Laptop Computers

Do Your Website's Meta Tags Stand the Test

2008-02-26T05:27:00.001-08:00

Every well designed website should have Meta tags. You might be asking yourself, "What are meta tags"? The short answer is Meta tags are a set of tags placed in the HTML header of your website to provide information to search engines about your website. You got it; the keyword here is search engines. As stated in a previous article, it is vital that you ensure your website is listed in the major search engines. Let's take this one step further and dissect the two major types of Meta tags.

Description Meta Tag

The description Meta tag is where you want to tell the search engines what your website is all about. You can think of the description Meta tag as the first impression of your website. When someone types in a search term in the search engines and your website is listed as matching that search term, the first thing they will see is the title and description of your website. If your description is not compelling enough your website may be overlooked time and time again. The end result would mean less traffic for you. So, let's take a look at what makes a good description:

1. First and foremost, your description must be relevant to your website. It should convey in a few words what your target audience should expect to get out of using your website. Your description should directly relate to both the title and the body content of your website. With that being said, every page on your website may not necessarily have the same description.

2. Although you want to make sure to use your main keywords in the description Meta tag, you do not want the description to be a complete reiteration of your keywords. The description should be full complete sentences making sure to be careful of any grammatical errors. Remember, the goal is to communicate to real people the essence of your website. To do so you must speak ("write") plain ole English.

3. Your description does not have to be really long to get your point across. The typical description is approximately 15 - 25 words long. This is equivalent to about 2 - 3 short sentences. Although there hasn't been an official word on what the description length needs to be, keep in mind there is only so much space available for your description in the search engine listings.

This list may not be all inclusive. However, it's a great start. To get a better fill of does and don'ts, search the internet using keywords relevant to your website and take a look at what the descriptions look like.

Keyword Meta Tag

The keyword Meta tag is probably the most important. This is where you would formulate a list of words that are directly related to your website. When someone types in a search term that fits your keywords your website could be one of the ones in the search engines listings. Typing in a group of words in the keyword Meta tag isn't as simple as that. There is a methodology to generating appropriate and good keywords that are suitable for your website. Let's take a look at a few things to keep in mind.

1. Don't use keywords that are not relevant to your website. Your keywords should consist of words that specifically describe what your website is all about. So if your website is geared towards web design, you should not use keywords relative to cookbooks. Sounds like common sense. However, you'd be surprised at how many websites use keywords that have nothing to do with their website.

2. You want to use keywords that are found in the body of your website. This increases the relevancy of your keywords. This does not mean that you should have lines of keywords imbedded into your website. Rather you should choose the words that are a part of the natural flow of your content. With that being said, it might serve you better to write the content of your website prior to identifying the appropriate keywords.

3. Generally, there are four areas to consider when incorporating your keywords in the Meta tag and the body of your website. These are density, frequency, prominence, and proximity.

a. Density refers to the number of times keywords appear versus all the words within the website. For example, if you have 500 words on a webpage and 250 are a particular keyword or keyword phase you would have a density of 50% which is way too high. Keyword density for each keyword or phrase should typically be between 2% - 6%.

b. Frequency refers to how often a keyword appears in the webpage. It is believed that the more a keyword appears the more relevant search engines see your webpage for that keyword. However, keep in mind that you do not want too high of a density. So if you want to use the same keyword over and over again make sure to have plenty of content surrounding the keyword.

c. Prominence refers to where the keyword(s) are found in the webpage. To achieve this remember to use your keywords in your title, description, at the beginning of the webpage, and the beginning of sentences.

d. Proximity refers to how close keywords are to each other. For example, consider the following two sentences:

"We design web sites"

"We specialize in web design"

If the keyword used in the search engines were "web design", the second sentence would be a better choice as it has the keywords web and design right next to each other.

There are many free tools on the internet that you can use to determine if your Meta tags past the test. Simply go to your favorite search engine and type in "free keyword analyzer" and see how you measure up.

SEO Services - Make Your Site Visible Online!

2008-02-26T05:25:00.000-08:00

SEO services and web copywriting goes hand in hand. One is of no use in the absence of other. Apart from writing search engine friendly content, the services include various technical subjects, quality inbounds links and other relevant details. However, copywriting remain one of the main functions of Search engine optimization services ever since the start of multiple search engines. Without proper content, SEO services is of no use because after all content is the prime factor that is capable of retaining reader's interest in the site. Higher the number of visitors higher is the SEO ranking, which further ensures higher development of your business.

All SEO services revolves around the content and it is often said that "content is king" which is quite true. The content referred here is not the same content that we write every now and then, but it is a commercially oriented content which is written with business point of view. The uniqueness and ability to provide all the details needed by visitors decide the SEO rankings of the website. Search engine optimization services provide all the relevant details required to make your site visible over the net. These services include keywords research, link popularity, website designing, and so on.

Although good content is highly needed to get better search engine optimization rankings, however one should not forget that visitors can only reach your website if SEO services ensure search engine friendly design and navigation to get better links. If there is no link to redirect visitors to your website then there is no point for writing good content as nobody will ever think that your site had existed. So, apart from using good readable content adequate keywords specially searched by search engine optimizers is of maximum importance for the development for your business. Search engine optimization services ensure that your website get a significant place on the web and you earn huge profits.

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How To Remove Spyware - What You Need To Know Now

2007-12-08T01:22:00.000-08:00

Learn how to remove spyware from your PC. It has the potential to betray your sensitive information to outside parties, slow down your computer and lead to financial and personal loss without your knowledge or permission. The alarming thing is that the majority of people whose computers are infected aren't even aware of the problem. This article will describe what spyware and adware are, how to remove it from your computer and where you can find some of the best removal software available.

The Basics Of Malware And Adware

It's important to learn how to remove spyware and adware from your computer, you should understand the potential annoyance and damage they can cause. Downloaded from the internet, it sits on your hard drive, looks through your files, watches the websites you visit and often records things such as usernames and passwords to various websites. Adware watches your behavior online and pops up advertisements on your computer screen. Many of these programs then send this information to outside parties. This can lead to financial loss and even identity theft.

Fortunately, you can easily learn how to remove spyware from your computer. In order to do this, you need to first identify the programs. Despite what some believe, not all software that are designed to protect the integrity of your PC can do this.

Can Anti-Virus Software Remove It?

Anti-virus software often cannot identify this stuff on your computer. These malicious programs are created and distributed every day on the internet. As a result, most well-known anti-virus software has difficulty keeping up with the onslaught of new spyware and adware released each day. Further, the creators of these programs work hard to hide them effectively from anti-virus software, making detection and removal even harder.

Can You Manually Remove Spyware From Your Computer?

You can manually remove it from your computer or you can use software specifically designed for the job. Most removal experts recommend not trying to do this manually. While possible, it is a very high-maintenance task that requires researching the various files associated with each spyware and adware program, the specific steps to get rid of each program, etc.

Using Software for Removal

Instead of learning to remove manually, you should consider using software such as Spybot Search and Destroy and Ad-Aware. Spybot is designed to identify and remove malware like this from your computer. Ad-Aware is designed to do the same for adware programs. The key factor that makes these programs effective is that they are constantly updated to account for new programs that are released. These types of programs are very easy to use and extremely effective.

This junk can slow down your computer, display annoying pop up advertisements, kill your productivity and even make your personal and financial information vulnerable to prying eyes. However, you can easily remove these programs from your computer by using removal software. If you are still not sure how to remove spyware there is more help available.

technology, computer, spyware, notebook, laptop, e-mail palmtop

Hacking - What, When, How?

2007-12-05T22:33:00.000-08:00

•What is hacking?

According to Computer Crime Research Center (US), “Hacking is unauthorized use of computer and network resources”.

•Who is a hacker?

A hacker is a gifted programmer; a programmer for whom computing is its own reward and also enjoys the challenge of breaking into other computers, networks, cracking applications, etc.

•How the hacker can hack a system?

Hackers hack by exploiting the weaknesses of the target system, network, etc, for poor configuration applications and web servers, unpatched or old software, poorly chosen or default passwords and disabled security controls.

•Why hack at all?

Hackers hack because they want it that way. There is no specific reason why they do that. Some does hacking to test their computer skills, others do that to steal specific data from the target. Once a vulnerable point is identified in the system, they definitely attempt to hack to try to gain administrative access to the machine.

•Different types of hackers

The different types of hacker are

1.WhiteHats are the hackers that try to make the movement go forward by working as system administrators, security experts and by maintaining web sites with new technologies, news events, bug reports, and much more.

2.Black hackers attack other’s systems; whereas White hackers do exactly opposite i.e., defend against attacks.

3.Crackers penetrate networks and try to take advantage of something they discover in the process; they are really malicious.

4.Script Kiddie, does not really possess any skills except for the tools, uses tools and techniques developed by WhiteHats, BlackHats and Crackers to deface sites, destroy information, and do other types of digital-vandalism.

•Basic Hacking Methodology

The basic steps for any hacking methodology are

1.Information gathering (Probe)

2.Attack (Advancement & Entrenchment)

3.Infiltration or Extraction

•Most Prevalent Hacking Attack Categories

Hackers preferably attack the organizations systems infrastructure and commercial applications. If the systems are well secured then the hacker may resort to social engineering or focus upon the target application vulnerabilities.

The four most prevalent attack categories are

1.Exploitation of Application-related privileges: Some server-based applications run with specific User or group permissions. By using Race conditions or Buffer overflow attacks these applications’ security can be compromised.

2.Client-side manipulation: Hackers bypass client-side validations by supplying incorrect data formats or data to the server in an attempt to reveal both the functionality and secured data.

3.Race Conditions: When the coding is not done properly for an application to access specific variables, files, and data or installed the appropriate checks to implement simultaneous accesses then the hacker can get unintended access to data through both trusted and untrusted server application components.

4.Buffer Overflow Attacks: Normally applications take data as an input and pass it to memory buffers for manipulation. If the coders do not put a checkpoint to check whether the size of data is too big for a buffer then they are bound to be a complications. Hackers may take this condition as an advantage and can embed their own commands within the oversized data package. Perfectly implemented, these commands can acquire System Administrator privileges to the hacker.

•Cyber attacks: What are they?

Cyber attacks happen on a nation-wide scale and includes clogging up the adversary country’s computers which handle sensitive information like logistics, communications, war strategies, shutting down their civil utilities, like national power grid, jamming radar sites, crushing military’s computers, and downing commercial websites, etc.

•Hacker’s tools

There are so many tools available in the Net and also in the market using which anybody can do the basic hacking. A few tools are

1.DSniff -- a suite of programs that can be used in penetration and auditing testing.

2.Ethereal -- the widely used network protocol analyzer.

3.AirSnort -- a wireless LAN (WLAN) tool which recovers encryption keys.

4.Netcat -- a simple Unix utility which writes and reads data across network connections, using UDP or TCP protocol.

•Hacking in day-to-day life

To name a few…

1.Application hacking

2.Email hacking

3.Password hacking

4.Key Loggers…

•The key to winning the war against hackers…

The first step is to know both the state of one’s own network and its vulnerabilities and also the tactics hackers employ and deploy. Strategic analysts proclaim the key, to escape being hacked by somebody, is network security. But again, unfamiliarity of hacker’s activities and ignorance of how to deploy firewalls and other security features effectively can make you the hacker’s favorite target.

“Hope for the best and plan for the worst” should be the motto in drawing strategies against hackers.

technology, computer, hacking, notebook, laptop, komputer, palmtop

E-Mail - Importance & Recovery

2007-12-04T05:43:00.000-08:00

E-mail abbreviated for Electronic Mail is a way to send message over network. Use of email has increased remendously as it is fast, reliable, cheap and effective way of communication. In today's competitive world of business, email has become the important mode of communication. It has become the backbone of the organization.

Bigger organization uses their own mailing server to contact to the client or their own employee. Outlook express or Microsoft outlook is used to store the mails. As the mail server can store such a big amount of data and it is also unsecured. So the mails are down from mail server to the individual machine.

Storing of email includes physical storage, logical storage as well as backup and recovery. The biggest security threat to any mail storage is email data to be lost. The general loss of mails is because of viruses, system format, and accidental deletion of mail. Mail could also be lost due to outlook express gets corrupted or Microsoft outlook not opening.

To recover the mail from such conditions email recover software has been developed. Email recovery software scans extract and saves email from .mbx and .dbx files in which Microsoft Outlook Express stores messages and folders on the local drive.

Good Data recovery software is helpful in recovering mails from the following conditions.

• Provides Mail Recovery from Outlook Express 4 mbx files and Outlook Express 5/6 dbx files.
• Provides deleted email recovery of dbx files and mbx files from corrupt media, such as floppy disks, Zip disks, CD ROMs, etc.
• Provides Mailbox repair of dbx files and mbx files.
• Support to repair dbx and mbx files with the 2GB size limit problem.
• Recovers deleted email attachments.
• Recovered messages may be opened directly in MS Outlook Express.
• Recovered messages may be saved in the *.eml file format on any (including network) disks visible by the host operating system.

technology, computer, computers, notebook, laptop, e-mail palmtop

Online Games - What's Hot What's Not

2007-12-03T06:57:00.000-08:00

Games, whether online or outdoor are exit points for a person's inner strength, a display of one's mental and physical agility. Over the decades, online gaming has caught the fancy of people more attuned to mental exercise than physical. And there are millions, believe it or faint, who have shun outdoor activities to embrace online or indoor games.

Most popular gaming options are the ones that are more realistic and provide the most bang for one's pounds. Battle games like the Guild Wars series, War Rock, Battlefield 2 and the alternates play heavy on the gamers' minds. Role-playing games like Ragnarok Online is also one of the most popular online games. Apart from these 3D games, there are many flash games as well that are equally popular among gamers across all age groups.

The urge to beat one's own score, to play on other's mind is a hidden desire in every human soul and game sites serve as perfect outlets for the same. They offer games that challenge gamers continually and they are hooked up to this addiction. Another reason for the reigning popularity of gaming sites and online games are the plummeting costs per session. With tough competition from fellow game makers, each one of them is trying to lure maximum gamers and succeeding at that too.

Gaming consoles or playstations are the latest entrants in the indoor gaming arena. Big players like Sony, Nintendo Wii, Microsoft's Xbox offer gaming experience par excellence. Equipped with high speed processors, superb graphical sharpness, sound clarity and presentation, such gaming consoles offer connectivity options through USB and Ethernet as well. Popularity of online games and gaming sites rest upon the punch feeling of the games itself as well as through viral marketing. The more gamers it can attract, the more successful a game becomes.

technology, computer, computers, notebook, laptop, online games, palmtop

Firefox vs IE

2007-12-01T09:51:00.000-08:00

Even though Firefox is newer than Internet Explorer, it is considered by many, to be superior in security and reliability. While Internet Explorer may boast its new features in recent upgrades, there are plenty of bugs that people are encountering and for the most part, the majority of the 'newer features' IE brags about, were already available in Firefox for a while.

One of the most recent embellishments to Internet Explorer is the tab browsing. This is a very useful feature; however Firefox has had it for over a year now. Regardless if there are or aren't any bugs in this particular IE feature, given their track record, I give Firefox a thumbs up on this one because it's old school for them at this point.

Additionally Microsoft Internet Explorer offers protection against phishing scams with its anti-phishing scanner. Due to the rise of phishing threats, it is a well received and necessary feature. However, Firefox offers this same safety feature with its Google Toolbar extension.

And while Firefox might not be absolutely one hundred percent secure, the bugs are realized and repaired much faster due its Open Source software. While some feel this poses unnecessary security risk, by making the source code readily available to the public, it receives more support and contributions from various software developers. In contrast, with Internet Explorer, Microsoft is solely responsible for fixing security issues, which sometimes means delayed response.

Then comes the Internet Explorer Web Developer Toolbar extension feature. This ingenious feature offers welcomed tools to web developers by way of troubleshooting web pages. But, you guessed it, still yet another pre-existing and perhaps superior feature available with Firefox tools.

To sum it up, even with Microsoft Internet Explorer running alongside Firefox, the fact still remains that Firefox has had few problems from the beginning. With both being neck to neck in available features the competition is stiff. But if you're ready to put some of the new features to work for you in web browsing, why not check out the dependable one that been doing right all along. You can download now, Firefox for FREE, plus learn some special tips that will allow you to make the most out of Firefox tools.

My computer is slow...

2007-11-30T07:15:00.000-08:00

Computer slowness can be caused by a variety of issues, which can be categorized in 2 categories: hardware or software. Computer hardware are the physical parts of the computer system, for example motherboard, CPU, RAM, etc. Computer software are all the programs and applications that are installed on your PC. Software includes the operating system like Microsoft Windows XP or Vista and all of the applications such as Microsoft Office, Photoshop, etc. Viruses, spyware and malware are software as well.

Things to check:

* Startup programs
* Virus and spyware scan
* Hard Drive out of space
* Fragmented hard drive
* Bad sector or corrupted files
* Overheating due to dust

Most common reason for computer slowness is unnecessary applications running in the background. When new programs & applications are installed many times they will be configured to start automatically when your computer starts.

These applications are not always needed, and will take up a portion of your computer's memory (RAM) which in turn will slow your computer down. To check what applications start automatically, clicks on the start button, then click on run, then type 'msconfig' and click on OK. Once the Systems Configuration Utility is open, click on the Startup tab. On the startup tab you can select the programs that you want to start.

Unselecting any of the programs in the startup tab will not remove them from your computer; it will merely keep them from starting automatically every time you turn your PC on. I recommend unselecting all the applications that you don't need. If you see software that you don't recognize it could be indication of virus of spyware.

If your computer is running slow and you're getting a lot of pop-up windows, even when you're not using the computer, your computer is most likely infected with a virus and/or spyware. Everybody should have antivirus software installed, updated and running at all times. There are many antivirus software packages, the best one on my opinion is Nod32 from ESET.

Regardless of antivirus software that you use, you should always keep it updated, and regularly scan your system for viruses. Most antivirus software don't check for spyware, so if your computer is infected by spyware, you should download a specialized spyware removal software. There are 2 programs that I use myself all the time, Spybot and Adaware they are absolutely free to use. Once you download and install these programs, make sure to run the updates and scan your entire computer.

Make sure your hard drive is not out of space. If it is, it's a good idea to get an upgrade, or delete some programs and files. Delete all of the temp files, temporary internet files and cookies, you could do it manually or use another free program called "ccleaner".

When files are stored on your computer's hard drive they are not always stored in the most efficient way and can become fragmented. Fragmented files take a lot longer for your system to open or save. To start the defragmentation utility click on Start then programs -> accessories -> system tools -> disc defragmenter. Defragment all of the drives listed. The defragmentation process can take anywhere from about 5 minutes to a couple of hours, and sometimes needs to be repeated. I recommend defragmenting the computer hard drive about once a month.

Another cause of computer slowness could be a corrupted system file or a bad sector on the hard drive. Bad sectors can corrupt systems files which can slow down your PC or even keep it from running.

To check and correct bad sectors run the scan disk (chkdsk) utility.

Make sure the computer is not overheating or running very warm. Most computer allow air to flow through the computer, this is great for cooling but also causes a lot of dust to accumulate inside of computer case. Dust will cause poor air circulation and might overheat your PC. Open up the case of the PC and blow all dust out using compressed air.

technology, computer, computers, notebook, laptop, ups, palmtop

Which UPS Should I Buy?

2007-11-26T04:44:00.000-08:00

There are some comparisons with UPS technology and most appliances and capital equipment in quality and long-term value. A small UPS for a single computer can cost anywhere between A$50 to A$900 and the protection levels afforded greatly vary with the price as well.

The simple rule is that most people buy a UPS to protect either valuable equipment or to ensure data integrity and protect against valuable data lost. In many cases data corruption or loss even equipment failures can cause major financial loss to business regardless of size and present workplace safety risks.

It is fair to assume that if you pay a small amount for a UPS you will get a smaller amount of protection. It is also the same for higher levels of protection with a high price tag as a type or insurance against these occurrences. No matter if you run a small business on one machine or you have multiple sites in an industrial or corporate office failure to get the right UPS often leads to damage occurring in particular where you have generator back up supply.

Power protection should be simple, cost effective and work and we can help you with your installation and set up with practical advice also. Most believe you should have the right solution to meet your needs not just the most expensive solution and can advise you on the most cost effective UPS to employ.

technology, computer, computers, notebook, laptop, ups, palmtop

Content Management System

2007-11-24T23:07:00.000-08:00

Anyone who builds websites for a living will tell you that building them is quite a complex operation. Plus the way in which each website is built will differ depending on its actual purpose. So if you have a site that is just trying to provide information will differ vastly from one which is dedicated to offering shopping facilities. So in order to make things easier many website designers are now using CMS software. But before you start looking for any of this software it is best that you do a few CMS software comparisons to help find one which is suitable for you.

All CMS software programs have been designed to not only power but also monitor and organize the content of the websites that you build. One particular feature that these programs come with is that that prevent every one who uses the site from seeing all of its content. So what this software does is allows all those users who view on the web (front end) to see only the content that you want them to see. Whilst the person who has actually built the site is able to see everything including the codings etc., that they have included. In order to gain access to this part of the site often referred to as the back end you need a user name (identity) and a password.

Briefly above we have explained what CMS does now we are going to take a look at some of the CMS software programs now available. We are looking at what features they have and their quality.

1. Basecmp
This uses a TOMCat application server and with this there is no requirement for a person to have a commercial licence (this is optional) in order to use it. In order to use this CMS software you need to have Java 1.4 programming language also. Other features that are provided with this software is that it has login history reports, pluggable authentication, you can manage each session as they occur, it has a certification program as well as a pluggable API. Also it comes with the ability for you to carry out public mailing lists, spell checker, allow you to drag and drop content as well. Plus you can also zip files in to archive folders also.

2. ACM Ariadne Content Manager
When you compare this software to the one we have mentioned above in order to use this you need to have a Java application server such as Oracle AS, IBM Websphere or Jboss. Also in order to use this particular software the user will be required to obtain a commercial license where as with Basecmp as previously mentioned you don't need to if you don't want to. Plus with this particular software you are actually don't get a large number of the features that we have previously mentioned for the software program above.

Therefore before making any kind of purchase it is vital that you carry out CMS software comparisons on every type of program that is available. By doing this you will be assured of getting a program that you find easy to use but will have all the features you require in order to make your sites look as good as possible.

technology, computer, computers, notebook, laptop, cms, palmtop

Overclocking? What is it?

2007-11-24T01:34:00.000-08:00

Many people probably don't know what overclocking is but have possibly heard the term used before. To put it in its simplest terms, overclocking is taking a PC component such as a CPU and running at a specification higher than rated by the manufacturer. Every part produced by companies such as Intel and AMD are rated for a specific speeds. They have tested the capabilities of the part and certified it for that given speed. Of course, most parts are underrated for increased reliability. Overclocking a part simply takes advantage of the remaining potential out of a computer part that the manufacturer is unwilling to certify the part for but it is capable of.

Overclocking the CPU

In general CPU chips are tested by the manufacturer to see at what speed they fail at.. They are then rated at a speed one step lower than this. Since the tests are quite stringent the idea is that it may be possible to push the CPU somewhat faster than its rating while maintaining stability in the system. Sometimes, when manufacturers are short on stock, they package faster MHz CPUs as slower ones; overclockers perceive this as a windfall.

Results from overclocking the CPU alone must be balanced against the rest of the system's specifications, namely the bus speed of the motherboard, memory, et cetera. For example, a 20% increase in CPU speed does not usually translate to a 20% overall improvement. The CPU might be running faster than the rest of the system, operating in a "hurry up and wait" environment

Unsuccessful overclocking can result in an unstable system at best, and in the worst case scenario can damage the CPU. Though the latter is less common, it happens. Pushing also reduces the lifetime of the CPU an indeterminable amount, as it forces the CPU to work harder and hotter. Cooling fans and a good heatsink become even more important in this case.

Overclocking the System Bus

Changing the CPU bus speed successfully can create a noticeable improvement on the entire system because all components will run faster. Since the CPU's effectiveness is helped by the bus speed, an improvement here can also utilize the full benefit of the CPU. However, overclocking the PC is risky because it means pushing every PC component on the motherboard.

Heat!

The biggest obstacle to overclocking the computer system is heat. Today's high-speed computer systems already produce a large amount of heat. Overclocking a computer system just compounds these problems. As a result, anyone planning to overclock their PC should be very aware of the needs for high performance cooling solutions.
The most common form of cooling a computer system is through standard air cooling. This comes in the form of CPU heatsinks and fans, heat spreaders on memory, fans on video cards and case fans. Proper airflow and good conducting metals are key to the performance of air cooling. Large copper heatsinks tend to perform better and the greater number of case fans to pull in air into the system also helps to improve cooling.

Beyond air cooling there is water cooling and phase change cooling. These PCs are far more complex and expensive than standard PC cooling solutions, but they offer a higher performance at heat dissipation and generally lower noise. Well-built systems can allow the overclocker to really push the performance of their hardware to its limits.

If you would like to learn more about overclocking with easy to follow guides taking you through step by step. I would recommend on visiting the link below. This site teach you how to get the most out of your PC without damaging it.

Go on http://www.overclockyourcpu.co.uk

technology, computer, computers, notebook, laptop, overclocking, palmtop

The Battery Is Your Laptop's Weak Link

2007-11-23T07:44:00.000-08:00

We talk about being mobile, part of a wireless world, untethered (OK, it's just me who says 'untethered'). But if, mid flight and mid sentence, you've ever cursed your laptop battery for giving out, or developed the habit, when you walk into Starbucks, of immediately peering under chairs and through people's legs for a power outlet, you'll know that the reality doesn't quite match the talk. Our laptops might be more portable than before, our connections might be faster and involve less cabling, but we know our batteries will let us down. We still need juice.

Of course, there are some people who never seem to need an outlet. At one conference, I offered a slot in a power strip I had managed to purloin to a fellow journalist, only for him to turn it down, snootily proclaiming he was using a Mac and therefore didn't need power (personally, I don't agree with his view that Macs have longer-lasting batteries; I suspect he just had a newer battery than mine). And some people, who always seem to be ridiculously good-looking, sit in Starbucks all day in front of laptops without any visible wires (I suspect their laptops are turned off). But what can the rest of us do to make the most of our batteries

The truth is: not an awful lot. 'I watch the consumer becoming more and more agitated,' says Christina Lampe-Onnerud, founder and chief executive of U.S. battery-technology company Boston-Power Inc. 'My message is very simple: There's very little you can do.' Of course, Ms. Lampe-Onnerud has an ax to grind: Her company is working with heavyweights like Hewlett-Packard Co. to launch a new kind of battery called Sonata, which she says will have a lifespan as long as that of your laptop and give you at least four hours of power between charges, compared with two to three hours with existing batteries. (She declined to say when they'd be available and how much they'd cost.)

Truth is, there's a lot of smoke and mirrors about batteries. Computer companies offer plenty of advice about how to get the most from yours, but it's probably wise to keep your expectations low. Battery technology still relies on chemical reactions taking place inside those innocent-looking slabs of plastic, and improvements happen, according to Isidor Buchmann, founder and chief executive of Canadian battery-charger maker Cadex Electronics Inc., far more slowly than improvements in, for example, chip speed.

