You’re not alone!

Who hasn’t surfed the web looking for information only to
have their session interrupted by those annoying pop-up
windows displaying everything from banner ads to newsletter
sign-up’s?

Though pop-up windows and other methods of influencing a
user’s online experiences originally had positive
intentions, they now seem only to annoy and manipulate
users at every turn.

For anyone who ever felt extremely irritated by online
advertising, the following advice should help.

** Pop-Up Ads **

Pop-up windows open new pages in your browser without your
permission and, sometimes, without your knowledge.

They slow down your surfing and cause confusion, even for
the most experienced surfer.

If you don’t want to see pop-up windows in your browser,
you should get a free pop-up blocker like the ones that
come with the Google tool bar (http:/ oolbar.google.com)
or the Alexa tool bar (http://download.alexa.com).

Either of these free tools “plug in” to your web browser
and will stop the majority of pop-ups, including the
situations where 5 or 10 pop-up windows fly up on your
screen and “attack” you all at once!

** Page Hijacking **

Have you ever surfed along peacefully when all of a sudden
you hit your back button and nothing happened?

Click-click-click – no matter how many times you hit the
button, it seemed your web browser had been “wheel locked”
to a certain site and no amount of effort allowed you to
back track.

This nasty little trick, otherwise know as “page hijacking”
involves inserting a small bit of code into a web page that
disables your browser’s “back” button.

To defeat this little nasty just click and hold the down
arrow next to your browser’s “back” button (on both
Internet Explorer and Netscape) to see a list of the last
few pages you’ve browsed.

Click on a link in the history list to free yourself and
resume surfing.

Careful though, you may not have been hijacked, you may
have been the victim of the next dirty trick.

** Fast Meta Refresh **

A predecessor of the pop-up window, the fast meta refresh
trick involves opening one page and almost instantly having
your browser redirected to another page.

This tactic, often used by search engine promoters, often
leads to wasted time on pages that have little relevance to
your search.

It may also entail opening five to ten additional windows,
frequently displaying offensive material such as
pornography.

Closing all your browser windows and starting over seems
the only sure-fire way to defeat this tactic. Hitting your
back button to retreat from the problem will usually just
cause more windows to appear.

Quick Tip: If you find yourself attacked by multiple pop-up
ads, hold down the key and hit the key
repeatedly, all the web browser windows on your screen will
disappear faster than new ones can pop open.

If you feel a website operator appears to openly abuse
visitors with annoying or unscrupulous tactics, feel free
to complain to their hosting company or the search engines.

By doing so you might save the next person a whole lot of
inconvenience.

About the Author

– Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the
co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how
to use fr-e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted
visitors to your website or affiliate links…http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com

If you have been using the internet for a while, you have probably typed into your browser something that starts with “http:” and ends with “.html”, hit “Go”, watched your modem lights flicker on and off, and a couple of seconds later you are magically looking at page of todays news or a page of pictures. Let’s try and take some of the magic away …

I thought about calling this article a “Geeks view of HTTP”; I am not going into the nitty gritty, but rather present a sketch of how a geek might see something like HTTP, how they can think something like HTTP is simple, and why they are not trying to make things complicated just for the sake of it!

–* Layers *–

The background to the sketch is that computers are full of layers. Programmers and designers think in layers, because organizing in layers makes it easier to build things.

You don’t need to know what or where the layers are in your computer, or where one starts and another stops, but it is helpful to remember that they are everywhere because that is how geeks organize things.

–* Specifications and Protocols *–

Specifications and Protocols are the things that are the mostly likely cause of all your computer frustrations … but they are a necessary evil. A wise man once said that any specification longer than one line will have ambiguities and be a source of problems.

There are lots of specifications and protocols in everyday life. An example of a protocol is when you are driving and see a red light you slow down and stop until it turns green. The specification of this protocol is the rule that is (probably) written down in the road-rule book. But we don’t need to read the road rules, it is just common sense to know to stop for a red light. Of course we all know the words computers and common sense don’t belong in the same sentence, and that is why there are so many computer specifications and they are generally so long and detailed.

A common sentiment is “you really need to spell things out for a computer”. I think this is a bit misleading. It isn’t the computer that needs things spelt out, it is the programmers and designers who build the higher layers who need to spell things out for other programmers creating other higher layers.

If one programmer ignores the rules of a specification, or doesn’t know there is a rule to follow, the result can be the same as if a driver runs a red light … a crash.

–* Connection *–

I have finished with the background of the sketch, and now I am going to draw a picture of a couple of boats in a bay, each with a two-way radio. I grew up around boats and always liked listening into the chatter on the two-way radios. The following conversations are from my memories of growing up, but the ideas are probably the same for cb and other forms of radio.

The first boat we will call “Rock n Roll” the second “Jazz”. There was only one channel, and I noticed that there was a protocol that everyone seemed to follow (except on Sunday afternoons) to keep things orderly. I don’t know if this protocol was written down anywhere as a set of specification rules or was just common sense. If Jazz wanted to call Rock n Roll they would wait until they heard the current conversation end with an “Over and Out”. They would wait a couple of seconds and then say something like “Rock n Roll, Rock n Roll, this is Jazz, do you read me, over”. If someone on Jazz was listening, they would say “Rock n Roll, this is Jazz, go ahead, over”. Bingo!, they have a connection.

