Ural Electronics in DVD deal with Indian firm

Ural Electronic Factory based in Ekaterinburg (Russia) is negotiating terms of DVD-R disc distribution with India's Moser Bayer.
Currently Ural Electronic Factory is equipped with three disc production lines from Germany's Steag Hamatech AG and three lines using Holland's VDL. Production output is 4.5 million units a month.

Getting to grips with Linux

Gary Parkinson had a torrid time when he converted to Linux. Here he shares his experiences with one of the alternatives to Microsoft's ubiquitous operating system.

It's Saturday afternoon and I should be lying on the sofa sipping sweet tea and watching Football Focus.

Instead, I'm stamping loudly round the living room swearing like a sailor, looking for a cat to kick and cursing a Finnish computer programmer whose name meant nothing to me only days before.

The source of all this disquiet sits on the coffee table looking defiant yet lovely.

It's £370 worth of brand spanking new laptop, sleek glossy black, 10 inches wide, give or take, and weighs about the same as a chunky hardback novel.

Hippy ideals

It's not the machine itself that's driving me to violence, but the operating system that controls its programs and hardware: Linux.

Linux is an alternative to operating systems such as Microsoft Windows or Mac's OS X and has been around since the early 1990s.

It's creator Linus Torvalds - then a 21-year-old University of Helsinki student - made the heart of his operating system absolutely free and open source, which means anyone can still download the code and tweak it as they see fit.

This kind of hippy philosophy behind Linux - that free access to software inspires development driven by need, not the need for cash - was the main attraction to me of choosing a Linux-fuelled machine over the Windows or Mac OS.

It's a muscular system too. The likes of Amazon and Google, and plenty of other household-name companies, are increasingly turning to Linux to run important parts of their businesses.

Look and feel

My requirements are more modest. It needs to let me surf the web, word process and manage the music that I listen to on an iPod.

First impressions of Linux were positive. The new machine, an Asus Eee, came pre-installed with a distribution, or flavour, of Linux called Xandros.

Because Linux is open source, different programmers have taken its kernel, or core, and written variations on the theme. They may use the same base code, but the desktops look and feel very different.

Some will seem much more familiar to those used to Windows or OS X than others.

There's half a dozen or so popular "distros", including the likes of Fedora, Mandriva and the one I prefer, Ubuntu.

Xandros worked right out of the box. Like most distros it includes Open Office, an open source copycat of Microsoft Office. Word processing, spreadsheets and presentations are no problem.

Linux-based computers won't run the software that you may be used to on Windows or a Mac - but there are free, Linux-compatible versions of pretty much any program you may want that can be downloaded from the internet.

Xandros connected to the net through my home wireless network at the first time of asking. And surfing was fast and easy.

Freedom to fiddle

There were a couple of things about Xandros which I didn't like.

The music management program - its "iTunes", if you like - let me listen to music and podcasts on my new laptop but wouldn't sync anything I loaded on to my iPod. Big problem for a music and podcast junkie.

Plus the desktop - the way the screen looks, the icons it uses to open programs - looks like it's been designed by a four-year-old with a fat crayon. It's may be down to personal taste, but I just don't like the way Xandros looks.

One of the (many) great things about Linux is that if you don't like a particular distro you can just change it for one you do by downloading it from the internet and installing it on the machine.

If you don't like that one either, just keep trying distros until you find one to your taste.

A quick trip to the local newsagent yielded a Linux magazine that included instructions on how to change distros and free CD with Mandriva and Ubuntu on it.

CD into disk drive, hit the escape key right after power up, boot up from the disk not the hard drive as usual, follow the simple instructions to install and 10 minutes later my computer screen looks completely different and much more like what I'm used to. A doddle.

Except now the internet wireless connection doesn't work and the music management software still won't let me sync with my iPod. Mmmmmm......

Like most journalists, I've the attention span and patience of a gnat. The air turns blue and I inform my wife loudly that Linus Torvalds has much to answer for (I paraphrase slightly).

Another great thing about Linux is the plethora of internet forums that you can sign up to where users can share tips and experience. My new machine may not be connected but luckily my wife's computer is. Couple of quick registrations later and I'm picking through the discussion boards for answers.

