The Fuji FinePix is an affordable 6 Megapixel camera that is packed with easy to use features that are so well designed you may not need to ever read the manual to figure out how it works. An intuitive interface is but one area of many where Fuji has endeavoured to introduce an affordably priced digital camera that represents a value you will want to tell your friends about.

To be sure, to bring a camera in at this price involves making trade-offs and the skill is in the details. Let us make this clear, the picture quality is outstanding, although we feel it could have been better in it’s video mode for capturing videos in low light circumstances. But then again, this is the true for the majority of digital cameras, and if you are going to be shooting many videos, it makes sense to invest in a dedicated digital video camera. So this is more of a quibble.

Indeed, in it’s core function as a digital camera, we were pleasantly surprised at how fast it could boot up and shoot photos. We had been used to slow digital camera start up times, so that when we turned on the the Fuji Finepix we were startled to be taking pictures virtually immediately! This is an important feature. One of the headaches of digital photography is the slow boot times, which means that many moments are over before the camera is ready to start taking pictures. Because this camera can take photos so quickly, you now have the ability to take photos one after another with virtually no delay, unlike so many other cameras. I could never figure out why other digital camera makers would release products that were so slow. Kudos to Fuji for finally creating a reasonably priced camera that performs as fast as cameras costing four times as much. Bravo! However, be sure to take note that this isn’t the case when using the flash, as the flash takes a second or two to warm up between pictures… oh, back to the old days!

The Finepix E550 sports a generous 2-inch LCD monitor for previewing photos. This is as large or larger than many cameras that cost twice as much, and the visual quality is outstanding. This makes taking photos a lot easier under difficult lighting situations, or if you have trouble seeing. It’s the perfect camera for shooting photos of your children or grandchildren.

The body feels substantial but is light and easy to carry. It feels well in the palm of your hand, although I have handled other cameras that fit better. It doesn’t feel awkward in any way, unlike other cameras we have tried. The controls are in easy to spot locations, and if you have ever used a digital camera before then using them will feel like second nature, it’s very intuitive to use. Even if you haven’t used a digital camera before, it’s relatively easy to use, featuring an automode in case you don’t have time to switch into one of the preset photo modes.

The batteries are standard AA batteries, which means you don’t have to spend lots of money on fancy batteries that are hard to find. Even better, the camera comes with rechargeable batteries and it’s own recharger- which will greatly lower the cost of ownership over the lifetime of the camera. There’s nothing so frustrating as running out of batteries and not being able to locate replacements. With this camera you will never run out of batteries because AA batteries are so easy to find, even in remote areas.

The other thing that we like, although there are pros and cons about it, is that it uses an xD memory card. We like that it will fit into most computer memory slots, unlike the larger and less expensive SD card. Yes, they’re more expensive, but not that much more. You can find some really great deals on xD cards on Amazon.com.

This camera is a great value and we highly recommend it to both novices and the more advanced user looking for a light and compact digital camera to carry around on vacation. A+

FFDShow MPEG-4 Video Decoder is a DirectShow decoding filter for decompressing DIVX movies, picture postprocessing, and show subtitles. It uses libavcodec from ffmpeg project or for video decompression (it can use xvid.dll installed with xvid codec too), postprocessing code from mplayer to enhance visual quality of low bitrate movies, and is based on original DirectShow filter from XviD, which is GPL´ed educational implementation of MPEG4 encoder.

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Meta tags alone are not the answer to all problems. In fact many leading search engine optimization experts are phasing out in the usage of some meta tags, why? When the web was small these meta tags were great tools to help organize the web.

Why Meta Tags Are Not Extremely Important

As the web grew, so did the potential to exploit it and commercial greed caused “spammers” to abuse the meta keyword tag and meta description tag by putting unrelated words in these tags, some many times over. If you look at some real third tier web search engines that allow people to place their own data description in the engine today, you see what was happening to the entire web not that long ago. ExactSeek comes to mind as a good example of a spammed out search engine.

