The New Year period is always a time for reflection and planning. It is when everybody starts dieting. When smokers quit smoking. When people get organized.

It is no different for businesses, and it is definitely no different here at KAYWEB.

Our New Year's resolution is to take our much-lauded customer service to the highest level ever in 2012.

When I survey clients to find out what they like about KAYWEB, they always respond that our customer service is very good compared to other experiences they've had in the web industry. We've accepted these compliments for over seven years, recognizing that customer service is one of our key points of difference.

This year, we want to take this point of difference to another level ... because we feel you need us to.

When starting a business 10 years ago, giving your business a web presence was not even on the priority list. Five years ago, it probably arrived somewhere towards the bottom of the top 10 things your business needs to get started. Today, it is number one or number two on that same priority list.

Every business needs a website, and a well strategized web presence. We will look to work with our clients to ensure their web presence is updated and holistic, with search engine optimization and social media marketing options taken into consideration.

We also feel that a mobile presence is becoming as important as a web presence for businesses. With nearly half of the world's visits to websites being made with mobile phones, it is our responsibility to check that our clients' websites are optimized for mobile browsing.

Our Support team has been expanded over the last year and is better equipped than ever to continue handling all our clients' technical issues.

KAYWEB will take customer service to a new level in 2012. Unlike many diets that began on January 1, our New Year's resolution will deliver results.

.xxx is a domain extension designed to house pornographic websites, which currently appear on the same domain extensions used by businesses and organizations (e.g. .com and .com.au).

Contrary to what some may have thought when reading this blog headline, I am not thinking of branching KAYWEB out into porn (I can feel the sighs).

All I am doing is protecting our brand 'KAYWEB'. Better I register it and do nothing with it, rather than someone else register it and do everything with it.

I encourage you to do the same.

KAYWEB does not currently sell .xxx domain names as our supplier has not yet made it available, but they are available at Go Daddy.

Check this slideshow out if you have a spare hour or so :)

With a growing number of Facebook, Twitter and other social network users, it is clear that internet usage is booming. As a result, many business owners are at a crossroads - questioning whether they need a website or, if they already have one, is it working to deliver whatever it is set out to deliver?

The two most common types of websites are.

1. Informational Website

Informational websites are mainly used is to give out information. This could have different purposes - a non-profit organization might deliver information about issues of concern, while a business could use this form of website to market their products and services.

2. Online Stores

Ecommerce websites, or online stores, serve the purpose to offer goods and services for sale and enable online transactions to affect such sales.

As business owners at a crossroads, you must decide which of the categories your website falls into. Is it to give information or to sell? Or is it a more custom need? Then choose your web designer and web developer to get your website designed and developed in an optimized way.

When your website is finally up, the best way to tell if it is working for you is by reviewing your website analytics. The analytics will show how many visitors are coming to your website, where your visitors are coming in from, what keywords people are finding your website under, what your bounce rate is and much more.

If your website has a high bounce rate that means that a majority of visitors are coming into your website and leaving quickly. This is not good! You want visitors to look around your website, and if they are not, your website is not working for you.

Though it sounds easy, reviewing analytics is not general knowledge. It is best to ask for guidance and help of a SEO specialist.

If your website is search engine optimized and still not working, maybe online marketing is the solution for you.

Or... if your website has many issues and is not working for you it may be necessary to start from scratch and get a whole new website.
This might be a little pricey at start but will pay off later.

Recently, I began contributing articles to one of the biggest social media news websites in the world, Social Times after the editor declared his interest in having me write on my expertise of 'startups' and 'web and mobile business' once or twice a week.

The article I wrote the other day went seriously viral.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST

DC Universe Online is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) by Sony Online Entertainment. Sony first released the conceptual art in July 2008, and after a long time of waiting, the game was official released in January 2011.

I describe as DC Universe Online as massive because it is more interactive than standard MMORPGs. It includes a levelling system, raid instances, endgame progression and inventories. Players can choose a mentor for their character (such as Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman for heroes and Lex Luthor, The Joker, or Circe for villains).

DC Universe is unique in a way because you can play it on your Play Station 3 if you don't have powerful PC but Sony doesn't support MAC users. This game allows gamers to create their own character with their desired abilities and power, like the laser eyes of Superman. Also, this game offers users to play as the villain, which most MMORPGs don't offer.

