Techies Dwell

sharing links with friends

2010-02-01T00:42:00.000-08:00

Mento is for sharing links with friends: Smarter than email overload, more permanent than IM, and always just one click away.Mento is a button for your browser and a place for saving your shared links.

Send links to any email address, Facebook friends and Twitter contacts,and use groups and tags for exchanging links with more people.Mento works best with Firefox and certainly supports Safari and Internet Explorer, too.Mento tells you when friends clicked on your links and gave you feedback ... because sharing a link is only the start of a conversation.No more asking "Did you see the link I sent last week?"
Instead you'll say: "That was a great video, wasn't it?" Only you can see the clicks on your links; and only your friends can see when you clicked theirs. That means: No one can see that you clicked a link except for your friend who posted it.

Add screenshots to the links you're sharing:
select any part of the page and make your links stand out.

Also share videos and images from YouTube, Flickr and many other sites.
Your stream of links will look great!

Adding screenshots on Mento works with Firefox on Windows or Mac.

Automatically publish your links with the services you already use so that even more friends will see and interact with them.

Mento works with

Facebook
FriendFeed
Tumblr
Twitter
del.icio.us
Ma.gnolia

10 tweaks to make Windows 7 even better

2010-02-01T00:21:00.000-08:00

1: Get Quick Launch back

I liked the new Windows 7 taskbar a lot — but something was missing. Yes, you can pin programs to the Start menu now, and I do. But I also liked the Quick Launch bar, where I could put icons for programs I use a little less frequently but often enough that I don’t want to have to open the Start menu to get to them. Quick Launch is missing in Windows 7, but there is a way to bring it back. You’ll find step by step instructions with screenshots in this tutorial.
Once you have the Quick Launch bar on your taskbar, you can drag programs to it as you did in Vista. See my Quick Launch bar in Figure A, on the right side of the taskbar next to the notification area.

Figure A

You can get the Quick Launch bar back in Windows 7.

2: Bring back the Vista taskbar look and behavior

Even though I like the new taskbar, I know some people don’t. They’d prefer to have the old Vista/XP look and behavior, where the taskbar uses less screen space. If you’re in that camp, it’s easy to change the taskbar so it will be similar to the old look:

Right-click the Start button and select Properties.
Click the Taskbar tab.
Select the Use Small Icons check box and click Apply.

If you don’t like the way Windows 7 combines icons for all instances of an application, you can change that, too. On the same tab, click the down arrow on the Taskbar Buttons box and select Combine When Taskbar Is Full.
This dialog box also allows you to select the taskbar location on the screen (bottom, top, left, or right), customize which icons appear in the notification area (system tray), and decide whether to temporarily minimize all open windows when you place your mouse on the far end (or bottom) of the taskbar (Desktop Preview).

3: Put different wallpapers on multiple monitors

If you’re using Windows 7 with two or more monitors, you’ll be pleased to find that multi-monitor support has been improved. One thing I really like about Windows 7 is that when I connect to it via Remote Desktop from another computer, it doesn’t rearrange all my icons as Vista often did with multiple monitors. However, one thing Microsoft didn’t build into Win 7 that some of us were hoping for is the ability to set different wallpapers on different monitors.
In XP and Vista, I used UltraMon to do that, but it costs $40. In a tough economy, many people don’t want to spend that much for a program of that kind. Besides, based on what I read in the forums, it doesn’t yet work reliably on Windows 7. Luckily, I was able to hunt down another application called DisplayFusion. The free version gives you multiple wallpaper support, and the paid version, which costs $20 less than UltraMon, gives you multiple taskbars and window management features. I’ve installed it on two Windows 7 computers and it works great. As you can see in Figure B, you can configure a variety of settings.

Figure B

You can use the free DisplayFusion application to put different wallpapers on each monitor.

4: Turn off Aero Snap

A new feature in Windows 7 is Aero Snap, which causes your application windows to automatically snap into a preconfigured place when you move them to the edges of the screen. Drag a window to the far right, and it will size itself to fill exactly half the screen. Drag it to the top corner and it will maximize to fill the whole screen. This can be handy, but it can also be annoying if you prefer that your windows stay the size you made them. Luckily, you can easily turn Snap off. Here’s how:

Click Start and select Control Panel.
Click Ease of Access Center.
Click Make the Mouse Easier to Use.
Select the Prevent Windows From Being Automatically Arranged When Moved To The Edge Of The Screen check box and click OK.

5: Display Control Panel applets with small icons

By default, the Windows 7 Control Panel shows the Category view (Figure C), similar to the default in Windows Vista.

Figure C

The default Control Panel view in Windows 7 is Category.

You can easily change to a more classic view by clicking All Control Panel Items at the bottom of the categories list, but that gives you a list of the items represented by large icons, as shown in Figure D.

Figure D

Clicking All Control Panel Items gives you a view of the applets with large icons.

What if you’d like to display the items with small icons so more of them will fit in the same space? Your first thought might be to click the View menu on the taskbar, but at least in the public beta (build 7000), the icon size choices are all grayed out. However, there’s a little trick: Right-click on an empty space in the window, and you’ll get a context menu from which you can pick View Small Icons. Selecting this command will allow you to display many more items in the same size window, as shown in Figure E.

Figure E

You can display Control Panel items with small icons to fit more into the same space.

6: Format the text in sticky notes

Another new feature in Windows 7 is the built-in Sticky Notes application. You’ll find it on the Start menu. You’ve probably already discovered that you can change the color of notes by right-clicking and selecting a new color. You may also have figured out that you can use the Ctrl + B and Ctrl + I shortcuts to format the text as bold or italic. But did you know that you can make bulleted and numbered lists in your sticky notes, and increase or decrease the text size? Here are some more handy keyboard shortcuts that work within sticky notes:

Ctrl + Shift + L (once): Bulleted list
Ctrl + Shift + L (twice): Numbered list
Ctrl + Shift + >: Increase text size
Ctrl + Shift + <: Decrease text size
Ctrl + U: Underline
Ctrl + T: Strikethrough

Figure F shows an example of how the shortcuts can be used to format text in sticky notes.

Figure F

You can format the text within Windows 7’s sticky notes with keyboard shortcuts.

7: Turn off Windows features

Microsoft gives you much more flexibility with Windows 7, allowing you to turn off Windows components — such as Internet Explorer, Windows Search, the Gadget platform, and media features — that you couldn’t disable in earlier versions of Windows. Here’s how:

Click Start | Control Panel and select Programs And Features.
In the left pane, click Turn Windows Features On Or Off.
Simply select or deselect the check boxes to enable or disable the various Windows features, as shown in Figure G, then click OK.

Figure G

You can easily turn Windows features on or off in Windows 7.

8: Make Adobe Reader display PDFs properly

If you’ve installed Adobe Reader in Windows 7, you may notice that sometimes when you try to open a PDF file, you get an error message and the file doesn’t open. It seems Adobe doesn’t play well with IE 8 in Windows 7 and won’t open the files (or at least won’t open some of them) in the browser.
If you set Adobe not to display PDFs in the browser, it will open them without any problems. Here’s how to configure that:

Open Adobe Reader.
Click Edit | Preferences.
Click Internet in the left Categories pane.
Under Web Browser Options, deselect the Display PDF In Browser check box and click OK.

9: Use the new keyboard shortcuts

If you’re a fast typist and hate having to move your hands from the keyboard to the mouse, you’ll be happy to know that Windows 7 provides new shortcut key combos to let you do more without mousing. Here are a few to try out:

Windows + E will open a new Explorer window.
In Windows Explorer, press Alt + P to turn the preview pane on.
Windows + P opens the Display Switcher applet.
Windows + Spacebar shows the desktop (makes active windows transparent).
Windows Logo Key + Plus (+) key turns on the Magnifier to zoom in on the desktop. Windows Logo key + Minus (-) key zooms back out.
Ctrl + clicking an icon in the taskbar toggles between the open instances of the program.
Windows Logo key + Left or Right Arrow key will shift the active window to the left or right side of the screen and make it fill half the screen (same as dragging the window to the left or right edge of the screen but without using the mouse).
Windows Logo key + Shift + Left or Right Arrow key (with multiple monitors) will move the window to the left or right monitor.

10: Install Windows 7 from a USB thumb drive

If you’re so impressed with Windows 7 on your desktop computer that you want to install it on your laptop, what do you do if the laptop is an ultra compact that doesn’t have a DVD drive? Of course, you could connect a USB DVD drive, if you have one. Or you could put the installation files on a network drive and connect to it over the network.
But here’s another option that works surprisingly well: Copy the contents of the Windows 7 ISO image to a 4 GB or larger USB thumb drive (or a flash memory card, if the laptop has a built-in reader). Installing the OS this way is likely to be faster than using a DVD.

Google may not support for IE6

2010-02-01T00:12:00.000-08:00

Google has begun to phase out support for Internet Explorer 6, the browser identified as the weak link in a cyber attack on the search engine.

The firm said from 1 March some of its services, such as Google Docs, would not work "properly" with the browser.
It recommended individuals and firms upgrade "as soon as possible".
Google threatened to withdraw from the Chinese market following the "sophisticated and targeted" attacks, which it said originated in China.
Hackers used a flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser to target the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

'Key functionality'
Following Google's revelations, the French and German governments advised their citizens to switch to a different browser until the hole had been closed.
Microsoft reacted by quickly updating the browser, nearly three weeks ahead of its regular security update.
However, Google has now said it is going to phase out support for the browser "starting with Google Docs and Google Sites".
It said that as a result, some "key functionality" of the applications would not work when used with IE6.
Google Docs is the firm's answer to products such as Microsoft Office, whilst Google Sites allows people to create web pages.
"The web has evolved in the last ten years, from simple text pages to rich, interactive applications including video and voice," wrote Google's Rajen Sheth in a blog post.
"Unfortunately, very old browsers cannot run many of these new features effectively."
Threat downplayed
Around 20% of web users still use the nine-year old browser, including many UK government departments.
But many developers want to see the browser phased out as soon as possible.
The online campaign ie6nomore, supported by more than 70 web firms, says that because the browser does not support modern web standards it restricts what developers can do and is "holding the web back".
Microsoft has said that it will support the browser until 2014.
Microsoft has released a fix for Internet Explorer and recommended that customers install the update as soon as possible or update to the latest version of the web browser for "improved security".
Microsoft normally issues patches monthly but the high-profile nature of the attacks led it to act more quickly.
Market share
The UK government played down the threat and said there was "no evidence that moving from the latest fully patched versions of Internet Explorer to other browsers will make users more secure".
However, Microsoft took the unusual step of patching the hole nearly three weeks ahead of its regular security update.
The new patch is available via the Microsoft Update site and will also be fed out to those who have their machines set to update automatically. All versions of Internet Explorer will receive the update.
Microsoft has admitted that it has known about the vulnerability "since early September" 2009 and had planned to patch it in February.
The bad publicity has allowed rivals such as Firefox to gain market share.
According to web analytics company StatCounter, Firefox is now a close second to Internet Explorer (IE) in Europe, with 40% of the market compared to Microsoft's 45% share.
In some markets, including Germany and Austria, Firefox has overtaken IE, the firm said.
Mozilla, the foundation behind Firefox, has just released the latest version (3.6) of the open-source browser

Tips for SEO Optimization?

2010-01-31T23:17:00.000-08:00

Step 1: Figure out what keywords you want to optimize for.
It is important to figure out which keywords to optimize for before you begin your SEO optimization efforts. You will want to pick out two or three keyword phrases that you want your website to rank high for. You can find great keywords by using Google AdWords: Keyword Tool. Just search Google for google keyword tool and enter in the keywords that you are thinking about optimizing for and this program will show you the previous months search volume for those specific keywords. This SEO tool will even provide you with alternative synonymous keywords that you can choose from. I recommend choosing a keyword phrase that has had at least 10,000 searches in the last month. I know you may be thinking why not optimize for the
keyword that has the most searches during the month? Well, the problem with this strategy is that the more searches that keyword phrase gets, the more competitors there are who will be optimizing for them. The more competitors, the harder it will be to rank for those specific keywords. This is why I suggest choosing to optimize for a less competitive keyword phrase at first. Once you have succeeded with this less competitive keyword phrase, your traffic will increase, thus increasing your Google merit, and in turn making it easier for you to rank well for more competitive keywords later.
Step 2: Analyze Your Competitors On-page Optimization.

You will want to go to Google and do a search for your keyword terms. Make sure you are not logged into Google when you do this search, as it may change the results. On the search results page you will want to analyze your main competitors sites (i.e. the top 5 results). The following is a step by step guide of how to perform this analysis:
Check the page rank of the webpage that you are trying to outrank. You can find several different page rank checker tools by going to Google and searching for page rank checker. If the page rank of the top 5 websites is below a page rank 5, you may have a good chance of out optimizing them. If the page rank is 6 or above you might want to try optimizing for a different set of keywords, as a page rank of 6 and up is VERY good and will be hard to beat.
Go to the website that is ranking high for your keywords, start from site 1 and work your way down through site 5. Once on the page, click the view button at the top of your browser and then click Page Source. When this new screen pops up click the edit button and then click find.
Search for the page's title tags. Once you find them, see if the keywords you are analyzing are included in the competitor's title. If they are, that's ok; you can add them to your page title as well.
Search for h1. You are looking to see if the site has your targeted keywords in their h1 tags. You may want to try to search for h2 and h3 tags as well. If they don't have the keywords in the h1 tag this is an advantage to you because you can add them to your header tag.
Now search the page for your keywords. You will want to see how many times the webpage has the keywords listed on it. Make sure to analyze how many times the keywords are listed on the page in regular font, as well as, bold, italics and underlined. Make sure your write all this information down so you can one up your competitor with your on page SEO optimization.
Check to see if the keywords are listed in the first 25 words of the page and the last 25 words of the page.

Your on page SEO optimization strategy:

You will want to make sure that your targeted keywords are listed in your title in a way that reads naturally.
You will want to use your main keyword phrase in your website description 2 times also in a way that sounds natural.
You will want to include your targeted keywords in your Meta tags.
You will want to add your main targeted keywords in h1 tags at the top of your web page.
Make sure to list your keywords once in each paragraph on your site. Also, try and use the keywords once in italics, once in bold, and once underlined throughout the page. - At most, only use your keywords once each paragraph. You don't want to use the keywords too many times as this can result in a negative effect on your SERPS. Google will see this ploy as keyword stuffing.
Try to make it so your main keywords are listed in the first 25 words of your webpage and the last 25 words of your site. A trick I use to make sure my keywords are in the last 25 words of my site is by adding them to the copyright portion at the bottom of my pages.

Now, I want to make it clear that on page optimization is only a VERY small factor in your SEO optimization campaign. On page optimization will only help your SERPS if you correctly conquer your off page optimization efforts, just on page optimizing will not dramatically increase your search position.
Step 3: Analyze Your Competitors Off page Optimization.
Now you will want to check the off page optimization tactics that your competitors are using.
To do this you will want to analyze the number and quality of backlinks that are linking to the your competitor's site. You can search for the number of backlinks a website has by using Yahoo as an SEO tool. Go to yahoo.com and search using this format: Link:http:// www. yourcompetitorswebsite.com. This search will show you how many of the websites pages are indexed by Google, giving you a better idea of how often Google visits the site, as well as, the number of in links or backlinks that the site has pointing to it.
Now for the time consuming part; you will want to determine the quality of the links that are linking back to this site. Here is a list of some things you will want to look at when determining the quality of the sites backlinks:

The Page rank of the page linking to the site (i.e.www. website.com/pagelinkingtowebsite).
The page rank of the main URL of the page linking to the site.
How many times the page uses the targeted keywords in:
The title of the page (i.e. in between the title tags)
In any h1, h2, or h3 tags - In the main body of the page
How many times the keyword shows up on the page in regular font, as well as, in bold, italics, and underlined.

After analyzing the backlinks of the top five competitors using the mentioned SEO Tools, you will want to choose some of the same high quality backlinks that are linking to your competitor's site that have the correct characteristics (i.e. correct category, onpage keywords, etc.) that will make an impact on your SERPS.
Once you have chosen your targeted link partners you will want get there whois information i.e. who owns the website. You can find this information by going to whois.com and doing a search using the site address.
Once you have the webmasters email, you will want to write them a letter asking them if they might consider exchanging links with you. Make sure that you already have their site link on your website. Provide them the address where they can see their link. Give them some kind of incentive for linking back to you. Be creative, and try to make sure the letter sounds somewhat personalized. There is nothing a webmaster hates more than receiving a letter that is painfully generic.
I will say it again, as it is VERY important. Give the webmaster a reason to link back to you. Emphasize What's in it for them if they link to you (i.e. you believe your site will be a great resource for their users or something of that nature). At first you will get more no's than yes's but don't get discouraged, this is the case for many new web owners and it will get easier as your website ages.
Now, I know this sounds like A LOT to analyze manually, so for anyone that is interested, I would like to introduce an amazing SEO tool that can completely automate this process for you.
This program will provide you with everything you need to analyze your competitors backlinks and facilitate your link building campaign.
Here is a list of some of the options this SEO Tool has to offer:
You can analyze the backlinks of any site. This analysis will show you:

You can choose to search for prospective backlink partners using different criteria including: using a competitors website to find links, using a keyword to find links, finding link directories with a specific category, and more.

