virtualecoding

Web Design Tips

2007-12-20T09:38:00.001-08:00

Web Design Facts by: Hunter Blyth
Fact 1: We can’t deny the fact that when browsers enter a site, they look for something that is relevant to their needs. If they ended in a particular site through advertisements, then they would expect to see something related to that ad. Fact 2: On the other hand, when a search engine scans a site’s contents, it looks for contents which are useful enough for other sites to reference. It expects to locate a content that is consistent with the keywords. Fact 3: Moreover, visitors who go to a shopping cart would expect to find photos with high quality, a variety of applicable views and lastly, a concise and clear description and costs. They also expect that the cart should work in all types of browsers. But sad to say, some viewers do not find what they need in a website or sometimes they have a hard time going around the site. The following things should make you aware on the things why web sites fail. One fact that web designers must know is that people wouldn’t enter your site unless they know their way around it. Due to this concern, web designers must take into consideration that they need to conceptualize user friendly and easy to understand websites. For most customers or viewers, very extravagant design won’t matter as long as they don’t get lost in your site. Your competitors are just a click away When designing your web site, think very carefully on things that could give you a plus over your competitors. Think of the things that you can offer your customers in order for them to stay on your site and choose you above all else. People hate slow websites Designers must understand that searchers can be very impatient when surfing through sites in the Internet. Therefore, designers must find a way to minimize the slowness of websites and at the same time offer viewers with quality contents. Searchers look for relevant information Dr. Jim Jansen of Penn State’s School of Information Sciences and Technology said, “A web site has to be relevant to a searchers needs. Otherwise, by the time three minutes have elapsed, 40 percent of searchers will have moved on. While some may have found what they wanted, others may simply have given up and move to a different site." When designing web pages, designers can’t help but become graphic artists with the aim to make your site look great but sometimes lacking in information. Therefore, remember that while it is important to make your site attractive, it is equally important to place in your site the information that visitors need. Sites should have clear abstracts The first thing that appears on the result page as an answer to a search engine query is the site’s abstract. The abstract explains everything about your site. According to a study done by Penn State, more users or searchers can be drawn to a site with the use of an abstract. That is if the abstract is informative enough and gives relevant and enticing information about the site. Dr. Jim Jansen said, "For site developers, if you want to be looked at, it is absolutely critical that the abstract be crystal clear about the purpose of your Web site."
About The Author
Hunter Blyth currently writes for Dolphin Promotions SEO and Web Design Company http://www.dolphinpromotions.co.uk/

10 Ways to Speed Up Your Windows XP PC

2007-12-10T08:03:00.000-08:00

10 Simple Ways To Speed Up Your Windows XP by: Andrew Zarudnev
1. Defrag Disk to Speed Up Access to Data One of the factors that slow the performance of the computer is disk fragmentation. When files are fragmented, the computer must search the hard disk when the file is opened to piece it back together. To speed up the response time, you should monthly run Disk Defragmenter, a Windows utility that defrags and consolidates fragmented files for quicker computer response. * Follow Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter * Click the drives you want to defrag and click Analyze * Click Defragment 2. Detect and Repair Disk Errors Over time, your hard disk develops bad sectors. Bad sectors slow down hard disk performance and sometimes make data writing difficult or even impossible. To detect and repair disk errors, Windows has a built-in tool called the Error Checking utility. It’ll search the hard disk for bad sectors and system errors and repair them for faster performance. * Follow Start > My Computer * In My Computer right-click the hard disk you want to scan and click Properties * Click the Tools tab * Click Check Now * Select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box * Click Start 3. Disable Indexing Services Indexing Services is a little application that uses a lot of CPU. By indexing and updating lists of all the files on the computer, it helps you to do a search for something faster as it scans the index list. But if you know where your files are, you can disable this system service. It won’t do any harm to you machine, whether you search often or not very often. * Go to Start * Click Settings * Click Control Panel * Double-click Add/Remove Programs * Click the Add/Remove Window Components * Uncheck the Indexing services * Click Next 4. Optimize Display Settings Windows XP is a looker. But it costs you system resources that are used to display all the visual items and effects. Windows looks fine if you disable most of the settings and leave the following: * Show shadows under menus * Show shadows under mouse pointer * Show translucent selection rectangle * Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop * Use visual styles on windows and buttons 5. Speedup Folder Browsing You may have noticed that everytime you open My Computer to browse folders that there is a little delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers everytime you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing speed, you can disable the “Automatically search for network folders and printers” option. 6. Disable Performance Counters Windows XP has a performance monitor utility which monitors several areas of your PC’s performance. These utilities take up system resources so disabling is a good idea. * Download and install the Extensible Performance Counter List (http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/tools/existing/exctrlst-o.asp) * Then select each counter in turn in the ‘Extensible performance counters’ window and clear the ‘performance counters enabled’ checkbox at the bottom button below 7. Optimize Your Pagefile You can optimize your pagefile. Setting a fixed size to your pagefile saves the operating system from the need to resize the pagefile. * Right click on My Computer and select Properties * Select the Advanced tab * Under Performance choose the Settings button * Select the Advanced tab again and under Virtual Memory select Change * Highlight the drive containing your page file and make the initial Size of the file the same as the Maximum Size of the file. Windows XP sizes the page file to about 1.5X the amount of actual physical memory by default. While this is good for systems with smaller amounts of memory (under 512MB) it is unlikely that a typical XP desktop system will ever need 1.5 X 512MB or more of virtual memory. If you have less than 512MB of memory, leave the page file at its default size. If you have 512MB or more, change the ratio to 1:1 page file size to physical memory size. 8. Remove Fonts for Speed Fonts, especially TrueType fonts, use quite a bit of system resources. For optimal performance, trim your fonts down to just those that you need to use on a daily basis and fonts that applications may require. * Open Control Panel * Open Fonts folder * Move fonts you don’t need to a temporary directory (e.g. C:\FONTBKUP?) just in case you need or want to bring a few of them back. The more fonts you uninstall, the more system resources you will gain. 9. Use a Flash Memory to Boost Performance To improve performance, you need to install additional RAM memory. It’ll let you boot your OS much quicker and run many applications and access data quicker. There is no easiest and more technically elegant way to do it than use eBoostr (http://www.eboostr.com/). eBoostr is a little program that lets you improve a performance of any computer, powered by Windows XP in much the same way as Vista’s ReadyBoost. With eBoostr, if you have a flash drive, such as a USB flash thumb drive or an SD card, you can use it to make your computer run better. Simply plug in a flash drive through a USB socket and Windows XP will use eBoostr to utilize the flash memory to improve performance. The product shows the best results for frequently used applications and data, which becomes a great feature for people who are using office programs, graphics applications or developer tools. It’ll surely attract a special attention of laptop owners as laptop upgrade is usually more complicated and laptop hard drives are by definition slower than those of desktops. 10. Perform a Boot Defragment There's a simple way to speed up XP startup: make your system do a boot defragment, which will put all the boot files next to one another on your hard disk. When boot files are in close proximity to one another, your system will start faster. On most systems, boot defragment should be enabled by default, but it might not be on yours, or it might have been changed inadvertently. To make sure that boot defragment is enabled: * Run the Registry Editor * Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction * Set the Enable string value to Y if it is not already set to Y. * Exit the Registry * Reboot Hope you find these 10 tips useful. Have a nice day!
About The Author
Andrew Zarudnev is the CMO at eBoostr, the software tool to boost your Windows XP performance http://www.eboostr.com/