So assume your battery is a dying beast as soon as you buy it. It only has a few hundred cycles -- from charged to empty -- before it starts to resemble a very expensive doorstop. The trick is to slow the dying process. To do this, it's best to think of your battery as separate from your laptop. Yes, it fits snugly underneath it, but that doesn't mean it should live there.

When you buy a new laptop or a new battery, go through at least one cycle of charging it fully and then discharging it, and do the same again every few months. This will reset the digital circuit that estimates the battery's charging status, so it doesn't stop charging prematurely. Resetting the gauge, says Atsushi Kumaki, director of ThinkVantage Technologies at Lenovo-Group Ltd.-owned Yamato Labs in Tokyo, 'will gain you a few percent' of charge each time.

Then plan your day. If you know you're going to use the battery, charge it fully beforehand. If you're not going to need it, let the battery run down until it's just under half full and remove it from your laptop. (Of course, this means you no longer have a battery backup if power fails, so if you're vulnerable to power outages or colleagues yanking out the power cord with their legs, you might not want to do this.) Laptop batteries should be stored at about 40% full; fully charged, they're a fire hazard, but if you store them entirely discharged, they might not charge again.

The reason for storing your battery outside your laptop is simple: Laptops get hot. If a battery is too hot, it starts to discharge itself and this, over time, reduces how long each charge lasts. Tests conducted by Cadex indicate laptop batteries under such conditions will last only 12 to 18 months, something I'm unhappily able to confirm.

So the battery is best kept somewhere else, preferably at room temperature. Some people recommend keeping it in the fridge (though not in the freezer), but I don't think you need to go that far -- just don't store it in your car in hot weather.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

Advantages of Buying a Laptop on Ebay

2007-11-23T07:41:00.000-08:00

Search for buying a good laptop at cheaper rates will be done by most of all who plans to buy one. The search goes in online stores and also the available shops in the cities and finally land up in a place which is satisfactory. But without making so many strides you can just browse in eBay which is well known online shopping store for all kinds of products you want. They have good bargain and avail laptops at cheaper rates giving all the details of the product with free shipping to your doorstep. If there is just one notion of buying discount laptop for cheap then the best route is to the eBay. They provide many advantages if you shop from them.

eBay lets you choose the best product of your choice from them. The advantage being you can bid for the price you feel worth for the laptop and if the seller likes the bid it's between you and him to come into bargain. This gives you free hand in selecting the desired laptop at your chosen rates. Though this kind of bid and buy facility is provided by many websites online, eBay has been in the name and people thrive more into it for the easy search. The search for the Laptop can be made by just entering your range and the name of brand you want to buy. There you get the list of all the laptops available in that range where you also can buy without bidding.

Options of many companies in the site give you a chance for going to better a product than the desired one you intended to buy. eBay also provides the service centers of the product you buy so that you can get the laptop serviced when needed. The website will not be responsible for the product you buy if it spoiled when using as it is the risk of yours and the seller from whom you bought. They facilitate you providing the information of the availability. But the laptops are available at very cheaper rates that you can never imagine if you are good at bidding. The risk factor of the products like the laptops that you buy from the eBay is very less and that makes the website to be in use by many people all over the world.

The service of the online store is well appreciated and the laptops are made to reach home safely taking lot of care. Just thinking of buying a laptop at cheap and discount rates with good advantages then eBay is the best stop to be in. Websites enables you and gives you the chance of buying a laptop of any company that are doing well in the market with best least possible price and see that the customer is always satisfied. There are many unwanted rumors about the online stores about frauding, cheating and so on, but all that will not be applicable for the eBay as it is been the rich source of laptops and other products at cheaper rates genuinely.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

RSS - Capture the Feed However You Can

2007-07-02T12:07:00.000-07:00

If you are a user who has found a Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feed to be of benefit, you are not alone. This tool is gaining a huge following. In fact, the new Windows Vista software comes equipped with an RSS Reader for those customers who have upgraded to the new Windows platform.

It can be frustrating to visit a site that does not provide RSS features. One of the primary reasons to subscribe to an RSS feed is to help you locate new information you really want to investigate. An RSS feed provides a snapshot of the revised information so you can make an educated decision about whether you want to read up on the latest informational feed.

If a site does not offer RSS it may still be possible to utilize existing information streams to access the same information through an RSS feed. For example, if you have a specific writer that you like to keep tabs on you can use an RSS feed from some of the more notable search engines and directories. By setting up an RSS feed from one of these sources you may be informed a little later than a direct RSS feed, but the information should be sent when the new page is indexed with your favorite author’s name. If the site the article is published on is a trusted site this process usually doesn’t take long.

Some RSS users also are merging their RSS feeds with searchable email systems. In essence when a service like Gmail is used to receive RSS email feeds you can use their search function to return to any popular feed you wish.

The integration of technologies can allow RSS users greater flexibility in accessing and managing feeds and accessing the information long-term.

For any online company the markets using knowledge-based content it just makes sense to add an RSS feed for your site material. Unless your material is so engaging you have site visitors that come back everyday on their own you should consider using an RSS feed as a marketing tool to help your consumers find a reasons to come back. When they come back they might find a reason to stay and shop.

An RSS feed is less intrusive than email and targets consumers who have an interest in your material. You know this because they have voluntarily signed up for an RSS feed from your site.

It’s been proven over and over again, your customers want an RSS feed. Have you make one available?

Iggy Discovers The 17 In 1 Card Reader

2007-02-05T22:35:00.000-08:00

Over the past couple of years, just about every gadget I have bought, needs some kind of memory card, or rather a differnt type of memory card to the one I already own! This means that I have a draw full of different card readers, docking stations, cables and adapters to allow me to hook these various gadgets up to my PC.

I have an MP3 player that takes a Compact Flash Memory Card, a Camera that takes an XD Memory Card, a Palm Top Computer that takes an SD |Memory Card and my Mobile Phone takes a Mini SD card! That's four separate USB Memory Card readers/docking stations I need in order to make the most of each of these gadgets. Up until recently I had been plugging and unplugging these devices into my trusty 4 port USB hub, after much swapping of USB leads I became concerned when some of the sockets on my USB devices were becoming loose, and not plugging in as tightly as they once did.

It suddenly occurred to me that most of my USB devices have removable memory cards, so I thought it might be a good idea to protect my gadgets' USB connectors from constant plugging and unplugging by using the memory cards themselves to copy over photos, music, video and other files, rather than plugging the devices directly into my computer's USB port.

So, instead of plugging in my Digital Camera directly into my computer, I will eject the memory card from the Camera and plug it in to it's card reader, and copy my photo's over to my computer directly from the memory card. A good idea, except for the fact that I have several different types of Memory Card as well as a multitude of different card readers, so in effect I'm no better off - instead of plugging in lots of different devices to my USB hub, I'm now hooking up lots of different card readers to my USB hub. Still, at least this way I'm protecting the USB sockets on the USB devices themselves.

I had settled on this method of transferring data from my devices to my PC, until I discovered the perfect tool to solve this plugging / unplugging problem. The Integral 17 in 1 Multi-Card Reader does exactly whet it says on the tin. This card reader / writer will actually read 17 different types of memory card all in one compact little unit, measuring 97mm in width, 57mm in depth and 15mm in height.

Simply plugging in this Multi-Card Reader / Writer to any available USB port on your computer, opens up your computer to be able to accept any one of the most popular Memory Cards currently on the market. Looking at the 17 in 1 card reader, it's hard to believe that it would take 17 different types of memory card, but between the four cleverly engineered slots on the front of this device, almost any type of Memory card currently on the market can be read or written to. (Correct at time of publish).

If your computer is running Windows 98 or 98SE then the supplied drivers will need to be installed before using the card reader. Windows ME, 2000, XP and MAC OS 9.0 and above requires no installation at all, other than connecting the card reader up to a USB port on your computer. Once the Memory Card Reader / Writer is plugged in and a Memory Card is inserted, a new icon appears in My Computer and a simple double click on this new icon will allow you to view the contents of the card. Once here you can drag and drop files to and fro between the memory card and your computer.

This simple device has helped save me wear and tear on my USB devices, stopped the constant swapping of USB devices and different USB card readers and also helps preserve the battery life of my Mobile devices. One thing to be aware of though, always double check your Camera, MP3 player, PDA (whatever your mobile device) to make sure the memory card is present before you go out, as it's easy to leave the all important memory card behind - in the card reader!!

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

Screenshots Vista Windows

2007-02-02T23:25:00.001-08:00

Features
Additionally, Vista will include many other new features.

Aero
Vista will include a completely re-designed user interface, code-named Aero. The new interface is intended to be cleaner and more aesthetically pleasing than previous Windows interfaces. The most visible addition to the interface is the sidebar (however this feature has been removed in the last alpha release), an area at the side of the screen consisting of tiles which display dynamic information about whatever window is currently in the foreground, which is essentially an extension of the "system tray" on the Windows task bar.

Search
Vista will feature a new search engine that will allow for instant display of results for a given search. This is in contrast to the search engine of Windows XP, which can take several minutes to display results. The Vista search will allow you to add multiple filters to continually refine your search (Such as "File contains the word 'example'"). There will also be saved searches that will act as Virtual Folders, where opening a folder will execute a specific search automatically and display the results as a normal folder. The search will also feature other usability improvements. The Vista search is actually built on an expanded and improved version of the indexing service for the search in Windows XP. This feature is similar to Apple Spotlight.

Metro
Metro is the codename for Microsoft's next generation document format, which is based on XML. It is similar in many ways to Adobe Systems' PDF. Metro is intended to allow users to view, print, and archive files without the original program that created it. The name Metro also refers to the print path in Vista. With Metro, documents can remain in the same format from the time they are created to the time they are printed. Microsoft states that Metro will provide better fidelity to the original document by using a consistent format for both screen and print output.

While many analysts suspect Metro is intended to be a "PDF-killer", Microsoft insists that they are not attempting to duplicate all the functionality of the PDF. For example, at the time of this writing, Metro is not planned to have the capabilities for dynamic documents.

Shell
The new shell is a significant change from previous versions of Windows. Combined with the new desktop searching feature, the shell gives users the ability to find and organize their files in new ways. Apart from the typical file organization practice of using folders to contain files, a new collection known as Lists let you organize files from multiple locations in a single place.

A new type of folder known as a Shadow Folder enables the ability to revert its entire contents to any arbitrary point in the past.

Additionally, the shell contains significant advancements in the visualization of files on a computer. Previous versions of the Windows Shell would display thumbnails to represent different files on your computer. In Windows Vista the thumbnail concept is taken further by overlaying different imagery to communicate more information about the particular file such as a picture frame around the thumbnail of an image file, or a filmstrip on a video file. Windows Vista helps the user identify the file easily by more intelligently generating the thumbnails. Using algorithmic analysis, images are cropped around their likely subject, and interesting key frames are automatically chosen from a video file. Also, the ability to zoom the thumbnails in the shell greatly increases their usefulness.

Networking
Windows Vista is expected to have a brand new networking stack. A significant change is a more complete implementation of IPv6 which is now supported by all networking components, services, and the user interface. Vista also takes advantage of P2P technology to provide a new type of domain-like networking setup known as a Castle. Castles make it possible for user credentials to propagate across networked computers without a centralized server making them more suitable for a home network.

The ability to assist the user in diagnosing a network problem is expected to be a major new networking feature. Using technologies such as UPnP, Windows Vista has a greater awareness of the network topology the host computer is in. With this new network awareness technology it can provide help to the user in fixing network issues or simply provide a graphical view of the perceived network configuration.

Other features
Full support for the "NX" (No-Execute) feature of processors. This feature, present in AMD's AMD64 architecture, as well as Intel's EM64T Architecture, can flag certain parts of memory as containing data instead of executable code, which prevents overflow errors from resulting in arbitrary code execution. This should not be confused with trusted computing facilities provided by a so-called Fritz-chip.

Built-in DVD recording capabilities, including Mt. Rainier support. A new installation program that will install Vista in about 15 minutes (which is present in alpha build 4074 of Windows Vista). Native Raw Image support (a format used by most professional digital cameras).

Native, embedded RSS support, with developer API. A new level of file encryption support from that available in Windows XP, which will make it easier and more automatic to prevent unauthorized viewing of files on stolen laptops/hard drives.

Monad. A new command-line interface called MSH, and codenamed Monad will not be fully implemented in Vista, but will exist in it to some extent. It plans to combine the Unix pipes and filters philosophy with that of object-oriented programming.

The "My" prefixes will be dropped, so "My Documents" will just be "Documents", "My Computer" will just be "Computer", etc. Windows System Assessment Tool (WinSat), a built in benchmarking tool which analyzes the different subsystems (graphics, memory, etc), and uses the results to allow for comparison to other Vista systems, and for software optimizations. The optimizations can be made by both windows and third-party software. Tom's Hardware Overview

File Virtualization, when an individual program's permissions are restricted, allows that program to use its own 'fake' set of certain files so modifications to those files from said program does not alter the original files. Transactional File Transfers, prevents a half updated set of files from being created during updates for example, which can cause stability problems. InfoCard, a user interface to the Identity Metasystem.

Features and technologies delayed until future releases WinFS (short for either Windows Future Storage or Windows File System): a combined relational database and filesystem, based on the next version of SQL Server (codenamed Yukon). Working on top of NTFS, it will provide abilities to represent objects and their relationships, rather than just a hierarchy of files and folders. The removal of WinFS from Windows Vista was announced in August 2004, and is expected to be released as an update to Vista, entering beta stages at about the same time as Vista is released. Microsoft's promotion of this technology has spurred the recent trend towards desktop search tools. Full implementation of Monad.

Graphics hardware requirements
Vista's graphics requirements are defined in relation to the different desktop experiences.

Aero Glass
This graphics mode adds support for 3D graphics, animation and visual special effects in addition to the features offered by Aero Express.

Intended for mainstream and high-end graphics cards.

At least 64 MB of graphics memory, 128 MB recommended, or 256 MB for 1600x1200+.

At least 32 bits per pixel.

3D hardware acceleration with capabilities equal to DirectX 9.

A memory bandwidth of 2 GB / second.

Capable of drawing ~1.5M triangles / second, one window being ~150 triangles.

A graphics card that uses AGP 4X or PCI Express 8-lane bus.

It is likely that such a configuration will be entry-level or lower by Vista's release in 2006.

Aero Diamond A graphics mode customized for the Vista Media Center Edition, and will not be made available in the other editions. Not much information is currently available, but it appears that it will be the most advanced level of graphics in Vista, requiring hardware at the same level or greater than the Aero Glass visual style.

Aero Express
The lesser Aero visual experience offering only the basic visual improvements introduced by Vista, such as composition based DPI scaling.

Intended for mainstream or lower-end graphics cards.

Uses the Avalon Desktop Composition window manager.

A Vista Driver Display Model (LDDM) driver is a requirement.

Some graphics cards already support LDDM. In some Vista builds (4074, 5048), LDDM is already supported to run Aero Glass.

To Go
The new Vista look & feel without any visual special effects, similar to the visual style Luna of Windows XP in that it resembles merely an application skin. As with Luna, no additional hardware requirements compared to the classic Windows interface.

A simple option for consumer upgrades, and mobile / low-cost devices. No additional requirements compared to the lesser Classic mode. Fallback mode in case the hardware requirements for Aero aren't met.

Classic
The most basic user interface offered by Vista, which is also seen in Windows 2000, or Windows XP with its visual style Luna deactivated.

An option for corporate deployments and upgrades.
Requires Windows XP Display Driver Model (XPDM) or LDDM drivers. No graphics card hardware requirements exceeding those of Windows XP.

Naming considerations
Vista means "the visual percept of a region", with these synonyms: aspect, panorama, prospect, scene and view. Translated from Spanish and Italian, vista means: sight, vision, ability to see; look, glimpse; spectacle; viewfinder; range of view; point of view.

In Latvian, however, vista means 'hen' (grown-up female of a bird, [2]) and 'chicken' (as in food), and may also connote something or someone not particularly agile or clever.

Windows Vista has been unofficially abbreviated to Windows VI, staying with the traditional 2 character motif, as in 95, 98, Me, NT, XP. VI is also the number 6 in Roman numerals, and Windows Vista will carry the version number 6.0 (Windows 2000 and Windows XP being Windows NT versions 5.0 and 5.1, respectively).

Windows Vista sound like "bosta" in Argentinian culture.

In the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, Vista is a part of the atmosphere that surrounds the world of Arda before the cataclysm at the end of the Second Age. Vista forms the inner layer of normal air: above it is Ilmen, and above that Vaiya.

Get Windows Vista: http://www.vistaarticles.com/articles/14/1/Where-to-get-Windows-Vista?
Windows Vista Wallpaper: http://www.vistaarticles.com/articles/16/1/Windows-Vista-Wallpaper
Windows Vista Theme: http://www.vistaarticles.com/articles/16/1/Windows-Vista-Wallpaper

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology, vista,.

Training Options for IT Certifications

2007-02-02T23:18:00.000-08:00

IT (information technology) covers all aspects of managing and processing information. With IT Certification, you can develop, design, support, and manage networks, hardware and computer software. Most computer training programs offer some type of e-mail support and sometimes phone support. The IT field of training is getting more and more competitive and crowded each year. Yesterday’s skills don’t cut it in todays more advanced technological world. You can show your commitment to your career as well as expertise by becoming certified. IT training validates your commitment to being the best.

Employers value an IT certification because it brings to the organization better quality of work for the whole of the company. When it comes to choosing the best certification training, there are many choices available to you. Every computer professional out there today understands the value of IT certification and IT training. The computer field is always progressing and always improving. In most high ranking jobs you can’t just walk in with your current skills and expect to be hired. You must continue to strive in your field with new skills; this means you are constantly seeking to improve your education. CBT or Computer Based Training is available at your finger tips. There are so many programs out there that can help you with this task.

Computer based training is not just a benefit to IT techs. Office personal are more and more involved in the uses of computers, and the more understanding they have of the systems that they operate, the more efficient they will be in performing their work. They will also be less of a bother to the busy IT help desk.

Training and knowledge have always been the keys that unlock the doors of opportunity. The advantage that IT techs have today is that training is offered in such a large variety of methods. You can study online without leaving your home. You can have onsite training at a large number of training centers in most areas of the country. Study manuals and guides are available for independent work. It is possible for large employers to have in house programs to help their employees prepare for IT certification training and to guide them toward the proper choices.

There are so many options available today that there is no excuse not to jump onto the Certification bandwagon, and get your employee file or resume filled out with IT certifications that will reflect your skill and your level of knowledge.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

Ecommerce: How Payment Gets From Here to There

2007-01-26T23:12:00.000-08:00

We’ve all heard the children’s song, ‘Dem Bones’.

The foot bone's connected to the leg bone,
The leg bone's connected to the knee bone,
The knee bone's connected to the thigh bone,
The thigh bone's connected to the back bone,
The back bone's connected to the neck bone,
The neck bone's connected to the head bone, Etc.

This same concept can be applied to ecommerce. For those who may not fully understand how ecommerce works let’s try this:

The Consumer’s connected to the Internet
The Internet’s connected to the Transaction Server
The Transaction Server’s connected to the Processing Network
The Processing Network’s connected to the Customer’s Bank

Now, let’s look the other side of the equation.

The Merchant’s Website’s connected to the Internet
The Internet’s connected to the Transaction Server
The Transaction Server’s connected to the Processing Network
The Processing Network’s connected to the Merchant’s Bank

Both the consumer and the merchant are connected to the ecommerce shopping cart through similar channels, but like blood pumping through a body the consumer follows the links from checkout to confirmation and the information flows through the Transaction Server, Processing Network and customer bank before it flows back through to the seller through the Transaction Server, Processing Network where the money is deposited in the merchant’s bank. This entire process only takes a few seconds.

The good news is all reputable shopping cart systems rely on encrypted technology to preserve the integrity of the online purchase. This means that a customer’s credit card information is not in danger of being confiscated and used by a third party.

This is important because the success of ecommerce relies heavily on privacy and security. A reputable shopping cart system is a must for any serious web store.

The truth is, all your client really wants to be sure of is the safety of their information, the reputation of your business and if the transaction was complete. They may never know or even care how exactly it is accomplished, but the use of a secure shopping cart, the attention to the reputation of your firm and the use of autoresponders to alert the customer to the completion of the sale will be necessary for positive ongoing client relations.

You’ve worked hard to provide a quality product at a competitive price. You’ve worked to optimize your site for search engine success and you’ve added knowledge-based articles to your site – so to use a football cliché, it would be a shame to drop the ball so close to the end zone. Make sure you have a secure shopping cart for present and future customers. They may just thank you by coming back.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

Bookmark Managers: Programs vs. Web Services

2007-01-26T00:55:00.000-08:00

The rapid development of the World Wide Web in recent years has led to an explosive growth of information on the Internet. Our contemporary lifestyle would be unimaginable without access to such a super-abundant cornucopia of valuable information and web surfing has now become an everyday occupation for even the most diverse sections of society.

This rapid expansion of web resources raises some new issues for all of us. How could you possibly remember; after a long search, the address of that crucial web page? How will you be able to return to the page without repeating a tedious web search through hundreds and thousands of pages?
The answer is obvious, you need a program that will allow you to easily create and manage a database of web resources. Of course, this database must be quick, intuitive and convenient to use.

One way to resolve this problem is to use your web browser's bookmarks feature. Bookmarks are a popular term for the lists of web page links stored in web browsers, although they are called 'Favorites' in Internet Explorer. These web browser bookmark systems have some severe limitations. For example, each bookmark list will only be compatible with a specific web browser. If you use several different web browsers you will have to manage the bookmark system in each one. Web browser bookmark lists may become cumbersome to use when your bookmark list grows beyond a few items. Important features missing from web browser bookmark systems include:

- Powerful search functions;

- Synchronization of bookmarks between different computers;

- Detection and automatic deletion of duplicate bookmarks;

- Checks for availability of bookmarked web pages.

Specialist programs and web services that store and organize bookmarks are now available and they offer a comprehensive solution to these problems. They are called bookmark managers or bookmark organizers (in this article both terms have the same meaning). The difference between online (web-based) bookmark managers and standalone bookmark managers is in the location of the stored bookmark database and in the way that the database is accessed. Web services called 'online bookmark managers' store the user's bookmarks on their remote servers and their bookmarks may be accessed from any browser. A standalone bookmark organizer is simply a program which runs on your local computer. It stores the bookmark database on a hard disk and allows access through its own built-in interface.

Here are some examples of web-based bookmark managers:

iKeepBookmarks.com - http://www.ikeepbookmarks.com

LinkaGoGo - http://www.linkagogo.com

Murl - http://murl.com

You can find more links to online bookmark managers here:
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Web_Applications/Bookmark_Managers/

Bookmark management software can be found here:

Link Commander - http://www.resortlabs.com/bookmark-manager/linkcommander.php

Linkman - http://www.outertech.com/index.php?_charisma_page=product&id=5

Powermarks - http://www.kaylon.com/power.html

Any software catalog will contain plenty of links to bookmark managers. For example: http://www.snapfiles.com/shareware/misctools/swurlorg.html

Offline and online bookmark managers each have relative advantages and disadvantages due to their differing methods of database storage and access.

An online bookmark manager does not depend on any particular computer. If you have an Internet connection you can access your bookmarks from any computer in the world. You don't need to synchronize the bookmarks on your home/work PC or notebook because they will all access the same bookmarks database. With an online bookmark manager you can access your bookmarks even when you are in an Internet cafe! Another advantage is that most of them are free. They will cost you time, though, because you access your bookmarks via an Internet connection. More importantly, most of the web interfaces are not as convenient as software based bookmark managers and don't have so many useful features. For example, they can't search for and delete duplicate database items. Here are some of the other potential disadvantages of using online bookmark managers:

You risk losing all your bookmarks if, for some reason, the web service closes down.
There is a danger of unauthorized access to your private bookmarks because your bookmark manager server may not be secure against hackers.

The advantages and disadvantages of offline bookmark managers are almost exactly opposite to those of online bookmark managers and will be discussed next.

Any offline bookmark manager is tied to the computer on which it is installed. It stores your bookmarks in a database (which usually has its own proprietary format) that is located on one of the hard drives. To use your bookmarks on several computers you will need to install the program on each computer and find a way to synchronize the bookmark databases. Most of the currently available bookmark organizers do have a database synchronization feature. Also, there are now devices with high data transfer speeds (e.g. flash drives) that can store an independent bookmark database and allow it to be shared between several computers.

Another disadvantage of bookmark manager software is the price. There are some free programs out there, but they don't have a great number of features and technical support is often weak or unavailable. The programs that require payment are inexpensive, though, usually costing from $20 to $40. The user licenses of such programs will normally allow you to install the programs on all of your computers.

In my opinion, the disadvantages of standalone bookmark managers are minimal compared to their advantages. The location of both the program and database on the same computer guarantees you fast access to your bookmarks and high security from hacker attacks. The convenience of the program interface and the number of useful features are limited only by the power of the computer and the skills of developers.

So, how should you organize your bookmarks? Should you use an online or offline bookmark manager? I don't think there is a definite answer. It all depends on your preferences and working habits. If mobility is your priority, if you travel often and wish to access your bookmarks no matter where you are and from any computer, then you should consider an online bookmark manager. If speed, ease of use, security and functionality is most important to you then an offline bookmark manager might be a better choice.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

Wytw?rnia Fonograficzna W.F.A.

2007-01-25T05:31:00.001-08:00

UNESCO's somewhat arbitrary definition of "book" is:

""Non-periodical printed publication of at least 49 pages excluding covers".

The emergence of electronic publishing was supposed to change all that. Yet a bloodbath of unusual proportions has taken place in the last few months. Time Warner's iPublish and MightyWords (partly owned by Barnes and Noble) were the last in a string of resounding failures which cast in doubt the business model underlying digital content. Everything seemed to have gone wrong: the dot.coms dot bombed, venture capital dried up, competing standards fractured an already fragile marketplace, the hardware (e-book readers) was clunky and awkward, the software unwieldy, the e-books badly written or already in the public domain.

Terrified by the inexorable process of disintermediation (the establishment of direct contact between author and readers, excluding publishers and bookstores) and by the ease with which digital content can be replicated - publishers resorted to draconian copyright protection measures (euphemistically known as "digital rights management"). This further alienated the few potential readers left. The opposite model of "viral" or "buzz" marketing (by encouraging the dissemination of free copies of the promoted book) was only marginally more successful.

Moreover, e-publishing's delivery platform, the Internet, has been transformed beyond recognition since March 2000.

From an open, somewhat anarchic, web of networked computers - it has evolved into a territorial, commercial, corporate extension of "brick and mortar" giants, subject to government regulation. It is less friendly towards independent (small) publishers, the backbone of e-publishing. Increasingly, it is expropriated by publishing and media behemoths. It is treated as a medium for cross promotion, supply chain management, and customer relations management. It offers only some minor synergies with non-cyberspace, real world, franchises and media properties. The likes of Disney and Bertelsmann have swung a full circle from considering the Internet to be the next big thing in New Media delivery - to frantic efforts to contain the red ink it oozed all over their otherwise impeccable balance sheets.

