Image Comics' Youngblood Goes Digital

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Parent Category: Gadgets

Category: Media

Published on Wednesday, 10 March 2010 03:45

Written by Laura Blum

Youngblood  fans may soon develop bulging muscles of their own: on their fingers. Owners of iPhone and iPod Touch can now get the Image Comics miniseries on Comics by comiXology, the plummy application for digital comics on Apple tablets.

Created by writer-artist Rob Liefeld — who also co-founded Image — Youngblood vol. 1, #1 follows the heroic feats of an elite government force comprised of former FBI agent and archer Shaft; teen-turned-to-live-stone Badrock; Russian fashion model Vogue; and government assassin Chapel. Rounding out this super-team that's tasked with the safety of an adoring populace are Sentinel, Photon, PSI-Fire and Cougar. Celebrity endorsements, shoe contracts, guarding the President — all in a day's work.

Self-taught illustrator Liefeld sicced comics writer and Ben 10 co-creator Joe Casey on a high-stakes mission to freshen the original Youngblood scripts for his remastered edition. Expanding the early readership to today's smartphone users is the latest step in an ongoing effort to update Youngblood''s fan base. More than a million copies sold upon its early-1990s launch.

Liefeld had already leapt to comicdom's nosebleed heights as an innovative artist on Marvel Comics' The New Mutants and the multimillion selling X-Force. The success of his hallmark characters, Cable and Deadpool (created with writer Fabian Nicieza), prompted him to mount the independent franchise with Youngblood when he and six other high-profile comics creators left the major companies to form their own, Image, in 1992. The publisher of Spawn, Witchblade, The Savage Dragon and other '90s hits evolved or devolved, depending on one's point of view. Liefield left Image in 1996 under acrimonious circumstances, but his 2007 return led to Youngblood 's makeover and redeployment.

Liefeld awarded comiXology exclusive rights to digitally distribute his company's maiden publication because of its "impressive track record in distributing classic print comics," he said in a statement. The nearly three-year-old ComiXology is considered the leading purveyor of comics to a broad range of iPhone and iPod readers.

Youngblood — together with Armegeddon Now! and the remainder of Liefeld's Awesome/Extreme catalog — shares the Comics by comiXology emporium with 1,000 or so other comics from more than 30 publishers. (ComiXology.com users can visit subscribing retailers to pre-order the dead-tree version of Youngblood.)

Will comics enthusiasts want to "Bag It" or "Burn It"? Stay tuned for the property's next hotly anticipated episode…

Make The Most Out of Search Engine Optimization

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Parent Category: Gadgets

Category: Media

Published on Saturday, 06 February 2010 21:53

Written by Brad Balfour

While technology and gadgets usually implies hardware that's held in hand or placed on a shelf, the software driving the technology is just as crucial as the hardware -- if not more so.

While sites bandy about this great digital tool or another few think about what drives the sites or makes them effective. All kinds of sites exist to provide information, processes, relationships and a total virtual life for some. But what makes the site effective.

Though I have written about lots of other subjects over the years and, by being re-born as a new media driven individual, I have tried to understand the best ways to use the internet both to reach an audience and "re-brand" myself. Scanning the web, reading the books, attending the conferences and workshops, I've accrued a resourceful layman's knoweldge of the best way to use the digital pathways for modern communications. Along the way, I have had to figure out the best way for websites to be built -- especially on the DIY level in advising others and making decisions for myself.

Though this checklist is fairly rudimentary, it maps out most of major areas of concern. Of course, as efforts shift from websites, to blog-like enviromments to various social netwroks, key decisions as to how the web is best will shift around but the main issues are outlined below.

 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has evolved in order to make your web efforts effective not only as a tool for users directed to your site, but as a vehicle to gain eyeballs from the vast wilderness of the web. This is a set of techniques and strategies you can use to, in effect, game the system--or rather, best present your site to the eyes of the web--the algorithms called "crawlers" or "spiders" that troll the internet and its myriad websites for evidence of your site's existence.

The traffic your site generates (whether it occurs through organic, contextual, or paid search) and the rankings that come as a result, are determined by a set of rules or options you can exercise or manipulate in order to increase your search ranking and your traffic.

The key is to get Google or the other search engines to index your site and as many of its pages as possible. Once that is done, your site is in the vast directory of data run by Google, et al. that allows for your site to register in a search, for pages to be found, and, hopefully, to meet the needs of data seekers.

Here are several concepts to keep in mind to effectively optimize a site:

1) To get your pages indexed properly with the search engines, your web designer can do some things internally, such as making sure there are many inter-linked pages throughout the site. That means a lattice work of internal links; when someone's name is mentioned in one place or on one page, it should link to where that person is mentioned elsewhere. For example, you mention an actor's name in the plot outline; there's should be a link to that person's bio within the site.

2) Another thing you or your designer can do is place lots of photos that are properly named so that image searches can provide further traffic. Remember, your site can be found through your visuals as well; still images and videos are as keyword-friendly as text.

