Jack @ ASP.NET

Why SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is important for any publically facing web-site.  A large percentage of traffic to sites now comes from search engines, and improving the search relevancy of your site will lead to more user traffic to your site from search engine queries (which can directly or indirectly increase the revenue you make through your site).

IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit

The SEO Toolkit helps you improve your Website’s relevance in search results by recommending how to make your new or existing site content and structure more search engine-friendly. It works on any Website on the Web. Best of all – it’s a small, lightweight free download!

ASP.NET 4 SEO Improvements

ASP.NET 4 includes a bunch of new runtime features that can help you to further optimize your site for SEO.  Some of these new features include:

• New Page.MetaKeywords and Page.MetaDescription properties
• New Response.RedirectPermanent() method
• New URL Routing support for ASP.NET Web Forms

You can use the above routes and methods for both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC based URLs.

ASP.NET 4 includes a bunch of feature improvements that make it easier to build public facing sites that have great SEO.  When combined with the SEO Toolkit, you should be able to use these features to increase user traffic to your site – and hopefully increase the direct or indirect revenue you make from them.

Microsoft just released IIS Media Services 3.0, a set of extensions for Internet Information Services 7 (IIS) that provide an integrated HTTP-based media delivery platform.

This includes the new IIS Live Smooth Streaming and the separate IIS Advanced Logging package.

In addition, Microsoft released the beta of the Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit, which allows developers to easily create Smooth Streaming experiences using Silverlight.   Supported features include PlayReady, DVR controls, instant replay, slow motion, multiple camera angles, alternate audio tracks, content protection, ad integration, in-stream data feeds, and more.

Since April, 2009, key broadcasters around the world have used beta versions of IIS Media Services 3.0 to successfully broadcast some of the world’s premier live events.

These include the Tour de France and the Roland Garros 2009 International French Open Tennis Tournament on France Télévisions; the IAAF Athletics World Championships and FINA Swimming World Championships on both France Télévisions and RAI; the FIFA Confederations Cup South Africa 2009 on RAI; and Champions League Soccer on BSkyB; as well as events such as the Michael Jackson Memorial on Sympatico/MSN inMusic and SKY News.

In a combined effort with Microsoft, NBC Sports and others, Wimbledon Live delivered more than 6,500 minutes of live and on-demand Smooth Streaming video via a high-definition (HD), interactive online video experience.  Each Sunday this Fall, NBC and Microsoft are broadcasting Sunday Night Football on-line in HD, utilizing live DVR controls, multiple camera angles, slow motion, ad integration, analytics, and other cutting-edge features.  26 such trial deployments are currently highlighted on the Smooth Streaming Showcase.

What’s available now:

With this release, the key elements of the IIS media server platform now include:

· Smooth Streaming, adaptive streaming of media over HTTP

· Live Smooth Streaming, for live adaptive streaming of broadcast events

· Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit, for creating custom clients

· Bit Rate Throttling, meters the speed that media is delivered to a player

· Web Playlists, secure sequencing of media content

· Advanced Logging, with real-time client- and server-side logging

· Application Request Routing (ARR), providing HTTP proxying and caching

Download the latest IIS Media offerings

You can download all of the IIS media server platform components, and the Smooth Streaming PDK, using the Web Platform Installer button on the IIS Media page (http://www.iis.net/media).

Advance Notification for the October 2009 Security Bulletin Release

For October we are releasing 13 bulletins (eight critical and five important), addressing 34 vulnerabilities, affecting Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, Silverlight, Forefront, Developer Tools, and SQL Server. Most of these updates require a restart so please factor that into your deployment planning.

Among the updates this month, we are closing out two current security advisories:

· Vulnerabilities in SMB Could Allow Remote Code Execution (975497)

· Vulnerabilities in the FTP Service in Internet Information Services (975191)

Usually we do not go into this level of detail in the advance notification but we felt that it is important guidance so customers can plan accordingly and deploy these updates as soon as possible.

The target to release the October security updates is next Tuesday Oct. 13 at 10:00 a.m. PDT (UTC -8). Check back here at that time for a more detailed overview of the updates (including an overview video), our risk and impact summary and our deployment prioritization guide. More information about the upcoming security updates can be found here in the ANS.