But were the now silent pundits right all the same? Is the future of publishing (and other media industries) inextricably intertwined with the Internet?

The answer depends on whether an old habit dies hard. Internet surfers are used to free content. They are very reluctant to pay for information (with precious few exceptions, like the "Wall Street Journal"'s electronic edition). Moreover, the Internet, with 3 billion pages listed in the Google search engine (and another 15 billion in "invisible" databases), provides many free substitutes to every information product, no matter how superior. Web based media companies (such as Salon and Britannica.com) have been experimenting with payment and pricing models. But this is besides the point. Whether in the form of subscription (Britannica), pay per view (Questia), pay to print (Fathom), sample and pay to buy the physical product (RealRead), or micropayments (Amazon) - the public refuses to cough up.

Moreover, the advertising-subsidized free content Web site has died together with Web advertising. Geocities - a community of free hosted, ad-supported, Web sites purchased by Yahoo! - is now selectively shutting down Web sites (when they exceed a certain level of traffic) to convince their owners to revert to a monthly hosting fee model. With Lycos in trouble in Europe, Tripod may well follow suit shortly. Earlier this year, Microsoft has shut down ListBot (a host of discussion lists). Suite101 has stopped paying its editors (content authors) effective January 15th. About.com fired hundreds of category editors. With the ugly demise of Themestream, WebSeed is the only content aggregator which tries to buck the trend by relying (partly) on advertising revenue.

Paradoxically, e-publishing's main hope may lie with its ostensible adversary: the library. Unbelievably, e-publishers actually tried to limit the access of library patrons to e-books (i.e., the lending of e-books to multiple patrons). But, libraries are not only repositories of knowledge and community centres. They are also dominant promoters of new knowledge technologies. They are already the largest buyers of e-books. Together with schools and other educational institutions, libraries can serve as decisive socialization agents and introduce generations of pupils, students, and readers to the possibilities and riches of e-publishing. Government use of e-books (e.g., by the military) may have the same beneficial effect.

As standards converge (Adobe's Portable Document Format and Microsoft's MS Reader LIT format are likely to be the winners), as hardware improves and becomes ubiquitous (within multi-purpose devices or as standalone higher quality units), as content becomes more attractive (already many new titles are published in both print and electronic formats), as more versatile information taxonomies (like the Digital Object Identifier) are introduced, as the Internet becomes more gender-neutral, polyglot, and cosmopolitan - e-publishing is likely to recover and flourish.

This renaissance will probably be aided by the gradual decline of print magazines and by a strengthening movement for free open source scholarly publishing. The publishing of periodical content and academic research (including, gradually, peer reviewed research) may be already shifting to the Web. Non-fiction and textbooks will follow. Alternative models of pricing are already in evidence (author pays to publish, author pays to obtain peer review, publisher pays to publish, buy a physical product and gain access to enhanced online content, and so on). Web site rating agencies will help to discriminate between the credible and the in-credible. Publishing is moving - albeit kicking and screaming - online.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

Guide To Computer Security

2007-01-24T05:14:00.000-08:00

Since you're reading this article, you're already connected to the Internet. You've probably already thought about security on your computer or network. Every day seems to bring new threats and it can seem pretty daunting, but the key thing is to have a common sense approach and to take a few basic precautions.

There are lots of great tools available to help and you don't have to break the bank to get them. Here are some areas to take a look at:

BACKUPS

Securing your information starts here. You'll need some or all of the security tools listed below, but even then you can't guarantee 100% that you won't have a problem. Hardware failures do occur so backup your data. One easy way to keep your important files is to burn them onto CD or DVD.

ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE

An absolute must have. Alright, you already knew that, but I can't stress too strongly the importance of having good, up-to-date antivirus software. With new threats and Viruses arriving every day it's important to maintain update subscriptions and download virus definition updates as soon as they become available.

There's a lot of good antivirus software available, both free and for low cost. I'd recommend going for paid software...you just never know when you're going to need to call a helpdesk and that's generally the difference between the free stuff and the stuff you pay for. Norton, McAfee, AVG and others all sell antivirus software that's affordable on a low budget.

FIREWALL

A firewall is always recommended to help protect against unauthorized access to your PC. For a small number of PCs a software firewall is usually best and is the easiest to work with if you're not an IT expert. However, don't discount hardware firewalls, especially if you have a network with a lot of devices on it.

Whatever you do, don't rely on the Network Address Translation or packet filter built in to your ADSL or Cable router. It almost certainly won't be enough.

If you're buying a particular company's Antivirus software it's worth considering buying their integrated AV and firewall package if they have one (if they don't then maybe you should try someone else). It may well save you money and be easier to configure and maintain.

ANTI-SPYWARE SOFTWARE

If you spend a lot of time browsing the Web (and let's face it, who doesn't?), then spyware is going to find its way onto your machine. A lot of it isn't particularly nasty, but the really bad stuff can send important information like passwords, bank details or credit card numbers to people you really don't want to have access to that stuff. At the very least it can slow down your PC and since you didn't ask for it in the first place then you should get rid of it.

Some tell-tail signs that you have a Spyware infection are:

- You're getting pop-up ads all the time

- Your default homepage or other settings in your browser suddenly change (especially if you can't change them back)

- Your computer is slow (there could be other reasons for this, but it's worth checking for spyware)

There's some good free software available from Lavasoft called AdAware. Microsoft also have their own free tool for Windows users called Windows Defender. Among the paid-for Anti-Spyware software Webroot's

Spy Sweeper regularly picks up awards from computer magazines.

PASSWORDS

More and more people are accessing secure sites for shopping, banking, etc. Provided you take sensible precautions it's a great way to shop.

If you've been doing any online shopping you'll be used to dealing with secure sites. Whatever methods these sites use to secure their servers or encrypt your traffic, if they're accessed by passwords then you share some of the responsibility for the security on your transactions. Here are a few tips on how to keep unauthorised users from accessing your accounts:

- Be inventive with your passwords. Don't use easy to guess stuff that a lot of people know about you or can find out. Use a mixture of uppercase and lowercase characters, numbers and special characters (again be inventive. Just using a 1 instead of the letter i is no use if it still spells out an easy to guess word).

- Use different passwords for different accounts. If you always use the same one and it's compromised then someone will have access to everything.

- Don't write passwords down on paper or post-it notes. That's a hacker's favourite way to find passwords if they have physical access to your office.

- Don't get Web browsers to remember your passwords on shared machines or in office areas. If you log into a machine that other users have access to then never use Windows or Web browser mechanisms that remember your account details.

Having different passwords to lots of different accounts does make it more difficult to remember them and it's important that this doesn't lead you into bad habits. So what do you do?

You could look at getting some password management software. Naturally, Norton has a password manager, but other good options include "Web Replay" from Deskperience or "PC Password Manager XP" from CPLab.

WHERE TO NOW?

You don't have to go out and buy every piece of security software right away. Prioritise one or two to start with (I'd suggest Antivirus and Firewall software). Also download trial versions so you can be sure you're happy with them before you part with your hard earned cash.

Be careful on the Internet, but don't let it spoil your day.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

5 Ways To Find Cheap Used Laptops

2007-01-19T01:12:00.000-08:00

There are many reason why one would want to buy cheap used laptops, the main, and most obvious reason being that a new laptop is simply too expensive. If your goal is to find a cheap used laptop, then take some time to do the research, and you will be sure to get a great deal. I will detail 5 ways you can use to locate the right used laptop that suits your needs, and price range.

One of the first steps in your research should be to get on the Internet and begin your search. Your first stop should be eBay. Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few years, you already know that eBay is an auction site where you bid for items. It's also a great place to find hard to find items such as, a piece of toast with a religious icon burned into it, or a clip Elvis's sideburns. But, it's also a great place to find inexpensive used equipment, i.e. laptops.

Once on eBay, you can do a quick search by typing "used laptop" into the search function. You're sure to find hundreds of selections, and name brands too. Spend some time there conducting your research. You don't have to bid right away so take your time. Compare prices, and look for sellers with good ratings. The higher the rating, the more reputable the seller.

Another place to find used laptops is Amazon.com. Amazon is not only a great bargain store that sells new items. You can also find used items for sale at a great price, and often a lot cheaper than the respective new items. If you've used Amazon before, then you've probably seen the links for "new & used." By clicking on this link when you do a search, you'll be able to see both options. But of course we're interested in used. You'll be given the prices for the used items, as well as its condition, and the rating of the seller.

Still another stop you should make before concluding your research is Craig's List. This website is much like a newspaper classified section in its apparent simplicity. But don't let that simplicity fool you. Do a search for "used laptop" and you will find a huge selection. You can even choose by location to find something local, or you can opt to expand your search to other regions if you wish. One bad thing about Craig's List is that it doesn't include a seller's rating, so you have to be careful. One way to avoid being scammed this is to stick to buying locally, where you can have potential face-to-face interaction with the seller.

One more place where you can try to find cheap used laptops is Overstock.com. Although this site won't yield as much of a selection as eBay, or Craig's List, and perhaps even fewer than Amazon, it's still a good place to look. You may find something in there you didn't see in any of the other sites, so it won't hurt to look.

You don't have to limit your search to the Internet. You can also try doing a bit of off line research. Look in your local newspaper and see what turns up. Often times, some people will opt to sell their used computers by placing ads in the newspaper, so you may be pleasantly surprised by what you find. Try the Sunday paper since it usually has a larger classified section.

There you have it--5 ways to look for cheap used laptops. By doing some thorough research, you're sure to find a great deal. With all of the selections you'll have at your disposal, you'll be able to find a laptop that has the features you're searching for, at a price range you're comfortable with.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

Disable Windows XP Services To Boost Your PC Speed

2007-01-04T10:58:00.001-08:00

When you use your computer there are many different happenings going on in the background that you may not be aware of. A number of applications which are commonly called services will be running.

These services are managed automatically by Windows XP and at times XP will run services that are not needed and cause the PC to run slower as a result of using more memory takes takes its toll on the overall performance of your computer.

Ever wonder why your computer is running so slow? Unneeded services running in the background of Windows XP is something you don't want to happen. So what can be done to prevent this?

Many computer training schools will have online training courses teaching different lessons on boosting computer performance. And You will learn that Windows XP will have such neat tools built in to see to it you get the most out of your system.

It just happens that Windows XP has a feature that will allow you to override these services and make the decision yourself as to which ones should be running.

To turn off these Internal Services that run in the background will boost your pc performance.You can turn off many services without any pc performance problems.

Such internal services as Windows Messenger and NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing can be turned off with on ill effect on the performance of your system.

Other services you can disable would be Telnet, Net Logon, Device Host, and TCP/IP NetBios Helper.

You can quickly see the services running on your system by Clicking on Start, Control Panel, and then to Administrative Tools. Then you'll need to click on Services.

There you will see the services running, the description, the status, and their startup type. If a services is set to run automatically by default, Windows thinks it will need it.

However, if you think that service is not needed, you can disable it and set it to manual.Setting it to manual means that the service is not permanently disabled, it simply won't run until its needed and then Windows will start it.

If you have any doubt about the importance of a service, you can see a guide to the importance of a service by right-clicking that service.This will open its Properties window.

To change the service settings, look at the Service Type and change it to Manual. You can change the Service Status and stop it from starting by selecting Stop if its not needed.

In the Dependencies Dialog Box, you can see what the effect of turning a particular Service off will be. This is important because there may be other system components that are depending on that service.

The Dependencies tab is critical as it will forewarn you what will happen if you stop a particular service.For this reason, you'll want to spend some time here prior to changes any changes.

You should take the time to visit the Application Management Properties tab and see what is running on your computer and what you can disable to boost the performance of your system.

Don't forget the normal pc performance boosting steps such as removing unneeded applications and files.And remember to run Scandisk and Defrag often.Removing temperary files and not having a full hard drive will always speed things up on your PC.

Otis F. Cooper is solely dedicated to boosting the knowledge and confidence of every computer user. Sign up to receive his informative articles every month and learn PC Repair absolutely free.Sign up now at http://www.repairarticles.com

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

How To Put Movies On Your PSP The Easy Way

2007-01-04T10:57:00.001-08:00

There is a new way to finally put movies on your PSP. Since the software that originally came with the PSP didn't really allow you to watch videos in a wide screen format, the easiest way to do it by getting a free version of a PSP converter software which allows you to easily convert the video files on your computer to the preferred wide-screen format.

By using the PSP converter software method, putting movies onto your PSP can be accomplished in just a few easy steps, so let's get right to it. Here are the components you will need to enable you to enjoy the portability of your favorite movies on the go.

To transfer films or movie clips from your PC to your PSP including the formats: AVI, MPEG, RM, WMV, MOV, MP4, MPEG4, XVID, DIVX, AC3, OGG, 3G, here's what you will need to get started:

A PSP USB cable or a compatible memory stick reader

A minimum of 256MB Memory Card

A PSP converter software

Once the software has downloaded to your computer, it's extremely easy to use. Now go ahead and plug in your PSP over a USB cable.

Now that your PSP is connected to your computer, the PSP converter software should recognize your PSP automatically. If this isn't the case, double check your PSP's settings to make sure that it's in USB mode. Verify this on the settings menu on your PSP, find USB connections and make sure that USB mode is displayed.

The nice thing about this software is the user friendly interface that's easy and simple to navigate. You're now ready to begin the process of putting movies on your PSP. To convert the videos, just click convert and follow the onscreen instructions. To copy, the process is similar, click copy and again follow the instructions.

Once you've completed the above steps, you're ready to enjoy the freedom of watching movies on your wide-screen PSP.

Visit the PSP Resources Site where you can see how easy it is to put movies on your PSP download a free copy of the PSP converter. http://PSPHelp.ea20.com

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

Did You Know That - Laptop Skin Facts

2006-12-28T06:17:00.001-08:00

1. Laptop skin is a decorative piece of vinyl with an adhesive layer on the underside. The adhesive layer ensures that the laptop skin stays fastened onto the laptop cover. Usually, a good adhesive layer will allow for easy and clean removal from the surface.

2. Laptop skin is also otherwise known as laptop decal and laptop stickers.

3. Laptop decals come in a wide variety of designs - from simple logos, patterns, abstract art to even digital pictures from your favorite Walt Disney animation.

4. Laptop skins can be used to personalize your laptop. By choosing a laptop skin design which you can identify with, you can let the world know the kind of person that you are.

5. Due to the injection of certain chemicals, some high quality laptop skins can even withstand extreme heat and cold, radiation and chemical corrosion. They are resistant to tear, water and sunlight-fade.

6. High resolution image technology is typically used to render photo-realistic image quality and exceptional color density in good quality laptop skins.

7. Laptop skins are usually applied only on dry surfaces. However, some laptop skin producers, like Garskin, are able to produce a vinyl that can be applied onto the surface without water.

8. Laptop stickers can be purchased singly or in bulk. There are certain laptop sticker producers who specialize only in bulk orders. However, for most people, they are only interested in getting the single or few pieces of laptop skin designs which they like - there is no obligation or the need to buy things in bulk!

9. Laptop skins generally have good scratch resistance and robust handling qualities making them ideal for protecting your laptop from fresh scratches.

10. They come in different finishes, with lamination and varnish being most common finishes. The lamination layer in some inferior quality laptop skins may come off in 6 months. Hence, it pays to invest in a good quality laptop skin.

Garskin.com offers the latest and most chic laptop skins to the world. It is dedicated to quality and good design sense featuring art, beauty, functionality and aesthetics. With an ever expanding repertoire of products, Garskin.com is first in South East Asia to use technology from the US and Japan to produce laptop skins that combine design and functionality.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

6 Ways in Which Microsoft Windows Vista Secures Your PC

2006-12-24T23:50:00.000-08:00

Global reach and the information highway have changed the way individuals and businesses function. Computerization, the World Wide Web, and B2B and P2P applications have added a zing to business activities. The reach has grown beyond physical confines and boundaries to embrace the world.

In the fast paced world of business what causes grave concerns in security. With the use of computers and links to cyber space corporate crime is at an all time high and

1. High level security. Most companies spend thousands of dollars in securing their business data as with the advent of the World Wide Web cyber thievery is at an all time high. Vista is designed to provide multiple layers of protection. It will protect the business from external attacks and there are ways in which crucial information and data can be protected by creating a fortress of authorized access.

2. Back ups are automated and files can be recovered easily. So, if any information is inadvertently deleted it can be recovered.

3. Since the cyber highway is where security is lax and threats exist, Vista has Windows Internet Explorer 7. This is very advanced and provides great amounts of browser security and grants privacy protection. So while your employees can browse the World Wide Web for business related purposes thieves will not gain ready access to your company systems.

4. The Windows defender program has been integrated into Vista to protect your business system from malicious soft wear.

5. Wireless networking systems are secured by Vista such that employees can connect to multiple networks simultaneously without any trouble. It has a secure wireless networking protocol and Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2).

6. Internal threats are averted as Vista ensures that data is kept secure and confidential by encryption, assigning a high level of protection, and selective authorization of removing of storage devices like USB and flash memory drives.

Vista has been developed keeping in mind the threats being posed to computer users today. And, a new version of Windows Firewall has been developed to protect computers from inbound and outbound traffic threats. The UAC or user account control has been under continuous revamping and takes into consideration serious criticisms made throughout Vista development by techies on the Vista watch.

Paul Thurrott who has been monitoring Vista since the very start has written glowing reviews of Vista security features, the integrated anti-spyware product , Windows Defender, security improvements to IE7, parental controls, and more.

Security enhancements in Vista are more than welcome and users both business and individual are looking forward to the release of the final Vista package.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

Spam: The Tasteless Internet Meat of Criminals

2006-12-23T23:20:00.001-08:00

Spam. You’ve all heard of the crazy pink meat in a can, but what’s it got to do with the Internet? Well, it’s also the namesake for a major problem in the World Wide Web-unsolicited junk email. Problem! We’re talking serious pain in the butt both as a waster of time, space, and money. It is estimated that around half of all email received on the Internet is this sneaky illegal attempt at selling fake consumer goods, pornography, and a whole plethora of ‘helpful’ services. It’s taking up half of all email on the Earth, and it’s costing businesses’ billions in wasted time, as well as filling personal email accounts to the limit so important messages aren’t received. It seems everywhere there’s a leap in technology for humanity, there’s also a group of people who want to stretch the realm of criminal activity to another level.

The good news is that as it’s such a prominent problem, the ‘good guys’ have made it a main priority on their ‘To do’ lists. Software has been created to block Spam and is being updated constantly. Recently Bill Gates, richest human on Earth and self-made mogul of software masters’ Microsoft spoke of his aim to eliminate Spam by the year 2006. Obviously a lot of people would be quite appreciative if they could achieve this goal.

Supposedly most of the billions of junk emails originate from about 200 people who are intelligent enough to cover their tracks. They have multiple ways of finding out email addresses and then sending thousands upon thousands of unwanted messages to you and I. It usually costs them next to nil so if even one low-quality product sells they receive a profit. That’s why they do it; just another greed-induced means of getting rich quick without working for it like the rest of us.

Well, there’s a couple main ways of dealing with the Spam dilemma. The main one, and most easy, is to just delete the messages or empty your folder (after moving desired messages to another folder) straight off the server without downloading or ‘looking’ at the messages. This gives the ‘evil’ sender the knowledge that you’re not reading the mail and therefore the traffic you receive goes down dramatically.

Another way to block the Spam is to use software like Magic Mail Monitor (http://mmm3.sourceforge.net/) or Mailwasher (http://www.mailwasher.net/), which work well at destroying the unwanted, pink, tasteless, unworldly email meat by showing you the mail straight from the server without downloading it.

So, show the criminals you’re aware and not ignorant and take the first steps to bringing the Spam Empire down. Protect yourself and eventually the Spam will go where all filth is destined, into the trash.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

Laptop Skins Enhance the Computer Experience

2006-12-23T08:24:00.000-08:00

As the technology improves, you may notice laptop clamshells appear sleeker and thinner than ever before. Many are made available in standard colors like slate blue and silver, yet are still attractive and functional.

Of course, no two laptop users are the same, just as no two laptops are used for the same purpose. The serious businessperson will appreciate the design of his laptop as is, and leave all the necessary bells and whistles on the hard drive. For the creative user who wishes to establish an identity, a laptop skin may be the ticket for computer enhancement.

What is a laptop skin? Essentially, it is a vinyl covering that affixes to the top shell of the laptop computer. As you open your laptop to work, whether at school or the coffeehouse, people will be able to see the design of your choosing. Think of it as wallpaper for the outside of the computer. Laptop skins may replicate famous artworks or display logos of favorite sports team, or may enhance the look of your computer with a psychedelic or quirky design.

A quick Internet search for laptop skins will land you hundred of leads on retailers. Depending upon the style and size of the skin, you can expect to pay at least twenty dollars to dress up your computer.

Why do you need a laptop skin? Some might dismiss skins as a frivolity, but under certain circumstances laptop skins can be quite functional.

Identity

When you create a custom designed laptop skin, you are creating an identity. In a sea of conformity, where everybody uses similar styles of computers, one can get lost. Having a laptop skin reflects your personality and may even establish your unique qualities. Plus, if you're in a crowd and have set down your computer, you will be able to find it much more quickly!

Protection

Depending upon the style of skin you use, you might find it protects the clamshell quite well. Having a laptop skin can guard your shell from dings and scratches and whatever else befalls a computer during transit.

Marketing

A custom laptop skin can enhance your brand, which is especially helpful if you sell products. Create a custom skin with your business logo, URL, or phone number. Your laptop becomes a small billboard that everybody will see as you work in coffee shops or other public places that offer free wireless. Twenty dollars is great investment for lasting advertising.

Whether you use your laptop for business or pleasure, you can jazz up the staid appearance with a functional, attractive skin. Show your true colors!

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

A Simple Guide to Blogging for Fun or Profit

2006-12-21T09:22:00.000-08:00

Blogs are similar to a personal diary recording the blogger's own insights, opinions and thoughts. Like a diary, it is updated as often as the blogger desires with the submissions posted in a chronological manner. Unlike a personal journal, it can be interactive and is a great way to disseminate information that is based on the actual experience of the blogger, so if he/she posts a comment on a product or service, you know that it is probably truer than the advertising hyperbole you would get from the advertiser. Since its inception in the mid-1990s, blogging has gradually saturated the virtual community making the Internet a viable source of even greater information.

All you need for blogging is an account with blog providers. In most cases, these kinds of blogs are free of charge. Generally, blogs are created for personal use. It is a chronicle in which one can write about one's personal experiences, thoughts, opinions and sentiments. However, with the increased use of the Internet in conducting businesses, blogs have gradually taken on the role of providing the web savvy entrepreneur a chance to boost their productivity online. Business blogs are created to advertise the services or products of a certain web site or Internet business in order to increase online sales. Furthermore, business blogs can be used to creatively promote the company so that the other readers will know that it exists online. With blogs, entrepreneurs are able to advertise their product or brand name to millions on the Internet through articles that can be very useful to the reader. From there, it is a short step to creating a second stream of income by syndicating it to your business’ web site. This can be done through RSS technology.

So, if you are thinking of creating a blog, whether for business or for pleasure, you need to have some handy tips that could help you make your blog both remunerative and sought after online.

1. Consider your audience - Even if your blog is generally personal, it would be better to consider the interests of your readers. One of the primary motives for blogging is the desire to be heard, to share your views with the wider community in as creative a manner as possible. In order to reach a large audience, start with topical matters or those that are of general interest to many. After you have built up a sizable list of readers, you could narrow your focus, preferably after discussing it with them.

2. Pictures speaks a thousand words - Graphics always enhance the viewing experience of those who visit your site, so adding a few pictures can personalize your blog, making the reader feel that he/she has a connection to you. This can make your writings and comments credible and the viewer more amenable to your advice or suggestions. Avoid putting up pictures that could cause discomfort to your viewers. As the Internet grapevine is always active and extremely fast, before you know it, you could wind up with a lot of negative press - the last thing you would want if you want to make money off your blog.

3. Create blogs that are informative - Although you are at liberty to write just about anything you feel like, it would be better to write about matters that would be beneficial to your readers. One of the main reasons for surfing the net is the search for information, so if you are knowledgeable about any particular subject or are in a position to offer your expertise on a product or service, you should do so on your blog.

4. Avoid writing complex or rambling blogs - In order to have an interesting blogs, try not to use highly technical words. You do not want to come off as a show off, so it is better stick to simple facts and short blogs. However, if there are terms that you must use that are not commonly understood, but are essential to topic you are writing about, you could clarify them in a simple and concise way. Bear in mind that most people who use the Internet usually do scan the pages unless something spikes their interest. Also try not to have unconnected themes in your blog. It could be very disconcerting to the viewer to read about one topic in one paragraph and something totally different in the next

5. Make it interactive - As much as possible make your blog interactive. You can do this by placing video or audio clips in your blog. You can even have an area for comments or for feedback. In this way, you can get the reactions of your readers and strengthen your relationship with them. By taking into account the feedback you receive an making changes to your blog accordingly, you send the message to your viewers that you respect their opinions and this in turn makes them trust you, allowing you to build a solid base of subscribers for your website, newsletter, membership club or any online venture you would like to try your hand at.

Whether you blog for fun or for profit, you must never lose sight of the fact that what you are actually doing is building a network of connections between your readers and yourself. To forge strong bonds, you need to make them feel at home even though the contact between you and them is only via the Internet. The long term benefits of such an approach to blogging will soon be apparent to you. It is little wonder that all the best online entrepreneurs consider blogging as a vital Internet marketing tool for giving their business that extra boost.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

12 Simple Steps to Effective Websites

2006-12-19T22:19:00.000-08:00

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.

Edward Lear must have had some precognition about what was in store for us all with the development of the internet when he wrote this nonsensical poem.

Many people do feel at sea after they launch their website and attempt to navigate the sometimes confusing channels of the internet. They wonder why their site does not get traffic and why their inbox is not filling up with emails from people clamoring to buy their products or services.

It seems that the rules change as often as Oprah changes her clothes….and who could ever hope to keep up with that!

Price quotes for search engine optimization are all over the map, the process seems never-ending and it appears you do need plenty of money.

How is it that some people seem to have great success on the web without spending a huge amount of money? Is it unrealistic to think that you can make a living working on the web?

When faced with a seemingly overwhelming challenge it helps to break things down into bite sized pieces.

Effective Websites include the following:

1. Your website still needs to focus on a specific niche.

2. You still need to do keyword research and although Google does not give any weight to Meta keywords some of the other search engines still do.

3. Your site should have the main keyword used throughout and each page should be written around 5 – 10 keywords that are tightly focused on that page’s topic.

4. Content is still King so well written, focused, content is necessary.

5. Meta titles need to include keywords.

6. Organization of content should include H1, H2 etc. and subtitles to make it easy to scan the pages. Include keywords in these Headings as well.

7. Most people on the web are looking for information so if you do not give them anything valuable or entertain them, they will be gone…probably for good.