Text-based

Trouble is, the people populating these forums seem much cleverer than I am. On another planet, in fact. I may not be a good bet to be one to discover the cure for cancer, but I pride myself that not a (complete) fool either.

But I'm completely stumped by the instructions posted on these sites. The level of assumed knowledge is way above my head. I follow a couple of suggestions, try to connect to my router using an ethernet cable, download code that promises to set things right. And fail.

Ubuntu's own website isn't much help either. It suggests that with this particular machine it can sometimes help to whip out the battery, give it a couple of minutes, whack it back in, plug in an ethernet cable and get on line first that way. Nada.

Perhaps I am a complete fool after all.

It's probably worth mentioning one other important point about Linux here. It's a text-based operating system, which means that a fair few of the things you may want to tell your computer to do - installing certain new software, for example - requires you to open up a "terminal window" and actually type text into the little window.

It's a bit like the way all hackers in Hollywood movies furiously crash out lines of incomprehensible text on their laptops when they're trying to bust into the Pentagon's defence network.

As someone used solely to double-clicking on pretty pictures to do most anything on a computer this is pretty hairy stuff.

Tech support

True to form when I'm too stupid to figure out how to do something in five minutes, I phone an expert.

Geek Squad, a tech support service partnered with the Carphone Warehouse, is more used to dealing with problems with broadband and e-mail but later that night, Agent Jamie Pedder walks me through it over the phone.

Download a couple of bits of code from one of the Linux help sites on to a memory stick. Whack the memory stick into the offending laptop.

Bang a couple of lines of code into the terminal window to tell the machine to install what we've downloaded. Bingo, we're cooking on gas.

Ubuntu's running my wireless network and I'm back on-line. Easy when you know how.

The fly in the ointment remains the music management software. I still can't sync an iPod and Agent Pedder reckons that I probably won't be able to - for now at least.

While Linux is founded on the philosophy of free and easy access to its code for anyone who's interested, Apple is not. That means no iTunes for Linux, and nor is Apple likely to release such a version.

The iPod out of action is a major irritation, but I've not given up hope. There's software out there - free for Linux users as always - that promises to do what I want. I just haven't got round to downloading and playing with it yet.

For the time being, it's back to the trusty CD player. All this talk of hippy ideals has put me right in the mood for a bit of Sgt Pepper's.
from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7594249.stm

Large Hadron Collider

Scientists have hailed a successful switch-on for an enormous experiment which will recreate the conditions a few moments after the Big Bang.

The most powerful physics experiment ever built, the Large Hadron Collider will re-create the conditions just after the Big Bang in an attempt to answer fundamental questions of science and the universe itself.

Find out more about the LHC with this BBC News guide, starting at the top of the page with an introduction from Science Correspondent David Shukman. You can then explore key elements of the experiment using the links above.

They have now fired two beams of particles called protons around the 27km-long tunnel which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The £5bn machine on the Swiss-French border is designed to smash protons together with cataclysmic force.

Scientists hope it will shed light on fundamental questions in physics.

The first - clockwise - beam completed its first circuit of the underground tunnel at just before 0930 BST. The second - anti-clockwise - beam successfully circled the ring after 1400 BST.

So far, all the beams have been stopped, or "dumped", after just a few circuits.

On Thursday, engineers hoped to inject clockwise and anti-clockwise protons again, but this time they plan to "close the orbit", letting the beams run continuously for a few seconds each.

The BBC understands that low-energy collisions could happen in the next few days. This will allow engineers to calibrate instruments, but will not produce data of scientific interest.

"There it is," project leader Lyn Evans said when the beam completed its lap. There were cheers in the control room when engineers heard of the successful test.

from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7604293.stm

Embarcadero Goes Global with Next-Generation Delphi® and C++Builder Development Tools for Windows®

New tools enable ISVs and business developers to build high-performance client/server and packaged software applications that support rich user experiences worldwide

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – August 25, 2008 – Embarcadero Technologies today unveiled the next generation of the popular CodeGear™ rapid application development (RAD) tools for Windows: Delphi 2009 and C++Builder® 2009, geared specifically for both Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and workgroup client/server development.