The web was on the brink of becoming useless if it did not stop the spammers. Consequently the value of the meta keyword tag has dropped. Most major search engines say they do not even support the keywords tag anymore, They rely on the page content to pick up the slack for this area looking at page focus and consistency.

My Lack of Meta Tags

On Google I achieved a #5 listing for a competitive term in a competitive field on a page with zero PageRank and only a page title ( I had no meta tags on the page.) Meta tags mean very little in Google’s algorithm; however, Yahoo! places more weighting on meta tags.

Overview of Meta Tags

Meta tags are somewhat important, but they are a piece of the pie. Page title and linkage data are the two most important elements in most major search algorithms. A well optimized site has great content, is easy to navigate, has specific content, has great focus, and in due time the combination of the above and incentives or providing a useful service will even help develop link popularity and better rankings.

Review of Page Title, Meta Tags, and Other Tags

• Page Title Tag - Not a meta tag, but still goes in the same part of the page code. Displayed on search results and at the very top of the browser. Page title is usually the single most important text on the page.
• Meta Description Tag - A sentence to a paragraph describing the page content. Is sometimes displayed in search results under the page title.
• Meta Keywords Tags - Not displayed to viewer or in search results. Ignored by most search engines. Not super important. Yahoo! uses it to help include pages into search results when the text is not on the page. Misspellings and stuff like that should go in the meta keywords tag.
• Comments Tags - Used to help break up programming. States what each part of a complex program does. No good for SEO purposes as they are ignored by most search engines.
• Meta Refresh Tags - Used to redirect the browser to another page. When possible it is better to use a 301 redirect.
• Robots Exclusion Tags - Used to prevent robots from spidering certain pages or your entire site.
• Other Meta Tags - Meta tags not covered in the above short list.
• IMG Alt Tags - Used to tell visually impaired people what an image represents. IMG Alt tags act similary to anchor text. Don’t forget to use a period at the end of your IMG Alt tags.
• Make Meta Tags - Our free web based meta tag generator.

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Google vs Overture: Overture is the main competitor to Google AdWords. Overture is strictly price driven, which requires a ton of editors to perform countless hours of maintenance. Google is a highly mathematical company, and protect the quality of their listings in two ways: they have editors, and more importantly they monitor click through rate. Why does Google AdWords monitor click through rate?

Google Adwords Tips: Click Through Rate

Click through rate is a rough approximation of relevancy, in many ways this parallels the idea of grading the web on links. A relevant ad will have higher click through rates than a non relevant listing.

Google ads are not strictly price driven. Some think the added relevancy factor relates to the words in the add, while this is somewhat true, the true multiple is click through rate. If a web site has 3* the click through rate, that means Google can sell 3* as much advertising. To reward careful and considerate ads Google chops this price to 1/3 of what it would be with a site that had a third of the click through rate.

Google Adwords Tips: Keyword Selection

Successful ad buyers learn how to lower their prices by tweaking them in to match what the end user is looking for. Bidding wars should be avoided as they are a technique that indicate a lack of creativity. There are multiple ways to say the same thing, and few people are creative enough to think what is “searched for.” Yes you can exactly describe your product, but you need the people who have a problem to find your solution weather or not it exists. You may even want some of your keyword phrases to be in question format.

If you take the time to be the only one listed for a creative relevant term you may seem like the only answer to a problem, or at least the only one who cared. If you have the keywords you want to list well in within your text it they will be bold when people search for them. This will also add to your click through rate.

Qualify your traffic. One word search terms frequently draw competitors and junk traffic to a level that usually exceeds any intrinsic value the listing may have. Not every ad makes money.

Google Adwords Tips: Basic Google AdWords Listing Functions

Google has three separate ways you can list AdWords.