All of the links pointing to the site, with the exact address of where you can find the link.
The PR of the page the link is on - The anchor text used - If the link is do follow or no follow
If the site still has the backlink, sometimes links will show up (especially in the yahoo search) on pages that no longer house the website you are analyzing. This happens because the site may have had the backlink when it was last crawled by Google, but as of right now the link is no longer on the page.
It will analyze the density of the main keywords used throughout the pages that house the backlinks.
It gives you the ability to add your own keywords that you want to analyze the backlinks for, the keywords you choose will be analyzed for:

* Prominence of the word on the webpage housing the link
* Link density
* Link prominence
* Keywords in h1 & h2 tags
* Keywords in the Meta tags

You can do a search that will tell you how many of your pages or a competitors pages are I indexed in the different search engines, indicating how often the Google bot visits the site.
You can do a search to see where you are ranking for your specific keywords. This feature is especially helpful because a lot of SEO position checkers only check the first 100 results and you may not be listed in the first 100 results during your beginning efforts. This tool will show you exactly what position you are be it number 1 or number 800, which is extremely helpful in monitoring your SEO optimization progress.
It allows you to search for possible authority websites (meaning high value websites that are specific to your websites category) that you may be able to get a link from.
They even provide you with an article submission tool that will submit your articles to different article directories automatically.

This is just scratching the surface of everything that this incredible SEO Tool has to offer. This program has GREATLY reduced the time it takes for me to analyze a website and figure out my plan to outrank them in the SERPS.
So, I have covered on page and off page optimization SEO Tools that, if used properly, will help you outrank your competitors. I hope that you have found this page helpful and I wish you the best of luck in your SEO optimization efforts!
I have been researching SEO Optimization strategies online for several years now and have found thousands of strategies and SEO Tools online during this time. However, 99% of these strategies don't work and may actually hurt your SERPS position. I finally found a method that works and it is the only one I use. That is why I have outlined it here, in the hopes of saving at least a few of the new webmasters out there some of the many headaches that these false SEO tactics have caused me and thousands of other webmasters on the web.

Bebo is a popular social networking site

2010-01-31T23:14:00.000-08:00

Bebo's Social Inbox is the perfect way for you to organize all your messages in one easy-to-use inbox. The Social Inbox now features updates from Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and AOL Mail, and media recommendations that deliver you the most relevant online entertainment (including video, music, groups and games) into one place.
Our Lifestream Platform allows you to turn chaos into order by delivering real-time, chronological updates from all of your friends. Lifestream updates are available from your friends from Facebook, Myspace,
YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and Delicious, with many more to come.
Bebo allows you to share your life -- past, present and future with everyone you care about through its visually striking Timeline. The Timeline provides you with an interactive display of life events in chronological order in an intuitive and easy to use display. Timelines are made up of photos, videos, stories and special events that you want to record or schedule. The Timeline is updated automatically each time you add important content to your Bebo profile or manually add a new event.
You can also access your Bebo experience through your mobile phone. This allows you to connect with friends and content while on the move. You can now send and receive SMS updates and alerts, update your Bebo profile, add photos to your gallery, send virtual gifts and access exclusive mobile content.

Myspace comment form

2010-01-31T23:06:00.000-08:00

You can use the following code to add a comment box to your MySpace profile. This makes it easier for your friends to add comments - they can enter comments straight into your comment box (they won't need to click "Add Comment" anymore!)
To use this comment box code:

Copy the comment box code below
Log in to MySpace and click Edit Profile
Paste the comment box code into your MySpace profile (anywhere you like!)
Replace the friendID with your own MySpace friendID (this is important). To change the friendID, simply change the bit that goes value="123456" with your own ID. You can see your friendID in the address bar when you log into MySpace (it's the part that goes something like friendID=123456).

Copy this MySpace Comment Box Code...

<form method="post" action="http://comments.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.ConfirmComment"> <input type="hidden" name="friendID" value="123456"> <textarea name="f_comments" cols="40" rows="5""> Enter your comments here... (Hey... don't forget to change the friendID to your own!)

MySpace Codes

...to get this MySpace comment box:

opera mobile browser

2010-01-28T05:24:00.000-08:00

Innovative and easy-to-use

Living up to our vision of providing the best Internet experience on any device, Opera Mini 5 boasts a powerful new user interface. Merging the best from our desktop browser together with new innovations for mobile phones, Opera Mini is advanced, yet highly intuitive to use.

Faster

Time is precious. Opera Mini compresses pages by up to 90% before being sent to your phone, meaning faster page-load times than in other mobile Web browsers.

Full Web in your palm

When visiting a Web page, Opera Mini displays the overview of the page and suggests where to begin your reading before you zoom in. Opera Mini also detects when you are on a Web page designed for a mobile phone and displays it optimally.ull Web in your palm

Page zoom

Control default text size on Web sites. Depending on your mobile phone screen size, often text can be too small or too large to be viewed easily. Control the default zoom level from 60% to 200% directly in Opera Mini 5.

Built for speed

The new Opera Mini lets you search for text within a Web page, so you can get to the information you need even more quickly than beforeInnovative and easy-to-use

Speed Dial

Get your favorite Web page with just one click. Speed Dial is a set of visual bookmarks you see when you open a new tab, like a dashboard for your online life. To add a new page, simply click an empty dial, and Opera will make suggestions based on your browsing history and bookmarks.

Mobile view

Fit content to your mobile phone. Mobile view intelligently reformats Web pages into a single column eliminating the need for horizontal panning. Changing to Mobile view is accessible though the Settings menu.

Password Manager

There is no more hassle with those hard-to-enter usernames and passwords. Opera Mini 5 will remember your credentials, and you can log on to your favorite Web sites with just a single click. The passwords are stored on your phone for your convenience.

Tabbed browsing

Browse several Web sites at the same time. Check your e-mail in one window, Facebook in another and, Twitter in a third, all while being able to jump easily from one tab to another. With a touchscreen phone, you can enjoy even easier tab switching with visual tabs. On keypad-style phones easily mange desktop-style tabs in the Opera Mini user interface, above the address bar.

Power scrolling

Scroll at warp speed using your phone keypad or by dragging the page on a phone with a touchscreen.

Touch and keypad

3The user interface has been designed for both touchscreen- and keypad-style mobile phones. With a touchscreen, you can enjoy even easier navigation with our new zooming and kinetic scrolling.

Adaptive zoom

On a touchscreen phone panning has become even easier with adaptive zoom. When panning quickly around a zoomed-in page the panning momentum creates a more intuitive and easier to-navigate experience.

Landscape mode

Browse in the way that is most comfortable to you. Landscape mode allows you to view Opera Mini 5 on your phone in landscape.

Best free html editors

2010-01-28T05:03:00.000-08:00

Actual Drawing 7.4

Actual Drawing is a visual publishing tool that helps you make Web pages without you having to know HTML, allowing you to drag and drop page content. The program has its own image-manipulation tools so you don't need to use a third-party image editor. Web page content can be drawn with various effects such as glow, shadow, or transparency. Resolution-independent vector layers can be resized without loss of quality. The program has easy-to-use tools for preparing custom rollover buttons; it creates necessary images and JavaScript. In addition, Actual Drawing has
features for publishing your site, creating forms, and making Web albums. You can check broken links and submit your pages to search engines. The program also features a batch processor and ready-to-use JavaScript.

Adobe Dreamweaver CS4

Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 is the first rollout of this Web design application since Adobe acquired Macromedia. Is it the same Dreamweaver as before?Installation time has doubled, not including Adobe's mandatory registration process. Once installed, Dreamweaver looks more like Adobe's other products, but it will be familiar to users of previous versions. There are some new, dockable palettes for new features, but the Welcome screen, toolbars, and main window are largely unchanged.CSS support now features a large array of templates and new tools to help manage styles, and commentary on how best to use the CSS--including Internet Explorer workarounds. Improved integration means you can drag a Photoshop file directly to Dreamweaver, and select and copy any area of a PS image, including layers, and paste it into Dreamweaver.
Adobe's new Spry framework for Ajax is a JavaScript library of code snippets that makes it easy to add client-side behaviors. It's broken into Effects, which are animations, Data, which binds dynamic data to HTML, and Widgets, which create interactive elements such as pop-up menus.
Those learning the baby steps of Web design should take a class or read some books before diving in. Dreamweaver's advanced features won't be intuitive for anyone who hasn't studied them first. But because of the high price tag, we don't recommend upgrading to CS3 as a standalone product.

CoffeeCup HTML Editor 2008

Suitable for both Web-design newbies and HTML hotshots, CoffeeCup 2008 introduces a new CSS and HTML autocompletion tool to join its well-known WYSIWYG and standard HTML editors.
It continues to offer powerful features melded to a straightforward and compact interface that is organized by tabs--perfect for keeping track of multiple projects. Its advanced features include HTML and CSS scripting, Flash animations, and drag-and-drop Java scripts. Beginners, meanwhile, get an excellent tutorial and a WYSIWYG editor that supports simple drag-and-drop. Heavily trafficked support forums are also available. An extensive array of samples and templates includes site designs and JavaScript-based widgets such as calendars and calculators.
You also get a complete list of tags. Inserting an image, a table, a list, or a DHTML menu is a snap. Tabbed editing lets you simultaneously change multiple pages, and a built-in FTP client facilitates one-click uploading. The status bar displays valid usage suggestions, and you even get a built-in thesaurus. Full-featured and easy to use, users who are worried about the $50 price tag should be comforted by the fact that it includes lifetime free upgrades.

Internet browser applications

2010-01-28T04:55:00.000-08:00

There are three leading web browser applications, and several other options.

Dozens of browsers have been created over the years, many of which are described in the section on browser history. Today, most people use one of the mainstream browsers: Explorer or FireFox.

Some people run more than one browser, but you can conveniently keep all of your bookmarks only in one. Also, links only get marked as visited in the browser you use, so you probably want to standardize on one browser for most of your

surfing.

A high-level trade-off matrix between the top three browsers is shown below. You can also ask your friends for their experiences, and download and try several browsers.

	Pro	Con
Internet Explorer	Integrated with OS, faster. More sites ensure IE compliant first, some use MS multi-media software.	Integrated with OS, more vulnerable to viruses. More complex, deeper menus, not always standard.
Mozilla FireFox *	Open source. Good bookmark functionality. Multi-platform. Available email (Thunderbird), newsgroups, and IRC clients.	Not quite as fast for some functions on Windows. Less widely used on Windows.

This Living Internet site recommends Mozilla Firefox because it is well coded, multi-platform, free open source software, compliant with web standards, and has the best bookmarking and tabbed viewing functionality.

Mozilla also has developed a suite of basic Internet applications, including an email program and newsgroup reader called Thunderbird, and an associated ChatZilla IRC client. These open source applications perform well on all platforms, and get better with each release.

Other browsers. There are several other web browsers which compete on various feature sets and have different strengths:

Lynx -- A venerable web browser for character mode terminals without graphics originally developed at the University of Kansas Academic Computer Services Distributed Computing Group.

NeoPlanet -- Integrates several Internet applications together, including a browser, email, and chat.

Opera -- Small, fast, customizable application.

Indexes:

Google - Web Browsers

Yahoo - Browsers

Resources. The following sites maintain statistics about web browsers:

Google - Web Counters and Trackers

Yahoo - Browser Statistics

Browser News - Statistics

Browser Statistics - Trackers Compared

EWS Browser Statistics

TheCounter.com Browser Statistics

W3Schools Browser Statistics

WebReference.com Browser Statistics

Yahoo - The Random Yahoo Link.

Free gmail proxy download

2010-01-28T04:39:00.000-08:00

Our free proxy enables you to hide your online identity and become anonymous for every website you visit. Everyone who has an internet connection has an IP address, which in simple terms is your online 'fingerprint'. If you use our free proxy service, your fingerprint will be hidden and changed to our anonymous one, essentially hiding your real identity, and in most cases you will virtually reside in another country.
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Develop with Google Maps

2010-01-28T02:04:00.000-08:00

Google, in particular, has emerged as the leader of this pack with its recently released Google Maps product. It provides a slick, highly responsive visual interface built using AJAX technologies along with detailed street and aerial imagery data, and an open API allowing customization of the map output including the ability to add application-specific data to the map. To make it even better, Google currently provides access to this service for FREE! In this article we’ll examine some of the basic capabilities provided through the Google Maps product.

What is Google Maps?
Google Maps provides a highly responsive, intuitive mapping interface with embedded, detailed street and aerial imagery data. In addition, map controls can be embedded in the product to give users full control over map navigation and the display of street and imagery data. Users can also perform map panning through the use of the “arrow” keys on a keyboard, as well as by dragging the map via the mouse. All of these capabilities combine to provide a compelling product, but the primary driver behind its rapid acceptance as an Internet mapping viewer is its ability to customize the map to fit application-specific needs. For instance, a real estate agency might develop a Web-based application that allows end user searching for residential properties to display the results on a Google Maps application. To get a good idea of the diversity of
applications that are possible through Google Maps, spend some time at Mike Pegg’s Google Maps Blog.

Google Maps Fundamentals
At this time, the Google Maps API is a free beta service. However, Google reserves the right to put advertising on the map at any point in the future, so keep this in mind as you begin to develop Google Maps applications. Your applications may also need frequent code changes since this product is still in beta and subject to changes in the API.

Before you can get started developing Google Maps applications you will need to sign up for an API key. When you sign up for an API key, you must specify a Web site URL that will be used in your development. One problem frequently associated with Google Maps is that you must acquire a unique key for each directory that will serve Google Maps. Google Maps will generate a unique keycode for the directory that you specify. You must use this keycode in each script that accesses the Google Maps API.

Google also provides documentation for its product, including full documentation of the classes, methods and events available for the Google Maps objects as well as code examples to get you started. In addition, Google provides a blog and discussion group for additional information on using the API.

A Basic Google Map
When you sign up with Google Maps, an API key will be generated. Make sure you save this key as you will need it for all Google Maps applications that you develop for the particular URL directory that was specified. In addition to the API key, Google will also generate an example Web page centered on the Palo Alto area (in the vicinity of the Google headquarters). You can copy and paste the HTML and JavaScript generated into a plain text file, save it to the Web server directory you specified when you generated the key, and then display the map in your Web browser.

Beyond the Basics
The Google Maps API comes with a number of classes that allow you to create maps, add points of interest and polylines to a map, specify various map controls, display info windows, read XML files, and more. In the figure below you’ll see examples of some of the more commonly used objects in the Google Maps API.

The GMap class enables you to create map instances. You can create as many map instances as necessary for your application, although most commonly this will only be a single instance. Maps are typically embedded within an HTML container called a

tag. Once you’ve generated an instance of GMap you can use the various methods and properties available on this object to manipulate other aspects of the map such as the controls included, the display of points of interest or polygons, and many other things. Everything in Google Maps flows through an instance of the GMap class.

GMap can also respond to a whole host of events. Events are simply an external stimulus to the map triggered by the user. Typical events might include the user dragging the map or clicking the map, an overlay marker being added to the map, or the map type changing from regular to aerial. You can write code that responds to any of these and other events. For instance, you might want to add a marker at the point where the user clicks the map, or perhaps you could display the latitude, longitude coordinates of the center of the map after a pan event has occurred.

Map Controls
Google Map Controls allow the end user to zoom in or out, pan and change the map type between Map, Aerial and Hybrid. Each of these controls can be programmatically added to your map through the addControl method on GMap. For instance, the following code example would be used to add the small map control to a map as you see in the figure below.

In addition, you can add an instance of the map type control to your map through the following code example:

map.addControl(new GMapTypeControl());

The map type control can be programmatically added to your map alongside a navigation control. For instance, the following code example could be used to generate a map like this. In this example we’ve added an instance of LargeMapControl and MapTypeControl to the map.

map.addControl(new GLargeMapControl());
map.addControl(new GMapTypeControl());

Opening Info Windows
Info Windows can be used to display information about a particular point of interest and are typically opened just above a marker, but could potentially be placed anywhere on a map. Info Windows are opened via the openInfoWindow() method on an instance of GMap. Normally, Info Windows are used to hold HTML information such as text, links and images.

Map Overlays
A map overlay refers to a point or polyline that is added on top of the Google Map. Points (GPoint) are the most common type of overlay and are referred to as markers (GMarker). Polylines (GPolyline), composed of two or more points joined together by a vector line, can also be added to a map.

GPoint (-96.4523, 30.5356)
GMarker
GPoint and GMarker are used in conjunction to create point markers that can be plotted on a Google Map. An instance of GPoint represents a single, two-dimensional coordinate, whereas GMarker is a type of map overlay that shows an icon at an instance of GPoint.
GPolyline

GPolyline uses two or more instances of GPoint to create a vector line between the two points. The vector lines generated by GPolyline can be created in various colors, weights, and transparency.

Google Maps Polygons?
At this time, Google Maps does not provide the ability to generate true polygons, but I suspect that this will change in the near future as the API becomes more robust. However, a third-party developer, XMaps, provides this functionality in its XMaps Library, which is a Google Maps API Extension. This library is in pre-release and can be downloaded from their site.

