Yahoo’s Site Explorer was a very important source for businesses who want to get SEO relevant information about their competitors. Yahoo closed the popular service at the end of last year. That means that Yahoo no longer offers information about competing websites.

SEOprofiler is a web app that helps businesses to get important competitive information quickly and easily:

1. Spy on the backlinks of any website

The links that point to a website are Google’s most important ranking signal. The backlink analysis tools in SEOprofiler enable businesses to find out why their competitors rank highly for particular keywords.

By reverse-engineering the backlink strategy of their competitors, businesses can outrank them on Google.

2. Spy on the Google rankings of your competitors

SEOprofiler also enables businesses to spy on the organic rankings of a website on Google. That enables businesses to get a detailed overview of the search engine presence of any competitor.

3. Spy on the Google AdWords ad campaigns of your competitors

Detailed information about the Google AdWords ad campaigns of your competitors is also available on SEOprofiler: which ads do your competitors run for which keywords in which regions? The answers to these questions can help businesses to get more customers through Google’s ad system.

The competitive intelligence tools in SEOprofiler provide much more information than Yahoo’s SiteExplorer did. Businesses who are interested in getting higher rankings on Google, Yahoo and Bing get a good alternative with SEOprofiler.

A free analysis of any website is available at the SEOprofiler website: http://www.SEOprofiler.com/x/analyze

In addition to the new competitive intelligence tools, SEOprofiler offers a complete suite of SEO tools that help businesses to get more customers through Google and other search engines:

• Link building and link management tools
• Keyword research, analysis and management tools
• Web page optimization tools
• Web page ranking monitor
• Social media tools
• Google AdWords ads research and optimization tools
• Tutorials and communities

Further information and a free account are available at “http://www.SEOprofiler.com“.

OnlineClock.net has expanded its services to include background noise to help those who have trouble falling asleep. The new Moods Clock is a great addition to the website. It’s simple to use and studies have proven that background noises are good for the promotion of sleep. There are many quirky little timers and clocks available on the Online Clock website; however, this addition is quite useful for the more zombie-like among us who toss and turn and spend too much time trying to wind down into their sleep cycles.

The Moods clock offers the very same Online Alarm Clock that everyone who uses the website is familiar with, but it has an additional new feature of a white noise generator that includes a host of choices for background sounds. Users can use it as an alarm clock to wake themselves up or to set free online reminders.

After setting the online clock alarm, members can choose from many background sounds to promote sleep. The different sounds help them to relax and fall asleep more easily. The choice of sounds include sounds of rain, the sounds of a forest, fireplace sounds, ocean waves, cricket noises, lounge music, plain white noise, aquarium sounds and even the sounds of familiar city streets. Of course, not all sounds are relaxing for everyone; that is why OnlineClock.net has made so many choices available. The quality of the sound is excellent. The cricket noises are so realistic that if you play them while city dwellers are present they may begin searching their room for bugs!

The innovations of the original Online Alarm Clock website just keep coming. New features and clocks are constantly being added to the website to increase the usefulness of its many online clocks, timers, stopwatches, alarms and countdowns. The website is used by literally millions of users each month and it continues to grow in popularity around the world. Users of the site find it both useful and fun. That is the continued goal for Tom Churm, creator and owner of the site. When interviewed about his website, he said: “We intend to continue to provide a useful, fun site for our visitors. After all, Fun is a very important aspect to the site!”

Mr Churm is very enthusiastic about his popular Online Clock website and when asked what might be the next addition for the many loyal followers of the site, he said: “I am constantly thinking of new and enjoyable ways in which to further develop the website. I simply will not stop creating fun, user-friendly ways to experience time!” The site is fun to use, sleekly designed and simple to operate.

The Moods Clock is a great tool for those who have stressful days. They can use the background sounds and white noise of the Moods Clock to help wind down and fall asleep. The alarm function will help them wake up, so that they will feel refreshed and ready for a brand new day. Who would have thought that the world’s original alarm clock website would begin offering sound therapy for the sleepless? OnlineClock.net continues to wow the users of their website with this great addition to their amazing collection of innovative clock gadgets. You can try the Moods Clock now by visiting http://moods.onlineclock.net/.

Using highly anticipated and innovative technologies, “Glabber will advance the internet into Web 3.0and change the way people think about and use the internet,” says co-founder William Reid.