Developers can now easily expand the global reach of their applications with built-in support for Unicode™ throughout Delphi 2009 and C++Builder 2009. Built-in support for Unicode means that applications will look and operate properly on all language versions of Windows and seamlessly support both Unicode and ANSI data. In addition, new and enhanced localization tools make it easier to translate applications to take advantage of specific local opportunities.

“For us as a database vendor, Delphi 2009 is the most important new release since Delphi 3,” said Thorsten Engler, Principal Software Architect at Nexus Database Systems. “The full Unicode support and the numerous changes to the data access layers put Delphi 2009 at the top in terms of rapid application development. For anyone serious about internationally deployed database applications, Delphi 2009 is an absolute must.”

Delphi and C++Builder 2009 are the only tools tailor-made for organizations building packaged software for resale/redistribution, high-performance graphical workstation applications, and client/server workgroup database applications. Top industries using Delphi and C++Builder today to build next-generation solutions include ISVs, MicroISVs, Banking/Finance, Manufacturing, Government, Healthcare, Science/Engineering and Telecommunications.

This new release takes the Delphi and C++ languages forward with a host of powerful new programming language features such as Delphi generics and upcoming C++0x standard language features. A new multi-tier DataSnap™ architecture enables developers to use RAD to build high-performance, highly scalable database middleware applications. The middleware applications can be connected to via a lightweight, open communications protocol with thin, full-featured clients that can reside on virtually any native or Web client platform

In addition, Delphi 2009 and C++Builder 2009 represent the first Embarcadero solutions to bring together advanced CodeGear and DatabaseGear™ functionality in a single offering. The Delphi and C++Builder Architect editions include ER/Studio® Developer Edition to provide a complete solution for designing and building database applications. This integration results in enhanced productivity and time-to-market for developers.

Other new and enhanced features of the two products include:

• New Visual Component Library (VCL) components including Microsoft Office style ribbon controls, Portable Network Graphics (PNG) image support, dozens of new capabilities for existing controls, and the ability to seamlessly build powerful UIs for Windows XP and Vista desktop applications simultaneously.
• Major new language features including Delphi generics and anonymous methods, and the first commercial IDE support for C++0x and Technical Report 1 (TR1) in the C++ language.
• VCL for the Web for creating AJAX and Silverlight-enabled rich intranet and line of business web applications.
• Updated built-in dbExpress support for CodeGear InterBase® and Blackfish™ SQL, Oracle®, Microsoft SQL Server™ , Informix®, IBM® DB2®, SQL Anywhere®, Sybase® and MySQL® databases.

“Our goal with 2009 is to deliver the best Delphi and C++Builder ever, to enable ISVs and client/server developers to simultaneously and seamlessly expand their business footprint globally with more client platforms and databases, and richer UIs,” said Michael Swindell, Vice President of Products for Embarcadero Technologies.

“Our goal as a combined company is to eliminate the development barriers between applications and databases. This release combines award-winning database architecture and design features from ER/Studio with Delphi and C++Builder to create the ultimate database application design and development solution – the all new Delphi and C++Builder Architect Editions,” said Swindell.

Delphi and C++Builder 2009 support development and deployment on Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008.

Pricing and Availability

Delphi 2009 and C++Builder 2009 are immediately available worldwide for pre-orders. North American upgrade pricing begins at $399 per license for Professional editions, $1,299 for Enterprise editions and $2,299 for Architect editions. They can be purchased directly through Embarcadero or through one of its global partners. For more information, visit: www.codegear.com/products/delphi/win32 and www.codegear.com/products/cppbuilder.

Community Resources

• See Delphi and C++Builder 2009 in action at http://www.codegear.com/cg-videos/
• Learn more with these webinars: http://dn.codegear.com/article/38478
• For the latest on Delphi and C++Builder, visit: http://dn.codegear.com/delphi and

http://dn.codegear.com/cpp

• See the many popular Delphi-built applications and components being used by millions today: http://delphi.wikia.com/wiki/Delphi_Wiki
• To subscribe to Embarcadero’s CodeGear RSS newsfeed, visit http://dn.codegear.com/atom

About Embarcadero Technologies

Embarcadero Technologies Inc. empowers application developers and database professionals with tools to design, build and run software applications in the environment they choose. A community of more than three million worldwide and 90 of the Fortune 100 rely on Embarcadero’s CodeGear™ and DatabaseGear™ product lines to increase productivity, openly collaborate and be free to innovate. Founded in 1993, Embarcadero is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices located around the globe. Embarcadero is online at www.embarcadero.com.