The same kind of thing happens when you type an address into your web browser and hit “Go”. Your computer is just moving a bunch of numbers to the modem. To keep things simple, lets ignore that the modem is converting those numbers into sounds, and pretend that it is those numbers that are traveling out along your phone line. The reason sending numbers out along your phone can work, is that at the other end of the line is your ISP’s computer. This computer, and all the other computers on the internet, have layers written by programmers and designed by computer architects, that follow strict and detailed specifications of what to do with the numbers coming out of your computer.

This sounds complex (and the details are!), but it is just the same as the person on Rock n Roll knowing to wait until they heard “over and out” before calling Jazz, and saying “over” at the end of each sentence. If no one followed these protocols the channel would have been chaos, everyone trying to talk over everyone else. In the same way, if your computer and the other computers on the internet did not follow the specifications, the fact that your computer sends out some numbers over your phone line would be as useless as it sounds in the first place! … but, if the rules are followed, it works.

I am not going to go into the actual details of these specifications, but you have probably seen the acronyms; TCP/IP and DNS (and a heap more!)

–* HTTP *–

Lets say that someone on Rock n Roll knows there is a football almanac onboard Jazz which will confirm the score of a particular game and settle an argument onboard Rock n Roll. When Rock n Roll hears Jazz say “this is Jazz, go ahead, over” they know they have a connection to Jazz and can start a conversation. Rock n Roll might say “Jazz can you get me the score of the 1987 Superbowl, over”, and Jazz comes back with the answer finishing with an “over”. Rock n Roll might ask for another score, or might ask for the list of players, or might just say “thanks, over” and which point Jazz would say, “See ya, over and out”.

–* http://Jazz/SuperbowlScore1987 *–

That is really what HTTP is doing. The connection has been made at lower separate layers which are handling the numbers traveling out of your computer and moving them to the computer you are connecting to. HTTP is a fairly simple specification that allows one computer to ask another for some information (by naming it), and for that information to be returned. It doesn’t say anything about where that information comes from; as far as the HTTP specification is concerned, somebody could be sitting at the other computer typing in the response. However, usually the information that is asked for is the name of a file, which is a bunch of numbers on the hard drive. Those numbers get moved from the hard drive into memory into the modem and back to your computer.

Thats it! That is the essence of HTTP.

The point is, to see why a geek can think something like HTTP is simple you need to think in layers like a geek. Thinking in layers is not some kind of zen like discipline for them, they probably do it without even being aware of it as that is what their tools and languages encourage. If a programmer was writing an HTTP program they may write something like:

LowerLayer connectTo: “Jazz”.
LowerLayer send: “GET SuperbowlScore1987″.
LowerLayer out.

The programmer who writes this is not thinking about the details of how the connection is established or how the message is sent. They may have no idea! When they are working with HTTP they just assume the lower layer works. If they, or you, do want to understand the lower layer, then put HTTP out of your mind and read up on the TCP/IP and DNS layers and specifications (have fun, and have a good supply of coffee ready).

Similarly, they are not trying to understand how the information that is received is displayed so nicely in your browser. That is a higher layer and yet another specification (HTML).

I hope you enjoyed reading this article, it has taken an unusual perspective of HTTP! If you want to read up on the details there are a number of good articles on the web and the HTTP specification itself.

About the Author

Copyright 2003 Chris Inga
Author of the Nici Picture Downloader software
program for Windows that uses the HTTP protocol to download pictures from the
web.

If you are attending trade shows or reading technology news, you know that managed services in the SMB market is a hot topic right now. There are a number of solutions out there that offer a platform for building managed and monitoring services; with an emphasis on the SMB market. This is important because many are asking “How do I improve my financial stability, maintain market share, and increase the company’s valuation”?

If you have already started selling managed services of some type, you know that there is more to it than buying a monitoring tool, installing it in your office, and getting a junior sales person to make thousands of phone calls. There has to be a value proposition that is compelling to what has been called, “The post chasm buyer”. It has to actually meet a business need, provide a return on investment, or move a customer closer to some federal security requirement. Before you move forward, there are four key questions you need to ask:

1. What will you offer?

You know how most SMB companies don’t have time to keep up with their IT environment? Patches are often out of date, security is very weak, main business systems are not highly-available, backups have never been checked, and there is either one or just a part time person dedicated to keeping everything going (a major security risk in itself). Now you need a program that solves the problem. Its not monitoring, its much more.

You need a program. Your program consists of the everything you can do to help a manager or business owner forget about IT. Systems have to be assessed for areas of risk (security holes, points of failure, inadequate procedures and personnel, etc.). Then, your client’s infrastructure needs to be repaired, optimized, stabilized, and cleaned up from spyware, RATs (remote access trojans), and other security/availability problems. Finally, a program to keep things going must be put into place. This might include periodic planning meetings, reports that forecast disk space and bandwidth constraints, quarterly or monthly onsite proactive maintenance (some of this might be done remotely or through automated systems), and of course, 7 by 24 monitoring. The bottom line is, post chasm buyers are not going to buy monitoring; they are going to buy uptime.