From thinking up an idea to buying a domain, then designing a website, developing a mobile application, launching, marketing, search engine optimization, social media optimization and exiting... it is truly a thrilling ride.

For me, it has become an addiction. Founding and setting up KAYWEB and investing in multiple internet and mobile businesses along the way has meant that I have been, and continue to be, on that ride with startups in Sydney, Melbourne and New York.

Recently on my personal blog, I wrote a few articles asking fellow riders of the startup wave to consider a few things. I link to them below.

1. Build to sell, or not? - click here to read

2. Location, location, location - click here to read

3. Identify your weaknesses and plug them - click here to read

4. Quirkiness is cheap - click here to read

Happy reading!

What do you think about a 17 button mouse?

I am sure, if you are one of the many World of Warcraft (WOW) players like me, a gamers’ mouse is not the latest thing. But for amateur gamers, let me discuss this special mouse.

The Razor Naga is the ultimate Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming mouse that shifts the balance between keyboard and mouse by putting an unprecedented number of in-game commands in one place.

The mouse has been optimised with an extra 12 buttons which are customisable to keyboard settings on the computer. This multi-button mouse will place every command you need in the palm of your hand.

According to GamesCom, the mouse enables players to “run rings” around other players who rely on a conventional keyboard to move around, jump, dance, and thwart evil plots.

This would certainly make the games easier to play, give maximum comfort for long gaming sessions and make you a more competitive evil doer plot thwarter.

A trip down memory lane.

In 1979, Philips and Sony, through partnership, successfully developed the Compact Disc in 1983. A spin-off of Laserdisc technology.

While Laserdisc was too big, the Compact Disc, or CD as it is called today, was small and was a great technological marvel because at a diameter of 12cm it could hold a 74-80 minute audio capacity and a 650-700 MB data capacity.

With the advent of the CD Writer in early 2000, we have used the CD for audio materials and file backups. CDs have been widely use for almost anything; audio, videos and even greeting cards.

All of that changed when the DVD arrived. DVD, also known as Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc, is an optical disc storage media format, and was invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Time Warner in 1995. Its main usage is for video and data storage.

It has the same physical size as the standard CD but packs a 4 Gigabyte storage capacity. It comes in different storage capacity sizes and is pegged at 17 Gigabyte at a maximum. The DVD has also been used to make HD Videos, Hi-Def Videos using HD DVD - a different capacity format.

The future.

Blu-ray Disc is also an optical disc storage medium designed to succeed the DVD format. The format has a 12 cm (same as DVDs and CDs) diameter, 25 GB per-layer optical disc, with dual layer discs (50 GB) the norm for feature-length video discs and additional layers possible.

The name Blu-ray Disc refers to the blue laser used to read the disc, which allows for six times more storage than on a DVD. The term Blu was used because blue is commonly used in English and therefore not registrable as a trademark.

Blu-ray Disc was developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association, a group representing makers of consumer electronics, computer hardware, and motion pictures. Every hi-definition game involves a Blu-Ray disc as its medium.

Technology is really moving forward and fast. What you thought impossible is now possible.

I can still remember when I used to play our gramaphone using a vinyl record and was fascinated on how the audio data was encoded there. Now having a CD or DVD that packs a lot of data is a common thing.

I say let's keep moving it forward with the web and digital content and delivery as the next great medium.

According to Hitwise, an internet traffic monitoring group:

“Facebook was the top-visited Website for the first time and accounted for 8.93 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2010. Google.com ranked second with 7.19 percent of visits, followed by Yahoo! Mail (3.52 percent), Yahoo! (3.30 percent) and YouTube (2.65 percent).”

The rise of Facebook to the top seems inevitable since more people rely on websites with shared information with other people than what we would find in algorithm-driven search websites.  This could also mean that people trust online content (videos, photos, etc.) that is shared by people within their network more than going to a random website via a search.

Think of this as an example. People will watch YouTube video embedded in a friend's Facebook wall. Since they are on Facebook, they will decide to post their thoughts about the video underneath that video, share to other friends, etc. These activities will count towards Facebook’s traffic as the said video is determined as trusted content from a friend.

Facebook applications, especially online games, are another factor that heavily contribute to its popularity.

For this year, we are expecting a tighter competition between Google and Facebook. With Facebook setting the trend, don’t be surprised if Google keeps trying to place a dent into the social web market. Its previous attempt with Google Buzz was timid at best.