###

Embarcadero, the Embarcadero Technologies logos and all other Embarcadero Technologies product or service names are trademarks or registered trademarks of Embarcadero Technologies, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

About Great Ideas

There is nothing more powerful than an idea. Except for an idea put into action.

There's more than one way to nurture an idea until it bears fruit.

No one way is going to work best for all ideas, but here's a general scheme to frame your efforts:

1. Look at your idea. Observe it from different perspectives and angles.
2. Take your idea apart. Use different approaches. Try looking at each part as a separate idea.
3. Add to/remove from your idea. Your idea should be complete, but not overdone.
4. Modify/Substitute parts. Find out which works best.
5. Put the parts together. Use different designs and orderings.
6. Combine ideas together. In different ways.
7. Use your idea. Adapt it for a special purpose. Maybe some new ideas will occur to you.

Web Video and the Net's Creaking Backbone

By Jack M. Germain
TechNewsWorld
07/26/08 4:00 AM PT

Video has quickly found a welcome home on the Web. Sites like YouTube have achieved near ubiquity in short order. TV networks have taken to putting entire prime-time shows online, and outfits like Amazon and iTunes are selling whole movies in high-definition downloads. What's the burden on the Net's infrastructure? There's room for build-up, but it won't be cheap.

Two weeks ago, Apple and AT&T outlets opened their doors to massive lines of fans eager to buy the new iPhone 3G. The stores were stocked and ready to sell, but the network -- shouldered with the burden of activating so many new phones -- was quickly overwhelmed, and the process slowed to a crawl. Demand quickly outpaced the ability of the system to provide for it, and as a result, it failed. Most users were told to go home and activate their new phones from there.

Is this sort of pile-on some sort of preview of what hides around the corner with the surge of video downloads on the Internet at large? Is the Web's infrastructure Rackspace now offers green hosting solutions at the same cost without sacrificing performance. Make the eco-friendly choice. inching toward collapse?

Stories of users overwhelming individual Web servers is nothing new. In the above example, some iPhone buyers had to leave without having their phones activated because the servers were clogged. A few weeks ago, anxious downloaders toppled the Mozilla Latest News about Mozilla Foundation Web site 15 minutes ahead of its scheduled release of Firefox 3.0. A couple of months ago, Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) Latest News about Amazon.com experienced sporadic outages, perhaps costing the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost sales Double your sales close rates with SalesView. Click to learn how.. And woe unto any smallish Web site or blog that gets a hot pickup on a popular news aggregator like Fark.com.

Even more serious is the potential impact of video's popularity on the Internet. Video is developing a "friend or foe" relationship with online companies. Online collaboration tools -- such as video conferencing, Web training and webinar participation -- are fast becoming a happy alternative to expensive corporate travel.

"Recent data shows that while the Internet traffic is still growing, it's growing at a manageable rate of increase. Video makes up a significant component of overall traffic, but the backbone and peering interconnect systems can still be easily managed upwards in capacity," James Crow, vice president of technology for digital media distribution firm ON Networks, told TechNewsWorld.
Disaster Prognosis

Despite the Chicken Littles' assertions that the Internet sky is about to fall, those pushing for the increased use of video on the Web deny the end is near. Others warn that some retooling of the Web's infrastructure will soon be needed to prevent widespread traffic snarls.

Just as uses for the Internet are not static, product producers are not standing still with the technologies they use for their services. Still, increasing video use on the Web will not be free of charge or challenge.

"Video isn't a challenge on the Internet yet. It is not being overly used. But there are challenges with video ahead," Iain Molland, the North American CEO of the video streaming firm Vividas, told TechNewsWorld.
Content Delivery

Video players on the Internet are developing several technologies to mitigate the increasing consumer bandwidth needs and network responsiveness, Crow said. For instance, most video providers, of both streaming and downloading varieties, leverage edge-based content distribution networks (CDN).