2. How will you build it?

You might have something in place right now – perhaps you do it all yourself. But as Mack Hanan pointed out in his book “Consultative Selling”, a book written in 1972 on selling profit improvement, selling hours for dollars is always a commodity and will not build a long term profitable business. You need leverage.

Start by listing everything you could do for a company on a periodic basis and categorize it by system. You might have servers, workstations, network components, etc. Then you have administrative tasks that parallel these devices; Helpdesk services, planning and strategy, user awareness training, etc. I recommend that you add security as a separate section where we will list higher level security options in addition to items that will fall under each component. Now figure out what you can automate through tools that are out on the market today.

Once you have the offerings list, you will want to begin building on a platform that has many of these functions built right into it. Your core offering should include the monitoring functions, while also addressing security. In a recent workshop I conducted at the Level Platforms Headquarters in Ottawa, Peter Sandiford, CEO of Level Platforms made the comment that, “Solution providers need to stay on top of not only performance issues but also the exploding number of critical threats that can cripple their entire operations. The distinction between an MSP (Managed Service Provider) and an MSSP (Managed Security Services Provider) has disappeared.” In response, Peter’s organization has put together one complete integrated solution using a monthly subscription price; a pricing model that should help all of us begin the process without a large cash outlay.

3. Who will sell it?

This might be the number one question being asked right now. Selling technology to “post chasm buyers” is not an easy thing to do. In my seminars I always ask the group to help me measure the percentage of successful sales people. In addition, I am looking for the average time it takes a new sales person to get up to speed. In some cases I have found companies who have gone through dozens of sales people over the last three years, trying to find someone who can bring in enough gross profit to pay for themselves and offer a sound return on investment for the company. Bringing in a cold caller to find new customers that want their systems monitored may not be the best approach.

Michael Bosworth, in his book, Customer Centric Selling calls for Marketing to get involved here (or perhaps the person doing the marketing function – that might be you). The message needs to be built; He calls this “Sales ready messaging”. Michael Gerber, in his book eMyth Revisited, urges his readers to prototype the message – don’t leave it to each person’s interpretation and style. Once we have a proven message, there is a process to systematize it. In other words, create the message, get it right, and then use it as long as it works.

Once we have a message, we need to find every channel that can be used to sell the solution. At this point I recommend finding teachable people within your organization that will go out with you to learn the message. If there is a value to the service, and we are convinced the customers we deal with need it, then our task is to show them the need in a way that is so compelling that it will lead to a sale. Bosworth says, 3% of the people know they need something, 97% don’t but can be shown. Your engineers may be your best candidates at this point.

4. Will it be profitable?

It will be profitable if we price it right. Managed services is a different kind of solution because, depending on how it is built, we may not know the cost of goods sold (COGS) before we sell it. One way to approach this is by having a system in place to measure engineering time (others may involve pricing out certain types of reactive services outside of the contract until the cost model is developed). Some companies offer unlimited helpdesk support to the end-user customer, others offer a certain number of incidents. Some offer patches in the contract, troubleshooting onsite, etc. If you don’t track your costs you won’t know what the profit looks like. At the end of the day, you are looking for high margins on managed services. If you are not seeing three times your burden rate over the year, your margins are too thin on this offering.

About the Author

David Stelzl is the owner and founder of Stelzl Visionary Learning Concepts, Inc. working with manufacturers and resellers to create stronger partners through the adoption of emerging market business strategies. David specializes in professional coaching, workshops, and speaking engagements that help techology providers grow their business. Contact us at info@stelzl.us or visit www.stelzl.us to find out how to make your managed services offering successful.

Question: If I start a web site, won’t I get loads of spam?

Answer: Yes. But there are ways of cutting it down.

1. Hide your email address so it can’t be “harvested” by
spam robots. You can do this simply by replacing the @
symbol with the special Unicode symbol @ Browsers will
display it as normal. Robots that search the web for e-mail
addresses won’t be able to recognise it as an e-mail
address. Robots are getting more sophisticated – I “cloak”
or hide my complete address on every web page. Email
Scramble is an easy-to-use program that will produce the
code for you, ready to paste into your web page. Read more
details at
http://www.firstwebbuilder.co.uk/info/escramble.html

2. Set up filters in your email program. I KNOW I don’t want
a mortgage or a new credit card, as well as less pleasant
offerings, so I filter any messages containing those words
straight into my Trash. Check your email program’s help file
for instructions on how to filter out messages that you know
you don’t want.

3. If you get persistent spam from one source, send a copy
of the message to their email provider. Look at the “From”
address, and note what comes after the “@”. If you address
it to “abuse@” and the name you noted, with a short
description of the problem, they may be able to close the
account. But many spammers are using hidden and re-
directed accounts, so that the account name which actually
appears is nothing to do with them!