Fellow co-founder Charles Gindi adds, “To fully explain Web 3.0 would be to give away all of our secrets, but we can tell you a little of what we are working on now.”

Many people still have apprehension about trusting the internet because of the abundance of false and misleading information, where most often you know very little about the people and websites who say it. To change this Charles says, “Glabber will release a unique Web 3.0 Application that brings a high level of trustworthiness and credibility to everything you see online and the motivation behind it.” The uses for this technology are endless, and will assist in alleviating many problems that plague the internet today by decreasing the time people spend looking through incorrect or misleading information, minimizing malicious content, and giving people the power and control to have their voice heard.

Major search engines basically have a monopoly and determine how and even if people can find your business. Glabber’s technologies will include a Web 3.0 Search Engine, that uses exclusive algorithms which provide superior search results, ensuring that even if you have a small business – you will be seen, without SEO manipulation, huge popularity, or already being a multinational corporation.

Shopping online is generally considered somewhat boring and dull compared to shopping in the real world. Glabber will make shopping online into a more entertaining experience by utilizing a Web 3.0 E-commerce technology to create a new and exciting way of shopping online, and at the same time greatly boosting visibility and sales for small businesses worldwide.

Charles says, “Glabber will bring about Web 3.0 by implementing some very important changes to how the internet functions – making it significantly more like the real world.”

Glabber, a privately held company based in New York City is empowering people to take control of and change their world. To become part of the Glabber Web 3.0 social networking movement please go to http://glabber.com and to learn more about Glabber please go to http://glabber.com/about

appMobi (www.appmobi.com) today announced public beta availability of playMobi™, a cross-platform HTML5-based game development, deployment, and monetization SDK. playMobi gives HTML5 game developers an elegant JavaScript API solution to the many issues they face, including user authentication, in-game payments, social player engagement, scoring and leaderboard management. The core technology of playMobi is based on TapJs, which pioneered the social network category for HTML5 games and was acquired by appMobi in 2011. Developers can apply to join the playMobi beta program at www.appmobi.com/playmobi.

“With a single JavaScript API, playMobi gives HTML5 game developers all the tools they need to create interesting and socially engaging games that run on iOS, Android and Facebook platforms,” said Sam Abadir, CTO of appMobi. “playMobi includes slick in-app purchasing capabilities based on appMobi’s patent-pending ‘1Touch’ technology, making the experience very simple and highly secure. playMobi leverages the rapidly expanding HTML5 platform, offering game developers the unique ability to ‘write it once’ and deploy the same code to iOS, Android, Facebook, and the open Web — fully compliant with each platform’s terms of service.”

Scirra is the developer of “Construct 2,” a leading HTML5 game development environment. Director Ashley Gullen said, “Like appMobi, Scirra believes HTML5 is the gaming platform of the future. We’re excited by the potential of cross-platform IAP, leaderboards and achievements. We look forward to making playMobi really easy to use in games made with Construct 2.”

One interface enables In-App Purchases for all platforms
In an industry “first,” playMobi enables cross-platform in-app purchasing with its 1Touch in-app payment system. When a player makes a purchase, playMobi automatically completes the transaction using the correct in-app-purchase backend system, based on the device in use. When running on iOS, playMobi uses iTunes; on Android, Google Payments; on Facebook, Facebook Credits; and on the Open Web, PayPal. By providing a simple JavaScript programming interface that seamlessly supports e-commerce on the four most popular mobile gaming platforms, playMobi eliminates a huge headache for game developers who want to make money with their games.

Built-in Social Player Engagement Features – Interactive Leaderboards & Badges
playMobi includes social gaming tools that game developers can use to increase the “stickiness” of their games. User login is simple and easy using Facebook Connect. Tools are also provided to create and manage leaderboards, game achievements, player analytics, and cloud-based storage of game status and inventory.

Game Levels, Scores and Inventories Saved across Multiple Devices, even Across Platforms
Because today’s casual gamers increasingly play on multiple devices (both mobile and desktop), playMobi enables multi-device and even multi-platform social game play, supporting HTML5 Web-based games, Facebook games, and iOS and Android hybrid games created with PhoneGap or appMobi. For example, with playMobi, the achievement level and high score from a player’s lunchtime session on his iOS iPhone game will be in place when he plays the Facebook version of the game later on his home laptop. playMobi’s cross device/cross platform social gaming capability is another industry “first.”

