech Jackal explains the sometimes muddled and confused Microsoft search engine strategy. gOOgle has really turned on the advertising push and is full throttle on leveraging the latest social networking and Web2.0 technologies in case you haven’t noticed. Perhaps it’s the new opportunities in the on-line advertising market that has giant Mr. Softee stirring once again awakening from its sleep…

OUR FAVORITE gOOgle ad…

It’s no secret that Google has a 64% market share in the search engine market. Yahoo has captured a little over 20% and Microsoft is bouncing along at under 9% market share. Microsoft is planning to change those statistics by pouring 80 to 100 million dollars into a new advertising campaign, which will promote a new improved search engine model. This model will provide groupings of search results that are better organized, so the user can find the information needed in less time. Microsoft is also creating a Yahoo partnership, which would focus on selling ads for each other and that could eat into some of Google’s action.

Online advertising as Google has repeatedly demonstrated can produce results. The company reported a 6% increase in revenues over last year, thanks to a focused online advertising campaign. Microsoft is on the verge of introducing their new advertising rich search engine business model, as well as the brand name of the service any day. The outcome of this heavyweight advertising match will not be apparent for quite some time, but Microsoft is dedicated to improving search results as well as improving their bottom line, so they have a mission.

Google has created a search engine that is an automatic response for some casual users and their loyalty will continue to keep the company on top, but there are other users who want to get information quickly because of business needs. The Microsoft name can have an impact on that group, if the advertising dollars are spent to attract those users. — [Hat Tip: Tech Jackal]

You have to give the marketing folks at gOOgle some credit for having eyes that are bigger than their … well….  you know…

Web Development Tip For Our Readers:

Website Monitoring

If you have a website or blog running under ANY platform it’s always a good idea to be alerted if your site is down for any reason! Rockbridge Services LLC has introduced a new website monitoring system that can provide you that notification.  We have added some links where you can go directly to their site and test it out. You can also sign up your website for free and then try out their notification service in real time before subscribing…  Sweet. They offer both a free version as well as a professional upgrade…

This new service is worth checking out if you don’t have any method of monitoring your website’s uptime and want to be alerted to your cell phone or Blackberry if your site goes down…

Don’t Let Downtime Ruin Your Business! 1. Know problems earlier 2. Fix problems earlier 3. Improve your uptime dramatically Sign Up FREE · Learn More · Demo

Here is some additional information taken from their website…

Rockbridge Services provides:   Website monitoring, web server monitoring & server monitoring from worldwide locations.  Receive downtime alerts via SMS & Email directed right to your cell phone or any of your key email account(s).

	Features
	Monitoring Network
	SMS/Email Notification
	Quick Test

PSPad Editor is a programmers editor with support for multiple syntax highlighting profiles. It comes with a hex editor, CP conversion, text differences, templates, macros, spellcheck option, auto-completion, Code Explorer and much more. The program is pre-configured for the most popular programming languages (VB, C++, SQL, PHP, ASP, Python etc.) and you can further customize the syntax settings. PSPad includes several additional tools that are especially useful for HTML editing (compress, format code) and also integrates TopStyle Lite and TidyHTML. The program can be used as IDE for any compiler. Additional features include support for project, file browsing, custom shortcuts, built-in FTP client to edit files on the server and much more. Loaded with features; extensive syntax highlighting; macro recorder; projects; templates; integrated FTP; HEX editor;spell checker.

This is one of the best piece’s of freeware on the web today. We have been using it here at ZZ N&S for several years and it comes highly recommended. If you are just looking for a good replacement for Notepad or Wordpad, or you are a programmer and need extensive features, you won’t find a better piece of free software with this much horsepower. — Scotty

The below story was “leaked” by TechCrunch on August 26th. If true this could become a very interesting relationship, allowing emerging journalists exposure to much wider audiences. I have written several articles for Blogcritics in the past and I have found them to be extremely professional. Eric Olsen, the owner/publisher of Blogcritics, has developed what was once a simple portal with an “open voice” philosophy into an outstanding outlet of free speech and idea exchange. We wish Eric well and certainly look forward to the successful new relationship with Technorati.

Award Winning Site Gives Bloggers an Entry Point for Publishing to a Broad Audience

San Francisco, CA, August 26, 2008 – Technorati, the recognized leader in blog search technology today announced the acquisition of Blogcritics.org, an online community of bloggers and a full service news and reviews source.

The award winning property hosts a community of more than 2,000 bloggers and authors that contribute hundreds of articles every week: news, opinions, and product reviews across entertainment, technology, and politics. The site also provides bloggers with an entry point to publish their content to a much broader audience than their own blogs afford.

“As part of Technorati Media, we’ll be able to grow the community and further improve our platform to attract new audiences,” said Eric Olsen, founder of Blogcritics. “Technorati’s mission to help bloggers and people who read blogs is the ideal complement for us.”

In addition to devoting resources to scaling the property and its operations, Technorati Media will seek to work more closely with Blogcritics authors so they can monetize their own blogs. Advertisers will benefit by the ability to run more fully integrated programs across the site and its related blogs.

“Together with the bloggers themselves, Blogcritics has successfully built a thriving community with an extensive following, and given bloggers what has become a very large forum in which to express themselves. We’re thrilled to help them realize their full potential,” said Richard Jalichandra, president and CEO of Technorati.

Blogcritics joined the Technorati Media Network in June. There are no plans to merge the two properties.

