Darusha’s Network

Internet Users Will Get Faster Surfing Speeds with Opera 10.5

• March 3rd, 2010

Internet users are soon going to be offered a better browser, which will improve their surfing experience. This new browser apparently offers the fastest browsing speed as yet.

The browser, christened Opera 10.5, is going to be the latest offering from Opera. Compared with the earlier Opera 10.10, this is supposed to be eight times faster.

This news, brought to light by Computerworld, the computer news magazine, has been confirmed by the magazine’s own testing team. The magazine put Opera 10.5 through benchmark testing. When compared to the currently existing most-favoured web browsers like Safari and Google Chrome, Opera 10.5 has been found to be the swiftest of them all.

Before the launch of Opera10.5, Safari and Google Chrome were considered to be the two fastest browsers, but Opera10.5 seems all set to overtake them, being fifteen percent and twenty percent faster than Safari and Google Chrome respectively. Other browsers also did not fare any better when compared with the speed of Opera10.5. The speed of Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 was found to be ten times slower, while Opera10.5 is two times faster than Mozilla Firefox 3.6.

Although the most unique feature of Opera10.5 is great speed, there are also other attractive features. It provides support for Windows 7’s Aero Peek and Jump List features. There is a better interface and the menus utilise less space. Privacy is also being taken care of. The user can mark any tab to be private and that will block the browsing history from getting stored.

The formal launch of this new browser will be in the near future but users can download the beta version to experience the benefits of using the fastest browser currently available.

For more on getting connected to the internet, take a look at a dedicated broadband website. For information and free advice; it’s a good place to help you decide on what broadband and get started on the internet with broadband best deals from the various service providers.

Bandwidth Meters

• September 8th, 2009

You can test your internet speed for free by using bandwidth meters found in many site over the internet. Note, however, that the results generated by these tests are not 100 percent accurate, and that your internet seed varies from time to time (depending on many factors). Nevertheless, a bandwidth meter can give you a very good idea of how fast your connection is, and is detrimental to helping you decide whether you need more speed or not.

How does a bandwidth meter work?

The process is actually very simple. When you go to bandwidth meter site and hit the test button, the site’s server sends you a file and then calculates the length of time it takes for your computer to download the sent file. The resulting figure is your bandwidth speed.

A bandwidth meter essentially measures the capacity of your internet connection to carry information. The meter typically downloads an image to your computer – you can specify a connection and speed to determine the size of the image that will be sent (it helps to at least know what type of connection you have). The meter then reports the rime it takes for the image to be downloaded to its servers, and you are sent the figure representing your internet speed. To know if your speed is decent enough, try comparing it to speeds offered by different kinds of internet service providers (such as DSL, cable access types and dial-up types).

Most free bandwidth meters have servers located in the United States. So if you are testing a computer outside the United States, your bandwidth score may be lowered. Factors other than your physical location affect the result, too. For instance, you will get a lower result if you are downloading other things or running a bandwidth-based program simultaneously as you test your speed.

Bandwidth provides detailed information on Bandwidth, Bandwidth Tests, Bandwidth Management, Bandwidth Meters and more. Bandwidth is affiliated with Colocation Hosting.

How to Get Cheap Internet Service

• September 8th, 2009

Ever want to have an internet connection but couldn’t afford it?

Did you ever encounter companies offering cheap internet services but has doubtful quality of service?

It is possible to get cheap internet service providers that offer quality services. All you have to do is look for it.

Try searching the internet, here you can find many internet service providers that can offer affordable rates with great quality. If you live in a large city, chances are, there will be so many internet service providers that compete with each other.

These internet service providers will offer great deals with quality services in order to attract and keep customers.

They can offer a wide variety of internet packages with incentives for their customers. With competition, you can be sure that they will try to attract as much customers as they can with low prices with rewards and bonuses included.

If you live in a small community, there will usually be one or two internet service providers. These providers usually charge higher rates because of lack of competition. You can find internet service providers online that can offer cheap internet services in many areas.

You just have to find out if these companies can reach your area. They can offer you WiFi or wireless internet connection, which requires just a computer and an antenna or internet satellite dish. WiFi internet connection can be relatively cheap.

You can also have cheap internet connection by using a dial up. Because of advancement in internet technology, dial ups are now very cheap and in some countries, free.

However, dial up internet connections are not fast, this type of connection is only suitable if you are just going to use the email or surf the web. If you are more into downloading large files, dial up will not work for you.

Research your local library about cheap internet connections and cheap internet providers that offers services in your area and can offer you some pre-requisites.

You can also find cheap high-speed internet services by researching in the internet, your search results may come up with cable, DSL, and mobile internet services. In these three, the most expensive is cable, and DSL will require a telephone line.

Researching in the internet also enables you to compare different companies and different kinds of internet packages. It is up to you to choose which of these are the cheapest and that meets your needs.

High-speed internet service are becoming more popular and because of this the price becomes cheaper and cheaper. Installation fees can be a bit expensive, but monthly fees can get closer to the price of the dial up. Some high-speed internet service provider’s offers free installation to attract more customers.