Game Analytics Let Developers “Look Over Players’ Shoulders” to Improve Gameplay
playMobi gives HTML5 game developers important new insight into how their games are actually being played. Detailed analytics can be captured as the game is played, isolating trouble spots or levels that are too easy. Because high-score cheating is an issue on the open Web, playMobi allows developers to create rules-based checks on posted scores, eliminating most score hacks and protecting leaderboard validity. Integrating playMobi analytics into a game is simply a matter of adding the playMobi JavaScript library and a few lines of JavaScript code.

playMobi complements appMobi’s existing HTML5 gaming technology, which includes directCanvas, multiSound, and directBox2D, forming an integrated, high performance platform that creates games that perform well as native iOS and Android app store games on Facebook and on the open mobile Web. playMobi is being offered free of charge to a limited number of developers during a short testing phase. Interested developers can sign up for the beta program at www.appmobi.com/playmobi.

EarthBuzz Software has built a 3D engine capable of showing an interactive 160 megapixel NASA Blue Marble rendition with deep zoom in its latest product EarthBuzz Free Weather which runs on the Apple A4 processor at lightning fast speeds.

EarthBuzz Free Weather overlays live satellite weather data and Global Forecasting System image layers, over the NASA Blue Marble high-resolution earth imagery. In addition to the 160 megapixel Blue Marble rendition it also has overlays of animated real-time satellite clouds, earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, live weather conditions and Twitter friends using geo-location.

The EarthBuzz engine uses a sophisticated tiling technique innovated by NASA. Instead of using Mercator projection tiles, like our competitors, the EarthBuzz Engine uses a technique known as Tessellated Octahedron Tiling. This gives EarthBuzz superior fidelity around the poles compared to competing virtual earth software.

The satellite cloud layers are currently only 1 megapixel due to bandwidth constraints although it is possible with sponsorship and support that EarthBuzz Software will release a high fidelity satellite cloud layer in an upcoming version.

The live weather condition data, forecast data, animated satellite cloud image layers and global forecast system image layers are made available from CustomWeather, Inc a San Francisco based weather data provider.

Michael Clark, Managing Director of EarthBuzz Software, tells us there is a back-story behind EarthBuzz Free Weather and the EarthBuzz Engine.

“It’s really a statement on the openness of information and respect for the creators and innovators that have made this information available such as NASA and NOAA. There is a huge investment in satellite remote sensing infrastructure for which data is made available to small companies like EarthBuzz Software, giving the potential to innovate and add value. These governmental open data initiatives create a huge downstream benefit that expands and enriches the entire application ecology.”

While EarthBuzz Software is based out of Singapore, the largest proportion of profits from the ad-supported EarthBuzz Free Weather and its companion ad-free paid version EarthBuzz Weather go to companies in the United States such as Apple, Inc, for its iTunes App Store channel, CustomWeather, Inc for its weather data feed and Amazon, Inc who host the cloud computing infrastructure behind the EarthBuzz Free Weather service.

EarthBuzz Software is hugely thankful to those who make their channels, information and infrastructure openly available to international companies such as EarthBuzz Software, based in Sunny Singapore. Apple has given small developers a wonderful opportunity to innovate and create world-class mobile applications.

In recognition of this, the initial release of EarthBuzz Free Weather is first available in the United Sates as a statement on our respect for openness and freedom of information. Europe tends to provide access to satellite weather data at prohibitive costs for small developers whereas the US government believes that opening this information up to innovators creates more downstream economic benefits from value added services. Many other countries such as Singapore and New Zealand have similar open access government data initiatives.

EarthBuzz would love to have the backing of NASA or Twitter. Imagine a mobile app visualizing real-time social network information on the EarthBuzz 3D earth engine. This would allow the potential to see trending topics and global sentiment in real-time with analytics from the Twitter fire-hose. The technology platform is available but EarthBuzz Software needs sponsors and partners to aid with development and cover bandwidth costs for a Twitter fire-hose feed of geo-located tweets. In addition, there are opportunities for visualizing climate change, and as a platform for crisis communication, education and travel.

Michael Clark the founder of EarthBuzz Software has invested 5 man years in engineering time in evenings and weekends to build up the cross-platform EarthBuzz Engine, the EarthBuzz Weather and EarthBuzz Free Weather iPhone and iPad apps along with server-side middleware to transform map projection into tessellated octahedron tiles. EarthBuzz Software now has a completely unencumbered virtual earth code-base using no proprietary components.

