Weird. All night we have seen TweetMeme up and down on our blog. But it seems its finally out for the count at around 10 PM. It’s dead at Mashable and Twitter has “Tweetmeme Down” as a trending topic. It also seems like they are also getting lots of Tweet spam sent to the @tweetmeme account. No major words form other blogs about what is going on. Thankfully we have enabled BackTypes Retweet WordPress Plugin, a very capable competitior to Tweetmeme. We suggest you give them a shot. In the meantime we will update this post as the news develops.

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Update #1

Tweetmeme finally has message to users:

The Tweetmeme status blog notes the following: “The main site is currently still down, but we have identified the issue and will be back and fully operational soon.”

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Update # 2

The Tweetmeme status blog now notes the following: “We’re currently in holding, which means buttons are temporarily paused and the site is unavailable – we’ll be back and running smoothly as soon as we can.”

Funny- main updates come from Tweetmeme at their blog, not via Twitter.

Update #3
Still no “major” blog reporting the Tweetmeme outage. We will update in the morning when we learn what happened or any other important updates. You can follow Tweetmeme status here until then. We wish the Tweetmeme team good luck on getting back up. Its a great tool and wish them a speedy recovery.

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Update# 4

Early this morning (February 6th) Tweetmeme came back online. The Tweetmeme status blog reports:

“We have identified the problem that caused the general outage on Friday 5th February and applied a fix. The buttons, API and site are now all fully functional again.

Button counts may still be lagged as we restore our data processing systems to full strength and process the back-log. No tweets have been lost, we expect they will be attributed to your buttons within several hours.

Just to clarify, this was a fault with our internal systems. There has been no security breach and no data has been lost or jeopardized.”

We’re glad to see Tweetmeme back up and running…

In Quebec, a province in Canada, there are strict rules about operating a website in the province. You must offer a bilingual site (French and English) to customers if you do business in the province or are resided in that province. Actually the website content must be in French, but English is optional, as French is the official language in the province of Quebec. Failing to comply with the rules, can run you afoul of Office Quebecoise de la language francaise and possible fines and sanctions.

So what do you do if you are a small business without the resource to create a French site? Thankfully Google offers you some solutions other then spending a small fortune in translation services. Below are the solutions and the scripts you need:

1- Translate all the pages

This is the more time consuming solution by if you visit Google Translate, you can enter your site text, visit your website url, or upload your documents/web pages. Instantly Google will translate your files into French. Of course this is a machine translation, but it will give you the ability to come pretty close. If you know someone who reads/writes French, this will quicken the turn around time in translating your site. We recommend you add your French pages to a subfolder on your sever (i.e http://www.yoursite.com/fr).

2- Offer Translation Tool on Index

A quick solution is offering Google’s translation tool on your pages. Just use the below code.

<div id="google_translate_element"></div><script>
function googleTranslateElementInit() {
  new google.translate.TranslateElement({
    pageLanguage: 'en',
    includedLanguages: 'en,fr'
  }, 'google_translate_element');
}
</script><script src="http://translate.google.com/translate_a/element.js?cb=googleTranslateElementInit"></script>

3- Use .HTACCESS file to redirect based on browser language.
Using an .HTACCESS file, you can detect the language of the visitors browser. If a visitor has a French version of Firefox, Chrome or IE when coming to your site the site will be translated to French automatically using Google. If they come to with an English language browser, they will not notice a difference. All you need to do is replace “www.englishsite.com” in the code with your name.

#The 'Accept-Language' HTACCESS File for Quebec
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Language} ^fr [NC]
#Redirect user to http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http://www.englishsite.com/&sl=en&tl=fr
#sending 301 (Moved Permanently) HTTP status code
RewriteRule ^$ http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http://www.englishsite.com/&sl=en&tl=fr [L,R=301]

#For every other language, use English
RewriteRule ^$ http://www.englishsite.com [L,R=301]

If you decide to add other languages you would add the following code after line 7.

RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Language} ^de [NC]
RewriteRule ^$ /de/index.html [L,R=301]

The other option on this code is to create sub-site, with language folders. In the below code, English users will be taken to www.yoursite.com/en unless they are using a French browser. In this case they will be taken to www.yoursite.com/fr.

#The 'Accept-Language' HTACCESS File for correct language
RewriteEngine on
#
# Use accept-language to redirect to subdirectory, default to English if no match
rewritecond %{HTTP:Accept-Language} ^(fr|en)[-,;]? [nc,OR]
rewritecond en ^(en)$
RewriteRule ^$ http://www.yoursite.com/%1/
#
RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9_-]+)/?$ http://www.yoursite.com [nc,L]

So there you go! Three quick solutions to get your site in French fast and keep your Quebec customer happy. Now you may ask why we did not offer an IP blocking solution. Unfortunately, its just not efficient. For example, you would need to keep an updated IP list for all users in Quebec. This is a major issue, because there are always new IP addresses. Furthermore how do you identify users in Quebec with ISP’s in Ontario or for that matter those visitors using a proxy?

The best solution in our view is to start with solution # 2 or 3 above, while you work on using solution #1. A we have mentioned earlier, sometimes you just have to spend the money on website design. Having a fully translated website is the best way to increase your revenue from a local market and the most professional way to present your site. Most of all, we hope the above solutions helps cash-strapped (small) businesses in Quebec (or elsewhere) facing issues in translation.