3) Make sure the URLs for every page of your site are effectively, efficiently, and succinctly written. Web sites are found by their address, a URL, or Uniform Resource Locator; every website and page within it is assigned a URL with a set of instructions that catalog the site, the pages and information on the pages according to a set of prioritized words. Why is the URL important? Sometimes CMS systems will create less-than-useful URLs, and you may have to have your webmaster/programmer manually modify your URLs to be effective.

4) Use well-conceived meta tags, meta descriptions or meta keywords. If you think of what you see as a website on the screen as the skin that covers blood vessels, muscles and other elements underneath, meta tags are the words that lie behind the text and images you see.

They are part of the stuff (text, images, layout, designs, databases, links to videos, etc., that's describe in HTML (the language that makes the internet run) what makes up your site; it can be seen through the programs that construct your site.

5) Most important are effectively written meta descriptions--those sets of word under the URLs found through a web search. You can actually go in and write or change the ones that appear when a search find your site or some subject that is related to it. Those descriptions not only define your site--they can direct people to look at your site over others that have related content.

6) Understand and exploit the best practices for keywords and key phrases. You need to think, "What 10 or 15 words or phrases is this page MOST about?" Consider that throughout your site--whether it be the page that lists the film's plot, the cast and crew bios, or business information.

7) Remember, your site doesn't only exist within the context of itself. Use the subject of your film to have as many links as possible between your site and other relevant sites; and by "relevant," that means everything possible! From what the film is about, who is involved, what influenced it, etc., you should forge links with everything related to your film in any way.

That not only mean you/your designer-programmer makes links out to external sites; these outward links also means you need them to establish links back to you--and sometimes you get those by simply e-mailing the other sites, their administrators, webmasters, designers or owners and ask them to create links back to your site. Though you want lots of links, you don't only want to do them favors and take eyeballs away from your but to make sure they reciprocate in kind and bring you eyeballs.

8) Make sure that when you post anything--whether it be a blog about the film; a fully realized press kit; the director's statement--you intelligently situate key words and key phrase that you want search engines to pick in the first paragraph or headline that accompanies the text. That goes for captions and the underlying names of photos or videos the are integrated into the site.

9) Of course the richer the content of your site, the greater chance search engines will find keywords in the range of subjects your site covers--so there is a balance between focus and breadth or range. If your film is about a certain subject include related articles or stories and images about that subject.

10) Though often overlooked, two other important elements can improve your ranking in searches. One is "duration"--how long do people stay on your site either by reading or watching it -- and the other is "click-thrus" -- much do users jump around the site. By getting a hit or, as the term has been updated, a click-thru demonstrates user activity.

When someone clicks on an article or image on the site and then clicks onward, that's a "hit" or "click-thru." The diversity of clicks is more important than just someone hitting the site because hits can be rigged. Most important is that someone is really moving through the site not just clicking at one point.

Pepcom Winter Preview

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Parent Category: Gadgets

Category: Media

Published on Thursday, 19 November 2009 19:43

Written by Boonsri Dickinson & Brad Balfour

Every several months or so, a company called Pepcom puts together a gathering for tech companies and the writers and editors who love them — and their trinkets, toys, tools and other tech-infused goodies.

On September, 17, 2009, PepCom held its Holiday Spectacular mini-expo, to the pleasure and engorgement of many journos, we two included. Accompanying this text is a selection of highlights from that event, displaying some of the many goods and services featured — many of them showcasing the cutting edge of tech developments in those gadgets we use in both travel and in general communication.

This is being written in anticipation of the next Pepcom event, Wine, Dine, and Demo!, which is being held at the Hammerstein Ballroom for New York's tech media community tonight. In addition to the wine and food, it offers a great opportunity to preview stuff for the holiday season: the latest cellphones, TVs, videogames and broadband-services products. The ballroom will be filled by journalists from every major media company, generally stuffing their faces full of food and eyeballing tables of goods that will test their syntactical and descriptive skills — and, ultimately, giving us information on these futuristic tech development. Many gift guides are inspired by this event.

Directed Electronics will feature its Viper SmartStart, an app that lets you start your car with your iPhone.
Verbatim is rolling out with 2TB of memory.
Imation has the first wireless USB external hard drive, and will give a glimpse of its PowerPoint Karaoke.
Sonos is showing off its all-in-one wireless music system.
Livescribe will present its Pulse smartpen, beefed up with more applications.

And for the those weary of texting or calling friends? Give them a knock. Knocking brings you a new form of direct, visual mobile communication.

For all the photo addicts out there,one company has the world's first photosharing site that promises to store your photos forever.

So as the walk is made through this collection, those that might change your life or at least be worthy of your time and obsession will be revealed, here and elsewhere. Stay tuned, and check out the gallery below.

The followling pix illustrate the range of produics displayed at the shiow.