4. DON’T use your personal email address on your web site.If
you have a domain name, or paid hosting, you’re almost
certain to get e-mail addresses in the package. If you use
free hosting, many now provide an e-mail address to go with
your web site. If not, sign up for a web-based mail address.

5. DON’T use the “Reply to this email to be removed” link in
spam e-mail – all that does is tell them that your email
address is real! You could try a “bounce” program that sends
a false “bounce” (invalid email address) message – you’ll
find some at http://www.webattack.com

Dianne Reuby is co-author of the e-book “First Website
Builder”. Dianne created and runs the First Web Builder
site, dedicated to providing ebooks and tips for new
webmasters.
Visit FWB at http://firstwebbuilder.co.uk/
AOL

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains has full-featured manufacturing set of modules. In this small article we would like to give you highlights on what kinds of light customization you could deploy, before jumping into Microsoft Great Plains Manufacturing realm. Great Plains Manufacturing is targeted to discrete manufacturing clientele, which is opposite to process manufacturing – food processing, mining, including precious metals/gold/platina, oil and gas / chemicals / agriculture. Manufacturing from accounting stand point is moving inventory into work in progress and then into finished goods. And this is where we have fundamental difference between discrete and process manufacturing.
• Barcoding – this would be the help in allocating your inventory to the manufacturing activity. We saw clients who were asking about full-featured manufacturing, but later on we realized that they were envisioning barcode scanning people walking through their warehouse
• Bill of Materials – well if barcoding doesn’t do the job for you – you should look if Bill of Materials module will automate your operations. In Bill of Materials you could program light manufacturing. We saw the machinery manufacturing/assembly client in Chicago area who asked us to help them phase out Kiwell manufacturing, because of high annual maintenance cost. So – our opinion is if you are manufacturing client in the USA – you should probably first look at the outsourcing part of the business – if 90% of manufacturing of going to China – you should consider Great Plains Bill of Materials module implementation only with light manufacturing extensions
• ERP/ Capacity planning – well this is were you have to consider manufacturing suite. Great Plains Manufacturing has complete set of discrete manufacturing modules: Bill of Materials, ERP Capacity Planning, Cost Center.
• Reporting. In our opinion the best way to save software money is to replace highly priced module with similar reporting. Reporting is rather static, but in its prints outs it allows you to avoid expensive license fee (if you decide on SAP or Oracle Financials – this will triple your software expenses)

Good luck and you can always seek our help in customization, implementation, integration and support. Call us: 1-866-528-0577 or 1-630-961-5918, help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving Chicago, California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York, Australia, UK, Canada, Continental Europe, Russia and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK

RSS is a wonderful thing. For those that don’t know, it stands for Really Simple Syndication. Imagine the state of the internet today. Spam is everywhere, subscribing to a newsletter could potentially give your email out to thousands of spammers. Viruses are everywhere, and there are still surfers trying to find information. RSS eliminates the crap and focuses on the information. Really Simple Syndication.

Search engines love RSS. You can submit your site’s RSS feed to many different RSS directories. As robots crawl the web and come upon your feeds on many different sites, your website gets more hits, your rankings can increase, a lot can happen.

Just adding a link on your page that says RSS can do a lot for your traffic. If a person has an aggregator, they can easily view your RSS feed to find updated content. You could just offer a teaser in the feed, requiring the viewer to actually go to your site to view the whole article. Insta-hit!

There are hundreds if not thousands of internet success stories. A growing number of them are offering different secrets, topics about how to add and use RSS feeds to increase your website’s traffic.

In addition to all of these great traffic helps, there has been an increasing number of ads being placed in RSS feeds. Google ads are a very popular affiliate program which pays for every click. Some people now integrate their Google ads into the RSS feeds. That’s more exposure, more chances to get money, which is always great.

There are many reasons to use RSS feeds, and just about all of them are good. If you really need to boost your traffic, RSS is definitely the way to go. Tutorials about RSS will be popping up on this site soon.

About the Author

Ben is the webmaster of http://www.shadow-fox.net (The Shadow Fox Network). He has been working on the web for 3 years and concentrates on writing about websites.

Ever since I started doing free website reviews, there have been some common elements where many of the websites miss the mark. Usually this is because webmasters forget to recognise that websites are a multi-faceted thing – a bit like an onion – with layer on layer of interdependent elements. If you miss an element, then the integrity of the site is put at risk.

The outcome of this can mean:
Not being found by search engines
Pages not being indexed because no other page links to them
Not ranking as highly as you should,
Confused site visitors who leave,
The site is just’Too hard’
Potential customers do not develop trust with your site; so will not buy from you
Complete site rework required as a result of poor planning

Here are a couple of errors and suggested methods for improving them:

1.Not having a business model or plan in place.
Many sites develop out of an idea; most have no business model in place. Often website owners are just letting their websites grow without thought as to how or even if there should be a way to generate income, and if income is to be generated how this can best be achieved. But the business model need not be an income-generating model. You can also think of it as a ‘purpose and outcome’. If you are developing a site as a hobby, it still requires preplanning and thought.