8. Link using keywords.

9. Include a call to action and if possible a Free trial. You have to build trust before you can make a sale.

10. Check your site in various browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer) to make sure it displays equally well in each.

11. Your personality is what attracts people to you so why would you create a generic website with all of the excitement of a flat glass of pop. Keep the content fresh so it has Fizz!

12. Most importantly have realistic expectations of what you want to achieve with your website. With all the hype on the internet about overnight success it is difficult to put your results into perspective. If you expect instant success and do not get it it’s easy to become demoralized and quit before you reach your goal.

Some other important web marketing tips

Google page rank counts! The higher your page rank number the higher you rank in search. How do you find out your page rank? Download the Google toolbar here for Internet Explorer. http://toolbar.google.com/T4/ or here for FireFox http://tools.google.com/firefox/toolbar/install.html

Improve your page rank by encouraging other highly ranked sites in complementary businesses to link to yours and by developing content with a niche focus. Page rank is also affected by traffic numbers. A couple of ways you can boost traffic are pay-per-click advertising and posting articles on the web.

Your web image is at least as important as your personal image. You would not go out to meet a prospective client wearing a mishmash of styles and colours but many businesses have websites with tools that don’t work, tables and text that are out of alignment and old information, dated colours and confusing navigation. Those things are bad enough but when an experienced web developer looks at the code on a site they often find even if the site looks good, it’s not built to encourage search traffic.

Be prepared like the wise owl and make the job of marketing your business as easy as possible with a website that enhances your brand image, is technically sound and purrrr your way to success.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

Wireless Notebooks: What You Need To Know About Going Wireless!

2006-12-19T09:41:00.000-08:00

It's not exactly breaking news that our world is becoming increasingly wireless. Many of our daily activities that once needed a wired connection can now be done wirelessly!

The cell phone craze was probably the first revolution that seemingly happened overnight. The convenience of being constantly connected or plugged in to the your business, friends, or family was an undeniable need that was quickly met. For many people it has become a necessary in their daily lives.

Wireless computers, notebooks or laptops may just be the second wave in our struggle to becoming a totally wireless world. The ability to be constantly connected to your business and/or loved ones is revolutionizing the way we use computers and the Internet.

The ultraportable, versatile little notebook computer, will no doubt play a major leading role in our wireless struggle to be constantly connected. It's the 'portability' of the notebook or laptop computer that holds the most appeal and is its major selling point. And its popularity is growing.

It is estimated that over 42 million computer notebooks will be produced this year in 2005. The market for laptop and notebook computers is growing at a rate of 20% each year according to Taiwanese notebook makers. And they should know -- they make 70% of these notebooks or their components for such major players as Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Gateway.

But it's the portability and wireless communication these devices offer that's increasing their popularity among most users.

Just how is this wireless communication accomplished by the notebook or laptop you ask?

Wireless notebooks uses three major wireless data standards in order to transfer data. The one that is probably most common is 802.11b, also called Wi-Fi which stands for Wireless Fidelity.

Wi-Fi or 802.11b transfers data wirelessly at a maximum rate of 11Mbps for up to 150 feet. It uses the 2.4GHz radio spectrum and although it says 11Mbps, you will probably only get around 4-6Mbps in actual use. But this is enough bandwidth for high speed Internet, gaming and most file transfers.

The 802.11a is another standard that uses the 5GHz radio spectrum, so it has 8 channels available instead of only 3 that's available with 802.11b. The 'A' version also permits a larger transfer, at a maximum of 54Mbps.

The other standard, 802.11g, is a hybrid of 'A' and 'B' -- its also capable of 54Mbps but it uses the 2.4 GHz spectrum and is compatible with 802.11b devices. Some notebooks like the Fujitsu LifeBook N6010, have a tri-mode 802.11a/b/g wireless system that uses all three forms! The next technology in Wireless Communication is 3G EV-DO! Sounds like one of those funny robots from Starwars -- but it stands for evolution-data optimized. This new technology will change how we view and use the world wide web.

Verizon Wireless 3G EV-DO began commercial operations in Oct. of 2003 and is now expanding to over 125 million US consumers by the end of 2005. With download speeds of 400 to 700 kbps and bursts up to 2 Mbps, 3G has really given us wireless Internet this time. It has or will turn the Internet into a truly wireless system that's devoid of any cables or lines. It will be everywhere -- no space within our biosphere will be without the Internet very soon.

Of course, it should be kept in mind, that any group of computers can be made wireless by using a wireless router and a wireless network adaptor for each computer. Also, many notebooks and computers come with a Bluetooth module, which allows for wireless communication between any sort of electronic devices -- from cell phones to computer to stereos to headphones.

However, if you're setting up a wireless network or if you're using your wireless notebook or laptop at hotels and airports -- security will be a concern. Anyone within distance, possessing the right equipment and a little ingenuity may get access to this wireless system. For major corporations or the lowly homeowner; safeguards need to be taken to prevent unwanted visitors from interrupting your peaceful wireless universe.

There are usually two basic methods of securing wireless networks, WEP and MAC address filtering. The MAC (Media Access Control) is the physical address or unique hardware identifier given to each device in the network. Then you manually enter a list of addresses that can use or access your wireless network.

The other filtering process is more secure, WEP or Wireless Encryption Protocol requires a shared key between the users and then using this key to encrypt and de-encrypt data that's transmitted between your network users.

Many major hotel chains and other businesses are now offering 'Wi-Fi' services as an added convenience to their patrons. These 'hot spots' are popping up everywhere, even at some gas stations. You may need to sign in or get a password or key to access these services.

But like your cell phone conversations, any radio transfer or transmission will not be as secure as a wired connection. Keep this in mind if privacy is a major concern for you. But don't let it stop you from enjoying the convenience, portability and practicality of your wireless notebook or laptop.

It's a wireless world after all.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

Internet Forums - Six Ways To Avoid Disaster

2006-12-17T03:56:00.000-08:00

Internet Forums are highly popular, they cater for all tastes and deal with every topic imaginable. People visit Internet forums for a variety of reasons, the most common being the search for information or entertainment. The Internet forum is a safe environment if you behave sensibly but you can find yourself in dangerous territory if you ignore the following warnings.

Don't Join Internet Forum Flame Wars

An Internet Forum flame war is to be avoided at all costs. The airing of differing points of view, debate and discussion are healthy things for an Internet forum: they keep it lively. An Internet forum flame war can make entertaining reading but don't be tempted to join in or start one. If you make a habit of leaping into forum flame wars, you will acquire a reputation as a trouble-maker and you could find yourself barred from a forum because of your behaviour. Another good reason for avoiding forum flame wars is that you could find yourself caught in the crossfire. Before you know it, people will be firing at you from every direction when all you intended to do was have a bit of fun.

Don't Make Jokes On An Internet Forum

Well, you can if you really must, but remember that the Internet forum has the same drawback as email: the reader can't see your expression or gestures. The smile, shrug or grimace which can lift your comment from serious to humorous will be missing and your message will be something which the reader has to interpret. If the reader gets it wrong, you might very well find that you just started your very own Internet forum flame war quite unintentionally. You can safely tell a joke on a forum (provided that your joke's content is appropriate) but sarcasm and irony are dangerous and best avoided.

Don't Be An Internet Forum Drama Queen

The Internet forum is not a suitable stage for you to perform your very own drama. If you flounce about making extravagant statements merely for effect, you will be the object of ridicule by other forum members even if nobody tells you so. If you are a member of a support forum for a particular programme, it is quite in order to post a message to the forum saying something along the lines of "I've started to feel unsure about [whatever], I don't think it's going to work out unless I make some changes. Can anybody suggest what I should try next?" Compare this to the next post in drama queen style: "I quit! This Sucks. I've done everything right so it must be this ****ing programme. You will never hear from me again!" Which forum member would you want to help? There will be kind people who feel the drama queen's pain and offer support and suggestions. When the drama queen makes a big re-entrance to the forum after a few days sulking, posts "I'm back!" and expresses a resolve to work diligently towards success, the kind people who offered support will feel that their advice must have done the trick. When the forum drama queen posts another "Goodbye Forever!" message, the same kind people will empathise as the drama queen is obviously being affected by an emotional roller coaster and they will offer further sound advice. The kind forum members will be pleased when the drama queen makes a further "I'm Back And Here To Stay!" recovery. By about the third or fourth "I Quit!" drama, even the kindest people will be wishing the drama queen had stayed quit the first time round and Internet forum credibility for the drama queen ends there.

Don't Be An Internet Forum Puppy

A real puppy can't help chasing after everything that moves, getting under people's feet and being hyperactive to the point where it sometimes becomes annoying: that's just its nature. The Internet forum member who behaves like a puppy can help it and should desist. I am talking about the person who joins an Internet forum for the sole purpose of getting the links in his signature file on the forum as often as possible. The annoying forum puppy will respond to every message posted whether he knows anything about the subject or not. He will post messages which are of no value to anyone, these messages will range from boring pointless observations to obscure drivel to requests to poll an unimportant question which bears no relevance to the forum. If you are desperate to plaster your signature file all over the place, join lots of Internet forums and just post a few messages on each. With any luck, you will grow out of this time-wasting pursuit before the other forum members form a lynching party.

Don't Be An Internet Forum Seconder

Have you ever come across Mr Me Too? If you have, you will know who I mean. He is about as annoying as the Internet forum puppy. Mr Me Too will post a response to every thread that appears on a forum. It won't take him long as he won't bother to read through the thread, all he will do is add a comment saying "me too" or "I agree". This gets his signature file posted with the link back to his website and that's all he wants. Mr Me Too does not go to the Internet forum for entertainment or information or to contribute anything useful. If you are subscribed to a forum thread and receive notification that someone has posted a further message on the topic, it is very irritating to log in at the forum only to find that someone has posted a message saying "me too" or "I agree" just to give his signature file an airing. It is sadly true that the Internet forum puppy and Mr Me Too will get their links on the Internet alongside the forum members who post meaningful messages. When the day arrives that Search Engine Robots are able to distinguish the difference between valuable forum messages and drivel, those two offenders will find that it's pay back time for their transgressions.

Don't Attack The Internet Forum Moderators

If you have a message removed or edited by an Internet forum moderator, there will be a reason, so don't post complaints on the forum. Even if you don't understand or don't agree with the decision, there is no point in arguing. Attacking a moderator is like holding up a placard saying "I'm a pest, throw me out". The moderators are there to ensure the Internet forum is kept to the required standard. Remember that somebody owns this forum and invests time and energy in keeping the environment -- well -- moderate. The Internet forum is not your private sand-pit, you are a guest and if your behaviour is not appropriate, your invitation to play could be withdrawn. You should also remember that anything you post on an Internet forum will be available for public scrutiny for years to come.

The dictionary definition of the verb to moderate is: "to keep within measure or bounds; to regulate; to reduce in intensity; to make temperate or reasonable". If this does not sound like your kind of environment, perhaps you should stay away from Internet forums.

How To Run Old Software

2006-12-16T00:45:00.000-08:00

I sometimes get asked “Will programs from older versions of Windows run on new versions?” Usually the answer is yes, they’ll be fine. Most Windows 95 or 98 programs urn on XP as normal. And most Windows 3 or 3.1 programs will run on 95 or 98. Occasionally you’ll come across one that won’t. And if you’re trying to run a program from Windows ME, NT or 2000 you might well have problems. Luckily there are a few tricks you can try to give the program a helping hand.

First of all, make sure you don’t have any other programs running, just in case they confuse each other. That’s good advice whenever you have a program that’s a bit shaky.

Next, instead of starting it normally, go to the shortcut on the start menu and right click on it. The ones on the desktop are no good – it needs to be the “original” which is in the start menu.

Click on “Properties” in the menu that pops up and then select the “Compatibility” tab at the top. Put a tick in the top box “Run this program in compatibility mode for” and then select the version of Windows in the drop down box below. Ideally pick the one the program was originally written for (it should say on the back of the box the program came in). Click on OK, then start it up and keep your fingers crossed. At least if it doesn’t work, you know you’ve tried all you can and there’s no chance of it working – so you might want to contact the people who made the program and see if they have a newer version.

Tim Wakeling is the Author of Computers One Step at a Time and Help! My Taskbar’s Vanished. He also writes a free monthly newsletter about computers for non-experts. Find out about both at http://www.helpfulbooks.co.uk

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

Are Spyware Programs Lurking On Your Computer

2006-12-15T22:41:00.000-08:00

Regardless as to how prideful you are when it comes to the skills you have whilst on your computer or surfing the internet, the fact is that you will be at risk from spyware and adware every time that you log on. There is just no one way in which to avoid the harmful and, annoying spyware programs that cause you to have more pop-ups than a childs favourite pop-up story book. Instead, you should try to constantly be aware of what is on your computer and how to maintain your computer in the best possible condition.

Here are a few things that you may want to keep checking on your computer in order to prevent spyware.

One way that you can tell if you have any spyware running in the background on your computer is if your keep noticing those annoying pop-ups appear without even having your preferred web browser open. Anybody that has a DSL or high-speed connection now know that they can be constantly connected to the internet whether intended or not so you must protect against this. Even though you may always be connected you should not ever have pop-ups appear on your screen unless you are actual surfing the internet at the particular moment. Otherwise, you most definitely have some form of spyware on your computer and you should use a spyware program to detect it right away.

When you open your preferred web browser it will automatically open at the default home page that you have previously set, whether it is where we go to download our email or to discover that latest new and events, spyware can cause this to be a headache. If you launch you browser only to discover that you are taken to a website that you have not previously visited or are unfamiliar with then it highly likely that a spyware program is on you computer and effecting the browsers settings. The unwanted web page that you would be taken to is likely to resemble a search page or sales page in the hope that you will use or purchase something.

If you start to notice that names or websites you do not recognize begin to appear in your browsers favourites list, such as pornographic or gambling related sites than this is likely to refer to some form of spyware. Many of these sites will attempt to automatically list themselves in your favourites list without your knowledge or really caring if you want them there at all. Remember that these websites are not there to win your heart or make you become a fan of their work, they are only there for one of two things, either to grab your personal details or just to cause a great deal of heartache.

If you are having problems in running any particular task or program, try bringing up the Windows Task Manager screen by pressing the Ctrl (control), Alt and Delete buttons at the same time, and check to see if you are running any programs that you did not actual start or do not recognize. Most of these spyware programs will attempt to run in the darkness without you having any clue that they are there so an occasional check now and than will not hurt.

If you always keep track of exactly all the additional software that you have installed on your computer since new, than it tends to be easier to notice when a new program appears on your computer, which may turn out to be spyware. Checking the list of programs on your computer can be done by simply viewing the Add / Remove programs area in the control panel.

If you start to notice that your computer is starting to run a lot slower than normal or freezing up at every possible turn, which is extremely annoying and frustrating, it may indicate that you have a spyware problem on your computer. Many of these programs can be more than just harmful to your computer; they can be extremely demanding on the memory now that a parasite has attached itself and taking up valuable memory space. By constantly staying on top of what you have installed on your computer you can head this off at the pass.

If you are unfortunate to discover a spyware program on your computer it may be possible to remove it without needing to purchase or download any anti-spyware programs from the internet. Not surprisingly, many people fear the thought of having to download something in the attempt to correct another problem caused by a download. Who is to say that the people selling the proposed solution are not the same ones that originally created the problem? You may be able to manually remove the program if you are computer minded, but it may be a relentless task as it sometimes takes several attempts to completely remove if from your system.

Always be careful if you decide to download any free stuff from the internet, such as wallpaper to smarten up the appearance of your windows background or small graphic files to use on you web pages like MySpace or FaceBook. Spyware programs are notorious for hitting on the latest fad to entice the younger internet users to unknowingly download a program simply because it is completely Free! This may look attractive on the surface, but as we all know, nothing in life is truly free.

These are just a few of the ways that you can continue to monitor your computer in the attempt to prevent spyware from being installed. Do not just get frustrated with your computer, stay on top of what you are doing and where you are going to keep your computer healthy.

Darren Lintern is the author and owner of Spyware and All About. For more information on Spyware Protection, visit Spyware and All About where you will find a wealth of information on Spyware and Adware, including Spyware Help, Software, Detection and many other solutions to find and remove Spyware.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

Internet : A Medium or a Message

2006-12-14T10:45:00.000-08:00

The State of the Net

An Interim Report about the Future of the Internet

Who are the participants who constitute the Internet?

Users - connected to the net and interacting with it

The communications lines and the communications equipment

The intermediaries (e.g. the suppliers of on-line information or access providers).

Hardware manufacturers

Software authors and manufacturers (browsers, site development tools, specific applications, smart agents, search engines and others).

The "Hitchhikers" (search engines, smart agents, Artificial Intelligence - AI - tools and more)

Content producers and providers

Suppliers of financial wherewithal (currently - corporate and institutional cash gradually being replaced by advertising money)

The fate of each of these components - separately and in solidarity - will determine the fate of the Internet.

The first phase of the Internet's history was dominated by computer wizards. Thus, any attempt at predicting its future dealt mainly with its hardware and software components.

Media experts, sociologists, psychologists, advertising and marketing executives were left out of the collective effort to determine the future face of the Internet.

As far as content is concerned, the Internet cannot be currently defined as a medium. It does not function as one - rather it is a very disordered library, mostly incorporating the writings of non-distinguished megalomaniacs. It is the ultimate Narcissistic experience. The forceful entry of publishing houses and content aggregators is changing this dismal landscape, though.

Ever since the invention of television there hasn't been anything as begging to become a medium as the Internet.

Three analogies spring to mind when contemplating the Internet in its current state:

A chaotic library

A neural network or the latter day equivalent of previous networks (telegraph, telephony, railways)

A new continent

These metaphors prove to be very useful (even business-wise). They permit us to define the commercial opportunities embedded in the Internet.

Yet, they fail to assist us in predicting its future in its transformation into a medium.

How does an invention become a medium? What happens to it when it does become one? What is the thin line separating the initial functioning of the invention from its transformation into a new medium? In other words: when can we tell that some technological advance gave birth to a new medium?

This work also deals with the image of the Internet once transformed into a medium.

The Internet has the most unusual attributes in the history of media.

It has no central structure or organization. It is hardware and software independent. It (almost) cannot be subjected to legislation or to regulation. Consider the example of downloading music from the internet - is it tantamount to an act of recording music (a violation of copyright laws)? This has been the crux of the legal battle between Diamond Multimedia (the manufacturers of the Rio MP3 device), MP3.com and Napster and the recording industry in America.

The Internet's data transfer channels are not linear - they are random. Most of its "broadcast" cannot be "received" at all. It allows for the narrowest of narrowcasting through the use of e-mail mailing lists, discussion groups, message boards, private radio stations, and chats. And this is but a small portion of an impressive list of oddities. These idiosyncrasies will also shape the nature of the Internet as a medium. Growing out of bizarre roots - it is bound to yield strange fruit as a medium.

So what business opportunities does the Internet represent?

I believe that they are to be found in two broad categories:

Software and hardware related to the Internet's future as a medium

Content creation, management and licencing

The Map of Terra Internetica

The Users

How many Internet users are there? How many of them have access to the Web (World Wide Web - WWW) and use it? There are no unequivocal statistics. Those who presume to give the answers (including the ISOC - the Internet SOCiety) - rely on very partial and biased resources. Others just bluff.

Yet, everyone seems to agree that there are, at least, 100 million active participants in North America (the Nielsen and Commerce-Net reports).

The future is, inevitably, even more vague than the present. Authoritative consultancy firms predict 66 million active users in 10 years time. IBM envisages 700 million users. MCI is more modest with 300 million. At the end of 1999 there were 130 million registered (though not necessarily active) users.

The Internet - an Elitist and Chauvinistic Medium

The average user of the Internet is young (30), with an academic background and high income. The percentage of the educated and the well-to-do among the users of the Web is three times as high as their proportion in the population. This is fast changing only because their children are joining them (6 million already had access to the Internet at the end of 1996 - and were joined by another 24 million by the end of the decade). This may change only due to presidential initiatives to bridge the "digital divide" (from Al Gore's in the USA to Mahatir Mohammed's in Malaysia), corporate largesse and institutional involvement (e.g., Open Society in Eastern Europe, Microsoft in the USA). These efforts will spread the benefits of this all-powerful tool among the less privileged. A bit less than 50% of all users are men but they are responsible for 60% of the activity in the net (as measured by traffic).

Women seem to limit themselves to electronic mail (e-mail) and to electronic shopping of goods and services, though this is changing fast. Men prefer information, either due to career requirements or because knowledge is power.

Most of the users are of the "experiencer" variety. They are leaders of social change and innovative. This breed inhabits universities, fashionable neighbourhoods and trendy vocations. This is why some wonder if the Internet is not just another fad, albeit an incredibly resilient and promising one.

Most users have home access to the Internet - yet, they still prefer to access it from work, at their employer's expense, though this preference is slight and being eroded. Most users are, therefore, exploitative in nature. Still, we must not forget that there are 37 million households of the self-employed and this possibly distorts the statistical picture somewhat.

The Internet - A Western Phenomenon

Not African, not Asian (with the exception of Israel and Japan), not Russian , nor a Third World phenomenon. It belongs squarely to the wealthy, sated world. It is the indulgence of those who have everything and whose greatest concern is their choice of nightly entertainment. Between 50-60% of all Internet users live in the USA, 5-10% in Canada. The Internet is catching on in Europe (mainly in Germany and in Scandinavia) and, in its mobile form (i-mode) in Japan. The Internet lost to the French Minitel because the latter provides more locally relevant content and because of high costs of communications and hardware.

Communications

Most computer owners still possess a 28,800 bps modem. This is much like driving a bicycle on a German Autobahn. The 56,600 bps is gradually replacing its slower predecessor (48% of computers with modems) - but even this is hardly sufficient. To begin to enjoy video and audio (especially the former) - data transfer rates need to be 50 times faster.

Half the households in the USA have at least 2 telephones and one of them is usually dedicated to data processing (faxes or fax-modems).

The ISDN could constitute the mid-term solution. This data transfer network is fairly speedy and covers 70% of the territory of the USA. It is growing by 100% annually and its sales topped 10 billion USD in 1995/6.

Unfortunately, it is quite clear that ISDN is not THE answer. It is too slow, too user-unfriendly, has a bad interface with other network types, it requires special hardware. There is no point in investing in temporary solutions when the right solution is staring the Internet in the face, though it is not implemented due to political circumstances.

A cable modem is 80 times speedier than the ISDN and 700 times faster than a 14,400 bps modem. However, it does have problems in accommodating a two-way data transfer. There is also need to connect the fibre optic infrastructure which characterizes cable companies to the old copper coaxial infrastructure which characterizes telephony. Cable users engage specially customized LANs (Ethernet) and the hardware is expensive (though equipment prices are forecast to collapse as demand increases). Cable companies simply did not invest in developing the technology. The law (prior to the 1996 Communications Act) forbade them to do anything that was not one way transfer of video via cables. Now, with the more liberal regulative environment, it is a mere question of time until the technology is found.

Actually, most consumers single out bad customer relations as their biggest problem with the cable companies - rather than technology.

Experiments conducted with cable modems led to a doubling of usage time (from an average of 24 to 47 hours per month per user) which was wholly attributable to the increased speed. This comes close to a cultural revolution in the allocation of leisure time. Numerically speaking: 7 million households in the USA are fitted with a two-way data transfer cable modems. This is a small number and it is anyone's guess if it constitutes a critical mass. Sales of such modems amount to 1.3 billion USD annually.

50% of all cable subscribers also have a PC at home. To me it seems that the merging of the two technologies is inevitable.

Other technological solutions - such as DSL, ADSL, and the more promising satellite broadband - are being developed and implemented, albeit slowly and inefficiently. Coverage is sporadic and frustrating waiting periods are measured in months.

Hardware and Software

Most Internet users (82%) work with the Windows operating system. About 11% own a Macintosh (much stronger graphically and more user-friendly). Only 7% continue to work on UNIX based systems (which, historically, fathered the Internet) - and this number is fast declining. A strong entrant is the free source LINUX operating system.

Virtually all users surf through a browsing software. A fast dwindling minority (26%) use Netscape's products (mainly Navigator and Communicator) and the majority use Microsoft's Explorer (more than 60% of the market). Browsers are now free products and can be downloaded from the Internet. As late as 1997, it was predicted by major Internet consultancy firms that browser sales will top $4 billion by the year 2000. Such misguided predictions ignored the basic ethos of the Internet: free products, free content, free access.

Browsers are in for a great transformation. Most of them are likely to have 3-D, advanced audio, telephony / voice / video mail (v-mail), instant messaging, e-mail, and video conferencing capabilities integrated into the same browsing session. They will become self-customizing, intelligent, Internet interfaces. They will memorize the history of usage and user preferences and adapt themselves accordingly. They will allow content-specificity: unidentifiable smart agents will scour the Internet, make recommendations, compare prices, order goods and services and customize contents in line with self-adjusting user profiles.

Two important technological developments must be considered:

PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) - the ultimate personal (and office) communicators, easy to carry, they provide Internet (access) Everywhere, independent of suppliers and providers and of physical infrastructure (in an aeroplane, in the field, in a cinema).

The second trend: wireless data transfer and wireless e-mail, whether through pagers, cellular phones, or through more sophisticated apparatus and hybrids such as smart phones. Geotech's products are an excellent example: e-mail, faxes, telephone calls and a connection to the Internet and to other, public and corporate, or proprietary, databases - all provided by the same gadget. This is the embodiment of the electronic, physically detached, office. Wearable computing should be considered a part of this "ubiquitous or pervasive computing" wave.

We have no way of gauging - or intelligently guessing - the part of the mobile Internet in the total future Internet market but it is likely to outweigh the "fixed" part. Wireless internet meshes well with the trend of pervasive computing and the intelligent home and office. Household gadgets such as microwave ovens, refrigerators and so on will connect to the internet via a wireless interface to cull data, download information, order goods and services, report their condition and perform basic maintenance functions. Location specific services (navigation, shopping recommendations, special discounts, deals and sales, emergency services) depend on the technological confluence between GPS (stallite-based geolocation technology) and wireless Internet.

Suppliers and Intermediaries

"Parasitic" intermediaries occupy each stage in the Internet's food chain.

Access to the Internet is still provided by "dumb pipes" - the Internet Service Providers (ISP)

Content is still the preserve of content suppliers and so on.

Some of these intermediaries are doomed to gradually fade or to suffer a substantial diminishing of their share of the market. Even "walled gardens" of content (such as AOL) are at risk.

By way of comparison, even today, ISPs have four times as many subscribers (worldwide) as AOL. Admittedly, this adversely affects the quality of the Internet - the infrastructure maintained by the phone companies is slow and often succumbs to bottlenecks. The unequivocal intention of the telephony giants to become major players in the Internet market should also be taken into account. The phone companies will, thus, play a dual role: they will provide access to their infrastructure to their competitors (sometimes, within a real or actual monopoly) - and they will compete with their clients. The same can be said about the cable companies. Controlling the last mile to the user's abode is the next big business of the Internet. Companies such as AOL are disadvantaged by these trends. It is imperative for AOL to obtain equal access to the cable company's backbone and infrastructure if it wants to survive. Hence its merger with Time Warner.

