“Another obstacle Amazon will face is a lawsuit Apple filed March 18, which claims that Amazon is improperly using the term “App Store,” which Apple says it has trademarked.”
This quote got me thinking about Economics. I was an Economics and Math major in college. I am always thinking about Economic fairness. This lawsuit filed by Apple has everything to do with the opposite. They want to gain a competitive advantage in the market for apps by saying they coined the word “App Store”. Here are my thoughts on the validity of that lawsuit.
They can’t trademark the word “App” because that has been established as an abbrevation for the word application long before computers. People were sending in “Job Apps” and “College Apps” for as long as the word “Application” has been around. It is human nature to abbreviate a word so easy to abbreviate. We all know they didn’t invent the word “Store”. But apparently they invented the combination of the two words.
That is a joke in my opinion. An “App” is a product. A store is a place to sell a product. This would be like saying the first store to sell shoes and use the word “Shoe Store” should be allowed to trademark it. After all, shoes are the product they are selling in the store.
This discussion can get political but really think about what is fair. Economics teaches us that competition is good for the market place. Monopolies or businesses that are near monopoly status are bad. Competition is good because when the market is competitive it leads to a diverse offering of products and fair prices. Apples attempt at trademarking the phrase “App Store” is all an attempt to gain a seemingly bogus competitive advantage. You can’t get mad at them for doing it, but it isn’t fair to us, the consumer.
So taking away competition from the market is bad. Apple regulates their “App Store” in case you didn’t know. I know stories of frustrations with Apple in regards to apps. Stories involing some apps being approved and some not being approved or taking way longer to be approved that were coded the exact same way. Do we really want our phone apps coming from one place? And to add to that a place that regulates?
I’d like to add that I love Mac OSX and use Apple devices as a computer, mp3 player and phone. They still have the best quality and just need to keep focusing on that. Not pointless, waste of money lawsuits.
This is a pretty simple way to see how many and what pages Google or other search engines have “crawled” of your website. Go to Google and type in “site:yourdomainname.com”.
The results will be all the pages of your site on Google that have been indexed. These pages will always be possibilities of pages that could show up in a search.
This is useful for analyzing SEO. If you don’t have many pages indexed on Google, that could be the first step towards your sites SEO issues. No one is going to be able to find pages that aren’t there. As far as Google and other search engines are concerned, pages that aren’t indexed aren’t there.
If you are concerned about your sites SEO, this is step one to making sure you are making the best attempt at search engine optimizations. I check mine periodically and see that it is doing fine since 10+ pages of results appear.
I will always suggest running a blog on your site. A lot of times the reactions I get are of the “puh” variety. The “I can’t believe you are telling me to blog, blogging is for teenagers” mentality.
I don’t take much offense to that because I really am just an overgrown teenager sometimes. Just ask some of the students I tutor. But that is besides the point. You should blog! Here is why.
There are two big reasons you should blog. It builds a larger sitemap, and it is constantly changing content for your site. Your site may have mostly static content that you want people viewing. A completely static site is bad in the eyes of Google and the other major search engines. This is where blogging comes into play.
You don’t even need people reading your blog. You just need content changing so the “crawler bots” see that your site is changing and changing in a content rich manner (“crawlers” are the tools developed by search engines to make search engine pages). Your initial site may of had only ten pages of advertising about your business for which recommend this editable free pay stub template. Blogging ten simple, industry related posts about your business will double your sitemap. Search engines love seeing this!
So you should blog, but what should you blog about? It is important that you keep the blogging related to the content of your website. For example, my site’s blog is all about computer or web topics. This tells search engines “this site is about computers, the web, and technology”. This is what I want. I don’t want people coming to my site searching for pasta recipes.
If you have a site about law, blog about law. If you have a site selling a product, blog about your product and the industry it is involved with. You don’t have to blog frequently, but the more frequently the better. And yes, this has everything to do with optimizing search results. As a consequence you might as well try writing something your audience may find interesting though. For instance, this post I am hoping helps search results and at the same time tells customers to blog!
Macs are famous for not getting viruses. This is great. There still can be issues that are very common for Macs that slow down your computer. Many people don’t know about this simple way to fix your Mac that may be crashing on you or moving slower than expected.
Repairing file permissions is as simple as opening an application and clicking a button. Here is an eHow page on repairing disc permissions. Ignore the end of the list. All you need to worry about is opening Disc Utility and choosing to “Repair Disc Permissions” on your harddrive. The “Verify” step is pretty pointless but won’t hurt anything if you do it.
If you are a customer or potential customer and don’t have a Facebook fan page, I will suggest making one no matter what. You may laugh and say “Facebook, we don’t need to be on Facebook, its just for pointless socializing”.
Watch this video. The numbers don’t lie.
The most appealing fact I see in that video is when they type into the google search about how consumers trust advertisments/reviews on Facebook. “74% of consumers trust peer reviews” as opposed to “14% that trust advertisments”. So do you still think you shouldn’t be on Facebook? Do you think it will be too much work?
Having a Facebook fan page does not mean you need to update it at all. You can post once a month, once a year, once every 5 years. Whatever fits your schedule. Think of it as a reference point. Think of it as just another way to reach your audience. If it helps, it really just serves purposes similar to a website. My thoughts are why would you ever want to not expose yourself to as many people as possible.
Ok, so hopefully I have convinced you to make a Facebook page. But how? Another time. Soon. I need to go tutor.
