Computer Support Network

Most people are familiar with the traditional forms of media advertising; the billboards, the TV advertisements and all forms of web based marketing. Quite recently a new trend has been emerging among advertisers who focus on the 18-34 demographic. Online gaming. This might seem a strange outlet for advertising dollars but recent trends have shown this to be anything but.

In recent years the American games industry has grown to surpass Hollywood as a financial producer and is poised to make even more gains in the coming years. Among the forerunners of this trend is the Blizzard Entertainment title, World of Warcraft, a game that requires a monthly subscription and allows people from around the world to play and quest with each other. Currently World of Warcraft has over ten million subscribers, each one paying $15 a month to play in the online world. What’s this mean? Well for starters this one game generates roughly $150 million dollars; that’s per year. WOW has been running for four years and going strong. Compare that to some of the highest grossing movies, Titanic ($601m) and StarWars (460m) and you can see the public has spoken. They like their games.

Many big name corporations have taken notice of this and started to pursue it. A number of online games have been renting out virtual advertising space as a means of reducing cost. Currently some of the biggest participants that have signed on are Coca-Cola, Comcast’s G4TV, Dunkin’ Donuts, Universal Music Group and Verizon. Additional advertisers such as Target and Wal-Mart have also shown interest in pursuing online game advertising in the future.

One reason why this form of advertising has picked up is the fact that it’s non conspicuous to viewers. These are not the crudely constructed games of ten or even 5 years ago. Many have come to a point where photo realistically rendered cities and characters are common place. Seeing an advertisement for Coca-Cola on a billboard in a virtual city seems as natural as in a real one.

With more and more companies jumping on board and with hundreds of millions of viewers around the world this is one advertising venue that is unlikely to die down.

- Richard Keene
IT Computer Support of New York
Design and Optimization Department

IT Computer support of New York is proud to sponsor the 2008 Optimist National Regatta. The event, which hosts close to 450 competitors from around the country is being held in Shorefront Park part on Long Island’s Great South Bay and allows competitors ranging in age from 8-15 to race for the title. This may seem like a departure for a technical support company but rest assured that this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Each competitor will participate in at least 5 races per day over the course of the 5 day regatta. There will be over 11,000 individual elements to score. In the past scoring of the race had to be done manually on the water with thousands entries tallied by hand. This was nightmarish and frustrating endeavor for everyone involved. To help remove some of the stress IT Computer Support of New York has provided wireless capable computers and VPN access to secure servers in the New York office. The benefit of this is that it allows for nearly real-time tracking of the races events and ensures a private secure connection. This is the first time in history that an event of this scale has been monitored in such a manner and with more technology being used in the field than ever before everything is poised to be an event to remember.

Opening ceremonies for the Regatta will commence on Wednesday July 23 and will continue through to the end of the week. If you would like to learn more about ITCSNYs involvement with the race you can read the official press release here. Or if you would like to learn what IT Computer Support can do for your event or gathering contact them on the web at http://www.itcomputersupportnewyork.com/.

- Richard Keene
IT Computer Support of New York
Design and Optimization Department

As many people already know Google is the king of online search tools; what people may not know is how high above the competition their crown sits. Recent findings based on a sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users states that Google holds a massive 70% hold on all searches in America. Google’s supremacy has been on the rise for quite a few years leaving previous giants like Yahoo and MSN to fall towards obscurity. Yahoo currently setting at only 20% of the market share, has been dropping in popularity at a rate of .3% a month for the past year. Rounding out the top four you have Microsoft with 6% and Ask.com with a 4% of the market share.

What does this mean for you? Well first of roughly 80% of all online business is driven by Organic Searches. Pay-per-click services WILL get you traffic but tests have shown that the majority of web viewers will avoid paid search links purely on the basis that they know people are trying to sell to them. Since most of your customers will find you through an Organic Search and Google holds 70% of the organics search market it is absolutely critical that you website is optimized for Google searches. This is not to say you should ignore optimization for all other browsers; 30% of your possible customers are a lot to just ignore. What it DOES mean is that you should find the best way to appease both search engines.

Search Engine Optimization is becoming a larger and larger part of the business world and with it is an increasing stress to make your website SEO compliant. Through proper optimization it becomes possible to create free advertising for your website and drives customers to you. Google has changed the way business is done on the web and with it changed the world. If you want to be a part of it you will need to embrace the changes.

- Richard Keene
IT Computer Support of New York
Design and Optimization Department

People have been told for years the importance of backing up the information and critical data from their computer systems. In my experience of working with different businesses and common people most lack even the most basic backup system. Most people make the assumption that if nothing has happened yet then nothing ever will; this is a terribly arrogant position to take and one that can have disastrous repercussions. Another problem is that many people don’t know what their options are.

A true story; less than a year ago I was asked to restore the computer system of a small business to working order. Their main hard drive had crashed and they knew very little about computers but they assured me they had all their files backed up. When I arrived at the location I was handed a box of 56 floppy disks that contained their “valuable” information. Upon inspection I became aware of the fact that not only was this a poor choice of backup but that they hadn’t made a recent back up of anything in nearly six months. Thankfully, with a little bit of effort I was able to pull the information they needed off from their crashed drive but this is not always going to be an option.

There are many different options when it comes to backing up your data. On the basic level you have access to things like external hard drives. The price of these units has come down considerable and it is not possible to purchase them in sizes up to a terabyte for a very reasonable price. This is, however, not a perfect solution for many reasons. First and foremost backing up in this manner requires diligence upon its users. A backup system isn’t worth much if it isn’t used regularly. Additionally, having a physical back up is fine to cope with hardware failure or personal error but what if there is a fire in your building? Or a theft? For this reason it is important to have a backup plan as well.  

More thorough and often reliable options are available in the form of new online backup systems. Recently a company that have receiving press offers a service called carbonite . This online service stores a copy of your vital files online and can be set up to automatically backup your files at preset intervals. In this way the individuals of a company are free to go about their business without having to worry about backing up their service.  

This again is not perfect but it IS a step in the right direction. When it comes to backing up your files it really comes down to a question. Could your business survive if you lost everything tomorrow? If the answer is no then you owe it to yourself to look into a backup plan to assure the life of your business.

IT Computer Support of New York offers an extensive program for helping you with your back up needs. You would like to get more information in what we can do for you call us for more information at 212-242-2949

Or visit us on the web and see what we can do for you.

- Richard Keene
IT Computer Support of New York
Design and Optimization Department