2.Working within the limitations of what your host provides
Sometimes, especially when it is your first site, you may look at what your web host provides and build your site around the services provided by your web host. If the services on offer are limited, this may limit the scope of what you are trying to achieve. Better to plan your website and gather the online tools to let you achieve what you want to do to build a site that meets you goals.

3.Not being clear on page on what the site is about
All too often pages are very ambiguous about what the page is actually about. The worst situation is when the home page does not provide a clear statement of purpose. I do not mean a Mission Statement, or other formal statement, but at least a paragraph that clearly explains the reason or content of the page. This does not need to be several paragraphs, one paragraph or even a long sentence. It can just be a solid tagline. It can take some skill and time to do this properly, but the results are worth it as your visitors will be quickly reassured that they are in the right place and will be prepared to spend time delving deeper. An additional benefit is written with a good keyword density, this text provides an excellent chunk of data for search engines.

4.Poorly written pages
Not only does the visual aspect of your website influence how people perceive your business, so does the text. Poorly written sentences, spelling mistakes or typos all contrive to say, “The business behind this site has not been careful with this, it won’t be careful with your business either”. Impressions are important and this extends right down to every single word on every page. Spend time on writing and rewriting text. If you feel you cannot get it right, get help.

5.Not using formatting to make pages easier to read
An important aspect of the web that many people do not realise is the we read computer screens differently than we read text on paper. On screen people scan more than read. This means that your text needs to be formatted in such a way that a visitor can scan your page and gain a reasonably clear understanding of what you want to say. It allows people to move quickly to the section of text that has the information they want to read every word of. So be sure to use headings, sub-headings, bold and italic text and bullet points. As a rule of thumb, make the text on a web page 40% shorter than paper-based equivalents.

6.Talking to the masses, not the individual
While your website may be seen by hundreds or thousands of people every day, an important, yet commonly overlooked factor, is that your website is seen by that many individuals. They are not there as a mass, but are singular entities (even if simultaneously) who need to be regarded as an individual.

7.Being self centred
Website visitors are interested in what is in it for them, not what you can do. Saying “We have the largest team of technicians in the city” does no-one any favours. But saying “You will receive fast, professional service from our team of qualified technicians” is better. As a consumer I don’t care how big your team is, I just want my equipment fixed quickly by someone who knows what they’re doing.

8.Inconsistencies
I shudder when visiting a site and when I go to the second page of the site everything about the page is different – colour, text style. It’s even worse when I get to a third page and it is different again… It makes the task of building a website much easier if you settle on a template and add content to the template. This shows a higher degree of professionalism (or less amateurishness). Also on any page, use no more than 2 font styles.

9.Tenses
“We believe that we can best meet your needs”…..”I have three years experience”
The switch from I to we is very common. Also beware of could, can, should.

10.Pages too wide for the screen
Test it – 30% of people still use 800×600 screen resolutions. Use design tricks to enable pages to adjust to variable screen widths. Even worse is when pages don’t fit any resolution properly, and require just a small sideways scroll, but often enough to be required to read the text of the page.

These are all common mistakes that are easily fixed and ones that will help in building credibility and greater visitor satisfaction.

For a free website review visit our site at http://www.plusone.com.au/appraisal.php
Copyright 2005 – reprint permission is granted if article fully reproduced including author bio.

About the Author

Matt Eliason is CEO of PlusOne -> Marketing Media Communications – He has over six years internet marketing experience and also runs six successful e-commerce web sites. Take advantage of PlusOne’s free website appraisal offer at http://www.plusone.com.au/appraisal.php

It’s hard enough as it is these days to get organized and then remain that way for weeks and months down the road. We are all very busy people, some of us with 9-5 jobs and one hour commutes, and others of us busy making our lives at home work for us, with children at tow and a variety of chores to do as well as errands to run.
However, no matter how vastly different our lives may be, we all run into the same problems when dealing with organization, and that’s: KEEPING organized. need to develop a system that helps your PC remain free of clutter and organized. Granted, this task doesn’t come easy at first, but all it takes is a few extra steps each day, done consistently, that will maximize your results in the long run.

So, let’s say you have disorganized files all over your hard drive that you have difficulty finding when you need them. Your PC keeps catching viruses out of the blue. You don’t know what to do with all your spam mail. You have extra programs and freeware on your PC that you don’t know anything about, and even if you did, wouldn’t know what to do with them. Here are a few steps to help you get started in the right direction:

1.)Get rid of any unnecessary files or programs that are on your hard drive. This requires a little homework on your part. You’ll need to set aside the time to sit down and actually take a look at all of the files on your PC and delete what you don’t need. A few things to do periodically for optimal performance is to run a disk cleanup, use your system file checker, and defragment your hard drive.
2.)Organize all of your files and folders. Once you’ve deleted everything you don’t need, take a look at what’s left. Is there some way you could organize these in nice categorical folders, so that it’s easier to retrieve them later on? For example, you could create a few folders underneath your My Documents folder, and give then names such as: My Journal, My TV Shows, My Videos, My Business, My Songs, My JobFind, etc. You could then place all respective files underneath these neatly organized folders. You can also take advantage of many of the folders already supplied to you by Microsoft Windows, such as My Pictures and My Music.
3.)Install adware and spyware programs. I don’t think I need to stress how important it is to run antivirus and spyware software. I personally like McAffee because of its wide range of protection services, but Norton AntiVirus works great as well.
4.)Delete unnecessary shareware and freeware files. It’s very important to keep your hard drive as clean and organized as possible. Remember that shareware and freeware can potentially be harmful to your computer (viruses!), depending upon which source you received your shareware from.
5.)Delete unnecessary emails and take control of spam. By now, you know to have antivirus software installed on your PC. That’s a must, and will protect you if you should happen to open emails that have viruses attached to them. Before you open any of your emails, check to be sure you know the sender, and that there are no .zip or .exe attachments. Be very careful about opening files with attachments, especially from senders you don’t know.

Hope many of these tips will you help you move toward the right direction in de-cluttering your PC, now and for good.

–
Demetria Zinga is the founder and owner of www.faith-media.com, a technology and consulting firm which specializes in web design and hosting, graphics and print designs, internet marketing, and e-training. She is also the founder of www.christianladies.net, an interactive ezine, blog, and podcast for Christian women.

About the Author

Demetria Zinga is the founder and owner of www.faith-media.com, a technology and consulting firm which specializes in web design and hosting, graphics and print designs, internet marketing, and e-training. She is also the founder of www.christianladies.net, an interactive ezine, blog, and podcast for Christian women.

Now that you have got a basic understanding of the ins and outs of blogs, and some options available, you're probably wondering: How does this help my business? How does it help me to stand out?

1. Team Communication. Companies use blogs internally to communicate project status to stakeholders and managers. It beats clogging everybody's email with mass broadcasts. It allows these missives to be archived, indexed and easily searched.

2. Enrich Your Clients. You can easily link to articles and resources relevant to your readers and their needs. You can more easily attract experts to provide value-added content to your audience.

3. Get to Know Your Customer. Nobody buys from someone they don't know. Blogging allows you to demonstrate your expertise and point-of-view quickly and easily. In addition, blogs allow the customers to receive your updates in the format they choose.

4. Collaborate. You can create your own marketing buzz to drive attention and buyers to your products and services. Some companies use internal blogs to report on projects or to track work groups distributed around the world.

5. Research and Development. Weblogs are the perfect forum to test out new ideas and receive instant feedback. You can allow others to see how you develop your products and services, and at the same time, they can tell you how best to serve them.

6. Go Global. Blogs, like other online media, allow you to take your business and ideas to a global market. Translation services are getting better every day, allowing more people to read online content in different languages. I've helped bloggers from New York to New Zealand, from Indiana to India.

7. Hidden Entrance to the Press. Journalists are busier than ever and blogs provide a virtual directory of pundits on any topic. You and your company can be the content expert they're looking for. Furthermore, if your company is talked about in the blogosphere it could end up using that exposure as a back door to the press.

8. Get Published. Publishers are turning to blogs to find new writing talent. Blogs can give a publisher a taste of your writing style as well as a sample of your depth of knowledge. Content specific blogs show a a commitment to a certain topic or subject matter.

9. Write your book. Let your readers help you write your latest book or article. Post chapters or ideas, then let readers help you in researching, testing and suggesting ideas. Or, use a blog after your book is published to update the material or to answer questions from readers.

10. Success Stories. Invite clients to blog about their successes with your products and services – it's like a living testimonial that never ends. As clients share their experiences, your prospects can see first-hand how you can help them, too.

Copyright © 2005 Andy Wibbels

About Andy: Andy Wibbels is a blogging evangelist and creator of the Easy Bake Weblogs seminar that has helped hundreds of small businesses all over the world leverage blogs and RSS news feeds to increase profits and save time. You can download his free special report on business and blogs at http://easybakeweblogs.com/.

NanotechnologyInvestment.com Reports: Revolutionary Nanotechnology Developments Part 2 – Innovations in Renewable Energy and Homeland Defense Attributable to Nanotech

Nanotechnology developments spearheading new initiatives at Ford Motor Company and Boeing.

Brian Eriksen Noer reports for www.NanotechnologyInvestment.com November 2005

In the second of a two part report NanotechnologyInvestment.com details the current advancements in the science of Nanotechnology, and specifically as those innovations impact diverse sectors such as Renewable Energy and Homeland Defense. The emerging science is being embraced by everyone from giant corporations like Ford and Boeing, to smaller manufacturing firms like solar energy technology developer XsunX (OTCBB: XSNX). To read the full text of Part 1 of this report, please click here: http://www.investorideas.com/Companies/Nanotechnology/Articles/Dr iving_Force_Behind.asp

In part 2, further sector perspectives are revealed from industry participants: John Ginder, Acting Manager of the Physical and Environmental Sciences Department with Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F); John Belk, Nanotechnologist with Boeing; Tom Djokovich, CEO of solar technology developer XsunX, Inc. (OTCBB: XSNX); and NanoDynamics Inc. CEO, Keith Blakely.