SEO: Your Google Ranking

2007-09-24T05:50:00.001-07:00

Green With Envy In The Google Game by: Bill Platt
Beginning on April 14th, 2007, a firestorm blew through the Internet community with the search engine optimization (SEO) community burning the hottest. The embers were warm and waiting for a strong wind to blow and kick up the flames, but it took Matt Cutts, the Google engineer extraordinaire to fire the flames with an off-the-cuff comment about "paid links." The flames raged and in most forums, the wind quickly shifted moving the firestorm back towards Cutts and Google. Thread Watch offered the most biting rebuttal to Cutts' comments: http://www.threadwatch.org/node/13925 and http://www.threadwatch.org/node/13941 Aaron Wall at Thread Watch is a respectable fellow, and he tore into Google with a ferociousness that I had not anticipated. Matt Cutts tried to answer some of Aaron's questions, but it seemed that Cutts' rebuttals only added more fuel to the fire. I would not have wanted to be in Matt Cutts' shoes that week. Oh my, it was brutal! Even on Cutts' own blog where the "paid link" comment originally surfaced (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/hidden-links/), Danny Sullivan posted a question that went unanswered, so Sullivan commented about it on his site: http://searchengineland.com/070420-111550.php Search Engine Watch even mentioned this issue and linked to additional forums where the debate was raging: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/070416-020746 What Most Readers Took From Cutts' Comments There were only a few readers who took Matt Cutts' comments to be brotherly-advice. The vast majority of people were screaming that Google intended to exercise their "monopoly control" over the Internet to run all of their competitors out of business. Generally, I am not a "reactionary" type person. But for about an hour, even I had a ball in the pit of my stomach. The ball passed from the pit of my stomach when I read a post that mirrored an opinion I have openly written about numerous times before: How does Google determine the "intent" of a person making a link? They can't! Understanding The Nuances Of Similar Items Some people suggest that I should be ashamed of myself for speculating about the future of Google's algorithms. There is even one clown, who has suggested that I should fear mentioning Matt Cutts' name in an article, because I am bound to draw Cutts' ire against me and my businesses. But, I am not worried. I am simply laying out my "speculative" opinion about what Cutts' comments might mean to my business and yours. You are free to use your own brain to judge the value of my words. Am I playing a double standard when I say that Google cannot determine the intent of the person placing a link, and then I comment on how I interpret the future of the Google search algorithms? I don't think so, and let me tell you why. Google uses algorithms (software programs) to make distinctions about what a web page is about, how they value that page, and to judge the nature of a link. I use my intellect (or as some would suggest, my lack thereof) to make a judgment about what Google has told us we should expect from them in the future. I trust software to a certain extent, but software cannot always read the nuance that separates two very similar items. So, how can the Google algorithm be expected to determine the intent of a person who placed a link? It has always been my contention that humans are "required" in any process that must make an interpretation of nuance. In my businesses, we refuse to trust computers to make judgments of nuance, because they can't. That is the reason we employ human beings to process orders. What Is Google's Intent Behind The Paid Links Issue? The whole of Cutts' argument seems to hinge on nixing "paid links" that are designed to manipulate or "game Google's PageRank" and to a lesser extent, their organic search results. Google seems to be really agitated that webmasters are "selling links based on the PageRank value of a page." The problem is that webmasters are selling an intangible asset that is wholly owned by Google and maintained for "Google's benefit." Webmasters are selling this Google asset, but Google will not receive any of the proceeds from that sale. As a result, Cutts suggested that webmasters should use some method that Google's spider can use to recognize and distinguish "paid links" from "given links." Since Google's algorithm is based on the theory that links are given to websites that deserve those links, the paid links on high PageRank pages can really skew Google's PageRank values and its organic search results. Here Is Where It Gets Ugly Both honest and dishonest people inhabit this Internet. Google wants webmasters who are selling links to distinguish paid links from given links, so that Google can ignore "links purchased to influence PageRank." If honest people distinguish paid links in a way that Google can recognize, then the market demand for those links will dry up. Once the PageRank value of a link is taken away from the buyer, the buyer will be forced to purchase links based only on the traffic that the specific web page receives. If all paid link decisions were based only on a web page's traffic, then the market value of a link would be decimated. Once a webmaster tells his link-buying customers that his or her links will no longer carry PageRank value to the buyer's website, then the value of that link will drop in most cases by 80% or more. Why would a webmaster want to reduce the market value of his links by 80%? Although Google's links do not pass PageRank to the websites that are in their index or paid listings, we have to ask ourselves one thing. Would Google be willing to take a step that would reduce the market value of their own links by 80%? They certainly would not do anything that would cut their own bottom line that deeply, yet they are asking webmasters to do just that. This is the reason people are teed off at Google. At least 80% of the market value of a link is driven by the PageRank value of the web page where the link will be placed. Dishonest people don't care to play by the rules; they will continue to sell their PageRank value, as long as they continue to have buyers. Only the honest will suffer. Link Buyers Are Green With Envy Link Buyers are envious of the PageRank value given to other web pages, and they want a bit of that value passed over to their own websites. Link buyers are green with envy, because they can see that little green bar in the top of their browser that tells them how much value Google gives a web page in its algorithms. If Google were to keep PageRank as a private value, known only to them, then "paid links" would not be an issue for them to manage. If the public cannot see what a page's PageRank value is, then link buyers would not be able to use PageRank to influence their link buying decisions, and webmasters would not be able to market their PageRank value to other websites. How Simple Is That? All Google has to do to solve this problem of theirs, is to take away the indicator people use to buy and sell PageRank. Someone suggested to me that Google would never do away with the PageRank indicator in their toolbar, because Google feels that it is the only thing that ensures that people will keep the Google toolbar in their browser. Personally, I will continue to use the Google toolbar for my searches, even if the PageRank indicator was not there, because I like the search results Google gives to me. But that is just my opinion, and I am only one person out of millions of Google toolbar users. What it boils down to is this. If Google is serious about nixing schemes to buy and sell PageRank, then they would simply take their PageRank indicator away from us. But will they take it away? Only time will tell.
About The Author
Bill Platt offers article ghost writing and article distribution (http://thephantomwriters.com/ghostwriting) services through thePhantomWriters. He also offers a guaranteed link building (http://www.linksandtraffic.com) service, utilizing article marketing as its foundation, through LinksAndTraffic. If you have any questions about Bill's services, you can reach him by phone from 9am-6pm, Monday through Friday at 405-780-7745.

Cisco PIX/ASA Security Appliance and How to Configure Banners

2007-08-25T05:53:00.000-07:00

Cisco PIX/ASA Security Appliance: How to Configure Banners by: Don R. Crawley
Banners can be configured to display when a user first connects (MOTD), when a user logs in (login), or when a user accesses privileged mode (exec). Banners are used for legal warnings such as when a user is cautioned not to access a restricted system or that their access of a system is subject to monitoring and logging. Banners are also used on locked systems placed at customer locations by service providers to provide contact information for device access or technical support. The Cisco security appliance supports the use of login banners in console sessions and Telnet sessions, but not in SSH sessions. Exec and MOTD banners are supported in console, Telnet, and SSH sessions. Banners can be up to 510 characters in length. You can create multiple line banners either by creating multiple banner statements or by using the keystroke sequence of "\n" which inserts a carriage return. Here's how banners are displayed: MOTD Banners--When usernames are not configured, MOTD displays at login in a serial console session and before login in Telnet sessions. When usernames are configured, MOTD displays before login in a Telnet session and after login in a serial console session. Login Banners--The login banner displays before login in Telnet and serial console sessions. Exec Banners--The exec banner displays upon login in all sessions. How to Configure a Banner Note: The following procedures were tested on an ASA 5505 Security Appliance running software version 7.22. Other hardware or software platforms may require modification of these procedures in order to function properly. To configure a banner, use the following configuration mode commands: asa(config)#banner motd This is a restricted system. asa(config)#banner motd Do not attempt unauthorized access. Notice the use of two banner motd statements to create a multi-line banner. As mentioned previously, you can also use the "\n" key sequence to insert a carriage return. You can view the banners you created with the following privileged mode command: asa#show running-config banner Hands-On Exercise: Creating Banners on the Security Appliance The following procedures are for training purposes only and should only be performed on devices in a laboratory environment. Under no circumstances should these procedures be performed on equipment in a live, production environment without first verifying their suitability in a laboratory environment. In the following hands-on exercise, you will create MOTD, login, and EXEC banners. Step 1: In configuration mode, enter the following commands: asa(config)#banner motd This is the MOTD banner asa(config)#banner login This is the login banner asa(config)#banner exec This is the EXEC banner Step 2: Display the banners you just created with the following command: asa(config)#show running-config banner Step 3: Type exit repeatedly until you are logged out of your laboratory security appliance. Notice which banners are displayed. Step 4: Enter privileged mode with the command "enable" and notice which banners are displayed. Step 5: From your laboratory computer, start a Telnet session and again observe which banners are displayed. When you are finished, exit the Telnet session. Step 6: Also from your laboratory computer, start an SSH session and again observe which banners are displayed. When you are finished, exit the SSH session. Note: The above procedures are similar to the procedures used to configure banners on other Cisco devices including routers. Copyright (c) 2007 Don R. Crawley
About The Author
Don R. Crawley Visit http://www.soundtraining.net to learn more about soundtraining.net's business skills training programs for IT professionals, plus accelerated technical training programs for IT professionals in the areas of Cisco, Microsoft, and Linux products. To learn more about soundtraining.net's Two-Day Cisco PIX/ASA Firewall hands-on seminar, visit http://www.soundtraining.net/onlinestore/categories/category34.html

Programming Help on the Web

2006-12-15T07:05:00.000-08:00

Finding Programming Help on the Internet by: John V. W. Howe
Sometimes when you run into a programming problem you need a little help to get moving again. You can quickly find that help on the Internet (at a reasonable price). Rentacoder.com is a really helpful website. It is similar to eLance.com, but it specializes more in programming and coding while eLance.com covers more general services such as writing, translation, legal, accounting, etc. It is more difficult to register on Rentacoder than on eLance. Apparently, Rentacoder has been burned by credit card fraud so you must take additional steps to validate your card for payment. The sign up process consists of the usual completion of the sign up form, setting up your credit card as the payment method, scanning or faxing both sides of the card to Rentacoder, and then receiving a phone call from Rentacoder validating the card. This is handled quickly and efficiently. One reason for using Rentacoder over eLance is the minimum project cost on eLance is $50.00 and Rentacoder does not have a minimum. Let’s discuss how to use Rentacoder. Once you have established an account on Rentacoder and validated your credit card, you are ready to post projects for coders to bid on. This is a simple process of completing the input form for the bid. You must state the specifications for the job in as much detail as possible so the coders who will enter bids can understand the job and enter the most accurate bid possible. You then specify the computer operating system on which the program or script will run. The deliverables are important so both parties understand exactly what is expected as the output for the project. Rentacoder has standard language for deliverables to help you with this part of the project creation as follows: Deliverables: All deliverables must be uploaded to Rent A Coder before the deadline(s) for this project...with no exceptions. If this contract makes it impossible for a competent person to do this, then do not start this project...but instead alert Rent A Coder of an un-arbitratable, illegal project. 1) Complete and fully-functional working program(s) in executable form as well as complete source code of all work done. 2) Deliverables must be in ready-to-run condition, as follows (depending on the nature of the deliverables): For web sites or other server-side deliverables intended to only ever exist in one place in the Buyer's environment-- 3) All deliverables will be considered "work made for hire" under U.S. Copyright law. Buyer will receive exclusive and complete copyrights to all work purchased. (No GPL, GNU, 3rd party components, etc. unless all copyright ramifications are explained AND AGREED TO by the buyer on the site per the coder's Seller Legal Agreement). When you have entered all the information, post the job and wait for the responses (bids). You will be surprised how quickly you will receive bids and how reasonable most of them will be. Rentacoder is a great resource for any coding or programming project on which you need help. There are many capable programmers available through the Internet who can help you at a very competitive price. Don’t let a small coding project stop you when help is so easy to find at a reasonable price on Rentacoder. Copyright 2006 John Howe, Inc.
About The Author
John V. W. Howe is an entrepreneur, author, inventor, patent holder, husband, father, and grandfather. He has been involved in entrepreneurial activities for over 40 years. He founded http://www.boomer-ezine.com and http://www.retirement-jobs-online.com to help Boomers (baby boomers) become entrepreneurs when they retire.