The EarthBuzz Engine currently runs on Windows / Linux / MacOS and iOS, is written in cross-platform C++ with OpenGL ES and there is also the potential for an Android version. The EarthBuzz Engine features asynchronous tile loading, time series display and point data visualization capabilities as well.

Please contact Michael Clark, EarthBuzz Software, if your company or organization is interested in sponsoring EarthBuzz Free Weather, licensing the EarthBuzz engine for embedding in branded applications or custom mobile application development based on the EarthBuzz engine.

NASA has launched its first multi-player online game to test players’ knowledge of the space program. Who was the first American to walk in space? Who launched the first liquid-fueled rocket? These are only a few of the questions players can answer in Space Race Blastoff.

Available on Facebook, Space Race Blastoff tests players’ knowledge of NASA history, technology, science and pop culture. Players who correctly answer questions earn virtual badges depicting NASA astronauts, spacecraft and celestial objects. Players also earn points they can use to obtain additional badges to complete sets and earn premium badges.

“Space Race Blastoff opens NASA’s history and research to a wide new audience of people accustomed to using social media,” said David Weaver, NASA’s associate administrator for communications. “Space experts and novices will learn new things about how exploration continues to impact our world.”

NASA chose to make the game available through Facebook to take advantage of the social media site’s large audience and enable players to compete against others. Individuals also can play solo games.

Once in the game, players choose an avatar and answer 10 multiple-choice questions. Each correct answer earns 100 points, with a 20-point bonus to the player who answers first. The winner advances to the bonus round to answer one additional question for more points. Correctly answering the bonus question earns the player a badge.

Space Race Blastoff was developed by Scott Hanger, Todd Powell and Jamie Noguchi of NASA’s Internet Services Group in the Office of Communications. Play the game now at:

http://apps.facebook.com/spacerace

Since its very beginnings, Facebook seems to have had a love-hate relationship with its users. Now, another controversy has emerged following the release of an American Academy of Pediatrics report addressing a new phenomenon described as “Facebook Depression.”

In the report, Facebook Depression is defined as “depression that develops when preteens and teens spend a great deal of time on social media sites, such as Facebook, and then begin to exhibit classic symptoms of depression.” It also argues that these types of websites can create a skewed reality that makes teens feel alienated.

But is this enough to conclude that Facebook is causing more teens to be depressed? Many other resources are arguing that if Facebook causes depression, the same could be said for a teen sitting alone in the cafeteria. Whichever side you agree with, the fact is that teen depression is a serious issue. About 20% of teens will confront depression before they reach adulthood and about 5% are suffering from severe depression at any given time.

The Psychiatry Department at Miami Children’s Hospital has extensive experience helping children and adolescents with behavioral, social and emotional problems. Psychologist Dr. Sara Rivero-Conil, the department’s Clinical Manager, has helped many teens and their families cope with the effects of adolescent depression. “Adolescents with underlying poor self-esteem may be impacted by the sight of others enjoying activities or declaring their happiness. On the other hand, social media sites also allow for well-adjusted individuals to share ideas, emotions and feel connected. As a parent, you can set curfews or time limits around non-school-related activities and keep open communication with your children, allowing them to discuss their stressors, emotions and positive aspects of their day,” she said.

“Teen depression can affect anyone regardless of gender, ethnicity or social background,” said Dr. Rivero-Conil. “It’s important to be aware of the signs, which can include anger, irritability, withdrawal and frequent crying.”

So while we can’t be sure if Facebook is causing teens to become depressed, it is safe to conclude that monitoring your teen’s social media habits, along with their overall behavior and interests, can help you in identifying a potential problem and getting them the correct medical attention in time.

For more information on childhood and adolescent depression, visit www.mch.com.

Creative Productions, a Long Beach-based integrated marketing and promotions agency, is pleased to announce the development of the Metrolinktrains.com website, which went live January 23.  This milestone has been the culmination of ten months of strategy, development and multi-party integration to deliver a seamless website designed to meet the needs of regular and first-time riders in Southern California.

“The website’s clean, elegant design is only part of the story,” explains Deborah Golian Castro, Creative Productions CEO.  “The vision was to improve the website’s user experience to make riding the train more accessible to everyone in Metrolink’s six-county service area,” Castro continued.

“Creative Productions strove to exceed expectations through out the site development phase,” stated Erin Suarez, Account Manager, Creative Productions. “We are extremely pleased with how the new site delivers an improved customer experience to support the ever-expanding rider community,” added Suarez.

