With a store, a personal website and a few blogs, I know all too well the importance of website optimization. In an earlier post, I wondered if with after having our Page Ranked bombed, a website optimization firm could help a website to raise its search engine placement despite its lower page rank. I am sure an optimized website where bots can crawl easily would help somewhat.

Some people may think that only commercial sites would require the help of website optimization firms to make their website search engine friendly but I think that as long as you have a website or a blog, even if it is not a commercial entity, it will do you good to have it optimized.

This would help in getting an improved search engine results ranking in organic searches, hence bringing in new people to your site and hopefully they will convert to be loyal visitors.

I used to think that it would be an expensive affair to have a site optimized but it need not be. There are many website optimization firms that also cater to small to medium sites with a smaller budget. In any case, look for one that would meet your needs and yet does not bust your budget. You can only reap the rewards of a well optimized website.

When I first started using the internet, Yahoo! Mail was my primary email address. I then changed to Hotmail because somehow my Yahoo! email address became spam haven so I moved. Even now that I have Gmail as my primary email, Hotmail is still used for many of my old contacts and as log-in IDs.

The problem with Hotmail is that it is totally web-based and the only way to retrieve your Hotmail without logging in to the web is by using Outlook Express or Microsoft Outlook. On my desktop computer, I retrieve, read and reply to all my Hotmail email on Outlook Express and it is very convenient. I hardly ever log in to my Hotmail account on the web anymore except to retrieve large attachments.

Since June 2007 when I bought my mobile device, Nokia E61i, I have been trying to figure out how to get my Hotmail like how Gmail is set up on my phone. I know many people are looking for this answer as well based on the organic searches that came from search engines.

Anyway, I am now trying Consilient for ten days already. There are some parts that could be improved on like visual notification, the option to retrieve new email only (I understand that this is Hotmail issue), the option to delete mail from my phone only but leave it intact in my email account, the option to increase font size and an instant connection once I am online instead of the two minutes I have to wait before my accounts are sync-ed. Like Samm, the sound alert of my Nokia’s default email client is also muffled if Consilient is connected at the same time.

What I like about Consilient, which I use solely to retrieve and read my Hotmail, is the many different colors that I change ever so often. The sound alert is also very loud which is good if we are out and about. When I take my phone to bed during the night so that I am alerted of new emails, I cringe because it is too loud and may wake the household. I end up piling my pillows on it until even I could not hear it and missed the notification. Haha

One thing though, I don’t know how to stop my 3G connection from breaking so that my PUSH mail is uninterrupted. I have already selected an ‘always on’ connection *sigh*

P/S: I wrote the above article, all 400+ words of it on my mobile device! Woot!

Don’t know what happened but yesterday, most sites went down by a further one notch in Page Rank. There are some lucky ones whose ranks were maintained. Some people say that these sites were penalized for selling contextual links but I find that does not really hold water because I know of blogs that are heavily laden with sponsored posts and yet their PR is still standing.

StatCounter, which I use for all my blogs for statistics and traffic tracking went from a Page Rank 9 (some people said it was a ten before) to a 6. There’s one blog that I know with a 6 and dropped to a 3. And these are only two of the sites that I visit daily.

Oh well, after a long nap, this still doesn’t look like it was a bug as my sites are still depressingly low in PR. However, when the majority of the sites are down then everyone is on equal footing again. Well, almost!

I guess I will be spending the next few hours reading what other people are publishing on their blogs. *sigh*

In the early days of this blog, I wrote about how I lost my data due to a Trojan attack. I don’t even know how that could happen when my computer is protected with anti-virus software and I never visit any websites that are suspect. But attack it got and the end result was a corrupted software and data.

I heard from a friend that there is a data recovery New York-based company which offers their expert advice on how to recover data in such a “disaster”. I wonder if they could help me to recover my data this way or not.

This company also offers Raid data recovery service and they are experts when it comes to recovering lost data from hard disks, compact discs, media cards, memory cards and many other storage devices.

Data Hotline, this company, has a No Data No Fee policy and everyone can write in to them to request for a free evaluation. I think that what they are offering is great as sometimes our data could be lost in an accident and we did not have the lasted back up copy of our database! This is no longer a worry as we could call Data Hotline and let them do the dirty work in data recovery. Hahah!