Create Self Installing Software CD

2006-12-04T00:26:00.000-08:00

Create a Stand-Alone Software Installation CD by: Abramovskiy Ivan
You can use MultiSet software to create a universal disk for installing software onto a computer using any media (CD/DVD/Flash/Hard Drive). Now you can install the programs in any location and as many times as you want - just insert the disk into the CDROM, DVDROM or FlashDrive, and MultiSet will undertake the complete installation procedure for you!!! Automatic software installation benefits: 1. The disk contains ALL necessary information, such as - full software distribution packages, - registration information - software registration key 2. Automatic installation is much faster than manual installation. 3. Automatic installation does not require anyone to be around, i.e. you can spend this time on your needs 4. You can use this universal disk to automatically install software on any number of computers. Usually, the automatic software installation disk is started right after installing the operating system. 5. It is possible to perform automatic installation both from the disk and via the local area network. 6. Applications are installed in a strictly defined order. 7. Unlike copying a disk image, packages can be installed anywhere and any number of times without losing the current data on the PC. You should make several simple steps to create a universal disk. Step 1. Select the 'New Universal Database' item in the main menu. The wizard will appear on the screen. Specify the folder where the universal database will be located. For example, 'C:\Universal MultiSet'. Click the 'Next' button. Step 2. Now you should select the packages you want to be included in the universal database. The path to an executable file is specified for each package. MultiSet will copy this file automatically. A distribution package often consists of several files and folders, for example, MS Office. You have to copy the entire folder with the distribution package in this case. To do it, enable the corresponding option in the list item properties. Click the 'Next' button. Step 3. Click the 'Start' button to create the universal database. The universal database has been created. Step 4. Now you can copy the folder specified in the first step of the wizard to any media (CD, DVD, Flash, Hard Drive). If you insert such a disk into a CD/DVD drive or connect to the computer in case of a Flash drive or a hard drive, you will see the following dialog box on the screen. Click 'OK' to automatically install all the applications on your PC. So, with a help of MultiSet it’s very easy to create the disk “My Golden Software” which can be used many times for instant automatic software installation! MS Word: http://www.almeza.com/download/Create_a_stand-alone_software_installation_CD.doc HTML: http://www.almeza.com/content/view/58/72/ Should you need further information, please feel free to contact me. AN EVALUATION COPY IS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST Product page link: http://www.almeza.com Download link http://www.almeza.com/download/multiset.exe E-mail: press@almeza.com Web: http://www.almeza.com
About The Author
Abramovskiy Ivan You can use MultiSet software to create a universal disk for installing software onto a computer using any media (CD/DVD/Flash/Hard Drive). Now you can install the programs in any location and as many times as you want - just insert the disk into the CDROM, DVDROM or FlashDrive, and MultiSet will undertake the complete installation procedure for you!!!

PHP vs ASP.NET

2006-11-22T09:37:00.000-08:00

Web Languages: PHP vs. ASP.NET by: Kevin Jordan
While the average web developer has a lot of options these days. It's really more of a bi-partisan system between ASP.NET and PHP, the rest being just independents. The battle rages between the supporters of the two languages, with no clear winner every coming out. While both can be used to complete the same project, it really depends on what you're looking for: price, speed, security, etc. ASP.NET If you program in ASP.NET you'll typically get too responses from the other side. Either you're rich (or your company is) or you're a Microsoft lover. While the name comes from Microsoft's old ASP technology, they made a huge leap with the .NET Framework, and the CLR allows you to use other languages for back end processing: typically Visual Basic.NET or C#. ASP.NET's strength lies in object oriented features, and it's flexibility. Because of the CLR you can have C# programmers and VB.NET programmers working on the same project, or switch languages half way through and not have to rewrite all of your old classes. The .NET class library is organized into inheritable classes based around particular tasks, such as working with XML or image manipulation, so a lot of the more common tasks have been already handled for you. Visual Studio .NET is a massive development IDE that (as long as your computer is fast enough) will shave tons of time of your coding. It has built in debugging along with IntelliSense, which allows for auto-completion of methods and variables so you don't have to memorize everything. On the down side, ASP.NET is expensive. One it uses tons more resources on the web server so you'll require either better server or more servers in the farm. Windows 2003 and Visual Studio .NET are pretty tough on the pocket book as well. It's extremely rare for an ASP.NET app not to be running on IIS. And if you pay attention to any of the bug reports, you'll notice that Windows and IIS have had a bit of a history with vulnerabilities being exploited. PHP PHP works in combination of HTML to display dynamic elements on the page. PHP only parses code within its delimiters, such as . Anything outside its delimiters is sent directly to the output and not parsed by PHP. PHP strength lies mostly in LAMP. The LAMP architecture has become popular in the Web industry as a way of deploying inexpensive, reliable, scalable, secure web applications. PHP is commonly used as the P in this bundle alongside Linux, Apache and MySQL. PHP can be used with a large number of relational database management systems, runs on all of the most popular web servers and is available for many different operating systems. This flexibility means that PHP has a wide installation base across the Internet; over 18 million Internet domains are currently hosted on servers with PHP installed. With PHP 5 finally came exception handling and true OOP, but it still lack namespacing to prevent class naming collisions. PHP's type checking is very loose, potentially causing problems. Another drawback is that variables in PHP are not really considered to have a type. Finally, for some reason big corporations feel that if they're not paying for something, then it's not worth buying. If that's you're company's mentality, they just need to wake up and check out all the awesome free software that's out there. So Which Is Better? We'll I have my opinions and you may have yours as well. But in general, PHP is cheap, secure, fast, and reliable, while ASP.NET has quicker development time and is easier due to its class library system can probably be maintained more easily. Both are great languages, and it's up to you to make the decision.
About The Author
Kevin Jordan is a software engineer and the creator of Scratch Projects. A web site dedicated to teaching others to program through actual programming projects instead of just giving away code snippets. http://www.scratchprojects.com

Developer Software

2006-03-23T16:01:00.000-08:00

Two cool new developer tools have come to my attention lately, Python and Java Studio . Check them out, they are FREE and very cool!

PHP and Website Development

2006-03-21T10:47:00.000-08:00

PHP, Internet Business Marketing, & Good Web Content Go Hand In Hand by: Tom Worsley
Everyone has heard that content is king when it comes to search engine optimization and just good old plain web site marketing smarts. But how you present that content on your site can also make a world of difference.
PHP is a server-side, cross-platform, HTML embedded scripting language that lets you create dynamic web pages. PHP-enabled web pages are treated just like regular HTML pages and you can create and edit them the same way you normally create regular HTML pages.
Now here is were it gets interesting. Search engines like Google Yahoo and MSN love fresh new content that is changing on a daily basis. But if you are using a java script snippet the search engines will not be able to read the content. If however you are using a PHP type script the content will automatically be transformed into HTML and the search engines will be able to pick it up and read it.
The first thing you will need to do before you jump onto the PHP bandwagon is to make sure your web host provider has PHP support. Most do but if you are only paying for basic services or using a free host you may have to pay for an upgrade. It’s well worth it trust me.
One of the best PHP based scripts you can add to any web site is the forum or bulletin board. Forums will take on a life of their own after several 100 members have joined and are posting threads on a daily basis. If 100 members seems like a lot think again. I have one work from home internet business forum and after just 2 month I already have over 70 members. Each time someone posts to the forum the HTML changes and the search engines treat it as new content.
Another great PHP script you can add is the link directory. You can actually set up a categorized reciprocal link directory with 20 links on each page and the process is completely automated. I have mine set up so that I have to approve each link first but if you want you could by pass this so that once your script is set up the directory will just start to grow all on its own with no additional work on your part. Again each time someone adds a new link you HTML page is changing. Make sure you add categories that are relative to your main theme. My directory for example has categories for work from home , internet business and business opportunities because that’s what my web site is all about. Also make sure you have added instructions on how they can link back to you. This is the reason why I like to approve all my liks first. No reciprocal link back to my site NO directory listing.
PHP can also be used for blogging. Wordpress is one of the most popular PHP script based blogging tools. I have not used Wordpress but I do use blogger for all my blogging. A weblog (usually shortened to blog, but occasionally spelled web log) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles (normally in reverse chronological order). Although most early weblogs were manually updated, tools to automate the maintenance of such sites made them accessible to a much larger population, and the use of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of "blogging". With a blog or web log you can make daily posts on almost any subject matter creating new content for the search engines to crawl. To date Yahoo seems to be giving a bit of an edge to all my blogs incuding my work form home internet business news site. Ironically most of the post on that blog come from yahoo and or Google news. This is a great way to get free content on a daily basis for your blog. Just go to Google news or yahoo news and type in the keywords you are using for your blog. Each day there will be a new news article that you can legally use on your blog.
There are many more PHP scripts that you can use on your website to automatically create fresh new content with. The ones listed above are the ones I have downloaded for free and installed to my web host. If you are not using PHP now is a good time to get started.
About The Author
Tom Worsley is a successful work from home Internet marketer and independent representative for Strong Future International (SFI) http://freemoneymlm.com/make-money-from-home.html , Owner and Webmaster for http://kawarthapublishing.com & http://www.bigmoolla.com . This article may be re-published on your site or in your newsletter as long as this resource box is included.