These systems optimize traffic away from the backbone and isolate it to the distributed, last hop/last mile networks. These last-mile systems do represent a potential constriction point, but current technology projects like DOCSIS 3.0 and the FTTN/FTTC initiatives are directly targeting this problem, he explained.

"A company can deliver video very easily from a small server using CDN. This puts thousands of servers within the Internet infrastructure," Molland added.

CDN uses local servers as part of the process. It pushes video content to standard Web page servers while the content is stored at the edge, he explained.
Faster Networks

Internet users are being increasingly drawn to video in the form of full-length, prime-time TV shows posted online by the networks that produce them. ABC, Fox, ABC, CBS and the CW channel make some of their shows available for free on the Web through various outlets. Prime Time Rewind has a unique approach to preventing Internet overload. It links prime-time shows, but directs users back to the original network's site within a cube frame that viewers navigate to find their desired show.

This method allows Prime Time Rewind to serve as a video gateway without having to host its own online player and store all the video files locally. Instead, the content owner has to deal with bandwidth along with contributing to page views, ad revenue, etc.

Nortel, a provider of bandwidth-expanding technology, arms Internet video providers with more bandwidth to ensure that high-definition (HD) video and expanding Web services do not "break" the Web. Using its optical technology, Nortel can deliver both 40G and 100G network capacity, enabling four times the network throughput.

This new technology provides carriers with the capability to keep pace with dramatically increasing demand from heavy bandwidth applications like IPTV (Internet protocol TV), Internet video, HD programming and mobile video phones. Nortel's Adaptive Optical Engine uses enables both 40G and 100G transmission through fiber-optic cables.
Other Methods

Internet service providers often claim that a great deal of the excess traffic on their networks is due to peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing, with the implication that users illegally trading in copyrighted movies and videos are to blame. However, some P2P developers are bringing new technology to Web video distribution. Take, for instance, BitTorrent, a free, open source file-sharing protocol that effectively distributes very large software and media files. While applications using BitTorrent are popular tools among pirates, the technology is also being used to maximize the ability of the Web to handle all kinds of traffic.

"Our traffic is half of that on the Web. Web creators were sound in their architecture. Video is the latest scaling of that technology," Eric Klinker, CTO of BitTorrent, told TechNewsWorld.

From his view, people reporting that the Web is in danger of collapse are misinformed. Slow spots have always been and will continue to be a fact of life on the Internet, he believes.

"The Network is constantly being upgraded. Constant shifts occur with the backbone," he said. "We consume bandwidth in about the five to six megabyte range. This is about the bandwidth taken by a single audio track. We focus on transport only, not searching or cataloging," he explained, noting that BitTorrent is not a file-sharing operation but a transfer of files in what amounts to a separate network.
Movie Moving Alternatives

Vividas' technology streams video across HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol). This harnesses the power for existing bandwidth, according to Molland, who adds that this approach is much more scalable.

"Use of video requires additional Flash server capacity. Issues have been related to not having enough equipment. This is very expensive," he said.

Because the Internet is scaled for delivery of Web pages rather than video, as video use increases it will become a bandwidth problem, he warned. An alternative measure is for video suppliers to start with CDN and switch to P2P as usage increases.
Corrective Measures

Another factor to consider about the growing use of video on the Web is its impact on Web site performance. Officials at AlertSite, which offers a Web site performance and management service, said they do not really see a breaking point for the Internet as a whole.

"But major problems are happening now and in the future with page load times, broken rich Internet applications, and as a result unhappy customers of companies whose Web sites feel the pinch from video slowing Web sites and Internet performance down," Ken Godskind, Web performance evangelist for AlertSite, told TechNewsWorld.

To deal with the bandwidth concerns, enterprise Web users should measure their Web site's performance, he said. For instance, AlertSite's product sets a dynamic base line -- online commerce sites can then use this baseline to monitor overall Web site performance under different circumstances.

"Companies should step back and ask questions. Is their network's poor performance a network problem? Can the ISP help the customer share traffic better? You may find that the bandwidth is maxed out. This will help with capacity planning techniques," he suggested.

www.technewsworld.com

Google Bombs Are not So Scary

It sounds frightening. Google "Bombs" are now going off, where web sites are influencing Google's search results by controlling where they link to and what they say in their links, according to Corante's Microcontent News site.

