Search Engine Marketing Blog by Tilak

Microsoft has launched Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 version in English, German, Japanese and Simplified Chinese languages.

As far as I know Windows Vista users will have to find the uninstaller for beta 1 and it is located under: Control Panel, Programs & Features and in the left menu: “Installed Updates” under the listing Windows Internet Explorer 8. You will then be required to restart your system before beta 2 can be installed.

In new IE 8 they have enhanced tabbed browsing, good looking address bar, Inprivate browsing, undo closed tabs. Even you can reopen last browsing session.

From yesterday I have been facing slower Internet connection but today my Internet service provider informed me the reason behind slow browsing.

Due to damage of submarine cable systems, we are having difficulty to accessing the Internet or experience slow browsing and to making international calls.

This failure has affected Gulf Arab region, Egypt, India and other countries as well. Egypt’ 70% of Internet network was down, while India reported it has cut 50% to 60% in bandwidth.

Nobody know how the cables were cut or weather was a factor because Storms had forced Egypt to close the northern mouth of the Suez canal on Tuesday.

It is expected to full restoration would take 10 to 15 days.

Today, Skype users is unable to make long distance phone calls over the Internet. It is not immediately clear how many users are affected but Skype users in India, Germany, Finland, and the United States reported difficulties logging on.

Skype has around 220 million accounts with usually 5-6 million users online at given time. The company was acquired by eBay in October 2005 for about $2.1 billion.

“Our engineering team has determined that it’s a software issue,” according to a site maintained by Skype. “We expect this to be resolved within 12 to 24 hours.”

During writing this post, Skype is also unable to login in my computer:( I am hoping to connect via Skype soon.

Jay Westerdal of DomainTools.com confirms Apple has bought a iPhone.com domain from Michael Kovatch. Michael didn’t confirm the sale price of his domain name yet but Jay believe sold price could be one million dollars.

Michael Kovatch had registered the domain back in 1995 and had plans to build a company on the domain.

After final the deal, domain is still in Michael domain account and Apple plans to transfer the domain in next week.

Apple’s much-hyped iPhone finally goes on sale in the US today.

The opening cost of the phone is $499 to $599 for the 4GB and 8GB models respectively. Apple said the iPhone’s battery was good for eight hours of talktime, six hours of net use or seven hours of video watching. The gadget – which melds a phone, Web browser and media player – is the best thing to happen since the iPod, say tech gurus. Apple also said it hoped to sell 10 million iPhones by 2008 and grab itself a 1% share of the mobile phone market.

The iPhone going on sale on 29 June is likely to be just the first of a long line of gadgets with future models adding the features and software lacking in the original.

AT&T has confirmed that the iPhone will be available in all 1,800 AT&T phone stores at 6 p.m. sharp on June 29, according to an interview with USA Today. “We fully expect one or more of our stores to run out of stock on the first or second day — my guess is the first day,” says Larry Carter, senior vice president of sales for AT&T, the iPhone’s exclusive U.S. distributor.

Google Desktop is now available for Linux users. Few months back it was available for Mac users too. Google Desktop for Linux can be used for finding important documents as well assearch through emails saved in Gmail or other applications. With this launch Google Desktop is available for Linux, Mac and Windows as well.

It also features the Quick Search Box ,which you can call up by pressing the Ctrl key twice. You can get results instantly after typing a words in the search box. It is available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

India’s leading mobile service operator Idea Cellular Wednesday entered into a strategic tie-up with global Internet brand Yahoo! to provide mobile search services. Yahoo!oneSearch is now available in 14 countries around the world.

Yahoo!oneSearch, launched in Asia in May, gives access to news, web images, financial information, weather conditions and navigating other websites. Information on Yahoo! oneSearch in India is available at in.mobile.yahoo.com.

“Our partnership with Idea Cellular is helping to extend Yahoo’s clear leadership in search for mobile users in India,” Yahoo Vice-President and General Manager (Connected Life Asia) David Ko said.

Idea Cellular’s Chief Marketing Officer Pradeep Shrivastava said: “Yahoo!oneSearch provides Idea with a competitive advantage by offering a reliable and easy-to-use mobile search offer to consumers in India.”

Yesterday, YouTube has announced international versions of web video services. It has launched nine versions across Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK.

“Video is universal and allows people around the world to communicate and exchange ideas,” said Chad Hurley, YouTube co-founder.

“Our mission is to entertain, inform and empower the world through video.” More than half of all viewers on YouTube were now from outside the US, Mr Hurley also added.

“We want to create a YouTube experience that is a local experience,” said Steve Chen, the service’s other co-founder.

“It’s not just about translating, it also about creating content unique to certain countries.”

I hope YouTube will launch in many more countries in the near future.

Flickr, the popular online photo-sharing site, said on 12th June it is moving further to internationalize the service by available versions in seven major languages besides English.

Flickr introduce sites in French, German, Korean, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and traditional Chinese, with other languages to follow. You can change your language by clicking on the available language links at the footer of every page. Flickr will remember your selection for your next visit. Due to change your language preference, you should take a new uploader as well. At the moment Windows versions are available.

YouTube has begun offering a Web-Based Remixer Tool that is powered by Adobe Premiere.

The “remixer” which is enables users to create more professional look of videos by fix together video clips, music, graphics and other effects, according to information found on the site. It lets you assemble your new video in an easy drag-and-drop timeline, and then publish it right back to YouTube.

Its been more than two weeks and haven’t posted anything new. Now I am back to blogging. I thank all my blog buddies for checking on me.