In addition to the above techniques of qualification, you can also list which words you do not want in the query. if you did not want the word “free” in the search you would put -free at the end of your keywords list, or set your negative keywords at the campaign level.

Typical bad words are: free, cheap, download, crack, pic, pics, gallery…

Google Adwords Tips: Google AdWords Syndication

Google AdWords are syndicated, which means you can choose to list only in Google; in Google & other search sites; or in Google, other search sites, and in contextual ads. Think of the various user bases and decide which may be better for you. You also can decide which countries and languages you want to list in for further targeting.

Some people have been complaining that content syndication is lowering their ROI. I offer my solution here.

Google AdWords Tips: AdWords Groupings

You can place expensive words in there own ad group. You may want to use some ad groups for generic terms and others for specific terms.

As long as they are relevant and specific you are not likely to use too many keyword phrases, just remember to place them in various groups and track them.

The proper technique to gather accurate market information is to overspend off the start and see what happens in the long run. If you overspend you collect faster feedback. You learn from your account.

Google Adwords Tips: Bidding

The important tip as far as bids go is to bid enough to get first screen exposure, and do not keep throwing more money at a problem to do this. If the click through rate is garbage, fix the keywords and content of the ads.

If you start out way too low you will always be fighting an uphill battle. Remember that you are bidding against the best ads that have been developed over time so you are likely going to get your tail kicked for a while.

Google Adwords Tips: Tracking

Google allows the ads to be grouped and has began offering a free conversion calculator. Through properly grouping and monitoring the results of your Adwords campaign it is easy to see which ads are profitable and create similar ones.

Google AdWords Tips: Targeting

Google AdWords now allows you to target your ads based on the country, state, or city level, as well as have your ads appear within a specified radius of a location.

Geotargeting will help increase your clickthrough rate and give you traffic which is more pre qualified for a purchase if you are a local business.

Google AdWords Tips: Affiliates

Only one affiliate or merchant ad can appear per landing page per keyword. Whatever ad between all the affiliate ads and the merchants own ad has the highest effective click price (max CPC bid * clickthrough rate) will display.

If affiliates make their own white label review site with substantially unique content then many of those ads can display along with the merchant ad.

Google AdWords Tips: Tips for a Successful Campaign

If you intend to launch a large AdWords campaign, these Google AdWords tips on this page are not enough to guarantee your success. You need creativity, hard work, and if you are really serious about AdWords the $69 you will spend on Andrew Goodman’s report might be the best $69 of your life. In his 150 page eBook he covers in depth details to help guarantee your success.

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• Research your keywords (described above).
• Set up a pay-per-click account with Google Adwords.
• Run a campaign with your selected keywords for a week or so, and measure the results.
• Research more keywords if you don’t like the results.

I recommend Google Adwords for testing, since it’s the best pay-per-click platform. Some Adwords ads will be shown on Yahoo, due to the Google – Yahoo Partnership.

It’s very easy to use Adwords. You can learn how in detail here.

When you test keywords, make sure you have effective landing pages. A landing page is a page that users see after they click on your advertisement. It’s important to create a separate page for pay-per-click advertisements (and SEO) instead of directing visitors to your home page because:

• A landing page can contain and expand upon the content your advertisement had, giving a strong information scent to visitors.
• A landing page can have clear calls to action such “buy it now,” “call us now,” “fill out a form,” etc.
• It’s been proven that landing pages are more effective in converting visitors into customers than home pages.

You must test your keywords for at least a week to have real measurements. Analytics software can help you figure out how much time visitors spend on your web site, when they exit, which pages they spend time on and from which pages they leave. The biggest measurement however, would be your bottom line. If you spent $1000 on pay-per-click during your test week and only got back $200, then your keywords aren’t good enough. Go back and research more keywords. Test to see if results improve.

Once you see at least a double return on your investment, you’re safe. If your returns are poor, you should also examine your landing page and fix any problems there. Take the keywords you tested and optimize your website.

Good luck! source