No wonder that many of the ISPs judge this intrusion on their turf by the phone and cable companies to constitute unfair competition. Yet, one should not forget that the barriers to entry are very low in the ISP market. It takes a minimal investment to become an ISP. 200 modems (which cost 200 USD each) are enough to satisfy the needs of 2000 average users who generate an income of 500,000 USD per annum to the ISP. Routers are equally as cheap nowadays. This is a nice return on the ISP's capital, undoubtedly.

The Hitchhikers

The Web houses the equivalent of 100 billion pages. Search Engine applications are used to locate specific information in this impressive, constantly proliferating library. They will be replaced, in the near future, by "Knowledge Structures" - gigantic encyclopaedias, whose text will contain references (hyperlinks) to other, relevant, sites. The far future will witness the emergence of the "Intelligent Archives" and the "Personal Newspapers" (read further for detailed explanations). Some software applications will summarize content, others will index and automatically reference and hyperlink texts (virtual bibliographies). An average user will have an on-going interest in 500 sites. Special software will be needed to manage address books ("bookmarks", "favourites") and contents ("Intelligent Addressbooks"). The phenomenon of search engines dedicated to search a number of search engines simultaneously will grow ("Hyper- or meta- engines"). Meta-engines will work in the background and download hyperlinks and advertising (the latter is essential to secure the financial interest of site developers and owners). Statistical software which tracks ("how long was what done"), monitors ("what did they do while in the site") and counts ("how many") visitors to sites already exists. Some of these applications have back-office facilities (accounting, follow-up, collections, even tele-marketing). They all provide time trails and some allow for auditing.

This is but a small fragment of the rapidly developing net-scape: people and enterprises who make a living off the Internet craze rather than off the Internet itself. Everyone knows that there is more money in lecturing about how to make money on the Internet - than in the Internet itself. This maxim still holds true despite the 32 billion US dollars in E-commerce in 1998. Business to Consumer (B2C) sales grow less vigorously than Business to Business (B2B) sales and are likely to suffer another blow with the advent of Peer to Peer (P2P) computer networks. The latter allow PCs to act as servers and thus enable the swapping of computer files asmong connected users (with or without a central directory).

Content Suppliers

This is the underprivileged sector of the Internet. They all lose money (even e-tailers which offer basic, standardized goods - books, CDs - with the exception, until September 11, of sites connected to tourism). No one thanks them for content produced with the investment of a lot of effort and a lot of money. A really qualitative, fully commerce enabled site costs up to 5,000,000 USD, excluding site maintenance and customer and visitor services. Content providers are constantly criticized for lack of creativity or for too much creativity. More and more is asked of them. They are exploited by intermediaries, hitchhikers and other parasites. This is all an off-shoot of the ethos of the Internet as a free content area.

More than 100 million men and women constantly access the Web - but this number stands to grow (the median prediction: 300 million). Yet, while the Web is used by 35% of those with access to the Internet - e-mail is used by more than 60%. E-mail is by far the most common function ("killer app") and specialized applications (Eudora, Internet Mail, Microsoft Exchange) - free or ad sponsored - keep it accessible to all and user-friendly.

Most of the users like to surf (browse, visit sites) the net without reason or goal in mind. This makes it difficult to apply traditional marketing techniques.

What is the meaning of "targeted audiences" or "market shares" in this context?

If a surfer visits sites which deal with aberrant sex and nuclear physics in the same session - what to make of it?

The public and legislative backlash against the gathering of surfers' data by Internet ad agencies and other web sites - has led to growing ignorance regarding the profile of Internet users, their demography, habits, preferences and dislikes.

People like the very act of surfing. They want to be entertained, then they use the Internet as a working tool, mostly in the service of their employer, who, usually foots the bill. Users love free downloads (mainly software).

"Free" is a key word on the Internet: it used to belong to the US Government and to a bunch of universities. Users like information, with emphasis on news and data about new products. But they do not like to shop on the net - yet. Only 38% of all surfers made a purchase during 1998.

67% of them adore virtual sex. 50% of the sites most often visited are porn sites (this is reminiscent of the early days of the Video Cassette Recorder - VCR). People dedicate the same amount of time to watching video cassettes or television as they do to surfing the net. The Internet seems to cannibalize television.

Sex is followed by music, sports, health, television, computers, cinema, politics, pets and cooking sites. People are drawn to interactive games. The Internet will shortly enable people to gamble, if not hampered by legislation. 10 billion USD in gambling money are predicted to pass through the net. This makes sense: nothing like a computer to provide immediate (monetary and psychological) rewards.

Commerce on the net is another favourite. The Internet is a perfect medium for the sale of software and other digital products (e-books). The problem of data security is on its way to being solved with the SET (or other) world standard.

As early as 1995, the Internet had more than 100 virtual shopping malls visited by 2.5 million shoppers (and probably double this number in 1996).

The predictions for 1999 were between 1-5 billion USD of net shopping (plus 2 billion USD through on-line information providers, such as CompuServe and AOL) - proved woefully inaccurate. The actual number in 1998 was 7 times the prediction for 1999.

It is also widely believed that circa 20% of the family budget will pass through the Internet as e-money and this amounts to 150 billion USD.

The Internet will become a giant inter-bank clearing system and varied ATM type banking and investment services will be provided through it. Basically, everything can be done through the Internet: looking for a job, for instance.

Yet, the Internet will never replace human interaction. People are likely to prefer personal banking, window shopping and the social experience of the shopping mall to Internet banking and e-commerce, or m-commerce.

Some sites already sport classified ads. This is not a bad way to defray expenses, though most classified ads are free (it is the advertising they attract that matters).

Another developing trend is website-rating and critique. It will be treated the way today's printed editions are. It will have a limited influence on the consumption decisions of some users. Browsers already sport buttons labelled "What's New" and "What's Hot". Most Search Engines recommend specific sites. Users are cautious. Studies discovered that no user, no matter how heavy, has consistently re-visited more than 200 sites, a minuscule number. The 10 most popular web sites (Yahoo!, MSN, etc.) attracted more than 50% of all Internet traffic. Site recommendation services often produce random - at times, wrong - selections for their user. There are also concerns regarding privacy issues. The backlah against Amazon's "readers' circles" is an example.

Web Critics, who work today mainly for the printed press, will publish their wares on the net and will link to intelligent software which will hyperlink, recommend and refer. Some web critics will be identified with specific applications - really, expert systems which will incorporate their knowledge and experience.

The Money

Where will the capital needed to finance all these developments come from?

Again, there are two schools:

One says that sites will be financed through advertising - and so will search engines and other applications accessed by users.

Certain ASPs (Application Service Providers which rent out access to application software which resides on their servers) are considering this model.

The second version is simpler and allows for the existence of non-commercial content.

It proposes to collect negligible sums (cents or fractions of cents) from every user for every visit ("micro-payments") or a subscription fee. These accumulated cents or subscription fees will enable the owners of old sites to update and to maintain them and encourage entrepreneurs to develop new ones. Certain content aggregators (especially of digital textbooks) have adopted this model (Questia, Fathom).

The adherents of the first school pointed at the 5 million USD invested in advertising during 1995 and to the 60 million or so invested during 1996.

Its opponents point exactly at the same numbers: ridiculously small when contrasted with more conventional advertising modes. The potential of advertising on the net is limited to 1.5 billion USD annually in 1998, thundered the pessimists (many thought that even half that would be very nice). The actual figure was double the prediction but still woefully small and inadequate to support the Internet's content development.

Compare these figures to the sale of Internet software ($4 billion), Internet hardware ($3 billion), Internet access provision ($4.2 billion) in 1995.

Hembrecht and Quist estimated that Internet related industries scooped up 23.2 billion USD annually (A report released in mid-1996).

And what follows advertising is hardly more enocuraging.

The consumer interacts and the product is delivered to him. This - the delivery phase - is a slow and enervating epilogue to the exciting affair of ordering through the net at the speed of light. Too many consumers still complain that they do not receive what they ordered, or that delivery is late and products defective.

The solution may lie in the integration of advertising and content. Pointcast, for instance, integrated advertising into its news broadcasts, continuously streamed to the user's screen, even when inactive (they provided a downloadable active screen saver and ticker in a "push technology"). Downloading of digital music, video and text (e-books) will lead to immediate gratification of the consumer and will increase the efficacy of advertising.

Whatever the case may be, a uniform, agreed upon system of rating as a basis for charging advertisers, is sorely needed. There is also the question of what does the advertiser pay for?

Many advertisers (Procter and Gamble, for instance) refuse to pay according to the number of hits or impressions (=entries, visits to a site). They agree to pay only according to the number of the times that their advertisement was hit (page views).

This different basis for calculation is likely to upset all revenue scenarios.

Very few sites of important, respectable newspapers are on a subscription basis. Dow Jones (Wall Street Journal) and The Economist, to mention but two.

Will this become the prevailing trend?

The Internet as a Metaphor

Three metaphors come to mind when considering the Internet "philosophically".

The Internet as a Chaotic Library

1. The Problem of Cataloguing

The Internet is an assortment of billions of pages containing information. Some of them are visible and others are generated from hidden databases by users' requests ("Invisible Internet").

The Internet displays no discernible order, classification, or categorization. As opposed to "classical" libraries, no one has invented a cataloguing standard (remember Dewey?). This is so needed that it is amazing that it has not been invented yet. Some sites indeed apply the Dewey Decimal Syatem (Suite101). Others default to a directory structure (Open Directory, Yahoo!, Look Smart and others).

Had such a standard existed (an agreed upon numerical cataloguing method) - each site would have self-classified. Sites would have an interest to do so to increase their penetration rates and their visibility. This, naturally, would have eliminated the need for today's clunky, incomplete and (highly) inefficient search engines.

A site whose number starts with 900 will be immediately identified as dealing with history and multiple classification will be encouraged to allow finer cross-sections to emerge. An example of such an emerging technology of "self classification" and "self-publication" (though limited to scholarly resources) is the "Academic Resource Channel" by Scindex.

Users will not be required to remember reams of numbers. Future browsers will be akin to catalogues, very much like the applications used in modern day libraries. Compare this utopia to the current dystopy. Users struggle with reams of irrelevant material to finally reach a partial and disappointing destination. At the same time, there likely are web sites which exactly match the poor user's needs. Yet, what currently determines the chances of a happy encounter between user and content - are the whims of the specific search engine used and things like meta-tags, headlines, a fee paid, or the right opening sentences.

2. Screen versus Page

The computer screen, because of physical limitations (size, the fact that it has to be scrolled) fails to effectively compete with the printed page. The latter is still the most ingenious medium yet invented for the storage and release of textual information. Granted: a computer screen is better at highlighting discrete units of information. So, this draws the batlle lines: structures (printed pages) versus units (screen), the continuous and easily reversible versus the discrete.

The solution is an efficient way to translate computer screens to printed matter. It is hard to believe, but no such thing exists. Computer screens are still hostile to off-line printing. In other words: if a user copies information from the Internet to his Word Processor (or vice versa, for that matter) - he ends up with a fragmented, garbage-filled and non-aesthetic document.

Very few site developers try to do something about it - even fewer succeed.

3. The Internet and the CD-ROM

One of the biggest mistakes of content suppliers is that they do not mix contents or have a "static-dynamic interaction".

The Internet can now easily interact with other media (especially with audio CDs and with CD-ROMs) - even as the user surfs.

Examples abound:

A shopping catalogue can be distributed on a CD-ROM by mail. The Internet Site will allow the user to order a product previously selected from the catalogue, while off-line. The catalogue could also be updated through the site (as is done with CD-ROM encyclopedias).

The advantages of the CD-ROM are clear: very fast access time (dozens of times faster than the access to a site using a dial up connection) and a data storage capacity tens of times bigger than the average website.

Another example: a CD-ROM can be distributed, containing hundreds of advertisements. The consumer will select the ad that he wants to see and will connect to the Internet to view a relevant video.

He could then also have an interactive chat (or a conference) with a salesperson, receive information about the company, about the ad, about the advertising agency which created the ad - and so on.

CD-ROM based encyclopedias (such as the Britannica, Encarta, Grolier) already contain hyperlinks which carry the user to sites selected by an Editorial Board.

But CD-ROMs are probably a doomed medium. This industry chose to emphasize the wrong things. Storage capacity increased exponentially and, within a year, desktops with 80 Gb hard disks will be common. Moreover, the Network Computer - the stripped down version of the personal computer - will put at the disposal of the average user terabytes in storage capacity and the processing power of a supercomputer. What separates computer users from this utopia is the communication bandwidth. With the introduction of radio, statellite, ADSL broadband services, cable modems and compression methods - video (on demand), audio and data will be available speedily and plentifully.

The CD-ROM, on the other hand, is not mobile. It requires installation and the utilization of sophisticated hardware and software. This is no user friendly push technology. It is nerd-oriented. As a result, CD-ROMs are not an immediate medium. There is a long time lapse between the moment they are purchased and the moment the first data become accessible to the user. Compare this to a book or a magazine. Data in these oldest of media is instantly available to the user and allows for easy and accurate "back" and "forward" functions.

Perhaps the biggest mistake of CD-ROM manufacturers has been their inability to offer an integrated hardware and software package. CD-ROMs are not compact. A Walkman is a compact hardware-cum-software package. It is easily transportable, it is thin, it contains numerous, user-friendly, sophisticated functions, it provides immediate access to data. So does the discman or the MP3-man. This cannot be said of the CD-ROM. By tying its future to the obsolete concept of stand-alone, expensive, inefficient and technologically unreliable personal computers - CD-ROMs have sentenced themselves to oblivion (with the possible exception of reference material).

4. On-line Reference Libraries

These already exist. A visit to the on-line Encyclopaedia Britannica exemplifies some of the tremendous, mind boggling possibilities:

Each entry is hyperlinked to sites on the Internet which deal with the same subject matter. The sites are carefully screened (though more detailed descriptions of each site should be available - they could be prepared either by the staff of the encyclopaedia or by the site owner). Links are available to data in various forms, including audio and video. Everything can be copied to the hard disk or to CD-ROMs.

This is a new conception of a knowledge centre - not just an assortment of material. It is modular, can be added on and subtracted from. It can be linked to a voice Q&A centre. Queries by subscribers can be answered by e-mail, by fax, posted on the site, hard copies can be sent by post. This "Trivial Pursuit" service could be very popular - there is considerable appetite for "Just in Time Information". The Library of Congress - together with a few other libraries - is in the process of making just such a service available to the public (CDRS - Collaborative Digital Reference Service).

5. The Feedback Option

Hard to believe, but very few sites encourage their guests to express an opinion about the site, its contents and its aesthetics. This indicates an ossified mode of thinking about the most dynamic mass medium ever created, the only interactive mass medium yet. Each site must absolutely contain feedback and rating questionnaires. It has the side benefit of creating a database of the visitors to the site.

Moreover, each site can easily become a "knowledge centre".

Let us consider a site dedicated to advertising and marketing:

It can contain feedback questionnaires (what do you think about the site, suggestions for improvement, mailto and leave message facilities, etc.)

It can contain rating questionnaires (rate these ads, these TV or radio shows, these advertising campaigns).

It can allocate some space to clients to create their home pages in (these home pages could lead to their sites, to other sites, to other sections of the host site - and, in any case, will serve as a display of the creative talent of the site owners). This will give the site owners a picture of the distribution of the areas of interest of the visitors to the site.

The site can include statistical, tracking and counter software.

Such a site can refer to hundreds of useful shareware applications (which deal with different aspects of advertising and marketing, for instance). Developers of applications will be able to use the site to promote their products. Other practical applications could also be referred to from - or reside on - the site (browsers, games, search engines).

And all this can be organized in a portal structure (for instance, by adopting the open software of the Open Directory Project).

6. Internet Derived CD-ROMS

The Internet is an enormous reservoir of freely available, public domain, information.

With a minimal investment, this information can be gathered into coherent, theme oriented, cheap CD-ROMs. Each such CD-ROM can contain:

Addresses of web sites specific to the subject matter

The first pages of each of these sites

Hyperlinks to each of the sites

A browser

Access to all the important search engines

Recommended search strings (it is extremely difficult to formulate a successful search in the Internet, it takes expertise. "Ready-made searches" will be a hit in the future, as the number of sites grows)

A dictionary of professional terms, a speller and a thesaurus

A list of general reference sites

Shareware specific to the field

7. Publishing

The Internet is the world's largest "publisher", by far. It "publishes" FAQs (Frequent Answers and Questions regarding almost every technical matter in the world), e-zines (electronic versions of magazines, not a very profitable pursuit), the electronic versions of dailies (together with on-line news and information services), reference and other e-books, monographs, articles and minutes of discussions ("threads"), among other types of material.

Publishing an e-zine has a few advantages: it promotes the sales of the printed edition, it helps to sign on subscribers and it leads to the sale of advertising space. The electronic archive function (see next section) saves the need to file back issues, the space required to do so and the irritating search for data items.

The future trend is a combined subscription: electronic (mainly for the archival value and the ability to hyperlink to additional information) and printed (easier to browse current issue).

The electronic daily presents other advantages:

It allows for immediate feedback and for flowing, almost real-time, communication between writers and readers. The electronic version, therefore, acquires a gyroscopic function: a navigation instrument, always indicating deviations from the "right" course. The content can be instantly updated and immediacy has its premium (remember the Lewinsky affair?).

Strangely, this (conventional) field was the first to develop a "virtual reality" facet. There are virtual "magazine stalls". They look exactly like the real thing and the user can buy a paper using his mouse.

Specialty hand held devices already allow for downloading and storage of vast quantities of data (up to 4000 print pages). The user gains access to libraries containing hundreds of texts, adapted to be downloaded, stored and read by the specific device. Again, a convergence of standards is to be expected in this field as well (the final contenders will probably be Adobe's PDF against Microsoft's MS-Reader).

Broadly, e-books are treated either as:

Continuation of print books (p-books) by other means

or as

A whole new publishing universe.

Since p-books are a more convenient medium then e-books - they will prevail in any straightforward "medium replacement" or "medium displacement" battle.

In other words, if publishers will persist in the simple and straightforward conversion of p-books to e-books - then e-books are doomed. They are simply inferior to the price, comfort, tactile delights, browseability and scanability of p-books.

But e-books - being digital - open up a vista of hitherto neglected possibilities. These will only be enhanced and enriched by the introduction of e-paper and e-ink. Among them:

Hyperlinks within the e-book and without it - to web content, reference works, etc.

Embedded instant shopping and ordering links

Divergent, user-interactive, decision driven plotlines

Interaction with other e-books (using a wireless standard) - collaborative authoring

Interaction with other e-books - gaming and community activities

Automatically or periodically updated content

Multimedia

Database, Favourites and History Maintenance (reading habits, shopping habits, interaction with other readers, plot related decisions and much more)

Automatic and embedded audio conversion and translation capabilities

Full wireless piconetworking and scatternetworking capabilities

The technology is still not fully there. Wars rage in both the wireless and the ebook realms. Platforms compete. Standards clash. Gurus debate. But convergence is inevitable and with it the e-book of the future.

8. The Archive Function

The Internet is also the world's biggest cemetery: tens of thousands of deadbeat sites, still accessible - the "Ghost Sites" of this electronic frontier.

This, in a way, is collective memory. One of the Internet's main functions will be to preserve and transfer knowledge through time. It is called "memory" in biology - and "archive" in library science. The history of the Internet is being documented by search engines (Google) and specialized services (Alexa) alike.

The Internet as a Collective Brain

Drawing a comparison from the development of a human baby - the human race has just commenced to develop its neural system.

The Internet fulfils all the functions of the Nervous System in the body and is, both functionally and structurally, pretty similar. It is decentralized, redundant (each part can serve as functional backup in case of malfunction). It hosts information which is accessible in a few ways, it contains a memory function, it is multimodal (multimedia - textual, visual, audio and animation).

I believe that the comparison is not superficial and that studying the functions of the brain (from infancy to adulthood) - amounts to perusing the future of the Net itself.

1. The Collective Computer

To carry the metaphor of "a collective brain" further, we would expect the processing of information to take place in the Internet, rather than inside the end-user's hardware (the same way that information is processed in the brain, not in the eyes). Desktops will receive the results and communicate with the Net to receive additional clarifications and instructions and to convey information gathered from their environment (mostly, from the user).

This is part fo the philosophy of the JAVA programming language. It deals with applets - small bits of software - and links different computer platforms by means of software.

Put differently:

Future servers will contain not only information (as they do today) - but also software applications. The user of an application will not be forced to buy it. He will not be driven into hardware-related expenditures to accommodate the ever growing size of applications. He will not find himself wasting his scarce memory and computing resources on passive storage. Instead, he will use a browser to call a central computer. This computer will contain the needed software, broken to its elements (=applets, small applications). Anytime the user wishes to use one of the functions of the application, he will siphon it off the central computer. When finished - he will "return" it. Processing speeds and response times will be such that the user will not feel at all that it is not with his own software that he is working (the question of ownership will be very blurred in such a world). This technology is available and it provoked a heated debated about the future shape of the computing industry as a whole (desktops - really power packs - or network computers, a little more than dumb terminals). Applications are already offered to corporate users by ASPs (Application Service Providers).

In the last few years, scientists put the combined power of the computers linked to the internet at any given moment to perform astounding feats of distributed parallel processing. Millions of PCs connected to the net co-process signals from outer space, meteorological data and solve complex equations. This is a prime example of a collective brain in action.

2. The Intranet - a Logical Extension of the Collective Computer

LANs (Local Area Networks) are no longer a rarity in corporate offices. WANs (wide Area Networks) are used to connect geographically dispersed organs of the same legal entity (branches of a bank, daughter companies, a sales force). Many LANs are wireless.

The intranet / extranet and wireless LANs will be the winners. They will gradually eliminate both fixed line LANs and WANs. The Internet offers equal, platform-independent, location-independent and time of day - independent access to all the members of an organization.Sophisticated firewall security application protects the privacy and confidentiality of the intranet from all but the most determined and savvy hackers.

The Intranet is an inter-organizational communication network, constructed on the platform of the Internet and which enjoys all its advantages. The extranet is open to clients and suppliers as well.

The company's server can be accessed by anyone authorized, from anywhere, at any time (with local - rather than international - communication costs). The user can leave messages (internal e-mail or v-mail), access information - proprietary or public - from it and to participate in "virtual teamwork" (see next chapter).

By the year 2002, a standard intranet interface will emerge. This will be facilitated by the opening up of the TCP/IP communication architecture and its availability to PCs. A billion USD will go just to finance intranet servers - or, at least, this is the median forecast.

The development of measures to safeguard server routed inter-organizational communication (firewalls) is the solution to one of two obstacles to the institution of the Intranet. The second problem is the limited bandwidth which does not permit the efficient transfer of audio (not to mention video).

It is difficult to conduct video conferencing through the Internet. Even the voices of discussants who use internet phones come out (slightly) distorted.

All this did not prevent 95% of the Fortune 1000 from installing intranet. 82% of the rest intend to install one by the end of this year. Medium to big size American firms have 50-100 intranet terminals per every internet one.

At the end of 1997, there were 10 web servers per every other type of server in organizations. The sale of intranet related software was projected to multiply by 16 (to 8 billion USD) by the year 1999.

One of the greatest advantages of the intranet is the ability to transfer documents between the various parts of an organization. Consider Visa: it pushed 2 million documents per day internally in 1996.

An organization equipped with an intranet can (while protected by firewalls) give its clients or suppliers access to non-classified correspondence. This notion has its charm. Consider a newspaper: it can give access to all the materials which were discarded by the editors. Some news are fit to print - yet are discarded because of space limitations. Still, someone is bound to be interested. It costs the newspaper close to nothing (the material is, normally, already computer-resident) - and it might even generate added circulation and income. It can be even conceived as an "underground, non-commercial, alternative" newspaper for a wholly different readership.

The above is but one example of the possible use of the intranet to communicate with the organization's consumer base.

3. Mail and Chat

The Internet (its e-mail possibilities) is eroding traditional mail. The market share of the post office in conveying messages by regular mail has dwindled from 77% to 62% (1995). E-mail has expanded to capture 36% (up from 19%).

90% of customers with on-line access use e-mail from time to time and 60% work with it regularly. More than 2 billion messages traverse the internet daily.

E-mail applications are available as freeware and are included in all browsers. Thus, the Internet has completely assimilated what used to be a separate service, to the extent that many people make the mistake of thinking that e-mail is a feature of the Internet. Microsoft continues to incorporate previously independent applications in its browsers - a behaviour which led to the 1999 anti-trust lawsuit against it.

The internet will do to phone calls what it has done to mail. Already there are applications (Intel's, Vocaltec's, Net2Phone) which enable the user to conduct a phone conversation through his computer. The voice quality has improved. The discussants can cut into each others words, argue and listen to tonal nuances. Today, the parties (two or more) engaging in the conversation must possess the same software and the same (computer) hardware. In the very near future, computer-to-regular phone applications will eliminate this requirement. And, again, simultaneous multi-modality: the user can talk over the phone, see his party, send e-mail, receive messages and transfer documents - without obstructing the flow of the conversation.

The cost of transferring voice will become so negligible that free voice traffic is conceivable in 3-5 years. Data traffic will overtake voice traffic by a wide margin.

This beats regular phones.

The next phase will probably involve virtual reality. Each of the parties will be represented by an "avatar", a 3-D figurine generated by the application (or the user's likeness mapped into the software and superimposed on the the avatar). These figurines will be multi-dimensional: they will possess their own communication patterns, special habits, history, preferences - in short: their own "personality".

Thus, they will be able to maintain an "identity" and a consistent pattern of communication which they will develop over time.

Such a figure could host a site, accept, welcome and guide visitors, all the time bearing their preferences in its electronic "mind". It could narrate the news, like "Ananova" does. Visiting sites in the future is bound to be a much more pleasant affair.

4. E-cash

In 1996, the four corporate giants (Visa, MasterCard, Netscape and Microsoft) agreed on a standard for effecting secure payments through the Internet: SET. Internet commerce is supposed to mushroom by a factor of 50 to 25 billion USD. Site owners will be able to collect rent from passing visitors - or fees for services provided within the site. Amazon instituted an honour system to collect donations from visitors. Dedicated visitors will not be deterred by such trifles.

5. The Virtual Organization

The Internet allows simultaneous communication between an almost unlimited number of users. This is coupled with the efficient transfer of multimedia (video included) files.

This opens up a vista of mind boggling opportunities which are the real core of the Internet revolution: the virtual collaborative ("Follow the Sun") modes.

Examples:

A group of musicians will be able to compose music or play it - while spatially and temporally separated;

Advertising agencies will be able to co-produce ad campaigns in a real time interactive mode;

Cinema and TV films will be produced from disparate geographical spots through the teamwork of people who never meet, except through the net.

These examples illustrate the concept of the "virtual community". Locations in space and time will no longer hinder a collaboration in a team: be it scientific, artistic, cultural, or for the provision of services (a virtual law firm or accounting office, a virtual consultancy network).

Two on going developments are the virtual mall and the virtual catalogue.