Visual Basic 2005

2006-02-24T10:28:00.000-08:00

Does anyone know of a good place to buy inexpensive developer software for windows? Opensource software as well?

Declarative Programming

2006-01-30T10:32:00.000-08:00

Declarative Programming - Strategies for Solving Software Problems by: Roy Furman, M.D., Ph.D.
Many software and hardware producers take pride in the exponential pace of technology change, but for users and consumers of their products and services the rapid technological obsolescence often means increased costs, frustrations, and unfulfilled promises. Corporate America expects to make capital investments in goods and facilities that should last five, ten, even twenty years, but only an eighteen-month lifetime for computer software and hardware investment is not uncommon.
Lowering the costs to develop new software solutions or extending the lifetime of software applications are two complementary approaches to addressing technological change. These goals can often be met by taking a declarative strategy when designing software systems independent of the programming methodology employed.
Issues with Imperative Programming
Most programming projects today use the imperative style of programming. Developers write sequences of operations in a language, such as C++, Java, Visual Basic, etc., that implement an algorithm, or recipe, for performing tasks. The algorithm for the task mixes logical, or relational, statements about the task to be solved and control statements about how to calculate the solution. The logical statements describe "what-to" calculate while the control statements describe "how-to" calculate. Debugging the algorithm consists of verifying the accuracy of the logical statements and fixing the control statements, if necessary.
There are many problems with the imperative approach. The sequence of operations critically determines the correctness of the algorithm. Unexpected execution sequences through an algorithm caused by user input actions or real-time events in a multitasking environment may result in subtle or catastrophic algorithm failure. Writing the control logic is the programmer's responsibility and, therefore, subject to implementation errors. Understanding a program's algorithm is often difficult for other developers without extensive metadata, or comments, on the code and empirical tracing of the program's execution with sample data. Verifying program correctness consumes a significant portion of the development effort, but also usually fails to discover a significant number of defects.
To address the problems associated with imperative programming, the computer industry has developed and advocated many approaches. Structured programming and campaigns against "go-to" statements address some of the problems discovered with ad hoc control structures and statements. Modularization initiatives stress decomposition techniques on the premise that humans can better comprehend, reason about, and maintain smaller pieces of code. Object-oriented programming advocates program constructions using reusable components, libraries, and frameworks. The pattern programming school stresses analogies to other fields, such as architecture, by constructing programs using well-designed and crafted solutions, or patterns, that recur in many programming contexts.
What is Declarative Programming?
Declarative programming separates the logic, or what, of an algorithm from the control, or how, of an algorithm. The programmer still specifies the logic or equations specifying the problem's relations, but the programming system is responsible for control, or how the logic is evaluated. The most familiar examples are spreadsheets and query languages for relational databases. The user, or programmer, specifies a mathematical relation as a query, say in SQL, for what to retrieve, while the database engine determines how to execute the query against the database.
There are many advantages to declarative programming over the imperative style. In declarative languages, programmers do not specify sequences of operations, but only definitions or equations specifying relations. Unlike imperative programming, the logic relations in declarative programming are execution order independent, free of side effects of evaluation, and semantically clear to visual inspection.
The declarative family of programming languages has a long history in the academic computer science community and specialized areas of commercial application, such as compiler construction, expert systems, and databases. Declarative languages have two main family trees. The logic declarative languages, such as Prolog, are based on first-order predicate calculus, which generalizes the notions of Aristotelian true or false values to statements, or predicates, involving relations among any entities. The other family branch consists of functional declarative languages, such as Miranda, Haskell, and SML. The functional declarative languages are based on the l-calculus developed by the mathematician, Alonzo Church in the 1930's. l-calculus formalizes the notions of recursive application of pure functions to computable problems. Although not widely known as such, the latest programming fashion, XSLT, an extensible stylesheet language for transforming XML, is also a functional declarative language.
Despite the theoretical advantages of declarative programming languages, they do not have widespread use in commercial programming practice despite an attempt in the 1980's by Borland to mass-market a PC version of Prolog along with the highly popular Turbo Pascal. There are many factors contributing to the infrequent use of declarative languages. A large contributor is the paucity of collegiate training in declarative languages, but awkward syntaxes of some languages, inefficient compilers and run-times, and restricted domains of applicability of generalized "how-to" mechanisms are all contributors.
Using Declarative Strategies in Commercial Software
While declarative programming languages have not received wide-spread commercial usage, the strategy of separating logic, or what, from control, or how, in an algorithm is a powerful, generalized technique for increasing ease of use and extending the longevity of software. Declarative techniques are particularly powerful in user interfaces and application programming interfaces (APIs) that have a rich, complex set of inputs over a relatively small field of execution behaviors.
Two examples of commercial software that illustrate the applicability of declarative techniques are DriverLINX and ExceLINX in the fields of data acquisition and test instrument control.
Using Declarations for Data Acquisition
DriverLINX is an API for controlling data-acquisition hardware used to measure and generate analog and digital signals interfaced to all types of external transducers. Data-acquisition applications include laboratory research, medical instrumentation, and industrial process control.
Traditionally, APIs for data-acquisition devices modeled the characteristics of the hardware design and had a large number of functions of one or more parameters to setup the hardware and control data flow through the system. The ordering of sequences of operations was often critical to correctly programming and controlling the hardware. Upgrading to new data-acquisition hardware was often costly as hardware-necessitated changes in the order of operation sequences to program the hardware required costly software changes.
To surmount these problems, DriverLINX takes an abstract and declarative approach to data-acquisition programming. Instead of modeling specific board designs, DriverLINX abstracts the functional subsystems of data-acquisition hardware into generalized attributes and capabilities. Programs request the measurement task they want to perform by parameterizing a "service request" declaration. The DriverLINX runtime determines how to satisfy the service request using the available hardware and returns the measurements as a packetized stream to the program. The data-acquisition programmer is relieved of any responsibility for data-acquisition algorithm control.
Besides relieving the programmer of control responsibility, the DriverLINX abstract, declarative approach gives the program syntactic and semantic interchangeability when migrating to equivalent hardware products. The abstract, declarative approach also helps isolate the software vendor from early technological obsolescence of change in the computer industry by focusing on the immutable logic of data-acquisition relations while the control mechanisms vary with software developments. DriverLINX has been a viable approach to data-acquisition programming for more than 12 years despite the market evolution from 16-bit Windows to .NET today.
Using Declarations for Test Instruments
Test instruments, such as digital voltmeters and electrometers, have evolved from simple devices with a front panel knob and display screen to sophisticated measurement processors performing dozens of measurement and control functions. Like data-acquisition devices, typically developers send a carefully ordered sequence of commands to an instrument to setup the measurement and then send additional command sequences to control the data flow of measurements from the instrument. The aforementioned problems for developers using imperative approaches to instrument control significantly limit ease of use and prohibit quick instrumentation solutions to short-term measurement needs.
ExceLINX is an add-in to Microsoft Excel that allows rapid specification of instrument test setups by using worksheet forms. Users specify, or declare, the channels, configurations, sampling rates, triggering, and data locations for the measurements they wish to perform by filling out an Excel worksheet. When the user selects the "start" button on the toolbar, ExceLINX translates the specification into the correct command sequence for the target instrument, initiates the measurement, and flows the data back to the requested worksheet. Users can setup and collect measurements by themselves in minutes using logic specifications compared to days or weeks using programmer's time for imperative specifications.
Internally, ExceLINX also uses a declarative approach to handling the complex problem of field validation for the worksheet forms. Instruments have hundreds of parameters with complex overlaps among parameters. To validate whether the instrument supports the parameter set the user selected, ExceLINX maintains a dependency tree of allowed, disallowed, and unused parameters for every input cell on the worksheet. Each node in the tree also maintains logical relations among the selected set of parameters that ExceLINX evaluates at runtime to cross validate user input selections. Each supported instrument model has different parameter semantics, but ExceLINX can easily handle this complexity by switching model trees because the model-specific logic in the validation tree is separate from the shared control implementation in the ExceLINX code.
Declarative programming strategies that separate logic from control in algorithms are powerful techniques that can be used with today's popular imperative languages. These techniques can make software more interchangeable, maintainable, usable, and endurable.
Copyright Roy Furman, M.D., Ph.D. 2005
About The Author
Roy Furman, M.D., Ph.D. is Director of Research and Development at Scientific Software Tools, Inc. He leads a team of software developers who have developed over 70 commercial software products for customers in the manufacturing, healthcare,and life science industries. Visit their website, http://www.sstnet.com for articles and information on software development.