Of course, Google has always worked this way. What people link to and what they say in their links is a major component in how Google organizes its search results. Links can even be the predominant factor, in some cases.

The classic Google Bomb, if we're going to use that word, was way back at the end of 1999, when it was discovered that a search for "more evil than satan himself" brought up the Microsoft web site. At the end of 2000, we had the "Liv Tyler nude" incident, along with the more notorious search for an insulting slur that brought up the official George W. Bush campaign web site.

In all these cases, what people linked to helped influence the results that came up in Google. Moreover, link analysis was probably more important than usual in determining these results because few pages in the results set probably had much link value to boost them, in addition to the more traditional measures such as the words on the pages themselves.

In other words, if you have 1,000 pages all relevant textually for "liv tyler nude," then the one page that's actually developed links to it will probably get the edge over the others. Following on this, it's no real surprise to read in the Microcontent article below about someone manipulating links to get their friend to come up tops for "Talentless Hack" in Google or for a journalist to get ranked tops for his name.

The story goes on to ponder whether Google will succumb to future bombs, especially "Money Bombs" where people are trying to manipulate Google to make money. Anyone in the search engine marketing industry will probably be having a good chuckle over this. Attempts to manipulate Google through links for money reasons have been going on for ages. People have created entire networks of interlinked web sites, in an attempt to influence Google.

Google combats these attempts by identifying what it considers to be "artificial" link structures and adjusting or eliminating their influence in the rankings. Google has also recently taken action against reciprocal link pages, link "farms" and guest books, downplaying their importance in its link analysis algorithms. And there's no doubt that Google will take action against weblogs, if those weblogs are seen as manipulating results in a way that doesn't correspond with user expectations.

Google Time Bomb Microcontent News, March 3, 2002 http://www.microcontentnews.com/articles/googlebombs.htm

There's a section in this that ponders whether Google gives "older" links less weight. Google doesn't care how "old" a link is. Instead, Google is likely to weight a link more heavily if it's on the home page of a web site, primarily because that home page is likely to have more links pointing at it -- thus upping its PageRank score. If a link moves from that page to an "inside" page, that inside page has less of a reputation and thus can transmit less to other pages. And by the way, the proposed "solution" of blogrolling isn't going to be that helpful. The more links that are on a page, the less reputation that gets passed to them from the parent page, under Google's system.

Google hit by link bombers BBC, March 13, 2002 http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1868000/1868395.stm

Summarizes the Microcontent News article above. However, the Microcontent article did not say that the attempt to Google Bomb for "daniel pearl" was successful. Nevertheless, the BBC article turned this into a fact.

Google on guard for practical jokers Reuters, March 14, 2002 http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-859805.html

Has comments from Google, explaining that for more popular terms, Google Bombs aren't likely to go off. Google Search Engine Unfazed by 'Googlewhackers' NewsFactor.com, March 14, 2002 http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/16768.html

Google's been quite public in saying that it has to combat link spam, so it's extremely odd to then see the search engine quoted as saying Google Bombs have not been used for marketing or commercial purposes. But perhaps they were referring only to Google Bombs off of weblog pages.

Bush's Dubious Victory At Google

The Search Engine Report, Feb. 6, 2001 http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/01/02-bush.html

Explains what happened with an unmentionable search and the George W. Bush campaign web site.

Lookin' For Liv In All The Wrong Places
The Search Engine Report, Nov. 3, 2000
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/00/11-liv.html

This Google blip wouldn't make Liv Tyler very happy, though it's still hard to see which page for this particular search she would have liked best.

More Evil Than Dr. Evil?The Search Engine Report, Nov. 1, 1999 http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/99/11-google.html

The classic Google blip, that put Bill Gates on par with Satan. By the way, the answer to the riddle mentioned in the story is "nothing." See http://www.exodus-coach.co.uk/A_Riddle.htm.

More About Link Analysis
http://searchenginewatch.com/subscribers/more/linkanalysis.html

For Search Engine Watch members, explains how search engines make use of links from across the web to find pages and rank them in relation to searches. Includes many tips on how to locate "important" sites and request links that can help you with search engine positioning efforts.

By Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Watch