A while ago we spoke about the importance of having a website, but we should have added an important rule: Cheap website design can cheat you out of more business than having no website at all. Sure it’s important to get a website up for your company, but if you are serious about your business, you need to take your website design serious too. Using cardboard templates, wizards or testing your limited HTML skills is not the place for a professional website. At the same time, you are not required to pay a small fortune to get up and running.

I know I know, the question you now have becomes: “What is a fair price for a website?” But is that a question that makes sense? It’s all relative to how complex your website is, what features you want and how quick you need it. A good website designer will ask you these questions. You also need to ensure you have a plan for updating your content in the future. Nevertheless as a guideline, it is fair to be charged roughly $25-50/hour or about $250-500 for a basic site. We must caution you once again, this is price varies widely on what you need and the level of expertise of the designer.

Before you go to hire website design help, we suggest first you think about the elements you wish to have. The next step is to treat the process as anything else you would. Ask to see past work or see if you can talk to current/past clients. Don’t be afraid to shop around. Remember that building a website is not usually a set and forget job. Make sure you have someone you can call on for tweaks or a way to make changes yourself. We also recommend you select a company or person who will be around in a year or two. Most of all, make sure you are comfortable with who you select. They will be interpreting you and your company to all your internet visitors. You need to make sure you trust the person who will translate your vision.

Oh, and as bonus tip. If you don’t have a domain name, and the designer gets one for you, make sure the ownership is in your name and with your email address. If ever you decide to move to another host or web designer, you want to be able to do so without having to track them down or to negotiate to get what is rightly yours.

If you decide not to pay for website designer, we highly recommend you avoid the templates from hosts and ISP’s, and seriously think you should consider using WordPress as your website platform. Sure it will take a bit to learn how to do what you need, but the output will be 100 times more professional and unique then most of the templates out there. Remember, your website is a reflection of you and your business. If you want to be successful, look like you already are. If you put out a sloppy unprofessional website, people will have trouble taking you seriously. Unfortunately, this is the new norm. So don’t be quick and cheap. Put some thought (and money) into your website plans. Good luck!

If you have a tip to share, or have a question, leave it in the comments below…

A great tool in your arsenal to keep track of you competition is Google Reader. If you are not aware, Google Reader is an RSS reader that allows you to read RSS feeds. An RSS feed (also known as Really Simple Syndication) is an xml file format used by web publishers to advise their audience where frequently updated works are involved—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio or video. We even use it on our website. See our RSS feed here. You can easily subscribe to an RSS Feed at most major sites by looking for RSS feed Icon ( ) and clicking on it. But what are you to do if there is no RSS feed on the site you want to track changes on? Unfortunately, the only solution is the time consuming  practice of  checking a site every time you wanted to see if something changed.

Now Google has unveiled a game changer that makes Google Reader a lot more powerful. This new feature gives anyone the ability to monitor changes to Web sites that lack RSS feeds. What does this mean? In markets where RSS feeds are not standard for websites,  for example in the B2B market, you can put any competitor Web site into Google Reader and updates will appear anytime a change or addition is made to a particular web page.

Google will create a custom snippets showing page changes (like below-click image to enlarge) that will allow you to quickly decide if the information is of interest.

As you can see, this is a powerful tool for keeping tabs on your competition when they do not offer an RSS feed. However, because this tool is so powerful, Google has offered a way for web publishers to opt-out of tracking. Nevertheless if some of your competitors opt-out Google Reader is still a quick, easy way to stay on top of your industry and trends. And of course, we also hope you will add us to your list by subscribing to our feed found here.

Its not a secret that Facebook and Twitter are great avenues for promotion of your website. Almost every major  search engine marketing expert can offer details on how to optimize  your Facebook fan page or use a Twitter coupon campaign. We however, have a different take after several discussion with clients. Take a deep breath before you buy into the hype. Not every business should be in the business of producing social media content. For example if your company blocks Facebook and Twitter, does it make sense? First of all your own employees will have no idea of your promotions online, and when faced with questions from customers, they will not be able to see them. You also have to look at the industry. If your company blocks Social Media, isn’t there a good chance your target audience will be in the same boat. In a surveys done last year there are estimates that as low as 54% to as high of 76% of users are blocked from Social Media sites such as Facebook and Twitter at work.

So what is the next step? The most important thing to do is establish in your mind the target  audience. This will allow you to decide how to move forward with your campaign or even if there should be one. Remember, though, Facebook and Twitter have now permeated fully onto a new range of smartphones,  you can still get to your audience even if they are blocked at work. The real questions then becomes will your audience care to find you outside of work time  or follow/interact with you outside the normal channels if you are not providing value. What do we mean by this? For example if you have a retail business, social media can be used for coupons or to alert people to specials or new products- like 10% off Nike Sneakers for Twitter users who buy online in the next 24 hours. If you are selling B2B (business to business) services or products, the application of social media might be a bit more difficult.

There is no shame in not having a Facebook or Twitter page. You might really not need one no matter how tempting it seems.  Nevertheless,  creating content and owning the page are two different things.  Our advice regardless if you decide to get involved in social media n or not is at the bare minimum to grab the Twitter and Facebook name for your company. You want to make sure it is not abused or used by your competitors.  Create a Facebook Business Page, but keep it simple and include information which will redirect people back to your main corporate site. Grab you twitter profile, and make sure you tell people in the summary this is the official Twitter profile (maybe consider getting it verified) and tell them to visit your website. The beauty of this strategy is it locks up your name and allows you the luxury to decide later if it is worth developing further. Nothing would be worse, then realizing later you need a Twitter account and someone already has the name taken.  What do you think? Are you on Twitter or Facebook for your company account? How do you use it to attract customers?