Government and Corporate Funding

As nanotechnology redefines the landscape of many different industries, investors should be acutely aware of which companies and organizations are in receipt of government or private funding to drive their research and manufacturing activities. Corporate nanotech R&D expenditure in 2005 (exclusive of government funding) is expected to total $1.8 billion in the U.S., $1.1 billion in Japan, $296 million in Germany, and $213 million in South Korea.

Earlier this year (January 2005) the Governor of New York, George Pataki announced that corporate commitments amounting to $2.7bn had been offered to New York State by 11 companies interested in semiconductor and nanotechnology research and development infrastructure. The companies who offered this funding included IBM, Sony, Toshiba, Samsung, (chip equipment manufacturer) ASML and a consortium of nanoelectronics equipment suppliers.

Following Pataki’s announcement earlier in the year, in late September, IBM and Applied Materials Inc. launched their $300m partnership to develop new microchip technologies. The partnership would incorporate 80 researchers working at Albany Nanotech (a research facility affiliated with the State University of New York – funded both by the government and the private sector).

The technologies developed by this partnership are expected to generate applications within the fields of blood testing; DNA sequencing; drug development and delivery; telecommunications; artificial intelligence software; and sensors for environmental, energy and defense applications.

Also in late September the Canadian government announced that they would be funding $5.5m worth of research in India – an amount that will be matched by the Indian government. The project, part of Canada’s International Science and Technology Partnership Program (formed to develop research alliances and to commercialize innovative technologies with India, China, Brazil and Israel) aims to focus on the areas of biotechnology; nanotechnology; information and communication technology; sustainable energy and disaster management.

A technology like nanotech, which is anticipated to introduce widespread changes and developments will almost certainly also cause societal changes. The National Science Foundation has granted $6.2m to Arizona State University’s Center for Nanotechnology in order to study and anticipate the societal, ethical, and unintended consequences these technological advances could have. The Center will also to study how societal demands will direct and dictate research efforts. The effects that will be studied include: privacy and security, human identity and enhancement, potential use of nanotech by terrorists, environmental and health risks, and societal and economic equity.

Market Drivers

NanoDynamics Inc. CEO, Keith Blakely believes that the prospects for incorporating nanotechnology and nanomaterials into industrial and consumer products, along with significant use of these materials in health care (from diagnostics and imaging to antimicrobial surfaces and drug delivery) and in energy applications, are significant.

“The continued reliance upon oil – a finite resource for energy – will drive the research and applications of nanotechnology in batteries, thermoelectrics, photovoltaics, hydrogen storage, and fuel cells. Similarly, we believe that the need for clean water around the world will drive further investigation and utilization of nanotechnology based filtration, purification, remediation, and desalination processes and systems. And, of course, the incessant demand for improvements in personal health and well-being will provide adequate incentives to companies to develop improved materials and processes using nanotechnology for a broad range of health care applications.”

Solar Technology Developments

Tom Djokovich, CEO of solar technology developer XsunX, Inc. (OTCBB: XSNX) agreed with Blakely that burgeoning global energy demands will help to drive nanotechnology development towards the field of renewable energy.

“There are exciting new opportunities opening up in the solar energy markets for products that deliver performance characteristics such as increased conversion efficiencies, reduced costs per watt, flexibility of materials, light weight cell structures, the use of more readily available materials, and designs allowing the use of solar cells in common building materials to promote wide scale use of solar technologies,” said Mr. Djokovich. “By manipulating materials at the nano scale level to deliver the necessary performance requirements we are helping to move the solar energy markets towards the next generation of product applications and costs savings.”

“The solar energy market is currently dominated by the use of crystalline wafers accounting for over 90% of the market,” Djokovich continued. “Largely through enormous expenditures in manufacturing infrastructure of crystalline cells, costs have been reduced, but there is a shortage of available materials to fill the growth in demand and few if any further costs reducing opportunities may be available to this industry. The general market consensus is that only thin film technologies can provide the route to lower costs.”

“At XsunX we have focused on the development of new types of thin film technologies that provide performance characteristics to address cost reduction and application opportunities,” said Mr. Djokovich. “Our Power Glass® transparent thin film cell is in development for applications in architectural glass construction, and we’re launching a new development program aimed at the development of high performance thin film cells using nano scale manufacturing methods.”

“We are developing a new patent pending solar cell structure that sandwiches the use of two separate materials, nano-crystalline Silicon (nc-Si:H) and amorphous Silicon (a-Si:H), in a thin film structure that employs the use of 1/400th the materials used in conventional silicon wafer designs. These extremely small structures are combined to form a 4 terminal solar cell structure that holds a promising opportunity of delivering the performance characteristics of crystalline wafer cells at a fraction of the cost.”

Ford’s Nanotech Focus

In part 1 of this report John Ginder (Acting Manager of the Physical and Environmental Sciences Department with Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F)) and John Belk (Nanotechnologist with Boeing) discussed their plans to form an alliance with Northwestern University to research and develop commercial nanotechnology applications. The project will focus on clean fuel burning hybrid cars, as well as developments in specialty metals, thermal materials, coatings and sensors.