Internet Terms Summary

2006-01-29T17:09:00.000-08:00

A Must-Know About Computer And Internet Glossary by: Florie Lyn Masarate
Computer-related things tend to have a language all their own. While you do not need to know all of it, there are many confusing words and phrases that you are going to come across sooner or later.
Bandwidth. Bandwidth is the amount of data that your website can send each second, as well as the amount of data that the visitor to your website can receive. If either one does not have enough bandwidth, then the website will appear slowly.
For this reason, you should choose a host with plenty of bandwidth, as well as testing that your site doesn't take too long to download on slow connections.
Browser. A browser is the software (see below) that visitors to your site use to view it. The most popular browser is Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which comes with Windows.
Cookie. Cookies are data files that your site can save on the computer of someone who visits that site, to allow it to remember who they are if they return.
FTP. File Transfer Protocol. This is a common method of uploading (see below) files to your website.
Javascript. A common language for writing 'scripts' on websites, which are small programs that make the site more interactive. Another common cause of problems for visitors.
JPEG. Joint Photographic Experts Group. This is the name of the most popular format for pictures on the web, named after the group that came up with it. If you want to put pictures on your website, you should save them as JPEGs.
Hardware. Hardware is computer equipment that physically exists. It is the opposite of software.
Hosting. If you've got a website out there on the Internet, then you'll be paying someone for hosting. It is the service of making your site available for people to see.
HTML. HyperText Markup Language. A kind of code used to indicate how web pages should be displayed, using a system of small 'tags'. The 'b' tag, for example, causes text to appear in bold, and the 'img' tag displays a picture.
Hyperlink. A hyperlink is when a piece of text on a website can be clicked to take you to another site, or another page on the same site. For example, if clicking your email address on your website allows someone to email you, then your email address is a hyperlink.
Programming. This is when the computer is given instructions to tell it what to do, using one of many 'programming languages'. Programming languages for the web include PHP and Perl.
Server. The server is where your website is stored, and it is the server that people are connecting to when they visit the site. Note that server refers both to the hardware and software of this system.
Software. Programs that run on the computer, or that make your website work. Microsoft Word is software, for example, as is Apache (the most popular web server software). Opposite of hardware.
Spider. Do not be scared if a spider visits your website! Spiders are simply programs used by search engines to scan your site and help them decide where it should appear when people search. It is good to be visited by spiders, as it means you should start appearing in search engines soon.
Upload. Uploading is when you transfer data from your own computer to your website. For example, you might upload your logo, or an article you've written. Opposite of download.
URL. Uniform Resource Locator. This is just a short way of saying 'web address', meaning what you have to type in to get to your website.
For comments and inquiries about the article visit http://www.webplacements.com
About The Author
Florie Lyn Masarate got the flair for reading and writing when she got her first subscription of the school newsletter in kindergarten. She had her first article published on that same newsletter in the third grade.

Software Project Management : Book Review

2006-01-27T11:22:00.000-08:00

Applied Software Project Management Book Review by: Simon Buehring
It’s not often that a software project management book comes along that is practical, easy to read and stacked full of ready to use process scripts. Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene have done just that with recent book Applied Software Project Management.
There are too many books about software project management or software engineering which are dry, overly complex and boring, but this book is not one of them. It was a joy to read because their style of writing is clear without being simplistic and the authors describe things in just the right amount of detail. It seems they understand their audience and set out to write in an extremely helpful and practical way. They have certainly achieved this.
Part one of the book covers tools and techniques that can be applied on projects. Project planning, estimation, scheduling, reviews, requirements, design and programming and testing each have their own chapter. Part two is about using project management effectively and has chapters on understanding change, management and leadership, managing an outsourcing project and process improvement.
A clear thread throughout the book is a description of the typical problems software project teams face – inadequate requirements, managing changes, lack of quality assurance at each stage in a project, endless testing and bug-fixing cycles, tensions and misunderstandings between the software engineers and business users. None of these problems are technical in nature, but are organisational and managerial. Stellman & Greene offer practical advice to solve these problems based upon their experience on similar projects.
Stellman & Greene certainly appear to know a lot about problems that face software teams. As early as the introduction they describe the need to overcome chronic problems and this theme is continued throughout the book. For each problem, there is always at least one proposed solution. For example, they describe a common scenario whereby senior managers do not trust the estimates of the technical team, somehow believing that the technical team are deliberately over-estimating in order to give themselves some slack time. Their proposed solution is to involve these managers in the estimation process so they can see the estimates being made in a transparent and systematic fashion. They then go on to describe in detail how to run a Wideband Delphi estimation session and provide examples of templates and documents that can be used during such sessions. They also provide a valuable process script for teams to follow.
Subsequent chapters cover planning, scheduling, reviews, requirements, design and testing. Whilst most of these chapters cover each topic in reasonable detail, the section on design is lacking in detail and provides no description about what kind of design deliverables might be produced nor any detailed description of what these design deliverables might contain. This is in contrast to the requirements chapter which contains process scripts for requirements elicitation and analysis as well as a detailed description of use cases and software requirements specifications documents.
Another nice aspect to the book is the checklists that appear after dealing with one of the main project management or software engineering topics. Checklists are important quality assurance techniques that the authors rightly point out should be used throughout software projects as a way of catching errors early. For example, if a checklist applied to the software requirements specifications catches the fact that a critical requirement is missing or ambiguous, then the error can be corrected during the analysis stage. The authors explain that by catching and fixing errors early, the cost is small compared with the cost of fixing errors found later in a project. Their emphasis on quality assurance techniques being applied throughout the project with examples of checklists to apply is therefore very practical and useful.
The authors might want to reconsider some of the examples they use. They describe the process of refactoring code in order to make it more maintainable and use an example of some Java code which they gradually refactor over several iterations. At the end of this process they say why refactoring would be applicable in situations where code is spaghetti-like. This is fine, except they use an example of very un-spaghetti-like Java code to refactor. By doing this it looks to me that they fall into a common programmers trap of code beautification where programmers spend time from the schedule iteratively improving code that works just fine in order to write the ‘perfect’ code, class or object. I’ve seen this happen on projects where there simply wasn’t the time in the schedule to allow this, and it certainly didn’t bring any additional business benefits to the stakeholders. However this is a minor gripe.
I would have liked to have seen more pages devoted to risk management. Time and again, not managing risks is cited as a reason why projects fail. The authors do describe risk management in a cursory way, yet the book would benefit from a better description of how and why risk management should be done throughout the project, not just in the early stages of project planning.
One thing I thought the book lacked was a detailed look at iterative methods. The implicit assumption throughout is that the software project should follow the waterfall method. I would disagree. There have been some important alternatives to the waterfall method which have been developed over the last 20 years most notably those based upon iterative approaches. The main downfall with the waterfall approach is it’s assumption that everything about requirements is known at the beginning of a project.
Iterative approaches on the other hand assume that requirements will change during the project either because users gain a better understanding of what they need, or because of changes to the business environment. Based upon this assumption, iterative methods are designed to better manage this changing environment. With waterfall approaches, changes in requirements often require the project to revisit earlier stages with a corresponding increase in costs and effort. The authors spend barely a page on the Rational Unified Process (RUP) and the authors should look more closely into how their practical advice and processes might be used on alternative iterative approaches to the waterfall approach.
Finally, I think the book tried to be too broad by appealing to three different groups of people. Firstly, part one is aimed at those involved in a software team (project managers, analysts, programmers and testers). Part two is aimed at consultants hired to improve project management practices and project managers who need to manage software outsourcing projects. The book would have been better had it focused solely on those involved in the software team.
The penultimate chapter dealing with managing an outsourcing project is dealt with in a cursory way almost as if the authors felt they needed to mention it because outsourcing is such a business priority these days. The final chapter dealing with process improvement is also too short to deal effectively with such a large topic. Separate books dealing solely with these issues would have been more appropriate.
Not withstanding these points, this book is an excellent guide for those people involved in software projects, both project managers and technical team members alike. They will find much they can apply directly on their own projects.
I would recommend this book to anyone who works on a software development team because the book has so much practical advice to help people improve their capability to deliver quality software. Come to think of it, I would also recommend it to senior managers of companies who have a negative view of their own software development teams. Perhaps then senior managers might understand why committing resources to process improvement is one of the best investments they can make.
About The Author
Simon Buehring is a project manager, consultant and trainer and has extensive experience within the IT industry in the UK and in Asia. He works for KnowledgeTrain which offers project management training courses in the UK and overseas. He can be contacted via the KnowledgeTrain project management training website at: http://www.knowledgetrain.co.uk/.