There are well over 300 active virtual malls in the Internet. They were frequented by 32.5 million shoppers, who shopped in them for goods and services in 1998. The intranet can also be thought of as a "virtual organization", or a "virtual business".

The virtual mall is a computer "space" (pages) in the internet, wherein "shops" are located. These shops offer their wares using visual, audio and textual means. The visitor passes a gate into the store and looks through its offering, until he reaches a buying decision. Then he engages in a feedback process: he pays (with a credit card), buys the product and waits for it to arrive by mail. The manufacturers of digital products (intellectual property such as e-books or software) have begun selling their merchandise on-line, as file downloads.

Yet, slow communications and limited bandwidth - constrain the growth potential of this mode of sale. Once solved - intellectual property will be sold directly from the net, on-line. Until such time, the intervention of the Post Office is still required. So, then virtual mall is nothing but a glorified computerized mail catalogue or Buying Channel, the only difference being the exceptionally varied inventory.

Websites which started as "specialty stores" are fast transforming themselves into multi-purpose virtual malls. Amazon.com, for instance, has bought into a virtual pharmacy and into other virtual businesses. It is now selling music, video, electronics and many other products. It started as a bookstore.

This contrasts with a much more creative idea: the virtual catalogue. It is a form of narrowcasting (as opposed to broadcasting): a surgically accurate targeting of potential consumer audiences. Each group of profiled consumers (no matter how small) is fitted with their own - digitally generated - catalogue. This is updated daily: the variety of wares on offer (adjusted to reflect inventory levels, consumer preferences and goods in transit) - and prices (sales, discounts, package deals) change in real time.

The user will enter the site and there delineate his consumption profile and his preferences. A customized catalogue will be immediately generated for him.

From then on, the history of his purchases, preferences and responses to feedback questionnaires will be accumulated and added to a database.

Each catalogue generated for him will come replete with order forms. Once the user concluded his purchases, his profile will be updated.

There is no technological obstacles to implementing this vision today - only administrative and legal ones. Big retail stores are not up to processing the flood of data expected to arrive. They also remain highly sceptical regarding the feasibility of the new medium. And privacy issues prevent data mining or the effective collection and usage of personal data.

The virtual catalogue is a private case of a new internet off-shoot: the "smart (shopping) agents". These are AI applications with "long memories".

They draw detailed profiles of consumers and users and then suggest purchases and refer to the appropriate sites, catalogues, or virtual malls.

They also provide price comparisons and the new generation (NetBot) cannot be blocked or fooled by using differing product categories.

In the future, these agents will refer also to real life retail chains and issue a map of the branch or store closest to an address specified by the user (the default being his residence). This technology can be seen in action in a few music sites on the web and is likely to be dominant with wireless internet appliances. The owner of an internet enabled (third generation) mobile phone is likely to be the target of geographically-specific marketing campaigns, ads and special offers pertaining to his current location (as reported by his GPS - satellite Geographic Positioning System).

6. Internet News

Internet news are advantaged. They can be frequently and dynamically updated (unlike static print news) and be always accessible (similar to print news), immediate and fresh.

The future will witness a form of interactive news. A special "corner" in the site will be open to updates posted by the public (the equivalent of press releases). This will provide readers with a glimpse into the making of the news, the raw material news are made of. The same technology will be applied to interactive TVs. Content will be downloaded from the internet and be displayed as an overlay on the TV screen or in a square in a special location. The contents downloaded will be directly connected to the TV programming. Thus, the biography and track record of a football player will be displayed during a football match and the history of a country when it gets news coveage.

Terra Internetica - Internet, an Unknown Continent

This is an unconventional way to look at the Internet. Laymen and experts alike talk about "sites" and "advertising space". Yet, the Internet was never compared to a new continent whose surface is infinite.

The Internet will have its own real estate developers and construction companies. The real life equivalents derive their profits from the scarcity of the resource that they exploit - the Internet counterparts will derive their profits from the tenants (the content).

Two examples:

A few companies bought "Internet Space" (pages, domain names, portals), developed it and make commercial use of it by:

renting it out

constructing infrastructure and selling it

providing an intelligent gateway, entry point to the rest of the internet

or selling advertising space which subsidizes the tenants (Yahoo!-Geocities, Tripod and others).

Cybersquatting (purchasing specific domain names identical to brand names in the "real" world) and then selling the domain name to an interested party

Internet Space can be easily purchased or created. The investment is low and getting lower with the introduction of competition in the field of domain registration services and the increase in the number of top domains.

Then, infrastructure can be erected - for a shopping mall, for free home pages, for a portal, or for another purpose. It is precisely this infrastructure that the developer can later sell, lease, franchise, or rent out.

At the beginning, only members of the fringes and the avant-garde (inventors, risk assuming entrepreneurs, gamblers) invest in a new invention. The invention of a new communications technology is mostly accompanied by devastating silence.

No one knows to say what are the optimal uses of the invention (in other words, what is its future). Many - mostly members of the scientific and business elites - argue that there is no real need for the invention and that it substitutes a new and untried way for old and tried modes of doing the same thing (so why assume the risk?)

These criticisms are usually founded:

To start with, there is, indeed, no need for the new medium. A new medium invents itself - and the need for it. It also generates its own market to satisfy this newly found need.

Two prime examples are the personal computer and the compact disc.

When the PC was invented, its uses were completely unclear. Its performance was lacking, its abilities limited, it was horribly user unfriendly.

It suffered from faulty design, absent user comfort and ease of use and required considerable professional knowledge to operate. The worst part was that this knowledge was unique to the new invention (not portable).

It reduced labour mobility and limited one's professional horizons. There were many gripes among those assigned to tame the new beast.

The PC was thought of, at the beginning, as a sophisticated gaming machine, an electronic baby-sitter. As the presence of a keyboard was detected and as the professional horizon cleared it was thought of in terms of a glorified typewriter or spreadsheet. It was used mainly as a word processor (and its existence justified solely on these grounds). The spreadsheet was the first real application and it demonstrated the advantages inherent to this new machine (mainly flexibility and speed). Still, it was more (speed) of the same. A quicker ruler or pen and paper. What was the difference between this and a hand held calculator (some of them already had computing, memory and programming features)?

The PC was recognized as a medium only 30 years after it was invented with the introduction of multimedia software. All this time, the computer continued to spin off markets and secondary markets, needs and professional specialities. The talk as always was centred on how to improve on existing markets and solutions.

The Internet is the computer's first important breakthrough. Hitherto the computer was only quantitatively different - the multimedia and the Internet have made it qualitatively superior, actually, sui generis, unique.

This, precisely, is the ghost haunting the Internet:

It has been invented, is maintained and is operated by computer professionals. For decades these people have been conditioned to think in Olympic terms: more, stronger, higher. Not: new, unprecedented, non-existent. To improve - not to invent. They stumbled across the Internet - it invented itself despite its own creators.

Computer professionals (hardware and software experts alike) - are linear thinkers. The Internet is non linear and modular.

It is still the age of hackers. There is still a lot to be done in improving technological prowess and powers. But their control of the contents is waning and they are being gradually replaced by communicators, creative people, advertising executives, psychologists and the totally unpredictable masses who flock to flaunt their home pages.

These all are attuned to the user, his mental needs and his information and entertainment preferences.

The compact disc is a different tale. It was intentionally invented to improve upon an existing technology (basically, Edison's Gramophone). Market-wise, this was a major gamble: the improvement was, at first, debatable (many said that the sound quality of the first generation of compact discs was inferior to that of its contemporaneous record players). Consumers had to be convinced to change both software and hardware and to dish out thousands of dollars just to listen to what the manufacturers claimed was better quality Bach. A better argument was the longer life of the software (though contrasted with the limited life expectancy of the consumer, some of the first sales pitches sounded absolutely morbid).

The computer suffered from unclear positioning. The compact disc was very clear as to its main functions - but had a rough time convincing the consumers.

Every medium is first controlled by the technical people. Gutenberg was a printer - not a publisher. Yet, he is the world's most famous publisher. The technical cadre is joined by dubious or small-scale entrepreneurs and, together, they establish ventures with no clear vision, market-oriented thinking, or orderly plan of action. The legislator is also dumbfounded and does not grasp what is happening - thus, there is no legislation to regulate the use of the medium. Witness the initial confusion concerning copyrighted software and the copyrights of ROM embedded software. Abuse or under-utilization of resources grow. Recall the sale of radio frequencies to the first cellular phone operators in the West - a situation which repeats itself in Eastern and Central Europe nowadays.

But then more complex transactions - exactly as in real estate in "real life" - begin to emerge.

This distinction is important. While in real life it is possible to sell an undeveloped plot of land - no one will buy "pages". The supply of these is unlimited - their scarcity (and, therefore, their virtual price) is zero.

The second example involves the utilization of a site - rather than its mere availability.

A developer could open a site wherein first time authors will be able to publish their first manuscript - for a fee. Evidently, such a fee will be a fraction of what it would take to publish a "real life" book. The author could collect money for any downloading of his book - and split it with the site developer. The potential buyers will be provided with access to the contents and to a chapter of the books. This is currently being done by a few fledgling firms but a full scale publishing industry has not yet developed.

The Life of a Medium The internet is simply the latest in a series of networks which revolutionized our lives. A century before the internet, the telegraph, the railways, the radio and the telephone have been similarly heralded as "global" and transforming.

Every medium of communications goes through the same evolutionary cycle:

Anarchy

The Public Phase

At this stage, the medium and the resources attached to it are very cheap, accessible, under no regulatory constraints. The public sector steps in: higher education institutions, religious institutions, government, not for profit organizations, non governmental organizations (NGOs), trade unions, etc. Bedevilled by limited financial resources, they regard the new medium as a cost effective way of disseminating their messages.

The Internet was not exempt from this phase which ended only a few years ago. It started with a complete

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

Which Notebook Computer Has Your Name On It?

2006-12-13T22:10:00.000-08:00

Notebook Computers Are Sexy!

Granted, the notebook computer may just be the sexiest accessory this side of a Baywatch Extra! But are they worth the extra money? Should your next PC be a notebook or laptop computer?

What are the pros and cons of owning a notebook computer? More importantly, which notebook is best for you?

There's no denying it -- notebook computers are sexy! Slim, svelte and lightweight; they always come across as looking sexy, the ultimate in high fashion accessories.

Maybe sexy isn't the most appropriate word -- we are talking about chips, hard drives and bits of metal. But you have to admit; they do look good on just about anybody!

However; don't let the good looks fool you! And don't get blinded by all that sleek metal and flashy designs.

The notebook is one little workhorse whose time may just have come. Growing in popularity as prices decline, it's definitely worth considering when you make your next PC purchase.

All kidding aside, finding the right notebook that has your name on it can be a daunting task!

Basically, you have to narrow it down to a few simple steps. Then consider all your options before you make your decision.

First, ask yourself -- what types of tasks, jobs, do you want the computer to perform? Do you want it for traveling, business, or for use in the home?

Do you want it for simple tasks like email, web browsing or to use as a word processor? Do you want it for gaming, web authoring, heavy graphic work, dvd or MP3 downloading?

Next, consider all these options and find the notebook that best suits your needs. Remember, it's your needs that have to be fulfilled. Don't let a pushy salesperson talk you into buying something you will never need or use.

At the same time, make sure you buy a notebook that has all the features that will complete all the tasks you throw at it. In other words, make sure it can do the job!

Keep that question in the back of your head as you read the rest of this article. Especially, keep it in mind, as you browse thru all these sleek models and makes of notebooks. Don't be dazzled by all that sexiness!

Keep your eyes on the cursor!

Keep asking yourself -- what does my new notebook computer need in order for it to get the job done?

Lets take a closer look at all the options.

First, like anything sexy; notebooks come in all shapes and sizes.

SMALL: How small can they be?

They can be as tiny as well -- the small traditional paper notebooks -- with 10-inch displays. There is even a sub category known as Tablet PCs; these are very small tablets where you enter the data using a stylus. Common in certain fields, like health care or real estate.

Up a step from there -- are the 'Ultraportables'. You can easily take these anywhere as they fit nicely in a handbag or carry on bag. These are used by fliers and travelers, they are light and small with 12 inch screens without internal CD or DVD drives. They don't match the performance of other larger notebooks.

LARGE: How large can they be?

They can be as big as 6 or 7 pounds or more. Over an inch thick and come with 15 or 17-inch displays these are often referred to as 'Desktop Replacements'

And just as their name states -- these can replace your old desktop computer. For most purposes, these notebooks can perform all the tasks of a regular pc, have large screens, big keyboards, combo drives and very large hard drives. But you have the handy option of moving these from room to room for wireless networking, or even for traveling.

MID-SIZE

In between these two groups; we have the business class notebooks. These are often referred to as 'Thin-and-lights' -- they offer the best all around convenience of performance, portability and the different features.

Mostly preferred by the business travelers. They have 14-inch screens, CD-RW/DVD drives, wireless networking, because they are so versatile, these 'do-it-all' notebooks or laptops are becoming really popular.

Basic Rundown

That's a basic overview or rundown on the different types of notebooks. But you have to compare and contrast the different features in a little more detail if you want to figure out the best notebook that's suited for your needs.

Since there are so many types and varieties of notebooks; not to mention so many technical requirements... buying a notebook can sometimes be confusing. And for some people downright worrisome!

Will the notebook you choose get the job done? Will it be able to do the applications, or tasks you want it to perform?

Ease your Burden -- Make a Checklist!

If you don't want to be disappointed, here's a quick 'CheckList' of the features you want to check before you buy your notebook computer.

* Processor: The heart of your notebook or computer. It does the processing and applications. Most people prefer Intel Pentium Processors; the higher the number the faster it will process! Go with Pentium 4 if you can. Intel Celeron is another choice.

* Speed: This is how fast your computer can process data and perform your tasks. The faster the better! Latest models get up to a blazing 3.6 GHz.

Tip: You might also want to check the rotational speed of your notebook's hard disk as it can affect performance a 5,400rpm notebook disk is much faster than a 4,200rpm model. How fast the disk spins, will also determine the performance level of your notebook.

* Hard Drive: Check if it has a fixed drive; some units have drives you can swap. As for size; around 20GB for most notebook drives. You'll need only a 20GB or 30GB for most tasks on your notebook. If you handle large graphics or large amount of files (dvd, M3Ps,etc.) you need more -- 50 to 60GB or higher.

Also, keep in mind, that you also have the external drive(s) option for storing and media-burning.

* Memory: How much do you need?

RAM (random-access memory). This is what the computer uses to run applications and data on your operating system. It's generally agreed that you need at least 256MB for Windows XP and Mac OS X. You will only need 128MB for other operating systems in Windows or Mac.

* CD-RW Drive: You will need a CD-ROM for installing. And a CD-RW drive for burning your own CDs if that's one of the tasks you want your notebook to do.

Keep in mind another option -- many notebooks can access or use external drives for data storage, cd burning, etc.

* LCD Displays: Most have LCD screens; this is different from your desktop CRT (cathode-ray tube) monitor but most people are famaliar with this type of displays -- it's commonly found in digital camera and video recorders.

* Screen Size: You have to consider what size LCD display you want. If you're going to be viewing a lot of pictures or movies on your notebook -- a large 15 or 17 inch would be better suited for your needs.

Usually, LCD screens range in size from 12 inches to 17 inches (diagonal). Viewing is usually set at 1,024x768 resolution. Quality is almost standard in all these notebooks. But check them out at your dealers if picture quality is your main reason for buying a notebook.

Note-- Fujitsu LifeBook P ultraportable series has the smallest displays 10.6 inches. The Apple PowerBook has one of the largest at 17-inches.

* Modems: Most if not all notebooks have 56Kbps-modems and Ethernet connections. As well as connections (ports) for printers, VGA for external monitor and there should be one or more USB ports for keyboards, drives, MP3's and digital cameras.

* Antennas: Most notebooks have built-in antennas for wireless networking and portability. But check before you buy!

* Portability: Might sound like a strange question to ask about notebooks. Not really, most notebooks are very portable, easy to carry -- what they were designed for. However; larger notebooks like the 'desktop replacemets' with 17 inch screens and weighing over 7 pounds might not be the best choice for the heavy traveler. For example the new HP Pavilion zd8000 weights a whopping 12 lbs!

* Accessories: Lastly, you should look at some accessories that you might need with your notebook computer. Many come with a Docking station or port replicator -- somewhere to store and access your computer. Check on the functions of each before you buy.

You might consider buying an extra battery; especially if you're buying your laptop mainly for traveling and in the field work.

Laptop bag is another accessory you should definitely consider buying. Again, notebooks might seem lightweight and small but if you have lug it around all day and you're going to wish you had bought that carrying bag.

Now Assess Your Computer Needs?

Finally, we come to the main question that determines which notebook is right for you. (If money is no barrier!)

WHAT DO YOU NEED THE COMPUTER FOR? WHAT JOB OR TASKS DO YOU WANT THE COMPUTER TO PERFORM?

If you want something small to carry on a plane, or if you travel a lot, then go with an utralight -- often called ultraportables -- these are the lightest and smallest notebooks, about the size of spiral-bound notebook and weighing less than four pounds.

If you're a student and need something light weight but also a little sturdy with a large hard drive (hold MP3s) you might want to check out the 'thin and light' notebooks.

If you want to replace your main desktop with something more portable -- go with a 'mainstream' or 'desktop replacements'.

If you want something you can use at home, work and traveling around then you need 'thin and light.' If you want an 'all-around' 'all-in-one' 'do-it-all' notebook ... then buy a notebook of this type.

Because it's so flexible, and covers most of your computing needs; this is the one that's becoming the most popular.

That's it - JUDGMENT TIME!

You have considered most of the facts about buying a notebook computer. Now weight your options. Think about the tasks you will be doing with your notebook. Look at the checklist and check out the specs. Is everything covered. Will the one you choose -- have the features to do the job?

Keep that question in your mind. It's the most important.

If you're considered all these points; buying the notebook with your name on it will be just a little bit easier.

In no time at all, you may be walking around with one of those sleek, svelte -- dare we say sexy -- accessories tucked under your arm.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

How to Upgrade Your CPU - Part 2

2006-12-13T10:57:00.000-08:00

Now that we have talked about what CPU you should get, next is the removal and installation process of upgrading your CPU. First you need to shut down your computer completely, unplug all cables connected to it, and lay it out in an open workspace, preferably a wood table. You also will need a Philips and flathead screw driver and before you open your computer or anything, be sure to touch a metal surface to ground yourself and avoid any static electricity.

With everything ready to go, unscrew or slide off your computers case cover to get a look inside of your computer. Once you can see inside, you will see your motherboard, which is the big circuit board in the middle that connects every part together. When you look at the motherboard, kind of near the middle or top left, you will see a square with a metal heatsink and a fan on top of it. This is your CPU and the first thing you need to do is remove the heatsink. This is a very tricky and risky part of upgrading your CPU, since the heat sink is very securely fastened on top of your CPU. What you need to do first is unhook the fan's power. To do this you just need to find the wire that is going from the fan to the motherboard and unplug it. Then after that please study the heat sink latching mechanism and unlatch it. Some heat sink latches are different, so that is why I cannot give you a detailed description on how to unhook it.

When unlatching the heatsink you want to be sure to not scratch the motherboard or even touch it with your screwdriver. It may be hard, but you cannot do this or your motherboard most likely will not work anymore. This is why many people are scared to do it there selves, but I assure you, if you take it slow and exercise caution you will do just fine.

After you heatsink is gone and your CPU is showing, you will be able to remove it. To do this, you just have to lift the locking lever up (vertical) then just get a grip of the CPU and lift it up and out of its socket. CPU sockets and slots since the 1990's use zero force insertion, which means the CPU just sits in there and no force is required to install or uninstall it.

Now that your old CPU has been taken out you can put a new one in. First just make sure that the locking latch is in the up position ready for your new CPU. Now that you are ready you can insert your new CPU.

Processors are fragile, so when you do this do not try to cram it in there. Just remember that CPU's use zero force for insertion, so you just need to lay your CPU in there. Before you do though you need to find out which way you need to lay it. Every CPU has a notch on one of the corners and needs to match up to the point where the CPU holder has a notch. Then when the CPU is in place, properly, you can now push the locking latch back down.

Next you need to put the heatsink back on top of it, but first you need to locate your CPU's die and put the thermal compound that came with your CPU. Your CPU's die is the grayish looking square that is dead center on top of your CPU. After your thermal compound is properly applied, you are ready to put the heatsink on. Make sure the heatsink is facing the correct direction, and then gently sit it on top of the CPU. The thermal compound will cushion your CPU between the heatsink so no need to worry about scratching it.

Now is the tricky part all over again, latching your heat sink back on. Just like you unlatched it to remove your CPU, you need to do the opposite to latch it back on. As I said before, take your time and exercise caution when doing this so you don’t scratch your mother board.

Now just hook the CPU fans power back up by plugging the power wire back into the correct spot on your motherboard, where it was before. This is easy because usually the hookup spot on your mother board is labeled "CPU FAN" and is located right next to the CPU's location.

Finally you should check over your work and make sure the heatsink is securely fastened, all wires are secured, and everything looks good. If all is good, then put your case cover back on and screw it in. Then you can hook all of your computer cables back up again and power on your computer. Dust off your hands and pat yourself on the back because you have just completed your first CPU upgrade.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

How to upgrade your CPU - Part 1

2006-12-13T05:45:00.000-08:00

Your CPU, also known as the Central Processing Unit, is basically the heart of your computer and without it we would be in the dark ages. Just like the human heart pumps blood throughout the body, your CPU pumps data through the computer and the corresponding parts that are inside of it. This is why your CPU can be a deal breaker when it comes to your computers speed. Not having enough processing power can cause your computer to not work properly and fail, and too much power is...well just a waste of money.

What you want to find is the right speed for you and the socket type for your computers mother board. Most people just buy a new computer when it becomes to slow, but they are wrong in doing so since a simple CPU upgrade will bring it back up to speed with current software and components. So before you go buying a new computer just for more speed, or hiring someone to upgrade your CPU for you, consider doing a CPU upgrade yourself. Now I know what you are thinking, "I know nothing about computers and I am afraid I will mess something up." Well no need to fret, your in the hands of an experienced computer expert who will teach you each step to remove your old CPU and install a new one.

First we need discuss what CPU you need to buy and the speed it should be. CPU's connect to your computers motherboard, which is basically the big circuit board in your computer that connects everything together. Your CPU will sit inside of a socket, but what socket type you need is where it gets difficult. There are many different socket types and only two main CPU companies, Intel and AMD. If your computer is equipped with an Intel CPU, then you usually can only replace it with another Intel CPU, unless it is an old socket 7 which can support both. The socket types Intel uses are slot 1 for Pentium two and three chips, socket 370 for Celeron A's and socket 478 for Pentium 4's.

AMD uses slot A for Athlon's, socket 940 for 64 bit Opteron and Athlon multiple CPU motherboards, socket 939 for 64 bit Athlon's and socket 754, which is basically a cheaper socket for 64 bit Athlon's.

Now of course these are the current slot and socket types as I am writing this article, but of course technology is always advancing and in the future I assure you new types will come out.

Okay, so after all that you may be wondering how do I find out the slot or socket type that can be used in my computer? Well first I recommend you look at your computer or mother boards manual that came with it, and read about what socket type(s) it supports and what processors work best with it. If you don't have a manual, then I recommend you find out what processor is currently in your computer and match it with the correct socket type that I talked about above.

Since you have figured out the correct socket type for your new CPU, let's talk about speed. A processors speed can be measured in MHz or GHz, and GHz is the fastest. Processors that only go MHz are rarely found in computers these days, especially not new ones. The fact of the matter is that MHz processors just can't cut it for today's computer applications and operating systems. Plus, one thousand MHz equals one GHz, so you can see the huge speed difference between the two.

The amount of GHz speed you should get depends on what you will be using your computer for. If you plan on using your computer just for regular home use, like surfing the net, doing your taxes and other minor stuff, then you should just get a processor that is between 1 and 1.5 GHz. If you use a lot of programs, that require a lot of data processing, then you should get a processor that is around 2 GHz in speed. For all you computer gamers out there, I know you want something that will make your games load faster, play batter and look better, so I recommend you get a processor that is at least 3 GHz or maybe just a little less or more.

Well that concludes the first part of this article; in the second part we will discuss the removal of your old CPU, and the installation of your new one.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

A Day In The Life Of An Online College Student

2006-12-11T22:38:00.003-08:00

Amy Kirwan, a recent graduate of Phoenix University, recently sat down with me to speak about her day-to-day life as an online college student. As a working professional, she found the online environment a great fit for her lifestyle. Working nine to five, Amy would check in with her online school a few times a day to stay in touch and check out the status of her group projects so that if her online classmates needed anything from her, she could take care of it right away.

For the most part, though, the daily life of an online college student is shaped by the off-line life of that student: you can participate in the online classroom environment without disturbing your work schedule. You read for your classes on your own time, and conduct research when you can. At night, students spend several hours at the computer.

When you're on the computer at night, you can interact with your classmates. Online colleges try to arrange classes so that people in the same time zone are taking classes together. Therefore, when you're working, the people in your classes tend to be working as well. In addition to free-form interactions with your classmates via the message boards, you will be required to post written answers to discussion questions about your readings. These written responses take the form of essays. In addition to providing your own answers to the discussion questions, you will be responsible for reading and responding to those responses posted by your classmates.

Phoenix University requires its students to actively participate five out of seven days a week. If the school week begins on a Monday, you will probably do the required reading on Monday and Tuesday and post your responses to discussion questions by Wednesday.

In addition to the substantive responses to your classmate's discussion question essays, you will interact with your online classmates by participating in group papers and group presentations. One example of a group project is the creation of a new business, where teammates work together to craft a mission statement, a business plan, as well as plans for how the company would be marketed.

Depending on the course you take, you might also be responsible for writing an individual paper each week, in addition to the work you are responsible for in your team project. Each week, you will receive an assessment from your online professor, which will include results on papers and tests as well as commentary on your online posts as well as an overview of your progress in the course.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

Atmospheric Artificial Intelligent Super Computer Systems

2006-12-11T11:06:00.000-08:00

We saw during the record-breaking 2005 Atlantic tropical hurricane season the incredible devastation that Mother Nature can yield. We also saw, that mankind is getting better at predicting the direction, duration and strength of the stores; all this thanks to NOAA, weather researchers and supercomputers.

The upcoming 2006 Atlantic tropical hurricane season will be spectacular. We know this partly because we're in the middle of a La Nina season on the West Coast and that means a stronger than normal hurricane season. These supercomputers to crunch terabytes of data in very short amount of time, yet we need to add a little atmospheric artificial intelligence to be systems. Why? Because during the last hurricane season the NOAA often produced contradictory predictions of where the hurricane would go as it dispersed over land and met up with other flows of normal weather patterns.

As we add more components and more data and more information to be artificially intelligent programs which will be running these supercomputers are we need to understand better the interaction of all things. One of the hardest things to do in weather prediction is long-term predictions.