For people who are not familiar with riding the train, the new Metrolink website boasts a host of exciting new features that empower riders to plan round-trip travel with ease and confidence. Top features include, a trip planner that allows users to determine best routes, schedules, and connecting transit; My Metrolink offers regular riders a way to personalize their train-riding experience with custom alerts, favorite routes, and the ability to select relevant news content; and a price finder feature enables riders to quickly calculate the cost of a trip. The website also features real-time alerts and service advisories allowing riders to easily plan for route changes.

“It was truly a collaborative process,” commented Suarez.  “From multiple stakeholder meetings including member agencies, internal teams, partners and consumers, we were able to learn what people really wanted from this website, and that was especially important because Metrolink serves one of the largest metropolitan transit areas in the country.  The research and competitive analysis was very extensive—and it paid off when we were ready to go to the design phase,” added Suarez.

The new website will continually be updated through a custom content management tool, and act as the public-facing hub for all interaction with Metrolink trains.  It will serve to communicate information about travel, incentives, offers and promotions to keep the public informed of all Metrolink activities and endeavors.

Since 2006, Creative Productions has been an agency partner to Metrolink, developing its brand, marketing and advertising initiatives through strategy, creative and technology expertise. In addition to the new website, Creative Productions continues to collaborate with Metrolink in its efforts to reach out to potential riders through large-scale programs and promotions that foster education, awareness and rider retention.

Two new mxHero plugins, BCC Policy and BCC Usage, allow companies to block and/or monitor emails sent to previously undisclosed recipients. The process can be completely transparent to email users. Companies no longer need to risk damage that can be caused by hidden email communications.

The two plugins offer different strategies for dealing with BCC email. Companies can opt between the two or combine them.

The BCC Policy plugin works by blocking email sent to undeclared BCC recipients. The block can generate a reply message to the sender indicating that the email was blocked because of BCC usage. The plugin will apply to all emails sent regardless of the platform, ex. desktop, web or mobile.

The BCC Usage plugin allows BCC email to be delivered but also creates a silent copy that is sent to a pre-configured audit address. For example, if an internal email is sent to the CEO with an undisclosed copy (BCC) to an external address, a copy of that email can be sent to an audit address.

mxHero is an open source software platform that can be installed with any email system. mxHero extends email’s capabilities through plugins managed by a simple and intuitive interface.
mxHero is being actively developed – the roadmap includes more than 70 functionalities, some unprecedented in email. The current release includes more than 15 plugins with the added benefit of visual reports of effectiveness.

Alexis Panagides, CEO of mxHero:

“Companies have always had to deal with the fact that email allows users to send hidden copies to third parties. More than a security risk, one can question its ethics and potential impact on company morale.”

Concrete5 today announced that it has redesigned the company’s admin dashboard to leverage Twitter Bootstrap.

An early pioneer of in-context editing, concrete5 gained popularity due to its ease of use for managing the content of websites. With this in mind, the company has leveraged the Twitter Bootstrap toolkit to offer a completely redesigned, centralized dashboard for backend administrative tasks with the release of concrete5.5.1.

While concrete5 is frequently used by webshops to deliver sites to clients who want to make edits on their own, many people who use concrete5 are DIY websites on budget webhosts where concrete5 is acting as a self-publishing platform. Over two-thirds of the traffic hitting concrete5 servers isn’t coming to its public facing community concrete5.org at all. The company knew it needed to improve the learning experience from within the concrete5 application itself.

“We started just wanting to make it easier to get around the Dashboard and browse our marketplace from within your own site, but we quickly realized we were going to have to touch every part of the interface to do it right,” said concrete5 designer Robert Huston. “Twitter Bootstrap gave us an amazing style guide, and much of the infrastructure we needed right out the box. With some addition icon work and thoughtful application of the rules the Twitter team devised, we were able to accomplish months of work in just weeks.”

“A lot of time has gone into tuning things under the hood with this release,” added Andrew Embler, CTO of concrete5. “Performance on a default install of concrete5 has improved dramatically in this version, and new features like Stacks and Global Block Areas provide best-practice solutions to problems that had been solved organically in the past.”

New installs now include a wizard explaining how people can get started, and a daily news feed laid out like a magazine helping people learn more over time. The browse marketplace functionality has been dramatically improved, and users can now even purchase add-ons and themes without ever leaving their own sites.