What is HTML

2005-12-12T08:54:00.000-08:00

5 Steps to Understanding HTML by: John Bradford
HTML is a relatively simple language, but that doesn't stop people from having problems with it. Why is that? It's mainly because, while the HTML tags themselves are easy, creating an HTML document that works as intended on a web server requires you to know a few extra things that aren't often explained. Here, then, is a guide to understanding those parts of HTML that they just don't tell you about in the books.
Step 1: Understand Doctypes.
It isn't often noted that valid HMTL documents don't actually start with the tag – they have one extra tag before it. This is the doctype, and it must be present right at the top of your document for it to be valid HTML.
There are only really two doctypes that you really need to know about. The HTML4 doctype looks like this:
The XHTML one looks like this:
These versions of the doctypes that are a little more forgiving – if you're a purist, you can use the strict ones instead by changing the words 'transitional' and 'loose' to 'strict'.
But what is the doctype for? Well, its purpose is simple enough: it tells web browsers exactly what version of HTML your page was written in, to help them to interpret it correctly.
Step 2: Understand HTTP Errors.
A truly shocking number of people writing HTML pages don't know how HTTP works – and they quickly run into trouble because of it. HTTP is the way a web browser communicates with a web server, and this communication includes information about your pages, such as cookies.
You don't need to worry too much about the internals of HTTP, but it's worth knowing that it works by the browser sending a request to the server for a certain page, and the server then responding with a code.
Your website should be set up to handle error codes well. For example, a 404 (page not found) error should show a page with links to the most useful parts of your site. Other common error codes include:
200 - OK 301 - Page moved. 403 - Forbidden (no authorisation to access). 500 - Internal server error.
For more information, visit www.w3.org/protocols.
Step 3: Understand MIME Types.
MIME types are another part of the HTML header – an important one. Also known as the content-type header, they tell the browser what kind of file they are about to send. Browsers don't rely on HTML files ending in .html, JPEG images ending in .jpeg, and so on: they rely on the content-type header. If you don't know about this, you can have problems if you need to configure your server to send anything unusual.
Here are some common MIME types:
text/html - HTML.
text/css - CSS
text/plain - plain text.
image/gif - GIF image.
image/jpeg - JPEG image.
image/png - PNG image.
audio/mpeg - MP3 audio file.
application/x-shockwave-flash - Flash movie.
Step 4: Understand Link Paths.
One of the hardest things to understand about HTML is all the different things that you can put in an 'href' property. Abbreviated URLs are created using the rules of old text-based operating systems, and there are plenty of people writing HTML today who are completely unfamiliar with these rules.
Here are some examples. For each one, the assumption is that the link is on a page at http://www.example.com/example1/example1.html.
- links to http://www.example.com/example1/example2.html - links to http://www.example.com/example1/example2.html - links to http://www.example.com/example2.html - links to http://www.example.com/example2.html - links to http://www.example.com/ - links to http://www.example.com/example1
To put it simply, one dot means "in the folder we're in now", while two dots means "in the folder above the one we're in now". This can get confusing fast – just look at the difference one dot can make! Be careful with it.
Step 5: Understand How to Insert Things That Aren't HTML.
One of the most common HTML questions is how to insert things like Javascript and CSS into an HTML document. This is one of the easiest questions to answer: you simply use the link and script tags, like this:
About The Author
John Bradford is a Premier Web Designer, With more then 10 years of experience. Currently maintaining www.netking.info/webdesign Website With Free Web Design Articles.

I was looking for gifts such as art, collectibles, crafts, books, baked gifts and I found them shopping online.

My wife always shops for clothes, shoes, makeup and jewelry online.

My kids said to go online for Christmas toys this year.

Most of the time I shop online for electronics such as audio, tvs, cell phones, wireless digital cameras and pdas.

I found all the furniture and hardware I needed online.

My friend the chef said to look online for kitchen supplies and recipes.

IE Explorer vs. Mozilla Firefox

2005-12-11T19:58:00.000-08:00

Who Will Win the Race - Internet Explorer or Firefox by: Allen Brown
For the first time in a web browser’s era, we are witnessing real action behind a browser other than Internet Explorer. The most browser history we can remember, major and widely accepted internet browser was Internet Explorer.
In late 90s, there was a time when Netscape was trying to claim superiority in that browser market share, but Internet Explorer walk away winning a lions share. However at present, for the first time Microsoft is facing tough competition. The new contender of Internet Explorer is “Firefox”, which is likely to take advantage of the security concerns that is counted as loop holes in Internet Explorer structure.
A browser from the producers of Mozilla, Firefox is drawing massive attention. Firefox is a browser that focuses on opening websites rapidly while keeping malicious pop-ups and spyware a side.
While, at final stages Firefox luckily was picked for the upcoming browser two federal agencies that recommended Internet users to select browser other than Internet Explorer for the first time, because of security concerns.
Internet users began switching over Firefox after facing numerous security issues with Internet Explorer. Users believe that Internet Explorer has not actually been upgraded since beginning of 20s. Users have to download the patch known as Service Pack 2 as well as upgrade their system up to windows XP for more secured Internet Explorer.
Internet Explorer use to hold around 95 percent of market share for web browsers but slide down to nearly 92 percent in just the few months. This might seem a few percentage points, but these few percentages depict millions of people who have switched over to Firefox from Internet Explorer.
It shows that Firefox is becoming widely accepted by millions of its fans, for its excellent features such as download speed, outstanding user interface along with its pop-up blocker.
But the biggest advantage for Internet Explorer is that most websites are still built to work best with Microsoft's browsers. It may result that some sites may not sees right or not be accessible at all through internet browser other than IE.
So, who will win this race Internet Explorer or Firefox? If Firefox sustains getting market share as it has at current phase than future is bright for Firefox. But, if Internet Explorer comes out with the solutions for its security issues, it can hold onto its over 90 percent lions share in the browser market.
Whatever, but the fact is that both browsers have had advantages along with security problems and loop-holes. So only the time will show the right answer, just wait and watch.
About The Author
Allen Brown is a freelance writer for www.1888SoftwareDownloads.com, the premier website to find Free Software Downloads including free anti-virus software, free spyware detection software, free toolbars, free chat software and more. He also freelances for http://www.1888FreeOnlineGames.com.

ASP vs. PHP

2005-12-07T15:49:00.000-08:00

ASP vs. PHP by: Halstatt Pires
When building web sites, ASP and PHP are very popular languages. Here’s my opinion on whether ASP or PHP is best
ASP v. PHP
Both ASP and PHP are languages used to build Dynamic Web sites that can interact with Databases and exchange information. ASP (Active Server Pages) is from Microsoft and is used with IIS (Internet Information Server) that runs on Microsoft Servers. PHP (Personal Home Pages) is from Rasmus Lerdorf, who originally designed this parsing language which was later modified by different people. It runs on Unix and Linux servers and it also has an NT server version.
There are a lot of differences between ASP and PHP.
Cost
To run ASP programs one needs IIS installed on a Windows platform server, which is not free. PHP programs run on Linux, which is free. Even the connectivity of the database is expensive in the case of ASP as MS-SQL is a product of Microsoft that needs to be purchased. PHP generally uses MySQL, which is freely available.
Speed
If we compare the speed of ASP and PHP then PHP has an upper hand. PHP code runs faster than ASP. ASP is built on COM based architecture, which is an overhead for the server whereas PHP code runs in its own memory space.
Platform Compatibility
PHP programs can run on various platforms like Linux, Unix, Windows and Solaris whereas ASP is mainly associated with Windows platforms. However, ASP can run on a Linux platform with ASP-Apache installed on the server.
Additional Costs
Many of the tools used in PHP are free of cost and since PHP is open source a lot of code can be found in open source forums. PHP has inbuilt features like ftp, email from a web page or even encryption mechanisms but in ASP such features are not built in and some additional components are required. Therefore an additional cost is incurred for such components.
Base Language
PHP is based on C++ language and the syntax used in PHP is quite similar to C/C++. C/C++ is still considered the best programming language by many programmers and people who love this language would surely feel more comfortable with the syntax of PHP. ASP on the other hand has a more Visual Basic kind of syntax that again is closely related to only Microsoft products. So, it depends on a person-to-person which language he or she is comfortable
Database Connectivity
PHP, being extremely flexible, can connect to various databases, the most popular being MySQL. ASP mainly uses MS-SQL.
Conclusion
Both languages have their advantages specific to users. Some would argue that both the languages have their own importance and depending on the user's requirements the language and the platform can be chosen. If we talk about developing a discussion board then ASP is equally capable but many feel the best discussion boards are developed in PHP. If a user is looking for some e-commerce application development then many would call ASP the ideal choice. This does not mean that PHP cannot provide e-commerce solutions, only that many people choose ASP.
From my perspective, PHP is an all around better choice than ASP.
About The Author
Halstatt Pires is with the Internet marketing firm - http://www.marketingtitan.com - a San Diego Internet marketing and advertising company offering automated web site systems - http://www.businesscreatorpro.com - for e-commerce solutions.

All your business and finance needs including loans, stock market info, real estate services, insurance and news publications are found at Virtual Directory.

All your software needs for isp services, websites, hosting, graphics, development, office, games and security software are found at Virtual Directory.

Employment services for working at home, job boards, freelancing, eCommerce shops, resume services and education are all at Virtual Directory.

Optimizing Your Website

2005-12-04T19:32:00.000-08:00

Search Engine Optimization - Do it Right the First Time by: Avi Cohen
Search engine optimization has become big business and the competition for top placement in the search engines is fierce and growing every day. If you truly want to reach the top of the search results for your particular industry then have to be committed to building and maintaining your web site correctly from the start.
Although, there is more to web site promotion and search engine success than search engine optimization (i.e. content development and management and linking strategies) there are specific things you can do when building your site to make it more search engine friendly. It is important to note that these strategies for SEO are best implemented from the start as part of the foundation of your web site. This is not to say that you cannot optimize an established web site it is simply easier if you are doing certain things from the beginning.
These SEO strategies assume that you have already done extensive research to determine what keywords you should be using to optimize your web site.
Basic Tips and Strategies for Search Engine Optimization/SEO
Use HTML
HTML is still one of the best languages for building web pages because there tends to be less clutter. Therefore if possible build your web pages in good old-fashioned HTML.
Integrate Keywords
When optimizing each web page of your site for your keywords try to stick with one or two keywords on each page. There is no rush to cram more than that because you can always build another page for your additional keywords and the more pages you have on your web site the better.
ALT Tags
Be sure to put attach ALT tags to every image on your site with keywords relevant to the image or page.
Title Tags
Each web page should be optimized with the appropriate keywords in the browser title. These keywords should be placed between the tags.
URL Address of Individual Pages
One of the most important aspects of your SEO is integrating your keywords into the URL address of your pages. While there are many different opinions on whether to use dashes or not between words there is really little evidence to indicate that it matters. Most prefer to use dashes. For example, if you are a search engine optimization firm and you have a page that explains your SEO services then you would want to have your page look something like this.
www.yoursite.com/search-engine-optimization-services.com
If your web store is build in a database driven system and the software automatically creates your individual web pages then you might not be able to create the URL for each individual product page. These pages often look something like this.
www.yoursite.com/index.asp?PageAction=PRODUCT
In this case you may not have any control over the URL but you can always build additional pages within your site by hand that have keyword optimized URL addresses.
Link Text
Take care to include your keywords in your internal links. This is called the anchor text of your links and is important in overall SEO.
Search engine optimization for your web site is really that simple. How many times should your keyword appear in the text on your web pages? That is really up to you and how aggressive you want to be. You will find many different opinions on how much is too much but it really boils down to readability. If you put your keywords in there too much it will not read well and it will be obvious that your keyword density it too high. Try to stay within 3-5% and you should be fine.
About The Author
Avi Cohen, PageRank Checker Team
avi@prc.co.il