We will also need to consider as we redesigned the supercomputer artificially intelligent programs the potential effects of space weather, solar flares, X-Flares, underwater volcanic vents that could heat the ocean temperature and even moon cycles. Believe it or not all these things affect our weather and some more than others, yet to get a perfectly accurate reading any better long-term analysis of where these weather flows are going and what will happen as a hurricane disperses over land, we must consider adding more data and artificial intelligence to our hurricane supercomputers. Consider some of this in upcoming hurricane 2006.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

10 Solid Reasons To Make Your Next PC A Notebook

2006-12-11T03:50:00.001-08:00

Notebook computers are becoming very popular. They seem to be popping up everywhere: on tv shows, on airplanes, in movies, or in your friend's lap. These sleek little machines are invading our daily lives like never before... and the invasion has just started. Find out why they have become so popular with their users and why your next PC should probably be a notebook computer.

It is estimated that over 42 million computer notebooks will be produced this year. And that number is said to be growing by 20% each year. So what's driving the demand for these devices, what's making them so popular?

It's more than just the next tehno fad, notebook computers offer some very practical solutions to our computing requirements and needs. There are some real solid reasons why they have become so popular among their users. These are the same reasons why you should consider making your next PC purchase a notebook or laptop computer.

So if you need convincing, here are those 10 solid reasons why you should consider buying a notebook computer:

1. Size. This is one situation where size really does matter. It's the main reason you should consider buying a notebook or laptop in the first place. You want a PC that will fit neatly in your hand to take to your next office meeting, you want a convenient laptop to take to class or you want a notebook for your next cross country business trip.

Notebooks come in a variety of sizes to match your needs or purpose. They are categorized or grouped accordingly:

Tablet PC (smallest) Size of a paper tablet or notepad, less than 3 pounds.

Utra Portable (small), around 11" x 10", less than 1.3 inches thick, less than 4 pounds.

Thin and Light (mid-size), around 11-14" x 11", 1 to 1.4 inches thick, from 5 to 7 pounds.

Desktop Replacements (largest), more than 13" x 11", more than 1.5 inches, more than 7 pounds and up.

As you can see there is a great range of sizes so you should have no trouble finding a notebook computer to satisfy your needs. Just match the notebook size to the main purpose or use of your notebook and you can't go wrong.

2. Portability. Probably the second, if not the most important reason you're considering buying a notebook or laptop. You want a PC that's portable and lightweight. One that you can take anywhere; to class, to meetings, on business trips or from room to room in your home.

This freedom of movement -- taking your office or vital data along on your business or personal travels is the main selling point of the notebook computer. The portability factor is one you should seriously consider -- do you need a portable computer for your home, work or just for pure enjoyment.

3. Performance. Not too long ago, notebooks or laptops were viewed by many as second class computers when compared to the performance and speed of the mighty desktop PC. Distance cousins discreetly allocated to the sidelines.

But things have changed! Although still not on par with the desktop, thanks to the next generation notebook chipset, Intel's New Sonoma Platform, many notebooks come very close to providing the performance level of a desktop PC. Many notebooks, especially the desktop replacements, already have impressive technical specs that would shame most ordinary desktops. Some of these desktop replacements even use desktop processors or CPU's.

With hard drives up to 100GB or more at (7,200rpm), with RAM up to 2MB in some cases, and supported with Intel Pentium 4's, at 3.4GHz or more --- most notebooks are very capable of handling almost all computing applications and functions with ease. They can do the job.

4. Connections. We live in a wireless world. The notebook will do for computers, what the cell phone did for the telephone industry -- make our communications wireless. Being constantly connected to your friends, your business or your family does have a certain appeal that can't be denied. The notebook computer will give you this wireless connection.

Most notebooks now come with WI-FI (Wireless Fidelity), also known as 802.11 a/b/g, with the ability to stay connected no matter where you are. As more and more businesses such as hotels, restaurants, and airports offer these 'hot spots' or WI-FI service to their patrons, easy connections will become commonplace.

5. Function. There are certain functions that are unique to the notebook computer. The tablet PC provides a convenient device for note taking and data gathering that's not practical on a desktop computer. For business professionals such as doctors, lawyers, real estate agents...these tablet notebooks do very practical 'in-the-field' chores or tasks. Other notebooks are very useful for powerpoint presentations at meetings and other gatherings.

6. Backup. The notebook or laptop can be used as a convenient backup of your vital files and programs. Often overlooked, but the notebook can provide a rather cheap and safe way to protect your sensitive data. Anyone who has had a major or total loss of their hard drives can appreciate the importance of having a safe backup system.

For those constantly surfing the net, exposing your sensitive data to all the hazards (viruses, worms, spyware, etc.) can lead to problems. Having a separate system stored on a laptop or notebook can be a good way of working around this problem.

7. Variety. Notebooks and laptops offer much more variety than the ordinary desktop PC. From a small pocket size tablet PC all the way up to a Multi-Media desktop replacement that offers TV, Stereo, CD/DVD Player, as well as a computer of course.

There is a greater range of systems to choose from; all the way from sleek custom designed notebooks to huge monster gaming laptops, there's something to satisfy most tastes. You can also buy a notebook to match your style; from IBM black to Ferrari Red. It's out there.

8. Price and Availability. Notebooks are everywhere and they're getting cheaper by the minute. Notebook prices are coming down, as more and more notebooks are sold -- the price will drop even more. They're still slightly more expensive than a desktop PC but the gap is closing fast.

Finding a seller or dealer is very easy, shopping online directly from the manufacturer or company is also becoming very popular. In addition, there are also some very good reputable online dealers that's spreading the notebook gospel. Your dream notebook is only a click away.

9.Sex Appeal. It has to be mentioned, notebook computers are sexy! There's no denying it; these sleek, svelte machine are some of the sexiest accessories this side of a Batwatch Extra. The notebook's great looks will probably be the first drawing card for many people who's considering buying a notebook. A fully functional accessory that will not only turn heads but can also do the books.

10. Last but not least, the main reason you should consider buying a notebook computer -- because you want one. Just for the convenience, portability, or the downright pleasure of owning a notebook computer. Besides, it's a proven medical fact that denying your wants or needs can be detrimental to your health.

Go treat yourself!

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

115 Ways To Earn Money With Your Computer

2006-12-10T22:18:00.001-08:00

Here is a list of ideas for your reference if you want to use your own PC to earn income.

1. Provide computer-based office management services for attorneys

2. Do word processing

3. Do medical billing for doctors

4. Do automated telemarketing

5. Manage a church

6. Start a computer user's group

7. Learn to win at blackjack

8. Bet on horse races

9. Bet on pro football

10. Sell computers from your home

11. Provide medical information management

12. Broker information

13. Trade stock by computer

14. Provide astrological services

15. Offer an interactive electronic newsletter

16. Produce book indexes

17. Provide a computer-assisted booking service

18. Make stock market investment decisions

19. Do genealogical research

20. Manage a band

21. Manage a house or pet sitting service

22. Track precious gems

23. Sell information to collectors

24. Analyze real estate investments

25. Support a small law practice

26. Write a book

27. Market collectables

28. Do psychological counseling

29. Prepare income tax returns

30. Provide economic consulting

31. Solve real estate financing problems

32. Do data base research

33. Publish your own book

34. Design your own small business system

35. Crop management

36. Analyze farm expenses

37. Provide weekly printout of bowling league statistics

38. Make computer-generated portraits

39. Manage investment shelters

40. Manage construction costs

41. Produce computer utility products

42. Provide computer-aided financial planning

43. Sell life insurance

44. Support a small publishing business

45. Provide weekly printout of little league Baseball statistics

46. Run a small pharmacy

47. Become a computer dealer

48. Interpret physical therapy test results

49. Manage a restaurant

50. Start your own yellow pages

51. Conduct computer-assisted telephone interviewing

52. Stream-line executive search activities

53. Provide agricultural commodities planning

54. Turn financial statements into financial pictures

55. Manage a museum collection

56. Support consumer education programs

57. Do freelance technical writing

58. Do multi-level direct mail marketing

59. Review specialty software

60. Be an engineering consultant

61. Provide sports information services

62. Produce products for hobbyists

63. Provide specialty-focused software services

64. Run a multi-level, direct sales operation

65. Do litigation management

66. Manage a dairy farm

67. Provided automated debt collection

68. Provide date-base installation and instruction

69. Run a beauty school/beauty salon

70. Improve small business services

71. Broker used computers!

72. Telecommute

73. Enhance medical diagnosis and treatments

74. Create electronic marketing tools

75. Do independent software documentation

76. Teach people how to use microcomputers

77. Become your own computer book publisher

78. Create computer-generated puzzles and word games

79. Become a software consultant

80. Produce low-cost computer graphics products

81. Develop software for children

82. Perform real estate inspections

83. Do software translations

84. Produced a computer-controlled home security system

85. Automate conference registration

86. Create computer gifts

87. Enhance scientific products

88. Write software for use in the home

89. Manage a winery

90. Design and produce personal computer hardware or peripherals

91. Design, publish and distribute software

92. Provide information vending machines

93. Start a software writing cooperative

94. Develop small scale real estate partnerships

95. Do property management

96. Do mortgage loan brokerage

97. Perform non-judicial foreclosures

98. Develop mini-warehouse storage facilities

99. Sell instant signs

100. Start an advertising agency

101. Start a resume service.

102. Manage a talent agency

103. Operate a referral service

104. Operating a mailing list service

105. Operate a typesetting service

106. Offer a legal forms service for the general public

107. Publish your own newsletter or help others for a fee

108. Operate a voice mail service

109. Start your own local classified newspaper

110. Provide a collection letter service

111. Offer a custom diet plan service

112. Start your own local real estate newspaper

113. Start an apartment rental newspaper

114. Provide a payroll service

115. Start a singles dating service

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

Using A Laptop For Business

2006-12-10T07:43:00.000-08:00

Buying a cheap laptop for my mother's business seemed like the correct thing to accomplish. As heavy as a laptop is, there is still more power per pound than a desktop. I still thought Ebay is the biggest place to get bargain laptops. There are some great laptop deals out there, you just have to know where to find them. Refurbished laptops are still under production warranty, which means you can get warranty assistance directly from the manufacturer. And they seem extremely affordable for the technology they offer.

Laptops feature multi-slot readers for exceptional card formats. Refurbished laptops are less than 6 months old and have very high quality standards. This procedure is impressive and the tones are clear and crisp. Laptops are in no way low quality computers. There are smaller laptop screeens out there that also have 1920 by 1200 resolution. It can be expensive when it comes time to upgrade if the laptop requires proprietary parts. There are even predictions of $398 laptops appearing on price reduction store shelves this holiday season.

As you get to know more of what you are talking about, you must decide which features are the most important to you in a laptop. Laptops have become progressively prevalent in both business and home applications. And they are offering a special price on some of their products. I still chose a laptop for those extremely infrequent vacation trips I make. The laptop could be carried around the house to update our home inventory for insurance purposes.

You may now get a laptop for below $400. Laptops are powered by midrange Intel Pentium m processors. Hence it is a good idea to buy the fastest processor you may reasonably afford. When looking for clearance and refurbished laptops, check manufacturers sites. When buying your laptop, do your research first to ensure that you get the most out of your own money.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

Refurbished Laptop Computer Batteries - Don't Risk It

2006-12-10T03:38:00.000-08:00

Some laptop computer batteries dealers offer a refurbished laptop battery claiming they are restored to original specs. "Caveat Emptor", buyer beware. Most are cheap and won't hold the charge for very long. You might get lucky and get a good one, but the life of the battery is in jeopardy.

Why take the risk? New laptop batteries are not that much more in price and they are going to last a much longer time. If you buy a refurbished laptop battery it may only hold a good charge for a couple of months and once it's dead, it's dead!

Many people trust buying refurbished laptops and computers because the replacement parts are new and can make it last an extended amount of time. The laptop battery is different. Think back to when Dick Clark was selling the battery re-charger for regular AA, C, D and AAA batteries? If you bought one you quickly found that the charger worked great. One bad thing- the battery only held about half the original charge and you could only charge it a few times and then the battery wouldn't charge at all anymore.

If you take the same concept with refurbished laptop computer batteries you get the same results. They will last for a short time and most people only saved a few extra dollars, but were not happy with the overall performance. The technology just doesn't exist yet to supply a good refurbished battery. In the case of refurbished laptops, we have figured out that you can replace the hardware and it works as good as new. Sorry, but a laptop battery doesn't have hardware parts to replace, so the end result could be bad.

If the laptop battery isn't too old it should work just fine, but how many dealers tell you the age of the battery? Not many. If you want to save a few dollars then please buy a better MPG car, not a refurbished laptop battery. A lot of the time you don't know exactly what you're getting like how many times has it been charged previously, or how old is it. If you know the answers you probably can get a decent deal, but good luck finding out the answers.

Although a great way to save money it to buy refurbished electronics because they have replaceable parts, the technology to recondition batteries isn't quite up to the same speed. The good news is most new laptop computer batteries have a one year warranty and a discount price. You are much better off buying a new laptop battery.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

PDA Pocket PCs

2006-12-09T23:13:00.001-08:00

PDA stands for Personal Digital Assistant, a handheld device (small and light enough to be operated while it is held in the hands) that is typically used as a personal organizer. It has evolved into a more complicated computer-like gadget capable of performing a multiplicity of functions, such as serving as wireless communicators for sending and receiving data, faxes, and electronic-mail messages. The PDA concept was first introduced by Apple's MessagePad in 1993, and was later revolutionized by the PalmPilot in 1996, created by Palm, Inc. The overall market for PDAs has now grown by 20.7% in the third quarter of 2005, compared to the third quarter of 2004.

A basic PDA features a date book, address book, task list, memo pad, clock, and calculator software. Today, PDAs are widely used as notepads, word processors, spreadsheets, and appointment schedulers and to synchronize data with a PC or home computer. They may also be integrated with cell phones to provide mobile communication and be used for accessing the Internet through technologies such as Wi-Fi, Wide-Area Networks (WANs), and Bluetooth.

Most PDA devices are not equipped with a keyboard like palmtop computers. Instead, they are pen based and rely on special hardware that recognizes handwritten inputs to tap selections on menus and enter printed characters. Some devices may also include an on-screen keyboard for better accessibility.

PDAs now depend largely on a number of Operating Systems to function. Some of the most widely used PDA Operating Systems include Palm OS (Palm, Inc); Windows Mobile (Microsoft); Blackberry (Research in Motion); Symbian OS; and those based on the Linux kernel available for free such as GPE, and OPIE/Qtopia.

Computer, Computers, Komputer, Laptop, Notebook, palmtop, technology.

10 Important Tips to Finding the Best Laptop

2006-12-09T02:59:00.000-08:00

Taking the time to review laptops is time well spent especially when wanting to have the best working laptop for all your specific needs.

When reviewing consider these things;

1. Screen - What are you looking for in the Screen., is it resolution, size, definition.

2. Portability - Are you carrying it around a campus or is it mainly home and hotel?

3. Speed - Laptops are generally 20-30% slower that Stationary Computer with the same features. If speed is a necessity be sure to check out details such as; CPUs, motherboards, hard drives, and video systems. These all contribute to the speed loss.

4. Upgradability - Likely there will not be a lot that You can upgrade on your laptop so it is good to know what you need for the long run. Upgrades can be pricey and some almost not worth getting when You could just get a whole new laptop…so get a good one to start.

5. Memory – This is So Important! Most lower-priced laptops are sold with 128 MB of system memory (RAM). That is not enough for running applications efficiently under Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. If you use your laptop for occasional typing and web surfing you could get along with 128 MB of RAM but you are likely to be much happier with 256 MBs. As well Power users would benefit from a notebook with at least 512 MB or more.

6. Batteries - Lithium batteries are superior to others.

7. Hard Drives - 20 GB is a minimum. Of course as they say, larger is better.

8. Hardware - (DVD/MPEG-2) - All DVD drives rely on MPEG graphics compression to display video. The present standard is called MPEG-2.

9. MPEG-2 compression can be provided by software which is slow or by hardware which is fast. Needless to say, hardware MPEG-2 is more desirable, and will provide a smoother playback. Hardware MPEG-2 is a video chip function in laptops.

10. Expense - Laptop computers can cost almost twice as much as similarly equipped desktops. You can actually purchase two comparably equipped desktops for the price of one laptop. So if you have to have a computer in two separate places, you would be better off with two desktops. As well if they were reasonably close together you could connect them together in a wired or wireless local area network (LAN). Buying a laptop is great if you are on the go. The more you need in it the more you’ll pay but it will be worth it!

New Laptop Technology You Need To Know (Before Buying Your Next Laptop)

2006-12-09T02:55:00.000-08:00

Laptop or notebook computer technology is advancing at a blistering speed. Ferrari fast. So fast that by the time you purchase your new laptop, it's probably already obsolete or out of date. A sobering thought considering the hefty prices you have to pay for a high-end laptop.

But laptop technology is changing so fast new innovations are coming on stream as you read this article. There is a whole new generation of notebook technology every two years or less. Therefore, unless you buy or upgrade your laptop each year you're falling behind what these sleek little powerhouses can now deliver.

And unless you're already in Geek Heaven, keeping track of all these new technologies and innovations can be quite a chore. Figuring out the right Graphics chipset that works best with the right CPU and the best Data buses is a major feat. And now that everything is being Doubled -- dual core, dual graphics -- it's entering the realm where Einstein would be amused, even on a bad hair day!

What's the ordinary laptop buyer to do?

What you really have to keep in mind are the outcomes of all this new technology. Basically, these new technologies have made laptops smaller, faster and more powerful. With every new improvement the laptop is closing the gap between its main rival -- the desktop computer.

Notebook computers are now out-selling desktops for the first time in history. Laptops are replacing the old desktop computer, whose days may just be numbered. It won't be long before laptops are also out-performing them as well.

Some major computer makers are taking note of this trend towards more powerful, smaller computers. Even the desktop computer is morphing! Just look at the sleek design of the new Apple iMac G5, gone is the bulky tower, in its place is a well designed desktop computer that's almost a laptop!

For the ordinary computer user keeping abreast of all these new technologies and inventions can be a major chore if you're considering buying a laptop in the next little while. As you approach the smiling salesperson in your favorite tech store, here's a few bits of new notebook technology you might want to have in your possession so you won't look like a complete neophyte. Hey, where technology is concerned, we have all been there, done that.

In order for you to tech-proof your next laptop purchase, here's a quick run down of some recent Notebook Developments:

Sonoma Chipset

The new Sonoma Platform, Intel's next-generation Centrino Chipset is already on the market. Members of the Sonoma club are growing daily - Sony, IBM/Lenovo, BenQ, Dell, Samsung, Acer, and Toshiba... another 80 or 90 'Sonoma-endowed' products will be released very shortly.

No doubt, it will become the Platform standard for many high-end notebooks. Actually, it won't make or mean that much difference to the ordinary Joe/Jane who just want a notebook or laptop for web surfing, word processing and e-mail. Notebooks with the Sonoma Platform will be just a little bit faster and have a little better battery life.

But for Mobile Professionals and Notebook Fanatics (they do exist)... there's a lot of good things delivered or capable of being delivered with this new Centrino Chipset. First, wireless connections will be easier with the integrated tri-mode 802.11a/b/g, already dubbed by some as the 'wireless trinity'! This will make it easier to stay connected no matter where you are.

Improved performance will be experienced because the new Pentium M's have a 533MHz frontside bus, supported with up to 2GB of DDR2 DRAM, Serial ATA Hard Drive, and PCI Express, plus improved integrated graphics, including Intel's Hi-Def Audio. All are possible with the Sonoma Platform.

PCI Express

PCI(Peripheral Component Interconnect) Express is a new standard for expansion cards that comes in different versions. Presently, we have the x16 and x1 lanes, which will be followed by x4 and x8 versions. It offers increased bandwidth for example, x1 lane offers 500MB/sec instead of just 133MB/sec for PCI.

All computers, including laptops have different buses, (collection of wires) that transmit data from one component to another.

Of course, in an ideal world, all the data in your computer should move thru just one BUS - however, most experts agree it's not likely to happen unless we start over and build a computer system from scratch. For now we have to rely on different internal buses to move the data around, the PCI Express is a great improvement and will make your laptop faster.

Graphics Card

These are always improving. A Graphics Card handles the graphics or visuals on your notebook. If 3D graphics and games is a pastime, you will want to buy the highest quality system. Some of the higher end products are: ATi Mobility Radeon 9800, X800, and FireGL V3200 or Intel's Graphics Media Accelerator 900.

If you can, go with a NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 graphics card or for the real game diehards - wait for the debut of NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300 that features NVIDIA's TurboCache technology.

Gamers will be aware of NVIDIA SLI technology, ATI's CrossFire and Hyperthreading. All new stuff that's bringing the gaming experience up to a higher level of perfection that would even be worthy of a Spielberg or a Lucas Production. Not really, but it's getting there.

64 Bit Laptops

Most systems today run on the 32 Bit System. Keep in mind, the major difference between a 32-bit and a 64-bit system is the amount of memory that they support. Around 4 GB for 32-bit and 8 GB and up for the 64-bit. Right now -- Intel, Apple, and AMD all offer 64-bit systems.

Do you need all this memory? No, for the average laptop user it amounts to overkill. However, if you're interested in gaming, desktop publishing, or the graphic arts you will benefit from 64-bit technology.

Dual Core Notebooks

Two is better than one!

Dual core laptops are now on the market. The gaming industry is the starting point for many of these advanced systems. For example, the British Laptop maker Rockdirect now produces Xtreme 64, a gaming laptop with AMD’s new dual core Athlon 64 X2 processor. This same laptop also sports the ATI Mobility Radeon X800 XT graphics card that features 16 pixel pipelines, an industry first for notebooks.

The major producers of dual-core chips are Intel and AMD. The Intel dual-core processor has hyperthreading (HT), the two cores are divided into four virtual CPU units. Is all this needed? Again, if you're into heavy graphics or gaming, it's something you should consider and explore further.

Built-in Cellular Modem

Most high-end laptops now come with an integrated tri-mode 802.11a/b/g for wireless WI-FI connections.

Some recent models, like the Sony's New Ultra-Portable VAIO VGN-T350P, are raising the bar; it has the world's first 'Built-in Cellular Modem'. You can use your cell phone to connect to the Internet. This may be a great advantage since finding a 'Hot Spot' in some parts of the world can still be difficult.

The Avant-Garde: LumiLED Display

Be on the look-out for LED monitors in the near future. The brightness, colors and backlighting technology in LED monitors will be quite different from LCD displays.

The Forerunner in this field is NEC's SpectraView LumiLED, and will offer a much better image and color. Keep your eyes peeled.

On the Horizon:

19 or 20 Inch Laptop Screens

There is a rumor, only a rumor, that Dell is coming out with a 19-inch laptop in early 2006. There is also buzz that LG-Philips has a 20-inch LCD panel which could easily be used by laptop makers if they want to explore this market area. Andre the giant will be pleased!

Conclusion

Of course, there are many more laptop innovations in the pipeline but they're beyond the scope of this article. Just keep all these new technological notebook changes in mind when you're checking out your next laptop. Maybe, just maybe, most of these won't already have been replaced by something new by the time you buy your next laptop. But don't bet your Google Stocks on it!

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Using a Digital Projector

2006-12-07T22:25:00.002-08:00

Many schools have one or several digital projectors available for educators to use. Many people are worried that making slide shows and setting up the equipment will take too much effort and time. On the contrary, the use of digital projectors saves time and can take minimal effort.

Most digital projectors take no time to set-up. Have someone show you how to set-up the projector a few times and then try it yourself several times until you are comfortable setting up the projector on your own. Each projector and computer have their own little quirks so having someone who is familiar with the system will prevent running into trouble in the future.

Creating slide shows for your lessons may take a little effort in the beginning, however, once these lessons are created they will be saved for you to reuse or to tweak. There are also websites like http://MrKent.Net that provide subject specific slide shows for you to change or use as you please.

The only way to find out if using a digital projector is for you is to give it a try. Create or download a short lesson and present it to your students to compare it to your regular lesson Format. One thing you will notice right away is that you spend more time interacting with your class and less time writing and erasing items on the board.

3 Tips For Refilling Your Ink Cartridges

2006-12-07T22:25:00.001-08:00

When it comes times to replace their printer ink cartridges, most people are shocked when they see how much it's going to cost. The cartridges made by the original manufacturer of the printer often cost as much or even more than a whole new printer.

Fortunately, most cartridges can be refilled which can make a big difference in the cost of printing. These refill kits are not quite as easy to use as the original cartridges, however.

The first thing you need to make sure of when refilling your ink cartridges is that the refill kit you use is made for your particular model of printer.

Most brands and even different models from the same brands use specific types of ink. If you use ink made for an Epson printer in an HP, for example, the print quality will suffer and it may even cause the printer to break down.

Most ink refill kits say specifically what models they are designed for. Stay away from any "generic" kits that claim they can be used in any printer - they'll quite likely cause problems.

Another thing to be aware of when using ink refill kits is that the empty cartridges can only be reused so many times before they'll break down and either not work at all or print extremely poorly.

In most cases, you shouldn't refill a cartridge more than twice before replacing it with a new one.

Finally, when you're planning to refill your empty cartridges, do a little research first and find out just how difficult it is with your brand and model. Some cartridges are easier to refill than others, and in some cases it can be quite difficult to do it properly.

This can lead to poor printing or other printer problems as well as a mess if the refill spills, leaks or doesn't go as planned.

Most websites that sell refill kits offer online instructions for the various printer models, so you can see what's involved before you make your choice.

How To Choose The Best Gaming Laptop

2006-12-04T05:40:00.001-08:00

The gaming laptop is coming of age! It is steadily increasing in popularity as performance quality goes up. Gamers now regularly consider laptops or notebooks when searching for that perfect gaming machine.

With each new generation of notebooks we are seeing some novel breakthroughs: dual core notebooks, PCI Express, Sonoma chipset, increased storage, increased RAM, faster CPUs, better battery life and better wireless connections including a Cellular Modem. All welcome news for gamers and notebook lovers alike.

Generally, gamers are a very demanding group, they know their computers and they know what they want in their computers. Most gamers like to order their gaming laptop with their own specs and configurations. In that light, if you closely examine the main points gamers consider when configuring or building their Dream Machine -- you will have a good blueprint for the best gaming machine.

Since notebook technology changes every two years or so, it's probably wise to purchase a laptop that can be easily upgraded as new products come on line. So consider the upgradable factor in any notebook that you plan to buy.

Now, lets look at some of these key gaming factors:

GRAPHICS

You must have the best/latest/fastest Graphics on the market. DUH!

Serious gamers are concerned with graphics, obsessed would probably be a better word. And rightly so! Graphics or the quality of the graphic chipset in your notebook computer will be your first area of consideration and it will greatly determine the gaming performance of your PC.

Go with the latest Graphic Chipset and also check to see if you can upgrade your Graphics Card on the particular machine you're thinking about buying. Many machines allow this.

Here are some Graphic Chipsets that are highly rated: ATi Mobility Radeon 9700, ATI's Mobility FireGL V3200 or Intel's Graphics Media Accelerator 900.

ATi Mobility Radeon 9700 is a high quality Graphics Card or visual processing unit (VPU) present in many next generation notebooks. It will give you higher performance at a lower power level, saving battery power.