Reading XML Files
Google Maps also includes the ability to download, open and read XML files through the inclusion of the GXmlHttp class that creates a cross-browser XmlHttpRequest instance. The importance of this ability frequently comes into play when it becomes necessary to read in multiple points of interest. You could store your points of interest along with the coordinates that locate those points in an XML file or auto-generate an XML file from the database where your points of interest are stored.

Web-based bug tracking sofware

2010-01-25T02:51:00.000-08:00

Bugzero is a Web-based bug tracking, defect tracking, issue tracking, and change management system used in a distributed team environment to track software bugs, hardware defects, test cases, or any other issues. It can also be used equally well as a helpdesk customer support, trouble ticketing, or email management system to collect and manage customer feedbacks, incidents, requests, and issues. It is easy to use, but still flexible and adaptive, and can be configured to fit to your organization's unique business process and workflow. Reports limits to 100, user limits to 5. Version 5.7.1 has some issues with the Chrome browsers were fixed.

Tips for using USB 2.0 and 3.0

2010-01-25T02:41:00.000-08:00

1: USB release dates

USB (universal serial bus) was developed as an alternative to serial and parallel data transfer protocols. USB 1.0 was introduced in January 1996. As you can see in Table A, it has been a long time since the USB 2.0 specification was released.

Table A

2: Changes in USB 3.0

USB 3.0 is one of the most anticipated changes to the PC in years. Here is a summary of the major changes:

SuperSpeed — New higher signaling rate of 5Gbps (625MB/sec)
Dual-bus architecture — Low-Speed, Full-Speed, and High-Speed bus plus SuperSpeed bus
Asynchronous instead of polled traffic flow
Dual-simplex simultaneous bi-directional data flow for SuperSpeed instead of half-duplex unidirectional data flow
Support for streaming
Fast Sync –N-Go technology
Support for higher power
Better power management

3: The Low-Speed, Full-Speed, High-Speed and SuperSpeed confusion

There are four distinct data rates - not to be confused with the four USB specifications. Each new major USB specification introduced a new data rate. Table B shows USB data rate types supported by the four USB specifications. Each new USB specification has been backward compatible.

Table B

Table C shows maximum data rates for the four data rate types.

Table C

USB 2.0 does not always mean High-Speed. This is usually, but not always, the case. A device labeled USB 2.0 can operate at Full-Speed instead of High-Speed.
Will this confusing labeling exist for USB 3.0? The USB 3.0 specification supports the three legacy speeds in addition to SuperSpeed. This is accomplished by referencing, not replacing, the USB 2.0 specification. Low-Speed, Full-Speed, and High-Speed devices are USB 2.0 compliant but not USB 3.0 compliant, so a USB High-Speed device should not be labeled as a USB 3.0 device. The USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) has developed logos for each of the four data rates. Look for these logos when buying a USB device.
You can determine whether your USB 2.0 device is a High-Speed device in the Windows Device Manager (Figure A), although it is not a straightforward exercise. You will probably have to try more than one USB Root Hub before you find the device you are looking for.

Figure A

Open the Device Manager and expand the Universal Serial Bus controllers item. Open the Properties window for a USB Root Hub. Tip: Start at the bottom USB Root Hub.
Next, click the Power tab (Figure B). If the device is attached to this hub it will appear in the Attached Devices section. In this example, I have attached a flash drive and it is displayed as a USB Mass Storage Device. Note that this Root Hub has six ports available — one of them used by the USB Mass Storage Device.

Figure B

Finally, click the Advanced tab to see the USB speed (Figure C). On my system, the top six USB Root Hubs operate at Low-Speed and Full-Speed and the bottom two each operate at High-Speed.

Figure C

4: Actual data throughput

Actual data throughput is usually much less than the maximum advertised USB specification and is a function of many variables, including overhead. Actual throughput in practice is typically up to 35 - 40MB/sec for USB 2.0 and may exceed 400MB/sec for USB 3.0. NEC recently demonstrated its new USB 3.0 controller transferring 500MB in 4.4 seconds or “only” 113.6MB/sec. Symwave and MCCI claim to have demonstrated over 270MB/sec data throughput at the Intel Developer Forum in September 2009.
Bottom line: Don’t expect actual SuperSpeed data rates approaching 400MB/sec anytime soon.
I have a USB flash drive that can read at 26MB/sec and write at 6.6MB/sec and is typical of flash drives available as of late 2009. These data rates are within the actual High-Speed data rate. But Faster USB 3.0 flash drives are on the way that can take advantage of the SuperSpeed data rate.
Most hard disk drives can transfer data faster than 40MB/sec. USB 3.0 will be welcomed by those who like to back up data to an external hard drive or SSD drive or who have any USB device that transfers large amounts of data.

5: Cabling and maximum cable length

During my days at Hughes Aircraft Company, I was always looking for ways to save money. I suggested that my supervisor, who sat in the next cube, share a laser printer with me. But printing over the long parallel cable caused characters to be intermittently printed as the gibberish that is so familiar when data loss or corruption occurs. USB cables have a similar constraint. But unlike my parallel cable problem, there is a solution.
Table D shows the maximum cable and total lengths.

Table D

*The USB 3.0 spec does not detail a maximum cable length, but 3.0 meters or 9.8 feet has been recommended.

A total of six cables can be strung together using five hubs to achieve the maximum total length. In practice, the cable to the USB device counts as one of the six cables, reducing the maximum total length.
If the USB 2.0 five-meter limit is not long enough for your needs, you can purchase one or more USB hubs or special cables. There are two types of hubs: powered and unpowered. Higher power draw devices may require a powered hub.
Longer total lengths can be realized using repeater extension cables and CAT5 extenders for USB 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0. There is also a special class of USB 3.0 cables that contain circuitry to achieve a length of six meters (19.7 ft). The USB-IF Web site recommends a USB bridge to achieve lengths greater than 30 meters.
The USB 2.0 specification for a Full-Speed/High-Speed cable calls for four wires, two for data and two for power, and a braided outer shield.
The USB 3.0 specification calls for a total of 10 wires plus a braided outer shield. Two wires are used for power. A single unshielded twisted pair (UTP) is used for High-Speed and lower data transfer and allows for backward compatibility.
Two shielded differential pairs (SDPs) have been added. Each SDP contains three wires, two for signal transmission and one drain wire. The two SDPs are used for transferring SuperSpeed data allowing for simultaneous bi-directional data flow.
See the Author’s Notes section at the end of the article for a reference to a USB 3.0 cable cross-section diagram.

6: Power

One of the most significant innovations in USB over serial and parallel protocols is the addition of power to the specification. Plug in a USB device and it can be powered from the host computer.
To find the power requirements for USB devices open the Device Manager, expand the Universal Serial Bus controllers item, Right-click on Generic USB Hub as in this example or USB Root Hub (Figure B), select Properties and click the Power tab, as shown in Figure D.

Figure D

More power has been added in the USB 3.0 specification for power hungry devices. Table E shows the maximum amperage per port in milliamps.

Table E

There are four basic power states to accommodate a variety of devices and device states. For information about USB hubs and power, read Greg Shultz’s article Understand and exploit USB topology in Windows XP.
Note: The USB 3.0 specification details more power states, including idle and sleep.

7: Limitations

We’ve already discussed some of the USB limitations:

Maximum data rates
Actual data throughput
Cable length and total length
Power

There are several other limitations that you should know about.
Though you will likely never find it an issue, there is a 127 device limitation per controller.
Each USB 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller Interface (EHCI) host controller has a 60MB/sec total bandwidth limitation, and the bandwidth is shared by all attached High-Speed USB devices. If, for example, two High-Speed devices like a digital video camera and an external hard drive are in use at the same time, the last High-Speed device attached may operate at a lower data rate or a USB Controller Bandwidth Exceeded error may occur. If you have two EHCI host controllers on your system, you may be able to resolve the bandwidth error by moving one of the High-Speed devices to another USB port. Wikipedia has a list of I/O Controller Hubs with two or more EHCI host controllers.
Want to know how much bandwidth has been allocated for each USB device in Windows? According to this MSDN article, you can check Device Manager, if you use Vista or later:
“Starting with Windows Vista, users can see how much bandwidth a USB controller has allocated by checking the controller’s properties in the Device Manager. Select the controller’s properties then look under the Advanced tab. This reading does not indicate how much bandwidth USB hubs have allocated for transaction translation.
“The Device Manager feature that reports the bandwidth usage of a USB controller does not work properly in Windows XP.”
Figure E shows that three USB devices have been allocated 4% of the bandwidth available for this Universal Host Controller. The Fujifilm FinePix S700 digital camera is a USB Full-Speed device and is therefore listed under one of the Universal Host Controllers and not one of the Enhanced Host Controllers. The USB specification defines four data transfer types: Control, Interrupt, Isochronous, and Bulk. The 10% System reserved value shown here is used for Control and Bulk data transfers and cannot be changed.

Figure E

During system boot-up and when a USB device is plugged in, a process called enumeration occurs. The device is recognized, its speed is identified, and a unique address is assigned. For devices using the Interrupt or Isochronous data transfer types, a specific amount of the remaining available bandwidth is requested, thus guaranteeing that the bandwidth will be available. If the bandwidth is available, it’s allocated, and the device description and reserved bandwidth will be listed on the Advanced tab.
Note: Don’t bother looking for the bandwidth used by a Mass Storage device like a flash drive. This class of USB device typically uses the Bulk data transfer type and is not listed on the Advanced tab.
In addition to any of the System Reserved bandwidth that may be available, devices using the Bulk data transfer mode may use the remaining non-reserved bandwidth. The Bandwidth Used column heading is misleading. The bandwidth is allocated/reserved but may not actually be used.
As you can see in Figure F, ICH9R Southbridge supports six Universal Host Controller Interface (UHCI) host controllers and two Enhanced Host Controller Interface (EHCI) host controllers. The number of UHCI and EHCI host controllers may be different on your system. The ICH9R supports a total of 12 USB ports. The six Universal Host Controllers operate at Low-Speed and Full-Speed and each shares its bandwidth with two USB ports. The two USB2 Enhanced Host Controllers operate at High-Speed and each shares its bandwidth with six USB ports. The Advanced tab shows that 20% of the bandwidth is reserved by each Enhanced Host Controller for Control and Bulk data transfers.

Figure F

Note: There is another host controller type, not shown, called USB Open Host Controller Interface (OHCI) that supports Low-Speed and Full-Speed devices. The name of the new Intel SuperSpeed host controller specification is Extensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI).

8: Connector and receptacle types

There are a number of USB 3.0 connector and receptacle types:

Standard-A connector and receptacle
Standard-B connector and receptacle
Powered-B connector and receptacle (new in USB 3.0)
Micro-AB receptacle
Micro-A connector
Micro-B connector and receptacle

The matrix in Table F shows the types of USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 connectors that will work with USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 receptacles. Note that according to the USB 3.0 specification Table 5.1, the only USB 3.0 connector that will work in a USB 2.0 receptacle is the Standard-A connector.

Table F

A new multi-tiered system has been developed for the extra pins needed for USB 3.0. The Standard-A connector is slightly longer and the receptacle slightly deeper to accommodate the new design. Five pins have been added to the Standard-A connector and receptacle specifically for SuperSpeed transmit and receive data and ground.
The USB 3.0 specification recommends using a blue color scheme for USB 3.0 Standard-A connectors and receptacles to distinguish them from USB 2.0 Standard-A connectors and receptacles.
The USB 3.0 specification includes a new type of connector and receptacle called a USB 3.0 Powered-B Connector and USB 3.0 Powered-B Receptacle. They are identical to the USB 3.0 Standard-B Connector and receptacle, except that two pins have been added for power and ground. It is designed to provide power to a USB device without the need for any other power source. The USB 3.0 Powered-B Receptacle can accept both Standard-B and Powered-B connectors.
The Micro family of connectors and receptacles are defined for handheld devices. Unlike the Standard-A connectors with their elegant design, the Micro connectors and receptacles have a more complex design with two plugs and receptacles sitting side by side — one for USB 2.0 and the other for USB 3.0.
See the Author’s Notes section for references to diagrams for the USB 3.0 Standard-A Connector, the USB 3.0 Standard-B Connector, and the USB 3.0 Micro Connector Family.

9: Hot-swappable devices and data corruption

I can’t write an article about USB without bringing up the issue of data corruption. Removing any USB device capable of writing data can cause data corruption if done improperly. There are three ways to minimize the risk of data corruption:

Verify write-back caching is off
Pay attention to device LEDs
Safely remove/eject device

First, verify that write-back caching is turned off for the USB device. To verify write caching status, open Device Manager and right-click on the USB device. Select Properties from the drop-down list (Figure G). In this example, I am checking a SanDisk Cruzer flash drive.

Figure G

Next, click the Policies tab (Figure H). The Quick Removal (Default) option should be selected. If not, select it to reduce the risk of data corruption.

Figure H

Second, pay attention to device LEDs. Some USB devices will tell you when data is being transferred to or from the device with a flashing LED. Simply put, don’t remove the USB device when the LED is trying to tell you not to.
Third, safely remove/eject device. No doubt you already know how to safely remove a USB device but I am including it to be thorough. To safely remove a USB device in Windows 7, click the Taskbar Notification area Up-arrow and click on the USB icon (Figure I).

Figure I

Click the USB device you want to eject — Cruzer Micro, in this example (Figure J).

Figure J

The Safe To Remove Hardware notification balloon will appear when it is safe to remove your flash drive (Figure K).

Figure K

There is an alternate method for ejecting a USB device that you might not be familiar with. To safely remove a flash drive using Explorer, right-click on the logical drive assigned to the flash drive and select Eject from the drop-down list (Figure L). You can eject attached drives in Explorer, but be aware that more than one drive may need to be ejected.

10: USB downsides

USB can cause problems that can be difficult to debug. For example, on one occasion I was unable to install XP until I disconnected the USB to parallel cable attached to my printer.
USB is so convenient and easy to use, it poses problems in the workplace. Flash drives are the biggest concern to IT managers. Flash drives are so small that they are easy to bring into the workplace in a pocket or purse. The flash drive is a conduit for sensitive or confidential data leaving the office or malware sneaking in.
In addition, people who are conscious of the risks of transferring viruses via a floppy, CD, or DVD don’t think twice about plugging in a flash drive and transferring files to/from home. Perhaps the best solution to this problem is education. Flash drives are banned in some government agencies and companies, though the effectiveness of that policy is questionable. Interestingly, the DOD is partially lifting its flash drive ban.

The final word

USB has been such a huge success that a more than 10 times improvement in speed and an 80% increase in power is almost certainly guaranteed to be just as successful, right? Well, maybe not. Intel’s original conceptual designs for the USB 3.0 cable specified optical fiber cabling to carry the SuperSpeed data. Copper replaced fiber optics in the final USB 3.0 spec, but Intel continues to work on a variation of this design known as Light Peak. It may be available as early as 2010 in Apple products before Intel plans to support USB 3.0 in its chipsets.
Light Peak promises double the data rate of USB 3.0 now, with speeds possibly reaching 20 times the USB 3.0 speeds as the new technology matures. Perhaps more important in the short term, Light Peak cables may reach 100 meters (328 feet) in length and may be smaller in diameter and lighter.
Could Light Peak make its way to the Wintel platform? It certainly could, and its data transfer capability would leapfrog it past USB 3.0. So don’t bet just yet that USB 3.0 will be as successful as its predecessors. Regardless of what happens with Light Peak, USB SuperSpeed should satisfy USB device data rate requirements for many years to come.

Resources used in writing this article

USB Implementers Forum
Universal Serial Bus Revision 2.0 Specification (Zip, 10.2MB)
Universal Serial Bus Revision 3.0 Specification (Zip, 3.8MB)
Wikipedia - Universal Serial Bus
Everything USB
Windows USB FAQ: Introductory Level
Beyond Logic - USB in a Nutshell - Making sense of the USB standard (PDF, 175KB)

Author’s notes

I would like to thank Microsoft for its invaluable help.
In item 5, Cabling and maximum cable length, you will also need a USB switch and the appropriate USB cables if you are sharing a USB printer with two computers.
I wanted to include some of the USB-IF diagrams that showcased its new cable and connector designs. I also wanted to include its USB logos to show you what to look for when buying a High-Speed or SuperSpeed USB device. I was denied the use of all USB-IF diagrams. Here is a list of the images so you can look them up yourself if you so choose. They do a good job of detailing the changes you will see in USB 3.0 cables, connectors, and receptacles.
Items 5 and 8 — Cabling and maximum cable length and Connector and receptacle types:
From SuperSpeed_USB_DevCon_Physical_Heck.pdf (PDF, 2.33MB):
Page 11 — USB 3.0 Cable Assembly (Cable cross-section diagram)
Page 11 — USB 3.0 Cable Assembly (Type-A connector pin diagram)
Item 8 — Connector and receptacle types:
From SuperSpeed_USB_DevCon_Architecture_Overview_Dunstan.pdf (PDF, 3.15MB):
Page 9 — USB 3.0 Standard-A Connector
Page 10 — USB 3.0 Standard-B Connector
Page 11 — USB 3.0 Micro Connector Family

10 common user questions - and some analogies that help clear things up

Date: December 28th, 2009
Blogger: Jaime Henriquez
Category: 10 things, Support

13 comment(s)

Sometimes, the only way to help users grasp a tech concept is to throw them a lifeline to something they already understand. Here are some field-tested analogies from TechRepublic members.