About Blogcritics
Blogcritics.org was founded in 2002 by veteran broadcaster and music journalist Eric Olsen. Originally conceived for music fanatics to write and post reviews online, the site quickly evolved and took on a life all its own. Hundreds of bloggers flocked to Blogcritics.org, and sections including politics, film, television, culture, and books were added to support a truly grassroots phenomenon. Product reviews came to be supplemented by news, interviews, and opinion articles. Writers and readers alike found kindred spirits online who were interested in both pop culture and the world at large. In 2005, online gaming, sports, and science/technology sections were added to the mix.

About Technorati
The recognized authority in the blogosphere, Technorati collects, organizes, highlights and distributes the online global conversation, surfacing this content to millions of consumers. Founded as the first blog search engine, Technorati has become the definitive source for the top stories, opinions, photos and videos emerging across news, entertainment, technology, lifestyle, sports, politics and business. Technorati tracks not only the authority and influence of blogs, but also the most comprehensive and current index of who and what is most popular in the blogosphere.  —- TechCrunch

Have you just started a Facebook or MySpace site and you’re looking for something slick to add to it, here is something that might be just what you are looking for. Try embeding some flash games for your visitors! You can easily add arcade style flash games to your website or blog that has the effect of encouraging your visitors to bookmark and stick around your site!  You can find entire collections of arcade style flash games over at OpenWeb Digital Downloads that have instructions on how to do this that will work fine on just about any website including MySpace and Facebook, but you have to do some extra work which we explain below. These game packs are tested, screened against viruses, categorized, packaged and made available for immediate digital download. We even added a free sample download in our Downloads page so you can download a few and try them out.

Full packages are available over at OpenWeb Downloads in their arcade. They are also available over at PayLoadZ along with other software like RSS Directory listings to add your site’s RSS feed to.   Here is an example of what can be done:

The Shooting Arcade game to the left is one typical example on what you can do. You can register at the OpenWeb Downloads Arcade and check them out yourself before downloading and also have some fun at the same time! We also loaded three of these games in our right margin using a wordpress widget to give you an idea of how you can use this to increase “site stickiness”.  We did it for this article, but you can see that you might develop it much further on your own site.

The download zipped packages for blogs contains flash games (in .swf format) including its respective thumbnail (.gif) along with a simple instruction guide (.pdf) explaining how to configure them so your visitors can play them right on your site just like the Shooting Arcade example above. Here is a list of games in one of the bundles [Flash Game Inventory Listing (.pdf) ]. They also have Special Packs which appear to also be available for vBulletin Arcades and Nuke Arcades (which are full blown gaming arcades) that include install scripts for these more formal arcade sites. Here is the key….  These .swf flash game files will run on your website, blog or even off line as a stand alone game on your PC or laptop once you understand how to link to them and run them.

You will need some server space with  FTP access in order to do this seamlessly to link to them remotely.  If you don’t have access to a server we provide a link below to an excellent free hosting service.

If you do have access to a server what you do is simply upload all the files in the pack and then link to them in a post, or in a special area in your margin, (See our right margin as an example) or link to them anywhere else on your site that you choose similar to how you link a picture file (.gif or .jpg). They have instructions with details on how to do this in a .pdf file in the download zip.

For example: <a href=”LOCATION OF .SWF FILE ON SERVER”><img src=” IMAGE FILE ON SERVER OF FLASH GAME ” border=”0″ title=”" alt=”" /></a> When you click it will launch anyone’s browser that has macromedia flash running. Just about everyone does these days.  Their instructions had some info about Adobe and Macromedia Flash as well.

If your server host (ISP) doesn’t allow file uploading and hosting or you don’t have access to an server, then check out FileCrunch. Filecrunch provides a free file hosting option which anyone can use. Very sweet! Flash games right in your blog or website!

Summary: This is an easy way to entertain your visitors and also get them to stick around and give them another reason to bookmark your site and return!  It always helps if your site has interesting content to start with, but providing some additional enterainment can sure help you increase return visits.

For our readers who have their own websites or blogs we thought we would share with you the scoop on this new web traffic service we are trying out here on ZZ N&S.

If you are interested in participating in a refreshing new approach to blog traffic exchange without having to surf yourself into oblivion to increase credits, you might seriously consider subscribing to this recent new traffic exchange service – BlogRush!

We have been trying it here and we are finding the underlying software very interesting and promising. The developers there have been busy creating a somewhat intelligent and interactive software network which adjusts to variations in the traffic within the network itself and targets like content sites.

Example Reporting

There is no surfing necessary by the blog owner or anyone else. A small widget is placed on your site, like the one above similar to the one in our margin to the right, which publishes links from new blog posts via RSS from the member network. The widgets send targeted catagory posts to network members. That’s the key! The links are targeted similar to the targeting in Google’s Adsense for content similar to that on your site. They have wonderful graphical reporting.

You can subscribe here if you are interested and it’s free. You will not be disappointed, it costs nothing, and you get instant increased site visits. It uses a set it and forget it approach that beats the other timed surfing sites which will go nameless. We have also found that if you couple it with membership in a RingSurf webring, like ZZ OpenRing, you end up with an amplified reinforcing affect. Just keep BOTH the ZZ OpenRing ring code and BlogRush widget visible at the top margins of your blog like we do here and the combined effect is maximized.

We thought we would pass this find along to you, our readers. Right now we can say it is an excellent system with zero maintenance. We recommend you give it a try. — ZZ N&S Staff /Scotty