Gateway

Lenovo did with IBM's ThinkPad series, Acer says the Gateway brand (with its signature black-and-white dairy cow PC boxes) will remain fully intact. Acer president, Gianfranco Lanci, said Monday that the company has no intention of phasing out the brand and is in fact planning to expand it. This makes some sense in the context of the U.S. market, where the Gateway name is already strong, but Acer has a lot of work ahead if it wants to push Gateway overseas. Afterall, ThinkPads were generally highly regarded prior to Lenovo's buyout. Gateway PCs, on the other hand, have some...reputational hurdles to overcome.

Circuit City's Firedog

What was once a highly technical business, where men in workshops labored over a soldering irons has evolved into a multibillion-dollar opportunity.
Today, the industry is increasingly aimed at performing mundane maintenance and upgrades, and cleaning up viruses and spyware many consumers do not have the time or patience to try themselves.
Services provided by Circuit City's Firedog, which does everything from in-home Internet and television setup to full-scale computer component upgrades, represent one of the top growth areas for the electronics chain.
The same goes for its chief competitor, Best Buy.
That chain heavily markets its Geek Squad system maintenance and software installation services to customers before they walk out the door with a brand-new computer.

How to write ad copy

1. Start by choosing a single benefit of your product or service that you wish to highlight above everything else. This is your "principle selling position" or PSP. To choose this, ask yourself what specific benefit makes your product or service different, better, or special. Is it the price? The convenience? The reliability?
2. Write attention-grabbing headlines. This is very important. People are overloaded with information, so they skim read, particularly on the Internet. If your headline doesn't get their attention everything else is probably wasted because it won't be read. Your headline will often be based around your PSP.
3. Write a list of all the features of your product or service then translate each of these into a benefit for the customer. One way to do this is to look at each feature in turn then ask yourself "So what?" Imagine you're a customer; why should you care about this feature? Ask "What will it do for me?"
Read more about writing good ad copy.

Google and FFA pages

If you try to acquire inbound links by using link farms or FFA pages, not only will it hurt your search engine ranking, but you might get permanently removed from the search engine listings. Link farms are sites where you can instantly exchange links with all the sites listed in that directory. FFA pages are pointless link directories. The search engines usually discount any links that come from either of these sources. Now that we understand what link popularity is and how it works, we need to look specifically at how Google measures it. They use a number of variables in their algorithm to calculate your overall link score. The higher your score, the higher you will be ranked in the search listings.
One factor that Google uses in their algorithm, obviously, is the total number of sites linking to you. The more links you have, the higher your score will be. However, their algorithm is a little more complicated than that, and it is possible for a website with fewer links to be ranked higher than a website that has more links.
The reason for this is because Google also measures the quality of your links. If your website is about vitamins, and the site linking to you is a video game site, then that is not considered a quality link. The link still helps your score, but the link would help your score much more if it were from a website whose subject matter is the same as yours.

VMware

VMware is at the forefront of a new segment of technology called virtualisation. Rather than having software installed on an individual computer or server, where it is often vulnerable to viruses and other forms of attack unless updated regularly, virtualisation separates the hardware from the software. This means one computer or server can run various different programs - even operating systems - on the same machine.
It is an updated version of the application service provider (ASP) model, which was popular in the dying days of the last dotcom boom. But while the ASP model meant merely hosting a personal computer's software on servers on the internet, virtualisation software actually sits between a computer or server's operating system and the actual hardware. As a result, sensitive parts of any system can be partitioned so that viruses and other "malware" cannot infiltrate.
The "virtual" machine that is created can then be easily transferred between different computers, letting companies provide staff who "hot desk" or travel with secure access to exactly the same programs anywhere in the world.

Writing effective sales copy

Writing effective sales copy is an art. Good copy writers have learned how to
produce persuasive text targeted towards their particular audience. You really
need to understand your customers’ needs and produce copy that projects
emotion, passion, excitement and benefit.
Selling is also about enthusiasm, and projecting that on to your target audience.
Being excited about the product will shine through, so avoid dry, over formal copy
and let your passion for the subject show.