Once you’ve had to answer the same question from users a few times, you start looking for shortcuts — ways to get your point across without having to explain too much. What you need is a good analogy, appropriate and instructive. Clearly TechRepublic members know this. When Toni Bowers wrote last year about how to develop analogies, the related discussion generated 233 comments, which contained an abundance of great analogies and insights about when to use them (and when not to). On the subject of “when not to,” there are two main things to watch out for.
First, is the analogy going to work? Analogies attempt to explain an unfamiliar technical concept in more familiar terms, to explain an unknown in terms of something already known. So it’s vital that your audience actually knows the concept you regard as “more familiar” (Dcolbert). Explaining that programming a stack in memory is like using a Pez dispenser (Ccardimon) works brilliantly — unless the user has never seen one. Making an analogy to the library card catalog no longer works for younger audiences (Thordude).
Second, even if it’s a useful analogy, does your audience really want or need more explanation (Abegeman; Ian.Lockwood)? Or (worst case) are they going to think that you’re talking down to them (Mmparab)? Sometimes it’s wise to wait until they ask a question — or admit or demonstrate that they’re confused — before you trot out an analogy.
On the other hand, when the moment is right, nothing beats a good analogy. Here, then, culled from responses to Toni’s article, are 10 common user questions and some of the best analogies for answering them.
Note: This article is also available as a PDF download.

1: Why do I need disk space and RAM?

The most frequently used analogy for this topic is the desk and cabinet metaphor. Quoting Phil: “filing cabinet = hard drive space, desk size = RAM. Bigger desk = more files open to look at once. Smaller desk = lots of swapping files back to the filing cabinet.” And from Solutions: “Desk accessories (read: startup items like antivirus, update checkers, etc.) take up chunks of the desktop before you’ve even started working, leaving less desk surface for you to use for productivity.”
Another analogy is the kitchen. Iago9999:”I explain that the cabinets hold the dishes you’re not using at the moment (hard drive) and the countertop is used for items you are using (memory). This also helps to explain the concept of virtual memory (moving stuff from the countertop to a separate cabinet).”

2: Why do I need more bandwidth?

Explaining bandwidth can be done with everyday hydraulics. Jbartoli: “I compare it to a water pipe and multiple people trying to take a shower.” Rouschkateer: “I use the multiple people to one milkshake analogy (many people don’t realize they share their bandwidth with their neighbors).”
Traffic is another popular analogy. Nchetoora: “Bandwidth can be explained with the highway rush hour analogy … [or] everyone trying to rush out of a building at once when there is a fire drill.” Gater: “Some roads have more lanes than others, meaning that those roads have higher bandwidth.”

3: Why do I have to defragment my drive?

There isn’t a good real-life analog to defragmentation, but you can get close, Dave suggests it’s like “a library with all the books in a long row A, B, C, etc., and then as each book representing a program or service gets taken out it doesn’t get returned to its correct place. When you go to look for that book again you may find it, but will take longer to do …defrag puts them back in the correct order.”
Going back to cooking, Betageek52 suggests you compare defrag to “… making a cake. If you put each of the ingredients used to make the cake in a different room, it will take forever to get it done because you have to run around the house for each one. Computers need all the pieces of a program together, so they can load it faster.”
Jdriggers: “I use the analogy of a pool table when explaining fragmentation and when it causes slowness. If I line up 15 balls in numerical order along the rail, how fast can you pick them up in numerical order? OK, now if I scatter them all over the table, how fast can you pick them up in numerical order?”

Analogy vs. explanation

To explain how things get fragmented as well as the need to defragment, MemphisGuy offers a simplified explanation, “purposely leaving out the stuff that causes their eyes to glaze, and using layman’s terms”:

Let’s take the question, “Why do I have to defrag?” The answer is “You don’t. But let me tell you what it does. When you create your first document, life is good. When you create another document, the computer puts it right behind the first one, and so on. The computer doesn’t know how you may change any of these documents, so it doesn’t leave much space between any of them. When you go to edit or change the first document, if it can’t fit the change in the same place, it saves that part of the document somewhere else. That part is a fragment. If you go back and change that document many times, there will be many fragments. Suddenly, one day, you go to open that document and it takes a long time. It’s trying to go find all of the fragments” (at this point their eyes get big). “Windows treats its system files no differently from your documents. Everything eventually gets fragmented. Your entire system gets slower. Sometimes, you get errors or restarts for no reason. Now guess what Defrag does?” They all shout out, “IT PUTS THE PIECES BACK TOGETHER.” And then I say, “Then your system will run faster, programs may open quicker, etc.”

To develop this simplified explanation, MemphisGuy repeated it until his eight-year-old child and a technically inept user both could understand it. (He suggests you could shorten the process by running it by a six-year-old instead.)

4: Why can’t I put everything on the desktop?

Jdclyde: “Everyone has a junk drawer, usually in their kitchen. Imagine EVERYTHING you own is in that one drawer. Get up in the morning, go to the junk drawer and look for some clean clothes. Time to eat … go to the junk drawer and try to find a spoon and bowl. You would never be able to find anything. We organize our computers the same way we organize our lives. If I want a pair of socks, I go to the bedroom (directory), go to the dresser (subdirectory), top drawer (subdirectory). If I want a spoon, I go to the kitchen (directory) and go to the drawer next to the sink (subdirectory).”

5: Why is my Internet connection so slow?

When it comes time to explain networking or Internet problems, a natural analogy is to roads and traffic. NickNielsen likened an overburdened network to “a city street system built for the horse and buggy with dirt roads and no traffic controls. Unfortunately, we now have so many more cars than we had buggies, we are operating bumper-to-bumper. This causes a lot of wrecks (collisions!) that make everything even slower than the lack of signals justifies. Upgrading would replace those dirt roads with a fully paved four-lane grid system with a coordinated traffic signal.”
Brennj4 suggests thinking of it this way: “A network is a series of roads (cables) joined at intersections (hubs, switches) and controlled by traffic cops and lights (routers). Cars (data packets) leave their homes (sender) and with their destination address in hand (IP address) they set on their way.”

6: Why does my graphic look so bad?

Often, it’s a question of DPI. Cfbandit has a good analogy for that: “I usually ask people what they know about Impressionist painting. Most have heard of at least Monet and know what I’m talking about. I then ask them what would happen if they made the brush strokes bigger. The usual reply is that the image would be even more blurry. I then ask them what would happen if they made the brush strokes smaller. They usually reply that the image would become clearer…. When they’re trying to get a high quality image of a 72 DPI Web photo, I tell them they’re trying to get a small stroke print of a big stroke picture. They’re usually okay with me showing them how to fix their ’stroke size’.”

7: What about viruses and malware?

Subgeniusyeti offers analogies for both the problem and its solutions:

“The Path” — These are the safe places on the Internet. This includes the company site and various well-known news sites, etc. “You know when you’ve stepped off the path, and although you may not get any malware right away, it’s only a matter of time once you stray from the path.”
“Pulling weeds” — This is the laborious process of removing malware from a computer, which may contain a number of hard-to-replace documents/programs.
“Plowing under” - This refers to reformatting… guaranteed to fix it every time.

8: Network address? The computer’s right there

Real-life buildings are a fruitful source of analogies for network address concepts. For example, John explains the difference between static IP and DHCP: “It’s like the difference between a block of flats (apartment block) and a hotel. Each has many addresses (flats or rooms) but you only have a hotel room temporarily, whereas you have a flat (apartment) for a long time. What about a hotel guest who stays there for a long time? Well, that’s your reservations in DHCP.”
Kalmano: “When explaining to students about domain names vs. complete URLs, I tell them that getting the domain name instead of the URL is like being invited to a party and being given the zip code instead of the full address.”
When it comes to explaining ports, Craigpower1 says, “The analogy I like to use to explain the relationship between IP addresses and port numbers is to say that the IP address is like the street address of an apartment building, and the port number is like the apartment number. The street address gets the ‘letter’ to the ‘building’ it needs to go to, and the port gets it to the specific apartment.”
As for security, Dprows adds, “An analogy I use to describe ports on a router is that the router is a big house with lots of doors. We leave the doors closed unless absolutely necessary, to keep intruders out.”

9: Why is fixing this going to take so long?

Sometimes, you have to explain the difference between an easy fix and a difficult fix. Techpartner offers this analogy: “I give the business the analogy of an organizational chart of a business, with departments, managers, directors, etc. Adding/removing employees from a department does not impact the whole company (easy bug fix). However, changing the reporting structure and introducing/removing a layer of management affects everyone (big bug fix).”
Gitmo uses the analogy of a house: “If the fix involves some new nails in a couple of boards, we can do it quickly. But sometimes I have to jack the entire house up, lay a new foundation, and put the house back in place. That takes a long time, and we then have to make sure that lifting the house didn’t cause any problems elsewhere in the house…. Adding a basement to a house is an even bigger job.”

10: Why should I listen to you?

When users balk at taking advice from IT, an expertise analogy can help. ITCompGuy uses an auto mechanic analogy. “I explain that I have a key to start my car every day, but if the car runs slow or does not run at all, I rely on an auto mechanic because THAT is his expertise. You can replace auto mechanic with doctor, dentist, pilot, etc., but the important part is that everyone has a specialty.”
Jay.Philbin, working for an HMO, likes to “compare the end user/PC to a patient (parent/child). When doctors would tell me simply ‘my PC doesn’t work’ and I asked for details, I often used to get remarks like ‘You’re the expert - you figure it out’ or ‘I don’t have time to deal with this.’
“If the moment seems right, I explain my position through their eyes as doctors and nurses. If a patient were to walk in and proclaim ‘I’m sick,’ the doctor would ask a series of questions to zero in on his patient’s malady. I ask the doctor how he would react to the patient saying ‘You’re the expert — you figure it out.’ This opens their eyes. I have to triage and diagnose in a way that’s similar to their routines. I’ve ended up with very cooperative end users over the years.”

Powerful Android apps

2010-01-25T02:35:00.000-08:00

1: Dolphin (free)

Dolphin is one of the best mobile Web browsers. Period. It is fast, reliable, has real tabs, gestures, and multi-touch. Although the default Android browser is an okay solution, it simply doesn’t compare, feature for feature, to Dolphin. Dolphin is also much faster than most of the other Android solutions. My big question: Why is there no Chrome for Android?

2: ChompSMS (free)

ChompSMS is the best text client for the Android phone. In fact, this text app is so much better than the default, I’m surprised that the various Android-based phones haven’t switched. One aspect that makes this app so much better than the default is the battery usage. Especially in pre-2.0 releases, the Android text app has a problem with going to sleep, so it is constantly draining battery. By switching to Chomp, you will save your battery.

3: iMusic (free)

iMusic is a tricky one because of what it does: It allows unlimited downloads of MP3s. There is a EULA that insists you agree to remove the song as soon as you have listened to it. Or you can just listen to the song off the Web. Either way, this app will have you happily searching music to your heart’s content.

4: FeedR (free)

FeedR is an RSS reader that works as both an app and a widget. So far, in my quest for the perfect RSS widget, it has proven to be the best yet. FeedR can add preconfigured feeds or you can add your own personal favorites. This app beats the competition with its ability to truly auto-update. Many other feed readers (especially those in the widget category) require a user update to function properly. FeedR handles all updates in the background, with no intervention.

5: Advanced Task Killer ($4.99)

Advanced Task Killer is one of those apps you hope you don’t need, but you sometimes must have. I have noticed on occasion a rare app hanging out in the background unnecessarily. This can lead to a much lower battery life and slower app loading or usage. Advanced Task Killer allows you to kill an application with a single click. This particular app killer includes an ignore list, a widget version, and a long-press to menu feature.

6: Exchange by Touchdown (free demo)

Exchange by Touchdown is one of the best means to Exchange connectivity on the Android phone. Its Exchange connectivity is outstanding, and the support from the developers is just as great. Now this app is a demo and is free. There is a paid version, which does not revert to demo mode (after five days). However, you must install the free version first, as the paid version is only a key to unlock the demo. If you need Exchange connectivity on your Android phone, this is THE tool.

7: ConnectBot (free)

ConnectBot is an open source secure shell client for your Android phone. This client can manage simultaneous ssh connections and copy/paste between apps, and it has shortcuts for sequences. You may notice on its Market entry that a bug exists for the Hero. The upcoming Hero update will solve this bug, and it will be worth the wait. Now if HTC will push the 2.0 update!

8: Barcode Scanner (free)

Barcode Scanner has quickly become one of my favorites. If you need to find product reviews (or price comparisons) while shopping, all you have to do is scan the bar code with your camera and open up the results. No more having to Google a product and sift through pages for reviews and/or prices.

9: Places Directory (free)

Places Directory is one of those apps you will constantly be thankful you have. With this tool, you can locate (thanks to your GPS) any nearby place, such as a hotel, restaurant, retail location, or movie theatre. Everything is broken into categories, and you can bookmark your favorites. From a places listing, you can instantly dial a location’s phone number or visit its Web site.

10: Evernote (free)

Evernote is not just for the iPhone. This handy app lets you keep track of nearly anything — and in many ways. You can keep track of things with notes, photos, recordings, and more. And with an Evernote account, you can keep everything in sync online and on your PC. If you’re looking for a one-stop productivity shop app, this is it.

10 Google Chrome extensions worth checking out

2010-01-25T02:31:00.000-08:00

A while back, I put together a list of 10 Firefox extensions you can’t live without. Since writing that article, I have converted to Google Chrome for much of my work. Naturally, I wanted to add extensions to Google Chrome to extend its usability as well. Thankfully, the developers of the newish browser recognized the importance of extensions and created a framework for developing the little gems… and developed they were. In no time, plenty of extensions were created, bringing extra functionality to the Google Chrome browser.

1: Google Mail Checker Plus

This extension is a must-have for anyone who uses Gmail extensively. It gives you an at-a-glance notification of how many emails you have in your inbox, and it provides a drop-down listing of the top email subjects/senders. You can read, delete, mark as spam, or archive those emails. There is also a link in the popup that will take you directly to your inbox.

2: XMarks

XMarks allows you to keep your bookmarks in sync with Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer. There are slight differences between XMarks for Firefox and XMarks for Chrome, although they function in the same manner. When syncing XMarks in Chrome, the browser doesn’t become as unusable as Firefox does.

3: Flashblock

Flashblock does exactly what its name suggests: It blocks all Flash content from loading in your browser. It also lets you add sites to your white list on the fly by clicking Ctrl + Shift + F. Flashblock will block the following content types:

Macromedia Flash
Macromedia Shockwave
Macromedia Authorware
Microsoft Silverlight

4: Shareaholic

This extension allows you to share links to your various accounts, such as Facebook and Twitter. Just click the Shareaholic button and use the drop-down list to specify the service you want to share the link with. Shareaholic also lets you add personal notes to shared links. For those of you who share your online work with your Twitter followers, this makes life much easier.

5: Forecastfox Weather

This one is similar to the Firefox extension of the same name, with one major difference: Instead of placing the forecast in the notification toolbar, the Chrome version places a button in the Address bar (along with the other extension buttons). Clicking the button opens a pop-up window that displays the forecast. You’ll see a week’s forecast as well as current weather details.

6: Tab Menu

Tab Menu is essential if you tend to have Chrome open with so many tabs you can’t read what each tab is. It offers a drop-down listing of all tabs you currently have open and allows you to switch back and forth between them.

7: Session Manager

This extension allows you to save the state of your browser so that it will be reloaded whenever you need it. But it’s more than just a single-session save. Session Manager takes it to another level by allowing you to save multiple states, name them, and open any of those states by selecting them from a drop-down list.

8: WOT

WOT (Web of Trust) offers instant ratings for sites. These ratings let you know whether a site can be trusted. But WOT doesn’t just use an algorithm or function to rate these sites. Users provide ratings and/or warnings to unsuspecting users. Ecommerce sites are among the targets for WOT ratings.

9: iMacros

This power-user tool takes much of the repetition out of browsing. You can use iMacros as a form filler and encrypted password manager. You can even use it to combine extensions. If you perform a lot of tasks over and over, this extension will quickly become your best friend. Upon installation, be sure you hop on over to this site and check out some sample macros you can run right away.

10: Remember the Milk

Many users already have this venerable tool on their phones. It adds a task list to the browser, even linking to your Gmail account so tasks can be converted to email. These tasks can be synced with all your other instances of Remember the Milk, no matter what platform they’re on. You will need a Remember the Milk account to use this extension.

How do I create a Windows 7 installation flash drive with WinToFlash?

2010-01-25T02:26:00.000-08:00

One such tool that I frequently use is WinToFlash by Novicorp. This tool can take your Windows 7 (Vista or XP) installation CD/DVDs and pull the contents onto a USB drive. And better still, WinToFlash also preps the USB drive for you and sets the drive as bootable.

But why would you want to transfer your installation media from CD/DVD to a flash drive? If you want to install a different operating system on your netbook, you are going to have to have a USB drive ready with installation files. And we all know that CD/DVDs get lost, scratched, and cracked and that CD drives go bad. USB? Not so much. Flash drives are reliable, portable (I have multiple flash drives on my keychain), and work faster than CD/DVD drives. So why wouldn’t you migrate your installation disks to flash drives?