In part 2 of this report, Ginder elaborated upon his earlier comments that in some cases new inventions will be required to enable developments in propulsion technology: hybrid vehicles; clean diesel technology; hydrogen powered vehicles; and fuel cells. Ginder is optimistic that many of those inventions will come to fruition through the areas of nanostructured materials.

Specific innovations that are required include: battery electrodes, battery materials, fuel cell electrodes, hydrogen storage materials, filters for particulates in diesel exhausts, new catalytic materials for use in Ford’s existing products as well as future propulsion technologies. “Ford believes that the impact on our products is going to be huge,” said Ginder. “We are not quite sure where the biggest impacts are going to be just yet, but we know what the general areas are going to be.”

Another research focus for the alliance will be in the area of biofuels. “Right now,” said Ginder, “we do not know the product’s impact. But what we foresee is a suite of diverse technologies: it is not going to be all hybrid, all diesel, or all hydrogen, but we project that in 30 years a range of technologies will each contribute some portion of the total, resulting in the reduction of our dependence on hydrocarbon or fossil fuels.”

“Obviously there is going to be a phasing in of these technologies, but I think the more conventional technologies will be the ones to be utilized first.” Ginder believes that the clean diesel technology is first on the horizon, “it is mandated by regulation and it is the closest to what we already know how to do. We can expect to see this technology commercially available later this decade. In parallel, we have the development of hybrid vehicles and there is opportunity there for those of us that work in research to try to improve battery performance, and that would certainly help that sector’s overall picture.”

According to Ginder, diesels and hybrids will be commercially available in the relative near term and then farther out: hydrogen. “We have all read estimates on when fuel cells will become practical, but there are a lot of inventions required to make them viable. In fact, we are just completing our five-city, 30-car program to conduct real-world testing of fuel cell technology. The hydrogen internal combustion engine is perhaps the easiest innovation to implement, as it involves relatively conventional technologies.”

Boeing’s Hopes for Nanotechnology

In part two of this report, John Belk (Nanotechnologist with Boeing) also furthered his comments upon Ford and Boeing’s nanotechnology alliance with Northwestern University, specifically upon the reasons for the choice of Northwestern University as the scholastic partner of choice in this venture.

Northwestern University received one of the nation’s first nanotechnology centers and has been awarded hundreds of millions of dollars of nanotechnology-related funding. Ford and Boeing will be able to leverage this world-class resource through the Alliance while broadening both firms’ overall relationship with the University. “We have called this Alliance a ‘no brainer’ several times internally,” said Belk, “there is no doubt that this Alliance is beneficial for Boeing and as well as for our relationship with Ford and the students at Northwestern University.

Belk believes that the most interesting new applications in the renewable energy sector are in the area of solar cell. “Researchers have developed methods to lower costs and increase efficiency, bringing the advantages of exotic material cells closer to the price point of cells made with the more common inexpensive materials. There is a lot of forthcoming innovation within the domain of solar panels – I don’t know when it will become commercially available, but the benefit is a much lower cost than present technologies represent. I suspect that we are going to be very pleased in the next few years with discoveries in the area of solar energy research.”

Nanotech in defense

NanoDynamics Inc. has developed and demonstrated the first truly portable solid oxide fuel cell for combat soldier use, which is capable of running on a conventional fuel, such as propane. “The unusual performance and portability is the result of the carefully engineered integration and use of nanomaterials in the cell and reformer,” explained CEO Blakely. “Additionally, we are actively working on the application of nanomaterials in bulk thermoelectric materials, photovoltaic thin films, and thin film batteries. We are addressing the need for affordable, high quality, and precisely controlled metal, ceramic, and carbon based nanomaterials that can be supplied on a commercial scale.”

JMAR Technologies, Inc. (JMAR) announced on October 13th that they have been awarded a Phase I SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) grant from the U.S. Army. The grant will be utilized to support JMAR’s R&D for a compact laser system, capable of real time spectrochemical hazard analysis in the field – in layman’s terms: detecting hazardous materials from a safe, remote location. This new research will be based upon the company’s existing BriteLight dual-pulse laser technology, which is planned to be modified to provide performance, weight, and cost advantages of a field portable detection system. The BriteLight technology also features applications in nanotech scale fabrication, microscopy and soft X-ray source generation.

Brian Noer

Brian Noer has a degree in Business and Economics from the University of Western, Ontario. His career in the financial markets spans sixteen years and several continents, including: Manager with The Bank of Montreal in Canada, Associate Analyst with the structured finance group at Moody’s Investor Services in the UK, and Editor for several financial trade magazines in the UK for both Thomson Financial Publishing and Euromoney PLC (titles include Thomson’s trade magazines “The International Securitisation Report”, and “Capital Market Strategies”, and Euromoney’s “Asset Finance International”). Brian is the Writer, Editor and Research Associate for the InvestorIdeas.com portal team.

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