PHPBB2 Programming

2005-11-28T13:40:00.000-08:00

PHPBB2: All It Can Be? by: Matthew C. Keegan
Please allow me to start off and say that I am very happy to run PHP software on my computer. Specifically, the bulletin boards developed by PHPBB2 [an open source program] works head and shoulders above the EZBoard system I gave up on several months earlier. Still, it has its own special challenges that only a regular user or administrator can appreciate. If you are considering starting your own message board community please read on for some homespun advice on how to make PHPBB2 work best for you.
On Memorial Day 2005 I had a rude awakening. Although a national holiday here in the U.S. I was taking advantage of that day to catch up on some much needed behind the scenes work. You see, when you work for yourself a holiday just isn’t the same thing. It ends up being a day where your phone isn’t likely to ring all that much, thereby making it a better opportunity to catch up on all the little niggling details of operating a business, like paying bills and bookkeeping. Okay, I digress.
What happened on that special day was the total overthrow of the EZBoard message board system. Hackers, so EZBoard claimed, infiltrated their entire system and brought down the house. Literally overnight thousands of boards were affected and compromised. Now for the rub: forum managers, myself included, had no power to back up their sites. Thus, what was lost was likely lost for good or would take many weeks to restore from pasted together backups. We depended on EZBoard for our back ups and when their system failed we all suffered.
So then the decision was made for me. I downloaded PHPBB2 software a few days later and immediately went to work.
As open source programs go the PHPBB2 software was free and the instructions were quite good. Fortunately for me the two sites that I planned to set up, the Aviation Employment Board and the Corporate Flight Attendant Community, already had separate web pages hosted with a company that could support a database. This particular MySQL database would essentially power the site and house important stuff including all the member information.
Fortunately those who have been working on building, maintaining, and promoting PHPBB have a copious amount of detailed information accessible right online and available for viewing and/or downloading. Personally, the biggest help to me were the excellently made Flash videos that helped walk me through the installation process. Without them in place, I doubt I would have figured it all out. Truly, in this case, a picture is worth a thousand words each!
In addition to the software itself, PHPBB2 also offers a separate file to help speed the process conversion process from EZBoard to PHPBB2. This EZBoard converter takes messages from the old board and transfers them to the new board. Unfortunately, it was only partially successful which could have been due to the hacked nature of the EZBoard site. Still, what I was able to move over was helpful, but it did not include member files as that bit of necessary information was under EZBoard’s lock and key.
By the time I downloaded everything, followed all the instructions, converted what I could from EZBoard, laid out the new site, and made some additional design changes, approximately eight hours had flown past. At the end of that time a useful and functioning board was in place. The next day I contacted all my current EZBoard members and told them about the switch and put notices on the old site about the change. Most of my members were very understanding as they realized that the switch had to be made.
Without exception PHPBB2 has been a big improvement. Still, it could use some refining and, happily, many of those refinements are routinely accomplished within regular updates of the software or via preselected “mods” that a forum manager can select.
Without belaboring the point here are some things that I have observed about PHPBB2 that are helpful to know about before going with the software:
Limited Support There is a lot of information right online to read and there are forums moderated by volunteers. At the same time the moderators are stretched very thin and sometimes their responses border on the irritated. Of course, that could have something to do with all the N00B questions, many of which are answered somewhere on the site. My recommendation is that you spend plenty of time reading before posting a question. Study the forum for similar questions asked and answers given.
Difficult Updates Get on the forum managers mailing list to ensure that you receive notification of each update as they are made. Some updates are simple while others are more difficult. If you make any modifications to your site then only a “patch” update is necessary while everyone else will select “changed files only.” If you select “changed files only” and you have some mods installed, you risk losing all of your mods. Let’s just say that already has happened to me once!
AOL Quirks Some members have difficulty signing up, especially AOL account holders. It seems to be that the confirmation code doesn’t always show up when members register [you don’t need to have it enabled, but it does put a halt to rogue registrants] and sometimes AOL users get booted when logged on. A little thing called “sessions” monitors everyone’s visits by examining their I.P. address for a match. Of course, AOL scrambles I.P. addresses mid-session, a reason for much of the booting. The fix involved from a PHPBB2 standpoint is not recommended as it puts you at risk for security breaches. Quite frankly, I have urged some members to leave AOL especially if they can’t work around it on their end.
Back Ups The administration panel is simple to use, but back ups don’t always work. Errors messages prevail; therefore backing up through your web host is another option. Speaking of the administration panel, you can select whether members can email each other [not a good thing to have enabled], how long their signature can be, enable automatic pruning of posts, and lots more. Indeed, the features offered by PHPBB2 far exceed the limitations that are inherent with EZBoard.
There are alternative forums to PHPBB2 and one popular one is another PHP program called vBulletin. vBulletin utilizes excellent forum software that takes off where PHPBB2 leaves off. Many of the modifications that are not part of PHPBB2 are standard with vBulletin, therefore removing some of the behind the scenes tasks that a webmaster must do with PHPBB2 in order to customize his site.
So, why not go with vBulletin? For many it is simply the cost. With vBulletin, you can lease a license for $85 for one year or buy a license for $160. Access to updates after the first year costs another $30 per year while custom support can run from $30 for one month up to $300 for one year. Thus, if you have a small forum that makes little or no money, and you need extra special assistance, than vBulletin can be a big expense to carry. Other paid forums have similar expenses, but there are some free ones out there. For the record, EZBoard isn’t free, although the start up cost is very low. However, your renewal fee is calculated on the amount of bandwidth used in the most recent thirty day period and for some forum managers that amount could easily be several hundreds to well over one thousand dollars!
So then, why go with PHPBB2? Well, language packs to name a big reason. Besides English forums, an additional 59 languages are supported by this open source code! From Afrikaans to Vietnamese, Arabic to Russian, and from French to German, PHPBB2 is available in many native languages. For people of very limited means this has become an excellent way to communicate for no capital outlay. One gets the sense that PHPBB2 is very proud of this fact and I must admit that I am too!
As I write this I am in the midst of updating my two sites to the latest release. Because it is near the Christmas season I am also looking at several themed templates for my flight attendant site and have selected a “Merry Christmas” board replete with drifting down snowflakes. This template, which looks so professionally done, is free as well.
I plan on sticking with PHPBB2, quirks and all, by continuing to support our growing community of forum managers worldwide. Each of us, in our own way, has helped to shape this all important piece of open source software. It certainly isn’t perfect, but it definitely has been a lot of fun and has helped me to increase my knowledge as well as to appreciate the whole open source movement.
About The Author
Copyright 2005 -- Matt Keegan invites you to visit his two open source message boards, the Aviation Employment Board: [http://www.aviationemploymentboard.net/forum] and the Corporate Flight Attendant Community: [http://www.corporateflyer.net/forum] for first hand examples of forums built utilizing PHPBB2.

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Lady Geeks Wanted for Employment

2005-11-27T16:21:00.000-08:00

Why More Women Should Consider a Career in Computer Programming by: V. Berba Velasco Jr., Ph.D.
Everyone knows that computer programming is a heavily male-dominated field. I think this is unfortunate. Over the years, I've come to conclude that there is a great deal that women can contribute to this field.
Why is computer programming regarded as a primarily masculine discipline? I think that in part, it's because men have a reputation for being more likely to tinker around with gadgets and gizmos. In part, it's also because computer science is supposedly a very math-oriented field, and men are supposedly more inclined toward mathematical disciplines.
(Incidentally, I know that such generalizations would offend certain people. I'd like to emphasize that this is not my intent at all, nor do I wish to make excessively broad generalizations about either gender. However, a multitude of psychological studies do claim that men have-on the average-a greater aptitude for mathematics and mechanics than women do, whereas women tend to perform better at linguistics and communication. These tendencies coincide well with my own observations, so for now, I'll assume that these studies are reasonable descriptions of gender differences.)
Anyway, people often claim that men make better programmers because they are more mathematically inclined. Personally, I disagree. It is true that computer science is very much mathematical in nature; however, computer programming often is not. It's true that a software developer should understand basic concepts such as binary computations, round-off error and Boolean logic; however, for most programming tasks, there is little need for calculus, group theory or other advanced mathematical topics. For this reason, I think that the importance of a strong mathematical aptitude is largely overblown.
Indeed, I think that linguistic skill is decidedly more important. I'd say that in years past, about 90% of the programmers that I encountered produced sloppy code-software that is clumsily structured, poorly documented and difficult to understand. I've also noticed a strong correlation between linguistic skill and the ability to generate clean, legible code. And why not? Computer languages are, after all, just that-languages. It's thus reasonable to expect that someone with a strong language aptitude will-on the average-produce cleaner, more understandable code than someone whose language skills are lackluster.
That is one reason why I wish more women would pursue a programming career. If it is indeed true that women have better language skills, then they are likely to perform well with computer languages as well. Again, this jibes well with my own experiences. I haven't known many female programmers, but most of the ones that I do know have produced some rather outstanding work. (To be fair, I've also known some lousy female programmers; however, these individuals had little passion for their field, and only entered it for the sake of a paycheck. That's a pretty good recipe for mediocrity, regardless of one's gender.)
Breaking into this field may not be easy. I'm sure that many women will have to combat the prejudiced notion that software development is a man's field, and that female programmers are mere dilettantes. Still, it is my earnest hope that more women will make their marks in this arena. If they have the right passion for this field, and if they understand their strengths, then I believe that they have much to offer.
About The Author
V. Berba Velasco Jr., Ph.D. is a senior electrical and software engineer at Cellular Technology Ltd (http://www.immunospot.com, http://www.elispot-analyzers.de, http://www.elispot.cn). He is proud to serve in a team where the importance of clean, high-quality programming is understood by all.