Now there is one small problem that goes along with this. When using a CD/DVD you can always write the activation code key on the disk — so you would have to lose the disk to lose the code. With a smaller flash drive, you don’t have space to write the code key on the drive itself. So, you are going to have to come up with a system to store your keys. One possibility is to write the code key on a file and save that file on the flash drive. But do this after WinToFlash does its job, or you will overwrite the file.
Another item to note is the size of the USB drive. To successfully copy Windows 7 to a USB drive you will need approximately 2.37GB of space. To be safe you will want a 4GB flash drive. For Windows XP, obviously, you can get away with a much smaller drive (1GB will do).
Now, let’s take a look at how this is done.

Downloading and installing

There really isn’t an “installation” to be done with WinToFlash. What you do is download the zip file from the main page and unzip the file. Once the file is unzipped, you will see a new directory called Novicorp WinToFlash XXX (where XXX is the release number). Within this directory are a number of files and subdirectories. One of those files is WinToFlash, which is the executable file. You can right-click this file and pin it to either the Start menu or the Quick Launch menu for easy access.

Usage

When you fire up WinToFlash, you might see a warning that WinToFlash is not supported on your operating system. As of this writing, Windows 7 is not officially supported; however, WinToFlash does work flawlessly on Windows 7. So you can ignore that message.
The main window is very simple to use. As you can see in Figure A, you simply need to click the Windows Setup Transfer Wizard to begin.

Figure A

The Wizard will walk you through just a few simple steps to get you on your way.

Using the Wizard is not the only method. You can also click on the Task tab (Figure B) to set up the process.

Figure B

The default creation is Windows XP.

The first step is to select Windows 7 from the drop-down menu. You will notice that there are two Windows 7 choices: Windows 7 Pre-install Environment (PE) or Windows 7. If you install the PE, you will be able to get away with a smaller flash drive. The simplest method is to select the non-PE version. After you have made this selection, click the Create button to go to the next step.
The next screen is the Basic Parameters tab (Figure C), which is all you will need to configure for your installation.

Figure C

You cannot change either the USB drive type or the Format Type options.

The most important section on this window is the “setup files path” and the “USB drive” options. Make sure these are selected properly or you could wind up overwriting data on a drive you don’t want to lose.
Also, on the Process Steps tab, you can select what steps you want to take place. From that tab you can select:

Format drive
Collect information of setup
Create folders structure
Copy files

It is best to leave all these steps checked, or else your installation might fail.
Once you have all your options configured, click the Create button on the Basic Parameters tab. When you click this button, you will have to accept the licensing terms and click Continue. The next window will warn you that all data will be lost. Go ahead and click OK and the process will begin.
The creation of the USB installation drive doesn’t take too long (should take approximately 15-30 minutes — depending on the speed of your machine). When the process is finished, you will get an OK window, which you can dismiss.
When the process is complete, you can look at the contents of the USB drive (Figure D) to see that all the usual Windows install suspects are present and accounted for. Now all you have to do is insert the drive and boot the machine from USB to install Windows 7.

Figure D

The Windows 7 installation files are ready.

Final thoughts

WinToFlash has to be the easiest method of creating a bootable, installable copy of Windows on a flash drive I have ever used. This is definitely a keeper for your administrator tool kit.

10 common issues you can fix with a registry hack

2010-01-25T02:19:00.000-08:00

1: Disable AutoPlay

I always find it a bit annoying to insert a TechNet CD and have Windows open Internet Explorer and display a bunch of information I don’t care about. I would rather just be able to navigate through the disc’s file system and go directly to what I need. Fortunately, it’s easy to create a registry setting that disables AutoPlay:

Navigate through the Registry Editor to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer.
Create a DWORD named NoDriveTypeAutoRun.
Set the value to 000000FF.

2: Increase the maximum number of simultaneous downloads

As a technical writer, I’m constantly downloading files. Sometimes I need to download a lot of files, and Windows’ limit on the number of files that can be downloaded simultaneously gets in the way. If you’re in the same boat, you can tweak the registry so that Windows will let you download 10 files at a time:

Navigate through the Registry Editor to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings.
Create a new DWORD named MaxConnectionsPerServer and assign it a value of 0000000a.
Create a new DWORD named MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server and assign it a value of 0000000a.

3: Change the name of the registered user

When you install Windows, you’re prompted to enter a username and a company name. But since it’s fairly common for companies to merge, you may want to change the name of the company Windows is registered to by using this hack:

Navigate through the Registry Editor to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion.
Change the values that are assigned to the RegisteredOwner and RegisteredOrganization keys to reflect the new ownership information.

4: Prevent the Recycle Bin from being deleted

If you’ve ever right-clicked on the Windows Recycle Bin, you know there’s a Delete option, which can be used to get rid of it. If you want to prevent the Recycle Bin from accidental deletion, follow these steps:

Navigate through the Registry Editor to HKCR\CLSID\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}.
Create a new registry key called Shell.
Create a new registry key named Delete and put it beneath the Shell key. The path should look like this: HKCR\CLSID\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}\Shell\Delete.
Modify the Default key and assign it a value of Recycle Bin.

5: Eliminate cached logons

Windows is designed to allow users to log on using cached logins if no domain controller is available to authenticate the request. If you want to make sure that a login request is always authenticated by a domain controller, you could change the number of cached logons that are allowed from 10 to 0 (or you could increase the number of cached logins allowed to 50). To do so, follow these steps:

Navigate through the Registry Editor to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\winlogon.
Create a new REG_SZ setting named CachedLogonsCount.
Assign this new setting a value that reflects how many concurrent cached logins you want to allow.

6: Encrypt and decrypt from a shortcut menu

Normally, when you want to encrypt or decrypt a file in XP Pro or Vista, you just right-click on the file or folder and choose the Properties command from the shortcut menu. When the properties sheet appears, click the Advanced button on the General tab and then use either the Encrypt or the Decrypt option.
If all that seems like a lot of work, you can add those options to the shortcut menu you see when you right-click on a file:

Navigate through the Registry Editor to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced.
Create a new DWORD called EncryptionContextMenu and assign it a value of 1.

7: Delay Windows Activation

Typically, when an organization deploys Vista, it will create a master image, run SYSPREP, and deploy the image. The problem is that it might be a while between the time that SYSPREP is run and when Vista is actually deployed.
Microsoft will allow you to extend the activation period by 30 days, but you can do that only three times. You can, however, use a registry hack to get around this limitation:

Navigate through the registry to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SL.
Change the value associated with the SkipRearm key to 1.
Open a Command Prompt window and enter the following command: slmgr -rearm.

8: Relocate your offline files

When you use Vista’s Offline Files feature, the offline file cache is automatically placed on your C: drive. But my laptop has two hard drives in it, and I wanted to configure Vista to place my offline files onto my secondary hard drive. I accomplished the task by following these steps:

Open the Control Panel and click on the Network And Internet link, followed by the Offline Files link. Windows will display the Offline Files properties sheet.
Disable offline files if they are currently enabled.
Click OK and reboot the machine.
When the computer reboots, open the Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\CSC.
Create a new string value named Parameters.
Assign this value to the Parameters key:

\??\e:\csc

where e: is the drive letter you want to use.

Exit the Registry Editor and reboot the computer.
When the machine reboots, enable offline files.
Reboot the computer one last time. Now, you can start making folders available offline.

9: Disable User Account Control

One of the things about Vista that seems to irritate a lot of people is the User Account Control feature. In essence, an administrator is treated as a standard user. Administrators who attempt to perform an administrative action receive a prompt asking whether they initiated the action. I think that this prompt is a valuable safeguard against malware, but since a lot of people don’t like it, here’s how to use the registry editor to suppress the prompt:

Navigate through the registry editor to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System.
Change the value of the ConcentPromptBehaviorAdmin key to 00000000.

10: Don’t display the last user who logged in

Windows Vista is designed so that when you press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to log in, it will display the name of the user who logged in most recently. This can be a bit of a problem if multiple users share a common PC. They may forget to check to see who was logged in previously and key in their own password in association with another user’s login name. If they try this enough times, they could lock the other user out. You can get around this problem by using a simple registry tweak to tell Windows not to display the name of the user who was logged in previously:

Navigate through the Registry Editor to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System.
Set the DontDisplayLastName key to a value of 1.

10 ways to detect computer malware!

2010-01-25T02:09:00.000-08:00

1: Microsoft Process Explorer (formerly Sysinternals)

Process Explorer provides an excellent way to determine what processes are running on a computer. It also describes the function of each process.
More important, you can use Process Explorer to create a baseline of the running processes used by the computer when it’s operating correctly. If for some reason the computer starts behaving poorly, run Process Explorer again and compare the scans. Any differences will be good places to start looking for malware.

2: Trend Micro’s HiJackThis

HiJackThis is Process Explorer on steroids, making the application somewhat daunting to those of us not completely familiar with operating systems. Still, running HiJackThis before having malware problems creates a great reference baseline, making it easy to spot changes.
If it’s too late to run a baseline scan, do not fear. Several Web sites offer online applications that will automatically analyze the log file from HiJackThis, pointing out possible conflicts. Two that I use are HiJackThis.de Security and NetworkTechs.com. If you would rather have trained experts help, I would recommend WindowSecurity.com’s HiJackThis forum.

3: Kaspersky’s GetSystemInfo

Kaspersky has an application similar to HiJackThis called GetSystemInfo. I like the fact that Kaspersky has an online parser. Just upload the log file and the parser will point out any disparities.
GetSystemInfo, like the other scanners, is a good way to keep track of what’s on the computer, and if need be, it can help find any malware that happens to sneak in.
Be careful: As I alluded to earlier, removing processes suggested by the scanners is not for the faint of heart. It requires in-depth knowledge of operating systems or being able to compare before and after scans.
Next, I’d like to discuss two vulnerability scanners.

It’s simple: No vulnerabilities, no malware

Anti-malware includes any program that combats malware, whether it’s real-time protection or detection and removal of existing malware. Vulnerability scanners proactively detect vulnerabilities so that malware can’t gain a foothold. I’d rather update applications than chase malware any day.

4: Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer

Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) is a vulnerability scanner that detects insecure configuration settings and checks all installed Microsoft products for missing security updates. I recommend using MBSA when upper management needs convincing. Making a case for needing a vulnerability scanner is sometimes easier if the product is from the OEM.

5: Secunia inspection scanners

Secunia’s scanners are similar to MBSA when it comes to Microsoft products. But unlike MBSA, Secunia products also scan hundreds of third-party applications, which gives Secunia a distinct advantage.
All the Secunia scanners, online and client-side, have an intuitive way of determining what is wrong and how to rectify it. They usually offer a link to the application’s Web page, where the update can be downloaded.

Not always simple

Remember when I said, “It’s simple: No vulnerabilities, no malware”? Well, it’s not exactly that easy. It would be, except for those nasty things called zero-day exploits and zero-day viruses. That’s where antivirus applications come into play, especially if they use heuristics.

6: Antivirus programs

Lately, antivirus software is getting little respect. Like everyone, I get frustrated when my antivirus program misses malcode that other scanners mange to find. Still, I would not run a computer without antivirus. It’s too risky. I subscribe to the layered approach when it comes to security.
Choosing the correct antivirus application is personal. Comments come fast and furious when someone asks TechRepublic members which one is the best. A majority feel that any of the free versions are fine for nonbusiness use. I use Avast or Comodo on Windows machines.

Anti-malware enforcers

The next class of anti-malware is capable of both detecting and removing malware. I’m sure you are wondering why not just use these from the start. I wish it was that simple.
Scanners use signature files and heuristics to detect malware. Malware developers know all about each and can morph their code, which then nullifies signature files and confuses heuristics. That’s why malware scanners aren’t the cure-all answer. Maybe someday.
More caution: I want to emphasize that you need to be careful when picking malware scanners. The bad guys like to disguise malware (antivirus 2009) as a malware scanner, claiming it will solve all your problems. All four of the scanners I have chosen are recommended by experts.

7: Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool

Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) is a good general malware removal tool, simply because Microsoft should know whether the scanned code is theirs or not. Three things I like about MSRT are:

The scan and removal process is automated.
Windows Update keeps the signature file database current automatically.
It has the advantage of being an OEM product, thus it’s less intrusive and more likely to be accepted by management.

8: SUPERAntiSpyware

SUPERAntiSpyware is another general purpose scanner that does a good job of detecting and removing most malware. I have used it on several occasions and found it to be more than adequate.
A number of TechRepublic members have mentioned to me that SUPERAntiSpyware was the only scanner they found capable of completely removing antivirus 2009 (malware).

9: Malwarebyte’s Anti-Malware

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (MBAM) malware scanner was the most successful of the four I tested. I was first introduced to it by world-renowned malware expert Dr. Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks. For a detailed explanation of how MBAM works, refer to my post Malware scanners: MBAM is best of breed.
Still, MBAM does not catch everything. As I pointed out in the MBAM article, it misses some of the more sophisticated malware, especially rootkits. When that happens, I turn to the next malware scanner.

10: GMER

In Rootkits: Is removing them even possible?, I explained why it’s hard to find rootkit malware. Fortunately, GMER is one of the best when it comes to detecting and removing rootkits — enough so that it’s recommended by Dr. Nazario.

Google Ranking Search Engine Optimization Tool

2009-12-17T06:19:00.000-08:00

Google Ranking Search Engine Optimization Tool is a Matlab source code that checks the ranking of a Web page in Google. This is a search engine optimization tool. This Web position tool is intended to determine your Web site rankings in the major search engines. With Google Ranking, you can swiftly obtain information on the positions (rankings) your Web site holds for the selected search queries.Version 1.1 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.

Adobe plugs dangerous Flash Player security holes

2009-12-17T06:14:00.000-08:00

Adobe has shipped a critical Flash Player update to fix at least seven documented security vulnerabilities that expose nearly every computer user to dangerous hacker attacks.

The Flash Player 10.0.42.34 update is available for all platforms (Windows, Linux and Mac OS X). A new version off Adobe AIR is also available. Here are the raw details:

From Adobe’s advisory:

    * This update resolves a vulnerability in the parsing of JPEG data that could potentially lead to code execution (CVE-2009-3794).
    * This update resolves a data injection vulnerability that could potentially lead to code execution (CVE-2009-3796).
    * This update resolves a memory corruption vulnerability that could potentially lead to code execution (CVE-2009-3797).
    * This update resolves a memory corruption vulnerability that could potentially lead to code execution (CVE-2009-3798).
    * This update resolves an integer overflow vulnerability that could potentially lead to code execution (CVE-2009-3799).
    * This update resolves multiple crash vulnerabilities that could potentially lead to code execution (CVE-2009-3800).
    * This update resolves a Windows-only local file name access vulnerability in the Flash Player ActiveX control that could potentially lead to information disclosure (CVE-2009-3951). This updates the previously patched issue, CVE-2008-4820.

Adobe recommends users of Adobe AIR version 1.5.2 and earlier versions update to Adobe AIR 1.5.3.

To verify the Adobe Flash Player version number installed on your system, access the About Flash Player page, or right-click on content running in Flash Player and select “About Adobe (or Macromedia) Flash Player” from the menu. If you use multiple browsers, perform the check for each browser you have installed on your system.

Know How Firewalls Works?

2009-12-17T06:08:00.000-08:00

If you have been using the Internet for any length of time, and especially if you work at a larger company and browse the Web while you are at work, you have probably heard the term firewall used. For example, you often hear people in companies say things like, "I can't use that site because they won't let it through the firewall."

If you have a fast Internet connection into your home (either a DSL connection or a cable modem), you may have found yourself hearing about firewalls for your home network as well. It turns out that a small home network has many of the same security issues that a large corporate network does. You can use a firewall to protect your home network and family from offensive Web sites and potential hackers.

Tools to monitor memory usage in Windows 7

2009-12-17T06:02:00.000-08:00

To help you to appreciate the memory usage information in Windows 7 and to put the evolution of Windows resource monitoring into perspective, I thought I would begin by taking a quick look back at Windows 9x’s Resource Meter. Once you have Resource Meter up and running, you can hover the mouse pointer over the icon and you will see a pop-up display that breaks down the amount of available system resources into its three categories: System, User, and GDI, as shown in Figure A.

Figure A

Hovering the mouse pointer over the Resource Meter icon produces a display of the currently available system resources in three categories.

If you double-click the icon, you will see the Resource Meter dialog box, shown in Figure B. As you can see, this display used three gas gauge-like monitors to show you the amount of available system resources in each category.

Figure B

The Resource Meter’s display uses three gas gauge-like monitors to show you the amount of available system resources in each category.

Because resource management was horrible in the Windows 9x days, system crashes were inevitable. If you kept your eye on the Resource Meter icon, you could literally watch the amount of system resources depleted as you worked. As you can see in Figure C, the green bars would move down and change to yellow and then to red right before the system crashed.

Figure C

This is the evolution of a system crash caused by the depletion of system resources.

The Task Manager Performance tab

When you compare the Performance tab in Windows 7’s Task Manager to the one in Vista, as shown in Figure D, you’ll notice a few changes in the statistics sections. First, in the Physical Memory section, you’ll see that there is now a measurement showing the amount of available memory. While in Vista you can easily deduce the amount of available memory by subtracting the Total value from the Cached value. It is nice to be able to tell at a glance just how much physical memory is currently available to the system.