It makes your notebook computer capable of many functions: 3D games, wide-screen HDTV, dynamic presentations, mobile video editing studio and graphic processor.

Many notebooks now come with integrated graphics, where components interact and are sometimes shared, especially memory. If you want a notebook computer for 3D games -- check the amount of video RAM -- this is memory that's dedicated to graphic or video applications.

Other common graphic chipsets are: STMicro, NVIDIA, 3D Labs, Matrox, Trident S3 and SIS.

RAM

Get the largest amount of RAM possible. DUDE!

RAM or random-access memory will determine how much graphics your notebook computer will be able to handle. It's best to get the largest amount possible on your machine or what you can afford.

It's generally agreed that you need at least 256MB for Windows XP and Mac OS X. You will only need 128MB for other operating systems in Windows or Mac.

RAM or the amount of RAM on your notebook computer is extremely important if you want to handle heavy graphic files or want to play games on your notebook. The more RAM you have, the more applications you will be able to handle. Some notebook now come with up to 2GB of DDR2 533MHz RAM!

DDR2 SDRAM - is a new standard that can boost conventional SDRAM memory up to speeds well over 200MHz and beyond. For example, the IBM ThinkPad T43, thanks to the Sonoma Chipset or platform has 533MHz DDR 2 SDRAM.

This is much better than standard SDRAM which tops out around 150- 166MHz and DDR SDRAM which starts at 200MHz and goes up to around 400MHz.

Video RAM or VRAM is special memory that's used by video adapters on your notebook. This is RAM that is dedicated to handling the visuals and graphics on your notebook computer. This is helpful if you want to play a lot of the latest 3D video games on your notebook.

It is somewhat different from ordinary RAM because it can be accessed by two different devices at once -- enabling screen updates while the video processor processes new data. VRAM provides better graphics but is more expensive than ordinary RAM.

SPEED

You need the fastest computer money can buy. Period!

In order to get the maximum performance from your ultimate gaming computer you must have the fastest speed you can get or afford. Your ultimate PC must be able to process and handle the latest 3D video games with ease. There is nothing as annoying as your PC freezing up in the middle of some major gaming action!

Therefore, your Processor's speed is very important.

CPU or Central Processing Unit, you probably know it as the processor! It's the heart or rather the brain of your notebook or computer. It does all your computer's data processing and applications. Since it does most of the work, it's usually the most expensive part of your notebook computer.

Go with SATA!

SATA is a type of hard drive and stands for Serial Advanced Technology Architecture. It was developed by a whole group of companies including Seagate, Intel, Maxtor, Dell and others. SATA transmit data in a serially (in a single stream) as opposed to PATA or Parallel ATA which is commonly referred to as an IDE hard drive.

Serial ATA hard drives uses less power and are ideal for notebook computers, they are also more advanced than PATA hard drives which uses multipe streams of data -- go figure! But Serial Technology carries data in a single stream and unlike PATA is not limited to a particular clock speed, Serial transfers data packets almost 30 times faster than parallel.

If top performance in your notebook is one of your goals, go with a SATA hard drive.

Intel Pentium M processors are commonly found in a lot of notebooks and laptops. When in doubt also go with a Pentium!

The speed of microprocessors is measured in MHz.

MHz is short for megahertz. One MHz equals one million cycles per second. The speed of processors, usually known as clock speed, is measured in megahertz (MHz) or these days in gigahertz (GHz).

The higher the clock speed, the faster the computer will process applications and data. It determines how powerful your notebook computer will be. Processor speeds for notebooks or laptops are steadily increasing, not quite the same as a desktop but the gap is narrowing quickly. Speeds of 3.4GHz or more.

Don't forget to ask or check the hard drive speed! A 7,200rpm hard drive is faster than a 4,200rpm or 5,400rpm and usually gives better performance.

DISPLAY

You need the sharpest, brightest display screen or all the above points are moot!

Display quality is also extremely important to your gaming experience. Make sure the resolution and display quality of your notebook computer can handle the graphics for 3D Gaming.

What to keep in mind...

SVGA Resolution. Put simply, computer images are made up of dots, the more dots you have -- the better the image. SVGA Resolution is made up of 800 x 600 dots.

Many notebook computer have XGA (1024 by 768 dots) or SXGA (1280 x 1024 dots), these resolutions will give a higher quality image. WXGA stands for widescreen XGA.

TFT Active Matrix Display. TFT stands for thin-film transistors and many high-end notebook computers use (TFT) active matrix liquid crystal displays.

If display quality is your main reason for buying a notebook, it's best to give it the 'old eye test' and check out the image quality first-hand and decide for yourself. Panasonic, Toshiba, Sony, and others are known for their high quality monitors -- this quality is also present in their notebook display screens.

So when buying your perfect Gaming Notebook Remember This:

Graphics + Ram + Speed + Display = Perfect Gaming Notebook

Consider all of the above factors before you buy or config your perfect gaming machine. Chances are high that you will get a top-notch quality Gaming Notebook that will give you hours and hours of pure gaming bliss!

Laptops Guide: Choosing a Laptop that is Right for You

2006-12-04T05:39:00.001-08:00

Most of us tend to think of laptops in the same way: a fairly small portable computer that can open and close like a suitcase, with all of the capabilities of a desktop. In fact, the term “laptop” is really very generic. There are currently four main styles of these portable PCs, each offering something a bit different, depending upon your specific needs.

Ultralights – Also known as sub-notebooks or ultraportables, this style of laptop weighs up to – but no more than – four pounds, making them ideal for travelers. The upside of an ultralight is that it doesn’t burden those who have to spend a lot of time carrying them with aching muscles, as its larger cousins often do. The downside, however, is that – in order to cut down on the size and weight – this type of laptop is so small that there’s no room for a network card or internal CD drive. In order to reap the benefits of these types of “attachments,” you’d have to bring an external CD drive and port replicator. Another negative in the scenario is that ultralights tend to be on the expensive end of the laptop spectrum.

Notebooks – This is basically just a regular laptop, but is slightly less heavy, weighing in at four to six pounds. While it’s heavier than the smaller ultralight, it also offers more options with less fuss. Offering the flexibility of a combo bay, notebooks are designed with a large opening on the side which allows the user to plug a CD drive, floppy disk or extra battery – allowing you to access the features that you need without the burden of making room for those that aren’t needed.

Standards – Commonly referred to as “regular laptops,” these weigh between six and eight pounds and offer a full range of benefits. This technological pack-mule is the best buy – dollar for dollar – when you consider the cost/performance ratio. Due to their popularity, combined with their design and usability, it’s not uncommon to find discounts on these from major manufacturers. Other types of laptops, which fall into more specialized categories, tend to be in the higher price ranges. The bottom line is, of the four main types of laptops, the standard is the most economical for the most reasonable amount of money.

Extra Large – Although this type of laptop doesn’t yet have a technical name, it’s best to simply refer to it as “extra large,” since they weigh between eight and ten pounds and have a screen that measures at least 17 inches. In addition, the keyboard is much larger than a standard laptop, making it a more comfortable fit for those who find the keyboard of the standard laptop rather inhibitive. There are a couple of downfalls to owning this type of unit, not the least of which includes its weight. There can be a four pound difference between the weight of a standard and an extra large laptop – and that’s quite a bit, when you think about lugging it around all day. The other negative factor is the cost of this type of laptop. It offers a price tag that’s every bit as hefty as its weight and size.

The purchase of a laptop comes down to personal preference, and there are enough styles in the laptop community to please just about everyone. For those who can’t decide and just want “a laptop,” then it’s probably better to stick to the standard model.

5 Tips For Buying A Laptop

2006-12-03T10:48:00.002-08:00

You’re taking the plunge and buying a laptop. If this is your first, you probably are a little considerate about what you should be buying, what to avoid and what the big dollar sign is going to tell you. While there are a number of things to consider when it comes to buying a laptop, you can easily work your way through knowing what those are. Many people get a little worried about purchasing any type of computer. Follow these tips and you’ll get the right laptop for your needs.

Tip One: Know what you plan to use the laptop for. Sounds simple, but it will also define what is on the laptop you purchase. For example, if you are a professional looking to buy a laptop, not only do you need to insure the right software is on board, but you’ll need to make sure there is enough space to run it. For the personal user, do you plan to watch DVD’s? Do you plan to use it for gaming?

Tip Two: Compare and then compare some more. When you are out there looking at the various laptops, make sure to take some notes (doing your research online really saves you time here!) about the various aspects of the laptop. You’ll want to compare hard drive space, monitor size, drives, speed and other features that are important to your purchase. Not only are you looking for the best price, but the best overall product.

Tip Three: Warranties are important. Warranties vary greatly from one laptop to the next. When buying a laptop, you need to realize that the most common problem will be with the screens, especially those that are LCD. Make sure your warranty gives you the best coverage from parts that may break down.

Tip Four: While name brand isn’t everything, you should purchase a quality product. That means that you’ll need to insure that when you are buying a laptop that if you do decide to go with a lesser known brand name that you find out how well they really work. To do this, use consumer reviews that you’ll find online.

Tip Five: Make sure you know what is included in the purchase. If you plan to get online with the laptop, are there more products needed to do so? If you need the laptop to come with Word and it doesn’t, then you’ll need to account for that extra purchase as well.

When buying a laptop, take the time to consider all aspects of it, do your research and you’ll end up on top.

Jonathan T. Fisher is an editor at ComputerAndSoftwareDepot.com where you can find more articles about laptops and notebooks.

Laptop or Tower

2006-12-03T10:48:00.001-08:00

When asking the question which is better to buy a tower/workstation or a laptop the question used to come down to the size of your wallet. For a long time PC towers were simply cheaper than a laptop to buy. Normally half the price for the same specifications.

This is now no longer the case as the price of a laptop is now comparable to that of a tower. So now cost is no longer the main issue lets consider the advantages/disadvantages each type of system has.

In the case of the laptop the first most obvious advantage its portability. Designed not only to be easily chucked into a bag and carried to where-ever to want to work or play, but also by having its own internal power source it means you not limited to one place. With the advent of wireless broadband your not even limited by needing a fixed line connection any more. You can take it camping, work in bed, take it to the office, anywhere. However this size and portability is also a limiting factor. Most display screens on laptops are around 15 inches, some go up to 17 in. but anymore than this and the laptop loses its advantage in portability. Laptops also lack space for large internal fans or other mechanisms to cool of the main CPU. Some manufacturers have tried to overcome this limitation by inventing the dual core CPU (a bit like having two carburetors in a car), soon no doubt we will seen quad core and more. Hence laptops CPU's are more likely to experience failure due to over heating.

Towers on the other hand are fixed to a single workplace unless you get some sick joy out of lugging wires and equipment from one place to another and figuring out where every connection goes. This fixed location though does have some advantages, your display screen can be the size you want. You can add great extras like a 6 speaker sound system with sub-woofer so loud that when you play your latest shooter game, your neighbors ring the police thinking the sounds of gunshots coming from you house are real! In fact a workstation can be adapted into a full one stop office and multimedia center with a joint printer/fax/copier scanner, a digital camera, music player, DVD theater system, etc.

Another advantage of a tower over a laptop is the ease of upgrading. With a laptop the equipment is so tightly squeezed together that only an expert repairer dare enter the system and there certainly isn't room to add in more stuff. Whereas with a tower even most novices can learn how to plug a new graphics card, or replace a hard drive, increase the memory by inserting another card. Open most towers and you will see lots of space for all sorts of additional equipment Plenty of space to collect dust too, so don't forget to gently vacuum and clean it now and again - circuit boards, chips, etc don't like dust.

I hope this article has helped you with your next computer purchase decision. Of course if your wallet is big enough you can buy both!

For an Australian Computer supplier visit http://computer-supply.blogspot.com

This article is the property of Alastair HARRIS and his immediate family. It may be freely republished over the internet but must include original links.

Alastair HARRIS is the main promoter for article-gems.com article directory (visit http://www.article-gems.com) and the getfinancialfreedom4u family of websites, blogs and projects (visit http://getfinancialfreedom4u.ws) specializing in online business opportunities and education, income being generated by affiliate marketing, google, GDI, eBay, clip flipping and more. Alastair is rated as an expert author on numerous article directories and is very open to assisting others on the internet

iPod Accessories Report for November 2006

2006-12-03T00:04:00.001-08:00

Just in time for the 2006 holiday season, below is a list of best selling iPod accessories at the end of November based on several personal computing and shopping web sites. While the order will change from day to day, this list is an excellent snapshot. In other words, if you're looking for the hottest iPod accessories, the iPod Accessories Report is just what you need. Let's get going...

1. Apple iPod USB Power Adapter

2. iHome iH5 Clock Radio for iPod White

3. Altec Lansing inMotion iM7 Portable Audio System

4. Apple MA070G/A iPod Radio Remote

5. JBL On Stage Speakers for iPod

6. Kensington 33164 Stereo Dock, Charger and Transmitter

7. Apple iPod nano 2nd Generation Armband (Gray)

8. Nike + iPod Sport Kit

9. Apple M9867LL/A iPod Hi-Fi Home Stereo

10. Monster Cable A-IP-FM-CH iCarPlay Wireless FM Transmitter

11. Altec Lansing inMotion IM3C Portable Audio System

12. Apple iPod Dock for 2nd Generation Nano

13. Logitech mm22 Portable Speakers for iPod

14. Apple M9394G/B iPod Earbud Headphones

15. Nike + iPod Sport Kit MA365LL/B

16. Altec Lansing inMotion Portable Audio System for iPod

17. Apple M9837LL/A iPod USB Power Adapter

18. Logitech 980397-0403 Wireless Headphones for

19. Griffin Technology 4039-EJAM EarJam Earbud Sound Enhancing Covers

20. iTunes $15 Prepaid Card

21. Apple iPod Lanyard Headphones

22. Apple MA242LL/A iPod AV Connection Kit

23. Belkin TuneDok Car Holder for iPod Black

24. Apple iPod Dock Connector to USB 2.0 Cable

25. Belkin F8V7067-APL Mobile Power Cord

There are many ways to use this list. If you know what sells the best, you know what is most popular. That in turn can help you pick the best product, assuming that other people are making smart choices. Of course, be careful when choosing certain accessories since they might only apply to certain types of iPods (e.g., regular iPod versus iPod Nano).

Obviously all iPods and many of the accessories are manufactured by Apple Computer. However, many of the accessories are made by Apple's partners. Companies such as Belkin, iHome, Altec Lansing, JBL, Kensington, and Logitech offer iPod accessories. Not everything needs to come from Apple.

Here's an important reminder. When looking for music, MP3s, downloads, movies, and so forth, look beyond iTunes. There are many places to get nearly an infinite amount of content for a very low price.

7 Great Computer User Tips - For Windows® Users Only

2006-12-02T23:31:00.000-08:00

An Easy Performance Enhancement

If you’re using the NTFS filing protocol on your system, instead of FAT32, you can get a bit more speed by disabling Windows® Indexing. The downside to this is that searching your drive for a specific file might take a moment or two longer, but everything else should run faster.

To disable this feature open My Computer and then right click on the drive you wish to reset – usually C-drive. Now click on Properties and then uncheck “Allow Indexing Service.” It will take Windows® a few moments to accomplish this task, based on your processor speed. If you have other hard drives, perform the same process for them. After this is done, it’s a good idea to empty the Recycle Bin and then Defragment your hard drive(s).

FREE Software

If you have a system and it does not have an office suite, such as Microsoft Office, and you don’t want to pay several hundred dollars to have one, try Open Office. This is a great alternative to other suites, and it’s free! Simply direct your browser to www.openoffice.org and follow the instructions for downloading and installation. Make no mistake, this free office suite is an extremely powerful set of software tools – easily a match for any competitor.

Internet Explorer (Microsoft’s Internet browser) is unarguably the standard in computers. This is why hackers develop so many malware applications to invade it. If you use a different browser, you have much less chance of an invasion by malicious software. There is a great alternative available, and it’s free. You can download a copy of Firefox at www.mozilla.org/products/firefox. You can even move your Internet Explorer settings into Firefox automatically – so you don’t lose your Favorites, etc.

Laptop Printer Fix

If you’re using a laptop that is running Windows® ME, and you’re having trouble printing through the USB, try this simple fix. Go to the website for the company that manufactures your printer. If you use a Hewlett-Packard, for example, go to www.HP.com and download the appropriate drivers and install them. ME has drivers that recognize the USB printer is present and attached, but not the drivers needed to make it print. Which drivers you download and install will be dependant on your printer. After installing new drivers, update the printer as necessary in the Control Panel.

Save $$$ When Shopping On-line

If you’re making a purchase on-line, and you know the item you want to buy, you can easily compare pricing all across the Internet. This can amount to a very substantial savings.

At this writing, I went to www.mysimon.com and typed in that I wanted to buy a printer: a Canon PIXMA iP4000. The service instantly checked the Internet and returned prices ranging from $62.00 up to $286.00. This kind of price spread is not at all unusual, especially for computers and electronics.

The My Simon website service only checks pricing, it does not provide a platform for purchasing anything, though it does link to such places. It also gives a rating for the sellers and other users’ input regarding their experiences with the company. You can order the results of the search for your product by price, so that you can quickly find the lowest price from the highest rated dealer.

Windows® XP Professional Only

A feature of Windows® XP Professional, that is not available in the Home Edition, is the ability to encrypt files. This encryption prevents others from opening the files in the folder you encrypt. To encrypt one or more a folders, follow these easy steps.

Click Start, then My Documents. Now locate the folder you wish to encrypt and right click on it and choose Properties.

On the General tab, click on Advanced. Put a tick mark in the box for Encrypt Contents to Secure Data. Click okay two times and the confirmation dialog box will appear allowing you to select the folder, the folder and all files, and/or the subfolders within it.

Now you'll be able to place files in this folder (or folders) and since they're encrypted, others will not be able to access them.

Internet Safety

You should never reveal your username or password to anyone who e-mails you and asks for it. This information is frequently asked for by an Internet scheme called “phishing.”

In a common phishing scam, you receive an e-mail that looks quite official. It usually appears to come from a bank or credit card company. A common title for these e-mails is “We need to verify your account information.” Another is “Please logon to your account and verify your settings.” If you do click where instructed, you’ll end up on a site that appears to be the real one. If you fill in the username and password for of your on-line banking account, you can expect serious problems within twenty-four hours.

If you believe that a company or business that you do on-line business with really does require your information, then simply contact them. This way, you will know where you are sending your information, and what it will be used for.

CD Burning Error Fix

Burning music, video, and data CDs has become quite popular over the past few years, and the evolution of the supporting technology has yielded hardware and software that is better than ever – and very reasonably priced. CDs offer a great place to store substantial amounts of data in a small, easily retained format. They also give us new control over aspects of our entertainment.

A relatively common error received during CD burning informs you that the CD cannot be burned, or that there was an error during burning. Of course, you could actually have a defective CD drive, but this is usually not the case.

If you receive a message indicating that your CD cannot be burned, go to the website of your CD drive manufacturer. Look for the list of CD types (manufacturers/numbers) that are compatible with your device. Most often, you’ll find that your CDs are not listed. The two types that seem to have the least difficulty being burned are manufactured by Sony and TDK. These cost a bit more, but they burn very reliably.

Along the same lines – H-P has introduced a new CD burner. This new burner requires the use of special CD blanks, but after you burn your data into the CD, you can flip it over and close the drive again. Then you can use the laser to burn a title for the CD directly onto the CD itself. It’s new technology, but perhaps it will catch on and we’ll see newer, better such devices in the near future.

Online Shopping

2006-12-02T23:29:00.000-08:00

have just brought my first house!

I move in next week!

I'm really looking forward to it and can't wait to get those keys!

Ok so i'm not the first person in the world to be in this situation. But to me it is a new feeling and comes with tremendouse stresses and pressures which I havn't had to deal with before.

In between my day job and dealing with the solicitors and the estate agents, i'm worrying about the mortgage. Is the money going to get here on time? What if the contracts don't get exchanged? I hope I don't get gazzumped!

Finally I stop and have a think, then it hits me....

I havn't actually got anything for my new house! I need a fridge freezer, a washing machine, an oven. And the list goes on! I don't have time to go around the shops and compare prices. Let alone have the means to store everything before I get the house!

What am I going to do?

I know, i'll buy everthing online. Great, problem solved!

So, I get my laptop out and start surfing the Internet looking for the best deals and best prices.
Hours go by and I havn't actually made a purchase! I'm on a budget so I have to watch the pennies.
I find the product I want and think to myself, Can I get it cheaper elsewhere? so I go to another retailers website and start my search again. I do this a few times only to realise that the first place I looked was the cheapest anyway. How frustrating!

After an hour or two goes buy and my shopping list isn't really getting any smaller I think Why can't the High Street be online in one place? Wouldn't it be great if i could search one website with products from all retailers and compare the prices at the same time!

I typed into the Address bar http://www.thehighstreetonline.com to see if it had been done and to my pleasure, it has!

I found a great website which has all the major retailers and brands and even compares the prices.

If only I new about this great service before I wasted all that time!

Anyway, I searched for each of the products on my list and compared all the prices and then went off to the cheapest retailers website and made my purchases. All within 30 minutes.

This was fantastic, I now know that when I move in to my new house next week, I don't have to worry about being without the basic utilities like a fridge freeze, wahing machine etc. It is all being delivered the day after I move in.

All I have to do now is wait and keep my fingers crossed that the house purchase goes through without a hitch!

Please learn from my experiences and make the most of the free services out there, like http://www.thehighstreetonline.com

It really does save you time and money!

What Is A VoIP Phone?

2006-12-02T23:28:00.000-08:00

In spite of the growing popularity of IP telephony, there are still many people who do not know what a VoIP phone is. What is the difference between a VoIP phone and an ordinary phone?

As far as you are concerned, probably not a lot. You can still use your own landline phone if need be, though in its simplest form there is no VoIP phone handset as such. Just a microphone and speakers will do. All you need is some software which is supplied by the provider.

You can use your normal land-line phone. Just like digital TV requires a box, either set-top or included in the set, VoIP needs a box which you can either buy yourself, or get from your VoIP provider. Once you connect your phone to the box and the box to your internet connection, you have your VoIP phone system using your own phone. Due to the connection speeds involved you have to have broadband or another high-speed internet connection.

Your telephone conversation passes through the internet in packets in the same way as any other file does. As you speak, your analogue voice signal is digitized by the VoIP software into binary form, and the digital stream broken up into small 'packets' which are sent through the internet. These packets each take their own fastest route through the internet, from computer to computer, till they reach their destination. This is the way that all files are sent through IP.

The problem with a streamed signal, such as a VoIP phone conversation, and a packet system, is that the packets do not always arrive in the correct order. This is due to the releative amount of internet traffic each packet comes up against, and the fact that they can each take different routes. Also, some packets are lost, or 'dropped'.

Modern software is becoming increasingly better at arranging packets in the correct order (often through slight time delays which allow them to be rearranged) and covering up 'dropped' packets. VoIP phone conversations are therefore more audible now than they were in the early days of VoIP phone systems.

As I said, you can use your computer microphone and speakers to make and receive conversations, but you can also get a dedicated VoIP phone if you prefer. It's all a matter of choice and does not significantly affect the services you can have.

Some of the services supplied free with VoIP phone systems are:

* Caller ID
* Call waiting
* Call forwarding
* Voicemail
* Conference calls
* Call transfer
* Group pick-up

Once you have your box, any calls you make to another VoIP are free – anywhere. For calls to non-VoIP phones there is a charge, but this is generally lower than normal land-line charges.

Your phone number relates to the adaptor, so you can take this with you and use it on any computer with fast internet connection. You can also buy a VoIP phone to go with your laptop and make telephone calls anywhere at any time; just as you can with a mobile, but at a fraction of the cost, and usually free to any other IP phone. This is an excellent inexpensive solution for businesses with a network of offices – all calls between them will be free throughout the world.

Another cool feature is virtual phone numbers. You can get local area numbers allocated to your regular phone number, so that if your family live in LA and you are in New York they can ring your LA local number with their landline and speak to you in New York at local rates. How cool is that!

A VoIP phone is now an attractive option for anyone, both as a cheap alternative to a mobile phone and as a complete replacement for a landline.

Your Website As Your Store

2006-12-02T23:26:00.001-08:00

Do you think of your website as your store? If no you should. That’s what it is isn’t it. How would you like your store to be? Clean, neat and professional or dirty, disorganized and unappealing? When is the last time you walked into a dirty or cluttered store? How did you feel? Did you want to just turn around and walk out or even wash your hands? Did you think that what the store had to offer was cheap and below par in value? If that’s the way your site looks then maybe that’s what your customer is thinking!

You must have an atmosphere that is pleasing to buyers. One that tells that buyer that you are not an amateur, but instead a trained, seasoned professional. Your site is a direct reflection of
your product and that is why that having a well designed website can make or break your sales.

Take a few minutes a look around at several web pages. What makes them appealing? Were there some that you closed out of immediately? Why? Is it clean or cluttered? Can you pick out the information you need quickly? Is it easy to get to different sections or pages at the site? Take notes and do your research. While it’s true your store is different than a brick and mortar store, you can’t just take a scrub brush and some paint to it to brighten it up, there are some things you can do.

Think like your customer. Think about what they are looking for. Keep in mind that when a person visits your site they have a goal in mind. They are either seeking information or shopping for a product. Give the person what they want without having to search for it.

You have only seconds to capture their attention. Make those seconds count by 'grabbing' them immediately. Keep the information short and simple. Be sure that all the information on your site is relevant to your product. Make the buyer think that they need your product to solve their problem.

Your main page is what you see as you enter any store. It serves a very specific purpose. it should be short, simple and clean. It should be easy to view and load very quickly. It should not take more than 10 seconds tops to load on any computer. If it does your customer will leave. This is your first impression. It is best to have links that are easily viewable by the reader that will navigate to further information and details should they so choose.

To make your web site more appealing to the eyes, you should stick to mild colors. Loud colors tend to hurt the eyes after awhile and people may just go to another site. Since screen resolutions vary among monitors, it is a good idea to set the pixels to a standard 800x600. This will be sure to accommodate all screen sizes. Do not have a lot of graphics or pop ups that annoy or confuse your customer. Save the pop up for an important sale or a newsletter sign up and have it come up only once during a page. There is nothing more aggravating than having to constantly click off a pop up.

Pop unders are another good choice. A pop under comes up at the time you customer leaves your site reminding them to do something like sign up for a free newsletter or ad an additional product or come back for a sale. The customer has already gotten his information from your site and has completed his transaction and is usually willing to take a look at another offer.

You should remember that a lot of Internet users will not use the same browser as you, and therefore you should be sure that your site looks as good on other browsers as it does your own. You can do this by downloading several browsers through which to look at your page. If you do not wish to do this you can ask friends to check out your site for you. You could even write up a short questionnaire for them to fill out with questions like how did they like the site, the color, how long did it take to load, what type of computer, internet hook up and browser are they using. All this information will help you make your site better and increase your sales.

Remember you have only seconds to capture the interest of your customer. I'm sure you've gone to sites only to just click off if they don't appeal to you.