JavaScript and Search Engine Ranking

2005-11-26T10:27:00.000-08:00

Does Javascript Affect Ranking? by: Jon Ricerca
Almost all SEO's agree that using too much javascript can harm your rankings and might confuse the search engines. Is it true? We decided to answer this extremely simple question for the two leading search engines using a simple statistical analysis.
The methodology: I gathered the results of the queries that were naturally performed last month by myself and three associates using the two leading search engines and analyzed them. I had to visit each page and check the HTML source code to see if javascript was being used. I counted the number of pages found that utilized javascript for the first 8 rankings. The results for each of the two leading search engines were kept separate so that we could discover any differences between the two leading search engines for this factor.
The resulting graphs show the number of pages utilizing javascript for each ranking. The Y-axis shows the number of pages found utilizing javascript, while the X-axis shows rankings 1 through 8. Here are the graphs for each of the two leading search engines:
http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com/graphs/dcy02.jpg
http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com/graphs/dcg02.jpg
The result is very conclusive and very surprising. Both leading search engines rank pages that utilize javascript higher than pages that do not utilize javascript. This is another example of how the guesses of the SEO community are often just that... guesses... They have a 50% chance of being correct on any particular factor. In this case, the majority of the SEO community guessed wrong.
Notes:
1. There was no exercise to attempt to isolate different keywords. I merely took a random sampling of the queries performed by myself and three associates during the month.
Conclusion:
Pages which utilize javascript rank higher than pages that do not utilize javascript on both of the leading search engines.
This is merely a correlation study, so it cannot be determined from this study whether the leading search engines purposefully entertain this factor or not. The actual factors used may be far distant from the factor we studied, but the end result is that these search engines do, in fact, rank pages with javascript higher than pages without javascript in the study.
About The Author
Jon Ricerca is one of the leading researchers and authors of the Search Engine Ranking Factor (SERF) reports at SearchEngineGeek.com. For access to the other SERF reports, please visit: http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com

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Certification

2005-11-17T21:09:00.000-08:00

IT Certification Exams: 3 Most Popular Mistakes by: Divya Chopra
Parallel to the growth of the IT Industry, the value and importance of IT certification exams has also gain significant momentum. More and more people are pursuing these exams and organizations are also encouraging their employees to take these certifications.
But one needs to be educated enough to make a proper choice whether to take the certification or not. And if you decide to take, then it is even more important to be clear of what it gives you and takes from you to be a certified professional. Below is a brief discussion about 3 most common mistakes, people make while deciding for these certification exams.
1. Are you expecting too much?
People have lots of expectations about IT certification exams. Some of them are appropriate while many of them not. For e.g. if you believe that the certification itself 'will give you a job' then you are wrong. An IT certification exam like MCSE or CCNA, may 'help you get a job' but it alone can't give you a job.
Working professionals also expects huge raises on taking the certification exam. When they go to their boss or their organization, they get disappointed. A certification can definitely help you gain job stability or rise in career but don’t expect too much. It also depends upon the organization you are working for.
2. I should take what others are appearing for
Large number of people bases their decision of choosing the exam on what other people like friends and colleagues are taking. Also, many people take the decision based on which technology is hot.
Stop and think again. Is this the certification I really want to take it? Is this the one which is worth the effort for me? Your friend’s decision may be based on his/her organizational requirements but it may not be appropriate for you. The technology popular in the global market may not be popular in your country or your location. So, make sure that you are clear of the objective of your taking the certification. Don’t be in a hurry to make this very crucial decision.
3. Earning a certification costs very little
Majority of people grossly underestimate the effort required to earn a certification. They just add the cost of exam or the cost of training aids they plan to take. But they fail to estimate the cost of precious time which goes into the planning, preparation and finally taking the test. Also, people don’t calculate the cost if they fail to pass the exam in the first attempt.
Both of these factors cost a lot in terms of effort and money. Now, you know how to estimate the effort required.
Useful Resources: To help you decide, plan, prepare and pass an IT certification, follow the below list of useful links:
- IT Certification Exams List: http://certcities.com/certs/other/
- Salary Calculator: http://www.certmag.com/salarycalculator
- IT Certification Preparation Resources Center: http://www.certlobby.com/certification-resource-centers.html
- 2005 IT Certification Salary Survey: http://certification.about.com/od/selfstudy/l/bl_salarysurvey.htm
- 2005: Top 10 IT Certification Exams: http://certcities.com/editorial/features/story.asp?EditorialsID=86
About The Author
Divya Chopra is the founder of CertLobby. CertLobby (www.certlobby.com) ensures your success in various IT certification exams by providing you the best available resources to prepare for various exams. The selected list of Practice Exams, Articles & Tutorials, Trainings & Bootcamps, and Discussion Forums makes sure that you are using the best available options to be successful in your journey to be certified.

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Saving Time

2005-10-29T07:59:00.000-07:00

A Time-Saving Programming Tactic that Doesn’t Work by: V. Berba Velasco Jr., Ph.D.
Let’s say that you have a software project that’s under severe time pressure. Let’s say that this deadline is so tight that you already know it will involve many late nights of black coffee and frenetic programming. What can you do to make this process go faster?
I honestly don’t know, since the correct answer will depend on one’s individual circumstances. However, I can tell you how many programmers do respond under such circumstances. They decide to save time by skipping over the software planning and design phase, and immediately start coding away.
To an inexperienced or otherwise undisciplined programmer, this seems to make sense. After all, the finished product is what truly matters, right? The customer doesn’t care about flowcharts, class diagrams or software architectures. All they want is something that works.
It seems to make sense, but it’s a foolhardy approach. That way lies madness. We’ve all heard that an ounce of planning is worth a pound of cure, but in the world of software development, this adage is often forgotten.
If a real estate developer needs to get a house built quickly, does he save time by skipping over the architectural design phase? Does he decide to dispense with blueprints, and just start laying down concrete? Of course not. He knows that the results would be chaotic, and that work will progress more slowly without careful forethought and a concrete plan.
Yet that’s the approach that many people take when it comes to software. They decide to just start coding away, thinking that this makes the software development process more efficient. On fairly simple projects, this might work. On anything of moderate complexity though, such an approach is doomed to fail. Sure, you may save time at first. However, without a concrete software plan and a carefully considered design, problems are bound to catch up with you before long. Many of these problems won’t become clear until the testing phase comes around, and by then, it may be too late.
Sadly, such reckless thinking is often encouraged in the corporate world. Due to time constraints, a misguided manager may instruct his team to skip over the design work and just start hacking away. This makes the team seem focused and productive, but this strategy can wreak havoc on the project timeline. What’s more, the resultant code is often a tangled, poorly documented, chaotic mess. If this software must be maintained for years to come, then you have a recipe for disaster.
Mind you, I’m not saying that an elaborate design is always necessary. If time is short, then one might not have the luxury of an intricate software plan with exhaustive design documentation. However, one should at least have a general software architecture laid out—one which is detailed enough to make the software development process smoother and easier. Programmers rarely err on the side of over-planning, but they frequently fall into the trap of insufficient design detail. Don’t make this mistake, if you really want to save time.
About The Author
V. Berba Velasco Jr. is proud to work as a senior electrical and software engineer at Cellular Technology Ltd (http://www.immunospot.com, http://www.elispot-analyzers.de, http://www.elispot.cn) a biotechnology company that prides itself on its standards of excellence.

Software Articles

2005-10-22T10:29:00.000-07:00

I found several articles on software tech for you:

Ten Things I Learned the Hard Way: A Guide to Building Software by: Kara Brook Click Here

A Java Developer's Guide To Web Hosting by: David Heffelfinger Click Here

Podcasts Are Giving People A Voice: Future Internet 4 by: Jesse S. Somer Click Here

Great Deals!

2005-10-12T18:51:00.000-07:00

Check out these great deals I found at iSellSurplus.com:FREE Nero 6.6 Software Use Coupon Code: FREENERO Expires 10/19/2005 $4.99 Ground Shipping on All Orders - Use Coupon Code: 499SHIP - Expires 10/19/2005 10% off ALL Instock Motherboards - Use Coupon Code: MOBO10 Expires 10/19/2005

Your Website.

2005-10-12T16:33:00.000-07:00

I found several articles on websites that are interesting. One article on webpages gives tips on what to do and what not to do. Another article about sitemaps was interesting and useful to me also, and finally, an explaination of keyword usage useful to any webmaster. Any tips from you are welcome, there is no registration to this site needed. I also found a great deal on webhosting at Midphase Services, Inc. , you get a free domain and it is only $7.50 per month for your website(s). Check it out! :)