Figure D

Comparing Vista’s and 7’s Performance tab reveals a few slight, but noteworthy, changes.

Of course, the Total entry shows the amount of RAM installed in the system. The Cached entry indicates the amount of physical memory used recently for system resources. (This memory will remain in the cache in case the system resources are needed again, but it’s available should other operations need it.) The new Available entry indicates the amount of physical memory that is currently not being used. The Free entry indicates the amount of memory being used in the cache that does not contain useful information.
The Kernel Memory section now shows only the amount of Paged and Nonpaged memory. The Paged and Nonpaged entries break down the total amount of memory being used by the kernel and show you how much is coming from virtual memory and how much is coming from physical memory, respectively. The Total entry, which was essentially useless here, has been removed.
In the System section, you’ll find the same measurements found in Vista; however, the Page File item has been renamed to Commit. (Windows XP called this same measurement the Commit Charge and dedicated an entire section to it.) This measurement still shows Page File usage. Here, the first number indicates the total amount of physical and virtual memory currently in use, while the second number indicates the total amount of physical and virtual memory available on your computer.
The Handles and Threads entries are rather obscure and are actually sub-objects of processes. The Handles entry shows the number of object identifiers, or handles, that are currently in use by all the running processes. The Threads entry actually refers to the number of subprocesses running inside larger processes. The Processes entry, of course, represents the number of currently running processes. As you know, you can see each of the currently running processes by selecting the Processes tab.
The Up Time entry is still a nice piece of information that shows the amount of time that has passed since the computer has been restarted.

The Resource Monitor Memory tab

To access the Resource Monitor, just click the button on the Performance tab in Windows 7’s Task Manager. Then, select the Memory tab in the Resource Monitor. When you do, you’ll see the newly revamped interface, shown in Figure E. While the three graphs on the side are a nice new feature and show regularly updated graphs, the Physical Memory usage chart is stunning in that it provides an extremely intuitive picture of memory usage.

Figure E

The Physical Memory usage chart provides a very easy to understand picture of memory usage.

If you do the math, you can see the chart accounts for every bit of memory installed in the system. Table A identifies each section of the chart. If you subtract the amount reserved for hardware, you get the Total. If you add the Standby and Free, you get the Available to Programs total.

Table A

Hardware Reserved	Memory that is reserved for use by the BIOS and some drivers for other peripherals.
In Use	Memory used by process working sets, drivers, nonpaged pools, and operating system functions.
Modified	Memory whose contents must be to disk before it can be used for another purpose.
Standby	Memory that contains cached data and code that is not actively in use.
Free	Memory that does not contain any valuable data and that will be used first when processes or the operating system needs more memory.

Top ten firefox hacks?

2009-12-17T05:55:00.000-08:00

1: Speed up Firefox

This hack requires a few steps. Search for pipelining in the filter and you should see:
network.http.pipelining: Change this to true.
network.http.proxy.pipelining: Change this to true.
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests: Change this to 8.
Now search for max-connections and you should see:
network.http.max-connections: Change this to 96.
network.http.max-connections-per-server: Change this to 32.

2: Disable antivirus scanning

This is only for the Windows version. If you’re downloading large files, this scanning can seriously slow things down. And since you will most likely scan the downloaded file anyway, you’ll probably want to disable this. Of course, if you are uber paranoid (not a bad trait for computing), you might want to leave this entry alone.
To disable antivirus scanning, search for scanWhenDone and you should see:
browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone: Change this to false.

3: Open Javascript popups as tabs

If a popup window lacks the features of a browser window, Firefox will handle it like a popup. If you would prefer to open all windows, including popups, as new tabs, you need to tell Firefox in about:config. Search for newwindow and you will see three entries. Of those three entries, you will want to modify:
browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction: Change this to 0.

4: Spell checking in all fields

By default, Firefox checks spelling only in multiple-line text boxes. You can set it to check spelling in all text boxes. Search for spellcheckdefault and you should see:
layout.spellcheckDefault: Change this to 2.

5: Open search bar results in new tab

When you use the search bar, the results display in the current tab. This can be a nuisance because you will navigate out of the page you are currently in. To make sure Firefox always opens search results in a new tab, search for openintab and you should see:
browser.search.openintab: Change this to true.

6: Auto export bookmarks

In Firefox 3, bookmarks are automatically saved and exported for you. The only problem is that by default, they’re saved as places.sqlite instead of the more convenient bookmarks.html. To change this setting so that they can be easily re-imported, search for autoExportHTML and you should see:
browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML: Change this to true.

7: Disable extension install delay

One of the few gripes I have with Firefox is the silly countdown you must endure every time you want to install an extension. Fortunately, this can be disabled. Search for enable_delay and you should see:
security.dialog_enable_delay: Change this to 0.

8: View source code in an external editor

When you need to view the source of a page, it opens up in browser popup. Most developers would probably like to have that opened in their favorite editor instead of having to cut and paset. To do this, there are two entries to modify. Search for view_source.editor and you will see:
view_source.editor.external: Change this to true.
view_source.editor.path: Change this to the explicit path to your editor of choice.

9: Get more add-on search results

When you do a search in the Add-on window, you’ll see just five results. You might find it more efficient to increase this number. Search for getAddons and you should see:
extension.getAddons.maxResults: Change this to 10 (or higher, if you want to see even more).

10: Redefine the Backspace button

Did you know you can configure Firefox to use the backspace button to either go back a page or go up a page? This keeps power users from having to go back and forth from the keyboard to the mouse. Search for backspace and you will see:
browser.backspace_action: Change this to 0 for previous page and 1 for page up.

Top most firefox extensions

2009-12-17T05:41:00.000-08:00

#1: Morning Coffee

This extension allows you to set a group of Web sites that will open (each in its own tab) with the click of a button. This will save you from having to roam through your bookmarks (while drinking that first cup of wake-me-up in the morning) to view your favorite sites. And you don’t have to limit yourself to personal browsing, either. I also use this extension to open up all the Web-based admin tools for sites I administer. You can even set sites up to open only on certain days (or every day). So news junkies or overworked administrators rejoice: This extension will make your browsing life a little easier.
#2: NoScript

This is one of the best tools for making sure your browsing experience is secure. With NoScript, you can disable active content from any site you don’t trust. Unless you configure it to allow JaveaScript, Java, and

other executable scripting to run from a site, NoScript will completely block the script, keeping you browser safe from known and unknown exploits. And don’t think because you are using FireFox in Linux that you’re perfectly safe! Use this extension regardless of platform.
#3: ColorfulTabs

If you’re like me, you generally have a LOT of tabs open in Firefox. Sometimes this isn’t a problem. But there are times when the tabs can get a bit overwhelming and need a bit of organization. To help with this, ColorfulTabs gives each open tab a different color, making it easier to distinguish between them. With this simple extension, you can color-code tabs either randomly or according to URL. You can also set tabs to fade. Another fun feature is that you can set a background image for tabs.
#4: BBCode

This helpful extension adds BBCode, HTML, and XHTML symbols and formatting to the context menu. BBCode also allows you to add up to 10 custom tags to your menu. This extension shows itself when you’re in a forum and you right-click a text area where you can select the tag you want to add from the menu. This extension will make your forum work quite a bit easier, as well as faster.
#5: Buggybar

This extension is invaluable to Bugzilla power users. With this extension, you will have a Bugzilla Chrome sidebar available which will readily show all bugs that relate to a bug list you have created. As of version 0.2, Buggybar works with all instances of Bugzilla.
#6: Clear Cache Button

I don’t know about you, but I always set up my browsers to clear their cache at exit. But what about those times you want to clear the cache but not exit the browser? Instead of navigating through the menu structure, you can add this simple extension. It provides a button that gives you complete cache clearing with a single click.
#7: TimeTracker

Okay, this is not really a tool that will aid or better your browsing experience. In fact, this little extension will remind you how much time you spend browsing. I have found this little gem useful in a number of circumstances. Whether you are in need of a quick five-minute break from number crunching or you just need to know how much time you spend on a specific Web site, TimeTracker will keep track of how long you browse. What is nice about this is that the tool times across sessions. So when you close the browser, the timer stops, and when you open the browser back up, the timer starts again. You can reset the timer by right-clicking the status bar timer and selecting Reset.
#8: iMacros

This extension automates pretty much anything you do in Firefox. From opening up sites to filling out forms and even administration work — you can automate it with iMacros. The iMacros extension has a sidebar that shows favorite macros. It also has a record feature that allows you to create macros by simply clicking Record, going through the motions of the macro to be created, and clicking Save. These macros can be as complex as you need them to be. When you want to run them, you simply navigate to the macro in the iMacros sidebar and click the Play button. The only downfall I have found with this tool is that you can’t assign key combinations to run macros. Other than that, this extension is a must-have for power browsers.
#9: Fasterfox

This extension does one thing: It makes Firefox load pages faster. Speed of page loading can be increased by allowing simultaneous connections and prefetching. This extension is currently in the experimental stage because of the release of Firefox 3. To install it, you have to log into a Firefox account to download. The extension is worth the hassle. The speed increase is noticeable.
#10: BlogRovR

We all read blogs. From my TechRepublic Linux and Open Source blog to the countless other blogs available, we all read them daily. And this takes time. Instead of wasting time going to the blogs, let this handy extension fetch them for you. You do have to sign up for an account using this extension (they promise they won’t spam you.) and you will be asked to install another sidebar (Stickies), which is not necessary. Once you have this installed, you just enter the blog URL, and BlogRovR will begin fetching the information for you. Warning: If you have NoScript installed, you have to allow the BlogRovR page to run scripts or it won’t be able to fetch pages for you.

Google tools which speed up your website

2009-12-17T05:36:00.000-08:00

Google has announced a new Labs feature in Google Webmaster Tools designed to track page load speed. The new Site Performance tool is one part tracking and stats tool, and one part Firefox add-on.

The tracking and stats can be accessed through the Labs menu in Google Webmaster Tools. To get the live profiling add-on, you’ll need to be using Firefox and have the Firebug add-on installed. Yes, like Yahoo’s YSlow add-on, Google’s Page Speed add-on injects some extra profiling tools into the Firebug panel.

These days, nearly everyone has a blog or a website they maintain. Popular publishing systems like WordPress, Movable Type and Blogger do a decent job of keeping your sites slim, but once you load up a complicated theme and add a few widgets, your page load times can start to take a substantial hit. Google’s new set of tools, along with similar tools like Yahoo’s YSlow, are powerful and full-featured, making them a must for large-scale site developers. But they are also easy to install and simple enough to use that even bloggers and small site builders should gain plenty of insight from the data they provide.

To get the new tools, install the Firebug add-on and head to the Site Performance section of Google Webmaster Tools. At the bottom of the page you’ll see a button to install the new Firefox plugin. Once installed, head to your site, click the Firebug icon and look for two new tabs: Page Speed and Page Speed Activity.

Click on Page Speed and run the tool and you’ll get a list of potential speed killers. For example are you using image compression? How about minifying JavaScript and CSS? The handy part is that Page Speed offers links to minified and compressed version of your files.

Change your wordpress theme

2009-12-07T21:30:00.000-08:00

One of the great things about WordPress is the number of themes that are available to change the look of your blog. There are both free and paid versions available. Changing themes is quite easy.Finding just the right theme to fit your blog can be frustrating. And that is putting it mildly.You find one that you like just about everything but that one little thing.

Change your header

In your theme folder you will find an img or images folder depending on which one the theme author used. Inside that folder will be an image called header.jpg or header.gif. You can easily grab a copy of that image and check to see exactly what size it is.

Either create a new image the same size your self or hire a graphic designer to create one for you if you lack the skills. Name this new file the same as the original one and replace the original one. You now have a personalized header.

the other day a friend of mine had found the perfect theme for his blog but the hyperlinks were not the standard blue and underlined but they were just black and bold.

He loved the theme except for that and had spent hours finding just the right look. This problem was easily solved by making a minor change in the css (cascading style sheet) file of his theme.

WordPress themes are run using style sheets and you can change the attributes quite easily. In this case it was the hyperlinks so you needed to look on the style sheet for the link� attributes.

It will look something like this

a {

color: #000000;

text-decoration: none;

}

Just change the color to the appropriate hexadecimal code in this case #0000ff and then the attribute from none to underline and you have a standard� hyperlink.

Changing sidebar size

This takes two changes and they have to be the same amount of change. If your sidebar is a bit narrow say 120 pixels and you want to use 125Ã—125 buttons you will have to change the sidebar width and reduce the body width by the same amount.

Here are the two entries

#sidebar {

position: relative;

float: right;

width: 237px;

#content {

float: left;

width: 676px;

You need to subtract from one what you add to the other but this will allow you to customize the size of a sidebar if that is the feature that you don't like.

WordPress themes can be easily customized to your needs so if you find most of the features you want try your hand at customizing them. Just make sure to have a backup before you start.

How to get daily 300-500 page impressions for a baby blog?

2009-12-07T21:21:00.000-08:00

For new blogs it is difficult to get atleast 300-500 page impressions.But their is a solution for this. Your blog can get easy clicks within an hour after you contribute some stuff.For more information read the entire article below.

IndiaStudyChannel.com is offering a genuine Work From Home program for students and housewives. I have already registered and started using it. You will get 90% of the revenue share for:

Post your previous years university question papers.Contribute questions with answers to online exams & test section in various subjects.

Submit information about your college and invite classmates.

Submit educational news & announcements from various sources including news papers and university websites.

Participate in the discussion forum.To get started, you can register as a member in IndiaStudyChannel.com and start posting content to various sections. This is genuine program, approved by Google. Your share of the revenue will be sent to you directly by Google.

Link Building Techniques

2009-12-01T04:46:00.001-08:00

Directory submission

There is a controversial discussion about how good links from directories are. Of course we are not talking about DMOZ or Yahoo directories. There thousands others and you can get links from many of them free of charge. I believe that all links count and if you can automate directory submission, then the effort well worth it.

Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking sites are great way to increase your website ranking by building big number of backlinks pointing to your site. There are hundreds of social bookmarking websites where you can create free accounts and post links to your domains.

Blog and Forum posting.

Blog and forum commenting is very popular way to acquire backlinks very fast. You can find many blogs related to your website and post comments, leaving a link to your site. But make sure not to spam and leave valuable comments.

Using just these two methods you can build many backlinks to your website and improve your search engine positions. Try to get as many as possible links from trusted and established websites that have some authority in your niche.

Seeing clicks but no revenue?

2009-12-01T04:45:00.000-08:00

Have you ever checked your reports and noticed that you have clicks reported, but no revenue? I would like to explain why this may happen, as we frequently receive emails and questions on our Help Forum about this issue. What you're seeing may be due to one of the following:

1. Allowed Sites setup

The Allowed Sites feature allows you to specify a list of sites where ads from your account may be displayed. If you're using this feature, you'll need to make sure that you've listed all sites where you'd like to display your AdSense ad code.

To check if this is the case, log into your account and visit the 'Allowed Sites' page under your AdSense Setup tab. If the radio button 'Allow any site to show ads for my account ' is populated, you're not being affected by this issue, and you should continue to #2 below. However, if 'Only allow certain sites to show ads for my account' is populated, review the list of sites in the box below -- are all the sites you own listed in this box? If the answer is 'no', you won't be credited for clicks on the missing sites. Please be sure to add all of the sites where you'd like to display your AdSense ad code.

2. Invalid clicks

It's possible that you have some clicks that google monitoring system has considered to be invalid. As I have mentioned before, google monitor all clicks and impressions on Google ads for any activity that may artificially drive up an advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings. Any clicks that our system considers invalid will still appear on your 'Overview' page, under the Reports tab. However, because our advertisers aren't charged for these clicks and impressions, we won't show the earnings for this activity.

Drive Traffic To Your Site Through Good Content

2009-12-01T04:42:00.000-08:00

1. Have a purpose. Of course you need great content to bring traffic to your blog or website but there is something you must do first.

It's essential to have a goal before you start writing anything at all. You need to know what you want to get out of what you produce, whether that's to drive more visitors to your site or to educate and inform your market.

2. Focus on getting it right first time. Of course this doesn't happen without practice, but take an example from a daily newspaper journalist. Their deadlines mean they don't get time to write, edit, re-write and touch up their copy, so they have got to get it as right as they can first time round.

This is particularly important for any copy to your blog posts; they should be 95% right the first time you write them.

Entrepreneurs fail most often because they don't realise how important speed and execution are. Being a perfectionist is not a good idea in business, good enough will outperform perfection every single time so do not waste time 'perfecting' your copy, just get on with it.

A bonus to this technique is that if you really focus on getting things right first time then you you don't have to go back and fix them later.

3. Force challenging but realistic targets on yourself. It's quality not quantity that counts here, so your goal should be to create and share that every single day.

4. Give sound bites, not manifestos. A really great example of this is Twitter - you have to put your point across in140 characters, or less,. That forces you to be succinct and to the point.

Most inboxes are overcrowded and your message is easily lost so make your emails short and punchy.

Save the big ideas for the right medium and time when your customers have the time to sit down and take it in.

5. Have a point of view. People buy from people they trust, and they won't trust you unless they feel they know you.

I know I say you have to have speed and execution, but it also has to have something of your own personality in there. People are interested in your thoughts and opinions on the topic, so don't make it neutral and bland but state your views clearly as someone who has a genuine interest in the topic.

6. The Insiders Scoop. This follows on from the previous point, because in order to become an authority to your prospects and customers you want to make a real connection with them. People love to have the insider view, and you can give that to them, so tell them as much of your life and experience as you can.

BUT, it must have a point to it that is relevant to your market or product.

7. Always summarise! Back to school here. You remember with essays you were always told to 'tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them it and then tell them what you've told them.'

That is so true for content creation as well because you will make the greatest impression on your reader by repeating key points and making your message unmistakeable, and unforgettable.

Get Google Page Rank

2009-12-01T04:39:00.001-08:00

Page Rank is great with some of the most important determining ranks from Google search results. This is really important with some of the most interesting Page Rank or PR listing. As counted by Google there are great instances about the filtering links coming over through different forms of links with some of the more important penalized things about Google with rightly figured out site controlling ways that they can link to find out. There are certain links that bring penalized sites as well. There is a site PRO with a usual penalty that comes unlikely otherwise. This of course can be a pretty hefty penalty that can come with a heavier penalty. A site with higher PRO rating when linked with other sites, with some high yielding results.

Page Rank calculation is one of the most incredible account set ups that can come as a link to most sites that are even outside sites or linked with other sites. Page Rank and development can be quite easily probable with the published Page Rank development with some of the most incredible variations to bring the equation into focus. The t1 equation is one of the greatest Google page ranking processes that bring out bounded links that bring some damping factors that are usually set at 0.85. Sharing the links of the different pages of Google Page Rank has been divided through the out bounded links that come in as votes for the less than great-shared values that can link all of the pages.

The value is shared equally between and among different links with some of the greater PR4 as well as 5 outbursts about higher links coming from a page with PR8 and 100 out bounded links. The Page Rank can come with some of the most interesting and important technical page rank lining that can bring value to receiving greater conclusion from these reports.

Succeed in Affiliate Marketing

2009-12-01T04:35:00.000-08:00

For internet marketing, this generally means getting a click through to your sales page or that of the affiliate product you represent. Whether you need a few hundred bucks a month or several thousand a month, the income potential of affiliate marketing is limitless. Affiliate marketing is quite complex, and it would be impossible on the limited space here to explain all you need to know to succeed in affiliate marketing.

Now, you may be thinking ok, that’s good for you being a marketing coach, but I am an affiliate for a program. With these top three marketing tips, you will be able to able to increase your sales and survive in the affiliate marketing online
. There are only two tiers in affiliate marketing, however, consisting of the main site and its affiliates. Topics you’ll want to spend time researching include: affiliate marketing, Google ad sense, product design, and passive income streams.

There are many ways to start with affiliate marketing, but a basic starting point is to have a web site with text or image affiliate links to products you want to promote. However, to his credit Alex does provide links to two great affiliate marketing resource where you can do further research into the topic if you so wish. Affiliate marketing programs
Are best alternatives to those who are sick and tired of their arduous daily work just to climb up the venerated corporate ladder? The wonderful thing about affiliate marketing is that you can actually become an affiliate marketer and not have your own product or website.

These BIG money earners were earning fortunes off of many different business models (affiliate marketing, info products, membership sites, Google Ad sense, and portal sites. Setting up an online affiliate marketing business may not be quite as involved but that doesn’t mean that we don’t conduct the necessary research. Don't get the wrong impression, this income won't just suddenly appear, you do have to do some hard work marketing and promoting your chosen affiliate companies or services to make the initial sales. The TITLE Tag Location: just below the [head] tag ‘[title] Web Promotion, Affiliate Marketing, SEO [/title]' for example ([and] = as HTML disallowed in this article).

Two of the most common ways to generate easy cash online are by using Google Ad words and free Blogs with affiliate marketing. If the classification is based on the depth of the affiliate network, it can be classified as single-tier, two-tier, and multi-tier affiliate marketing. They are also written in response to questions which I have been asked as well as address common challenges that people have with affiliate marketing, article marketing, and internet marketing or running an online business in general. Affiliate marketing is much more than signing up for a free affiliate program and then posting your affiliate link here and there.

Make Money Online Via Internet For Free

2009-12-01T04:33:00.000-08:00

Yes, you can make money online. Just as money is made offline, money is also made online. There are varieties of ways to make money online, some of them are: through forex trading, affiliate programs, creation of software, creation of an ebook and setting up of an online store. Out of these ways to make money online, I am going to write about how to make money doing affiliate programs, the other ways to make money online will come up in my subsequent articles.

Firstly, I will start by defining what an affiliate program is all about. Affiliate program is a method of promoting the products of individuals or companies through advertising in return for some percentage of all sales generated by you. In affiliate programs, if you don’t make a sale, you won’t get any share, that’s it. Let’s take for instance, if am selling an ebook online for $50. I will create an affiliate program; put a link to it on my website for any interested persons to sign up. Let’s say I am offering $30 for anyone that makes someone to buy my ebook. Now, if anyone is interested, he will sign up for my affiliate program. After an interested person has signed up, he would be provided with a unique link which is going to be used to track his id whenever he generates a customer that converts into a sale. Understood? Just like any other ways of doing business have methods, they are ways to promote affiliate programs in order to make sales for your publisher and yourself. Some sets of people make over 8 figures monthly by promoting affiliate program products, and again, some sets of people make $0 monthly by promoting affiliate program. You see; people that make money and people that don’t make money are online, just as offline. The reason why these guys make 8 figures monthly is because they have a range of marketing methods that work well for them and as for those that doesn’t make any money online, though they have their own range of marketing methods but it doesn’t work for them. The reason may be because they don’t do it well. I have been working with affiliate programs for years now and since then I have made thousands of dollars. Let me say, I belong to those sets of people that make money online.

Create Webpage Using Your Own Computer

2009-12-01T04:31:00.000-08:00

here are many web hosting companies available willing to host your website for various monthly fees. Most of these fees are based on bandwidth usage, storage usage and anything else they can think of to add on fees.

Each company offers similar packages which include add-ons like support for programming languages such as PHP, ASP, Perl, database support such as MySQL or even a shopping cart for those of you interested in selling items from your website. If you have a need there is probably a company able to meet it for you and if not you may have just found yourself a business opportunity.

Don't want to to pay the fees? Then I have a possible solution for you and I say possible because it will take a little patience to set everything up but if you’re willing I'll show you how to setup your own computer to host your webpage yourself for free. Well not actually free you will still have to pay for the electric and your time to set it up but pretty close to free.

Designing A Website

2009-12-01T04:27:00.000-08:00

A website built to disseminate information should be simple and straightforward. On the other hand, if it is a commercial website, it should contains, pictures, graphics, videos and other audio-visual elements.

Color scheme

Unless your site is about, say, some glitzy subject like movies or videos, its color scheme should be simple and pleasing to the eyes. The colors of the text and background should make for an easy reading. You should stick to your chosen color combination throughout the website. Do not change the colors with every page. Some of the important color combinations are blue and white; red, yellow and white; white, blue and orange.

If you are not sure which colors you should choose, surf the internet and find sites that are similar to your subject and check what color patterns they have used.

Keep the navigation simple and predictable

Whatever the nature of the website, it should enable the visitor to move around through its pages quite easily. The text in the navigation links should be indicative of the topic or the page to which it directs the visitor. Navigation links are provided on the left side of the page. It has become a kind of norm since the visitors are used to looking for navigation links on the left side.

Navigation links should also be placed at the bottom of each page so that the visitors do not have to scroll back to the top.

Templates

Templates are basic website designs. They can be taken from your web design software such as Front Page. They can also be downloaded from several websites that specialize in website template designing.

Site map

It is always advisable to include a site map if your website consists of 15 pages or more to enable the visitors to find easily what they are looking for.

External links

Links to other websites should open in new windows so that the visitors do not leave your websites and come back to it after browsing through the linked site.

Content

Content is the king. All glitz and glamour are useless if the content is not unique, informative and useful. Content should provide the information that the visitors are looking for.

Google AdWords Editor

2009-12-01T04:25:00.000-08:00

Google has just updated its Adwords editor to include the columns Conv. (1-per-click), Conv. Rate (1-per-click), Cost/Conv. (1-per-click) and Conv. (many-per-click), Conv. Rate (many-per-click), Cost/Conv. (many-per-click).

For those who haven’t tried the new Google AdWords interface, 1-per-click and many-per-click are Adwords’ new conversion metrics.

Conversions (many-per-click) count a conversion every time a conversion is made within 30 days following an AdWords ad click. Conversions (many-per-click) will count multiple conversions per click. These metrics are useful for measuring conversions that are valuable every time they happen (e.g. e-commerce transactions).

Conversions (1-per-click) count a conversion for every AdWords ad click resulting in a conversion within 30 days. This means if more than one conversion happens following a single ad click, conversions after the first will not count. Conversions (1-per-click) count a conversion for every AdWords ad click resulting in a conversion within 30 days. This means if more than one conversion happens following a single ad click, conversions after the first will not coun

Webpage Keyword Density

2009-12-01T04:22:00.001-08:00

Keyword density is an indicator of the number of times the selected keyword shows in the web page. But mind you, keywords shouldn't be over used, but should be just sufficient enough to be shown at important places.

If you repeat your keywords with every other word on every line, then your site will probably be rejected as an artificial site or spam site.

Keyword density is always expressed as a percentage of the total word content on a given web page.

Suppose you have 100 words on your webpage (not including HMTL code used for writing the web page), and you use a certain keyword for five times in the content. The keyword density on that page is got by simply dividing the total number of keywords, by the total number of words that appear on your web page. So here it is 5 divided by 100 = .05. Because keyword density is a percentage of the total word count on the web page, multiply the above by 100, that is 0.05 x 100 = 5%

The accepted standard for a keyword density is about 3% and 5%, to get recognized by the major search engines and you should never exceed it.

Please remember, that this rule applies to every page on your website. It also applies to not just one keyword but also a set of keywords that relate to a different product or service. The keyword density should always be between 3% to 5%.

Simple steps to check the density:

Copy and paste the content from an individual web page into a word-processing software program like Microsoft word or Word Perfect.

Go to the "Edit" menu and click "Select All". Now go to the "Tools" menu and select "Word Count". Write down your total number of words in the page.

Now select the "Find" function on the "Edit" menu. Go to the "Replace" tab and type in the keyword you need to find. "Replace" that word with the same word, so you dont change the text.

When you complete the replace function, the program will provide a count of the words you replaced. That gives the total number of times you have used the keyword in that page.

Using the total word count for the page and the total number of keywords you can now calculate the keyword density.

Make A Website Fast And Easy

2009-12-01T04:21:00.001-08:00

Owning a website has become something mandatory in this technologically advanced world. Unlike the olden days when only countable number of businesses has websites, today each and every business available in this planet owns a website. As a matter of fact websites are not only for businesses. The advancements in technology and the knowledge of people out there about the Internet has paved way for the personal websites too. There are many website scripts and these out there that can be used to develop website with only little programming knowledge. Let your choice be creating a website with the help of these templates or getting the web design done through a professional company, the steps involved in creating a website are the same. Just keep on reading the article to know about the steps involved in creating a website and the factors to be considered in each step.

Getting The Domain Name

People have a misconception that the domain name doesn’t have any importance. Remember that Internet is overcrowded with websites and you have to consider every factor that can highlight your website in the crowd. Choosing a search engine friendly domain is an important factor to be considered. Expert web designers say that the domain name plays an important role in bringing a website to the top of the search engine results. Now choosing the domain name registration service provider will not be a big deal today. As you may know, there is no scarcity for the domain name registration service providers.

Choosing The Best Web Host

Once the domain name is booked, you next step is to find the best web hosting service provider. A web host is the place where your website files and designs will be stored. The choice of the web hosting service has to be done based on the requirement of your website and the nature of the web design. Note that web design done in flash and other advanced technologies will need advanced hosting services and lots of bandwidth. If you are planning to launch an entertainment website such as an online video site, you should make sure that you hosting service provider supports all the features needed for a video website.

Search Engine Optimization

If you want to make your website appear in the top of the search engine results, then search engine optimization is the one to look for. SEO in short includes both optimization done in the site such as adding content, keywords, tags etc along with offsite promotion through articles, social media etc. There are countless numbers of SEO firms available today for this purpose.

Web Design Needs Under One Roof

There are a few professional web design companies available out there were they will be taking care of everything from web design to promotion of the website. If you are looking for professional looking website you will have to certainly hire a professional web designer. This will be better than creating a website on your own.

SEO Friendly Content For Your Website

2009-12-01T04:19:00.000-08:00

Getting your website positioned as high as possible in SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) is one of the main goals for everyone who has a SEO strategy.

Statistics prove that the percentage of getting a click to your website keeps on reducing as the searcher moves down the result pages on a Search Engine.

What does a SEO friendly content have?
• Uniqueness
• Appropriate Language
• Relevancy
• Descriptiveness
• Scanable & Skimmable structure - Lists or Bullet form
• Presented in Q/A format
• Powerful Keywords and their placement
• Structured Flow
• Proofread for any mistakes

SEO friendly content does not mean that you start writing for search engines. Write content that search engines would adore automatically. The first and most important rule of content writing strategy is to write for visitors and not for search engines. Search engines ultimate goal is to provide their users with the unique and most relevant content. They will prefer your content if it is written for users.

It is not a coincidence that writing strategy for good contents makes for SEO as well.

Uniqueness: Name a subject and you will find it on web, so dig deep and write something that you own. Something that makes you stand out of the regular web shops.

Appropriate Language: Write in the language of your prospect. The language determines the kind of visitor your site will attract. If you are writing for Business owners who are generally non-technical, write in plain business language. It is always easy to write if you know your readers.

Relevancy: Write what is relevant to your topic and business. Search engines have their own algorithm to check the relevancy of the content. Please avoid playing around with search engines. Even if you get successful in bringing few visitors to your site and they find the content irrelevant to their search, they will immediately bounce out of the site.

Descriptiveness: Descriptive here does not mean to start writing stories. Describe your services or products in an informative manner. Try to display important information with a link to the detailed information. This could give you an extra edge over your competitor

Scanable & Skimmable: Most of the web users do not read they just scan the web. Research shows that visitors read about 20% of content on a webpage. Write content which is easily scanable by readers. Some points to be kept in mind are-
• Use of font color which is easy to the eyes
• Variable Eye catching font sizes
• Use list or bullets instead of paragraphs to improve recall value
• Use of Headers and sub headers - can create interest

Presented in Q/A format: Present your content in a form of questions and answers. Most of the websites miss this opportunity to answer reader’s question and they land up increasing their bounce rate. This can be best done by addressing the user’s pain with a simple yet effective answer.

Powerful Keywords and their placement: Keywords play an important role in SEO strategy. Do not just sprinkle your keywords into the content rather build it around the selected keywords and phrases. The denser the keywords towards the top, the better they are. Use of synonyms is good, however, try them a little lower on your web page.

what is a mobile wap portal?

2009-11-18T02:42:00.000-08:00

Generally people don't know the exact abbrevation of wap means "wireless application portal".In this present generation of mobile world.wap portals plays a major role in the upcoming generation since the world is advancing,the use of mobiles is also increasing at a rapid pace.

What operating system used in nokia mobile phones?

2009-11-18T02:37:00.000-08:00

The collaborative support from the industry for the growing power of the Psion software base led to the historic formation in 1998 of Symbian, a joint venture between Psion and phone manufacturers Ericsson, Motorola, and Nokia. Over the next few years Symbian helped bring forth the explosion of mobile device innovation—with Symbian software at the base of more than 100 million phones by 2006.
In 2008, the next step of Symbian evolution took place, with Nokia purchasing all Symbian assets and starting the software down the path to open source. As the Symbian Foundation and all its members look to the future and the billions of forthcoming interconnected mobile devices, it will be innovative collaboration—working together —that will help make people more productive, more creative and more entertained than ever before.

What is India study channel?How can it be useful?

2009-11-18T02:31:00.000-08:00

IndiaStudyChannel.com is an educational portal providing reliable and comprehensive information on educational institutions, examinations, education system, exam results, entrance examinations, previous years university question papers etc. Members can participate in a discuss forum which will be reviewed by an English expert and will help members to improve their English skills. Also, members can earn revenue through various sections of this site by contributing content like your previous years question papers, submitting educational news etc. In most sections of this site, you will earn Google AdSense revenue share for a period of 1 year from the date of submitting a specific post. In some sections like previous years question papers, we will pay you cash you in addition to the Google AdSense revenue sharing program.

How to earn by flixya?

2009-11-18T02:28:00.000-08:00

How to earn maximum revenue through flixya,xombia by only watching uploading and writing articles. when you register your account with flixya and xombia you adsense account is affliated with these services they get your google publisher id now what happen in you profile article and every post the google ads(advertisement) is shown by name google advertiser in the extreme right and left side some time below of your profile page and name now by clicking in the adsense of any other profile google ads it will provide him revenue in his google account .

Tools for Bloggers for posting made easy?

2009-11-17T03:01:00.000-08:00

Email Scrambler
Prevent spam-bots getting your email address by scrambling your email links with this easy Javascript generator.
Blog/News Headlines widgets
Create headlines widgets from your blog or favorite news feeds. Great for highlighting your recent posts in your sidebar! Fully customizable, no branding or backlinks included.
Free Pagerank Tools
Check your Google and Alexa pageranks, backlinks and more! You can even get a free Pagerank display for your blog which dynamically updates so you can be sure your Pagerank is up to date.

New features in wordpress?

2009-11-17T02:58:00.000-08:00

Completely Redesigned Backend — The first thing you’ll notice when you login to your blog is the backend has been completely overhauled for both aesthetics and usability. This is the first iteration of exciting things to come from the Shuttle team of designers that has been volunteering their time, and look for even more aesthetic improvements in the future.
Faster Administration — Call it AJAX, call it DHTML, call it Larry, but we’ve paid close attention to streamlining some of the most common tasks in managing your blog. For example if you’re writing a post and you can add categories on the fly, much like tagging in Flickr. Also instead of having two separate UIs for “simple” and “advanced” posting, we’ve combined them and let you customize the layout of the page on the fly by dragging and dropping the dialogs around. It saves where you put things so when you return it’s just like you left it. When you delete a comment or category it will fade out without a page load.
WYSIWYG Editing — WP dev Andy Skelton and the TinyMCE team have done a tremendous amount of work to bring a smooth WYSIWYG editing experience to WordPress. As code purists, we are very picky about what kind of HTML is generated, and while it’s not perfect yet (for instance nested lists can cause trouble) for 95% of what you do post-to-post the WYSIWYG should save you time. And if it doesn’t, you can turn it off on your profile page. One note: Safari and older versions of Opera, both fantastic browsers, don’t yet support everything that’s needed to do WYSIWYG, but we fully expect new versions of those browsers will continue to improve their standards support, so it may just be a matter of time.
Included Spam and Backup Plugins — We’ve included two of the most popular WordPress plugins: Skippy’s DB backup can backup your database to a file and optionally email you a copy; Akismet is a distributed anti-spam system which gets smarter the more people use it.
Resizable Editing — This is one of my personal favorite features. Ever been writing a post and that textarea seemed a little small? Happens to me all the time, and our new rich text editor includes a feature that lets you resize the editor on-the-fly by clicking on the corner, just like a regular window.
Inline Uploading — We’ve optimized our uploader for image, audio, and video files and put it inline with the posting screen. You don’t have to bounce around any more when writing a post! It also will organize your files for you as you upload them to make them easier to find later. On the backend, each uploaded file is actually a “sub-post” so it can have individual comments and pingbacks, its own permalink, and even a custom template based on what type of file it is. You can click on attached files to get a menu of options, or if you’re on Firefox you can drag and drop them into your WYSIWYG editor.
Faster Posting — In the past if you were linking to a number of posts or pinging a lot of update services, your posting time could appear to slow to a crawl even though everything was instantly done on the backend. We’ve modified how this works now so posting should be near-instantaneous, like everything else in WordPress.
Post Preview — Another enhancement to the post screen, now when you save a post it shows a live preview of how the post would look on your site, with the stylesheet and theme and everything. No more publishing a post just to see if it works.
Streamlined Importing — We’ve rewritten our import system from the ground up to be much easier to use (you no longer have to edit files), put it behind authentication, and also made it easy for new importers to be dropped into the system, much like plugins.
User Roles — We had a ton of feedback on our old numerical user level system. No one was exactly sure what those numbers meant! We’ve distilled the basic functions into a set of roles — such as administrator, editor, contributor — that make it easier to understand what sort of capabilities you’re giving your blog’s users. The new system is completely pluggable too, so plugins can modify roles and create groups that have access to certain things.
Header Customization — If you’re tired of the blue header in the default theme, you can now change the colors and text of it, which we’ve included as a demo of some of the new features available to theme authors.

How google chrome is different from other browsers?

2009-11-17T02:53:00.000-08:00

Google Chrome is a web browser that runs web pages and

applications with lightning speed. Read about why we built a browser.

Quick to start up from your desktop
Loads web pages in a snap
Runs web applications faster than ever

Designed for efficiency and ease of use

Search and navigate to web pages from the same box
Arrange and organize tabs however you wish — quickly and easily
Get to your favorite websites with just a click, from the thumbnails of your most visited sites in the New page.

Features of firefox latest version ?

2009-11-17T02:47:00.001-08:00

Play Tag

Once you build up a large list of bookmarks, keeping track of them all can get a little messy. To stay organized, you can assign tags to your bookmarked sites: just double-click on the star icon and you’ll be prompted to enter your tags.
You can tag a site with as many terms as you want (be sure to put a comma between each tag), and then easily find the sites again by typing that tag into the location bar. For example, entering "travel" into the location bar will bring up all the sites you’ve been bookmarking as part of your vacation research.

Learn All About Add-ons

The standard version of Firefox is full of features, of course, but why stop there? There are more than 5,000 Add-ons — little extras that customize Firefox — that you can download to enhance almost any task you can think of. Go to Tools → Add-ons to open the Add-ons Manager and discover all the ways you can make Firefox your own.

Search Smarter

You’re already familiar with the search bar built in to Firefox. But did you know you can customize it with just about any search engine you want? Just click on the icon to the left of your search bar to see the menu of default options.

Even better, click Manage Search Engines… to rearrange the list, add additional choices and even assign keyboard shortcuts to your favorite search engines. For example, you could give Google the shortcut "G" - then if you wanted to do a search for cookie recipes, simply typing "G cookie recipes" in the location bar would generate the full list.

Find it in a Flash

The Find As You Type feature is another handy timesaver. Rather than using the “find” bar to search for a word on page, just hit the / key and start typing the word you want. Your cursor will immediately jump to the first instance of that term.
You can use it for links, too. For example, instead of moving your mouse across the page to a "learn more" link, just start typing the word and when the cursor finds it, press enter.

Eliminate Every Trace

For security and privacy reasons, it's not good to leave a trail behind you as you browse (especially if you’re using a shared computer). Firefox lets you erase your browsing and download history, clear your cache and delete your cookies in a single click. Just go to Tools → Clear Recent History… to make it happen. Or, to be extra careful, go to Tools → Options → Privacy and select the "Always clear my private data when I close Firefox" option.

Search engine optimizing role in improving website traffic?

2009-11-17T02:42:00.000-08:00

Discovery is the process by which search engines find new pages. The search engines use robot web crawlers which go out periodically to all the pages the search engine already knows about (frequency based on importance!) and collects the latest information on that page (since pages change over time). Among other items they collect are the links on the page. The links are compared to the list of known pages and any unknown pages are put into another queue (based on the importance of the referring page!) to be crawled by the robot.

How relevant is any given page to the requested search? Relevance really ties together all the strands of search engine optimization work. A page is relevant if the link text indicates other sites label it as relevant, if it is important (i.e. trusted), and if the page title and text indicate the page has contents specifically about those keywords.

How facebook & twitter improve sales?

2009-11-17T02:37:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Web 2.0! Consumers make buying decisions based on different criteria now. They want to know what everyone is SAYING about a product before they commit to buy. Only a small percentage of consumers trust advertising.
Huge companies are realizing the need to talk to their customers and prospective customers like the small businesses have always been able to do. With Facebook, blogs and Twitter, the playing field has been narrowed. What does this mean for you?
You need to do things differently now. You need to find new and personal ways to communicate with your customers and prospective customers. They have come to EXPECT that. Now you need to put systems in place to give your customers what they demand.
Do you want prospective customers to have you in the top of their minds when they look for services like you provide? Yes! How do you accomplish that?
You put yourself and your company where the customers are. And where are they? They're online, in social networks, TALKING to each other.

How to protect yourself from dangerous viruses?

2009-11-17T02:29:00.000-08:00

Most of the time, those websites that offer free music, songs, films and games downloads tend to come with certain virus packages. These things otherwise tend to be illegal for downloading but these websites assure you these free of cost. Well, these are not. You have to pay in form of buying these virus packages from these. One tip is to avoid downloading such stuff from these sites and if you do want to, then run a scan beforehand and check if that file is filled with viruses or not. Do not go for free screen savers and mouse cursor downloads. This also comes with a surprise package of harmful viruses that get to be installed onto your computer when you download these free screen savers and mouse cursors.
You are to open emails that come from your family, friends or acquaintances. A large portion of viruses can be downloaded from these emails from unknown sources coming different types of attachments. You are not to open such emails. Rather go for an email filtration system that will put anonymous and spam loaded emails into the junk.

How blogger templates help for traffic?

2009-11-17T02:25:00.000-08:00

Installing a Third-party Blogger Template
The third way to change your blog's theme is to download and install a Blogger template created by a designer. There are many free Blogger templates available for download all over the Internet.
To install a third-party Blogger template, save the template XML file to your computer. Then, from the Layout -> Edit HTML page, click Browse..., and find the template file on your computer. Then click Open to return to the Edit HTML page. Click Upload to upload the new template.
Something to keep in mind if you are using a third-party blog template is that if you have added gadgets to your blog (e.g. Followers, Poll, Labels, etc.), you need to be careful when using a third-party template to avoid removing those gadgets. If you download and install a template that doesn't support your custom gadgets, they will be deleted when the new template is saved.
If your new template does have gadget discrepancies, you will receive the following message when you click the Upload button.
Widgets are about to be deleted
Please confirm that the following widgets should be deleted. All the widgets' configuration data will be lost.
The warning message will then list those gadgets that will be deleted if you proceed with uploading the new template. To avoid losing your existing gadgets, you'll need to find the XML tags that represent those gadgets in your current template, and merge those tags into the template you want to upload. Doing so may be a little tricky. You might be able to get some help from the original template designer

Advantages of FeedBurner With Blogger

2009-11-17T02:22:00.000-08:00

Once you signup at FeedBurner and configure it to your liking, you can integrate it fully with your blog hosted on Blogger. Let's start by changing AutoDiscovery URL. When you visit a site which has feed information between it's tags, all modern browsers display a little icon to indicate that. You will need to change it to point to your "burned" feed at FeedBurner instead of default one.

Start by opening your blog. Right click anywhere on it and choose "View Source". Find the following lines:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="YOURBLOG - Atom" href="http://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default"/>
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="YOURBLOG - RSS" href="http://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss"/>
<link rel="service.post" type="application/atom+xml" title="YOURBLOG - Atom" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/1/posts/default"/>
<link href='<a target="_new" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.blogger.com/rsd.g?blogID=1">http://www.blogger.com/rsd.g?blogID=1</a>' rel='EditURI' title='RSD' type='application/rsd+xml'/>

Select the whole block and copy it (not from here, but from your own source code). Once you do that, go to your blog's control panel and click Template>Edit HTML. Find the following line:

b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'

And simply replace it with all the lines you just copied from your source code. Now, change these 2 lines you just pasted:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="YOURBLOG - Atom" href="http://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default"/>
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="YOURBLOG - RSS" href="http://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss"/>

Into a single line:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="YOURBLOG - syndication feed" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/YOURFEEDNAME"/>

YOURFEEDNAME is the one you chose when adding your feed to FeedBurner. Congratulations - now when visitors click the feed icon at your blog, they will be taken to http://feeds.feedburner.com/YourFeedName.

Next, you might want to hide "Subscribe to posts (Atom)" link at the bottom of your blog, especially if you add subscription link on your sidebar. Simply go to "Edit HTML" window and add the bold line to the following code:

.feed-links {
display: none;
}

You might want to add FeedCount chicklet to your blog next to show off your subscriber number, or FeedFlare module to add all these social bookmarks I mentioned. If your feed has lots of subscribers, you can apply for FeedBurner's Ad Network and monetize your feed as well!

Increase Your Google Page Rank Rapidly?

2009-11-17T02:18:00.000-08:00

There are several ways to build quality back links, most of which are free. Some of the more popular methods are submitting your URL to search engines, web directories, social bookmarking, yahoo answers, and forum posting. The more quality back links you have pointing back to your site, the faster you'll climb the Google ranks to position number one.

If you'd like to generate some back links to your website, you should start by clicking here and submitting your URL to Traffic Submit Services Web Directory. It's my very own free web directory. Add it to your list of free website directories and start building some Google juice to your website today!

Sprouter: A Microblog for Entrepreneurs

2009-11-17T02:00:00.000-08:00

''What are you working on?'' Connect with other innovators to network, share ideas and collaborate. Solicit real-time feedback and benefit from previous discussions. Discover relevant events in your local area and post your own.

Blogging Tips and Tools

2009-10-26T03:02:00.001-07:00

Blog marketing is quickly becoming the preferred business method for people who are looking for way to make money from home. Though there are some people who still like to blog for personal reasons, many more are learning the benefits of monetizing their efforts.
Blog marketing to make money means that you are simply blogging for a profit.There is set amount of money you can make from blogging as long as you stay focused, persistent and consistent. To make the best of your efforts, there are certain techniques and tools that you must know. Here are a few tips for you.
1.You may have heard the saying "Content is King". This holds true only if you use your own original content. Not only would you be penalized by Google, you could also find yourself in a lot of trouble with the authentic owner if you try to copy someone else's content. Although posting articles you get from article directories onto your site is allowed as long as you keep the author bio attached.
2. Tracking is another part of blog marketing you need to record. You will want to know where your visitors are coming from. You want to be able to tell what keywords they searched on to find your blog, and where they did their searching. In this way, you will be able to see which keywords you should keep using, and which ones you should throw away.

3.Link exchanging with other blogs that are in the same market as yours. You do not want any that you are in direct competition with though. This can help you out if these linked sites have a good page ranking in Google or other popular search engines.
Blog marketing for money can be done. You simply need to find what works and what doesn't. It is a trial and error basis. Keep trying new methods of marketing until you have found what works the best. As you progress, you will see results for your efforts.

Build Backlinks To Your Blog

2009-10-26T02:57:00.000-07:00

Below are some of the top strategies you can use for building backlinks to increase
the value of your blog in the eyes of the search engine.
Write Articles and Submit Them
Writing and submitting articles is a great way to build backlinks! There are sites out there like EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com that allow you to post your content with a link back to your site. That means you get to have your link on authority sites! The more articles you write, the more you can submit them. The beauty of this is that you can often submit the same articles to different sites, or rewrite them quickly to have something that is more unique.
Comment on Other People's Blogs
It's a great thing to remember that a huge part of blogging is getting involved in the community. Commenting on other people's blogs will not only get you some recognition from their readers right away, it also counts as a backlink.

Write Guest Posts
Writing guest posts for other niche blogs is an amazing strategy. People love to let you do this because it gives them a day off from blogging. Readers love it because they get a fresh perspective on a topic they are interested in. You'll love it because it means you get a link back to your site and all you had to do was write an extra post for the day.
Use Social Bookmarking Sites
Another thing you can do is bookmark your sites. Now, there are some rumblings out there that these won't count as highly in the future as they do now. Still, bookmarking your sites lets the search engines know "you are there" for fast indexing. If you take the time to make sure the sites you bookmark with are high quality, you'll get the benefit of those links as well.
Paying for Links
There are many different ways you can pay for links. It is important to know that Google and other search engines frown on this because it's like you're gaming their algorithm. Whether you choose to do this or not is up to you, but it can be an effective strategy if you don't go overboard and aren't obvious. You can contact people directly or even work through link exchange networks.
Learning how to build backlinks to your blog is extremely important if you want to rank well. Add a few links at a time and they will build up in a massive way over the long run.

How to keep your registry files safe

2009-10-26T02:51:00.000-07:00

Registry files are very delicate files in the whole operating system.

Registry keys are those keys which have keys for every program or file or document installed on your computer.These keys have an extension of .reg.

Use a suitable registry cleaner software for your operating sysytem.Make every week run registry cleaner software on your computer.These registry cleaner softwares generally have to eliminate temporary files so called as "recent documents".Advice to all is keep a copy of registry file in your hard disk.Use tune up utility software which is a powerful tool for Disk cleaning,registry cleaning,completly delete files from your harddisk,regain your old files which are deleted previously.

How to Browse on a mobile phone safely

2009-10-26T02:08:00.000-07:00

Mobiles commonly have in built browser.Most of the surfers who browse over the web world don't take precautionary steps for a safe browsing.Surfers while browsing over the mobile keep aware cookies,passwords etc.Use a downloaded application of browser from among the open source browsers such opera mini 4.5,Which is a very powerful tool for safe browsing.You can have an idea of about how much is data sent over the internet.
Beaware of cookies after browsing make sure you delete all the cookies remained on your mobile phones.

What is USB virus?

2009-10-26T02:03:00.000-07:00

A USB Virus is one type of virus affected from generally pen drives.A USB virus is very dangerous virus it even struck up your operating sysytem.Most of the people dont know about how to use pendrives.Most of the harmful Viruses come lot from pendrives.Before using pendrives keep a note of how to use removable media such as pen drives,memory cards,etc.A USB(universal serial bus) virus is generally a parallel data transfer device where information travel through parallely rather than serially.Their is a great scope of dreadful worms to enter into your computer through these parallel trasfer devices.

How to Remove navigation bar from blogspot

2009-10-26T01:48:00.000-07:00

1. Open your Blogger dashboard.
2. Go to your blog’s Layout settings & go to Edit HTML.
3. Look for:

/* Variable definitions
====================

4. And above that add:

#navbar-iframe { display: none !important; }

5. Save your settings and open your blog now. The navigation bar will be gone.

Contact me

2008-01-01T03:53:00.000-08:00