Keep in mind that the price of the internet depends on how you use the technology. If you use internet for just emailing, it is probably not practical to get a high-speed internet connection.

Instead, go for the dial up internet, it may not be fast, but can produce enough speed for email purposes. If you use the internet for downloading large files, then high-speed internet is for you.

Basically, this means that determining the price of the internet does not really depend on the numbers you see on a sales quote but it is really about getting your money’s worth.

Bob Hett has extensively covered the Internet Service Provider industry as an analyst and has researched the various companies for factors based on price, reliability, support and overall quality. Learn more at Cheap Internet Service

Spy on the Competition, Stay on Top

• July 28th, 2009

Just when you thought you had this whole online business thing mastered, it turns out that now you must become a secret super spy, break into your competitor’s databases and steal important documented information that you can put to use for your own benefit. So get your rope and mask ready because we’re going in!

Oh, and by the way, I’m just kitting. Spying on your competition doesn’t require a mask and a rope or any kind of illegal activities. It is a lot simpler than you think, and it could give you the edge you need to attract more targeted traffic, discover helpful content, score well with the SE’s and ultimately make more money. The truth is that the word “spy” is actually a little too strong of a word to describe what you need to do. I like to use it because of its theatrical value, so I will keep on using it throughout this article. I like to think I’m a dangerous man.

How do you find who your competitors are and how do you check them out? Easy, Google will do most of the hard work for you. Let me begin by telling you that this process, although simple, takes time to do it right. You must be thorough in your research if you really want to achieve the best results. If you are going to go on a mission, make sure you get the mission accomplished right. Let’s begin.

First, come up with the ten most relevant keywords in your website, the ones that are the most important to have good Search Engine rankings with. I’m sure you’re already working hard on getting a good spot on the major SE’s with these words. Now go to Google and do a search on every single one of them. The top ten listings that appear for every keyword are your most fierce competitors. Unless you already have top ten rankings for some of these keywords or some of the same websites rank top ten for more than one keyword, you will end up with a max of one hundred quality websites to “spy” on. Remember, take your time doing your research, do it right. Don’t try to do all sites in one day, it will be impossible. Make some time in your schedule throughout the week and concentrate on one website at a time.

When studying each website carefully, concentrate one five major aspects that you could benefit from: Content, Sales Letter, Affiliates, Keywords and Link Popularity. Let’s find out how.

Content

Content is one of the most important aspects of having a quality website. You can bet that a site with an excellent amount of helpful content is going to rank well with the SE’s and be appreciated by its visitors. Check for related content which you could incorporate in your site by using your own words and style of writing. Also make note of how this content is organized throughout the website and under what categories. Notice how many pages are dedicated to each category, and suck as much helpful content out of each page that could help you enhance your own pages even more. Learn from the experts, use what works for them and you will succeed.

Sales Letter

Ok “Super Spy”, it is time to put on a secret disguise (This gets cooler by the second). I want you to dress yourself as an average visitor who just found the website you’re spying on by doing a real search for a product or service he/she needs. Now, look and read the sales letter through the eyes of this visitor. I want you to take note of what phrases caught more your attention. What did you read that made you think: “This is a pretty convincing statement”? That is exactly the kind of information you want to extract out of the site, because you can easily put it to use on your own business. You know that if it had you convinced, it will most like convince your own visitors also. Make note of all the convincing arguments you can find, then “steal them”. Of course, by this I mean put them in your own words and use them for your own benefit. Many webmasters have spent a lot of time doing research and putting together a sales letter that will sell, and you can take advantage of that. Don’t you almost feel bad?

Affiliates

No matter what kind of online business or website you have, it is always a great thing to be affiliated with companies that will pay you for referrals that lead to sales. Being affiliated with a good company not only could bring you a lot of extra cash, it will secure the survival of your business by creating multiple income streams. This is crucial to the beginning online business person. If your main source of income goes down the drain, it won’t be the end of your business.

Spying on successful websites of related content to yours could lead you to high quality affiliate programs that you can create partnerships with and secure a successful future for your business and more income for you. Usually websites refer visitors to their affiliates by making a friendly suggestion about their products or placing a link to their website under a related category. They don’t want the customer forced to click on the link, but willing to do so. Search the links back to the company’s main website and check them out for yourself. If you like what you see and feel the product is worth representing, sign up for the program. The foundation of your business gets a lot stronger by having quality income streams.

Keywords

Keywords are “key” to getting targeted traffic to your site. After all, more than ninety percent of people online find what they are looking for by doing a search on a specific word or phrase that relates to what they want to find. Your website and the websites you are spying on already have one or more of the same keyword in common. Now you can check and see what other keywords these websites feel they need good rankings with. You could probably find some words that you could possibly insert on your site and improve the chances of getting noticed by the SE’s. You have nothing to loose here, it’s a simple procedure:

Go to the top of your browser and click on “View”. Now click on “Source”. A new window should open displaying the html code for the page that you are viewing. Locate the Meta Keywords Tag on the Head of the page. You will be able to see what keywords the webmaster felt were relevant to the content of that page and needed to be noticed by the Search Engines. Make note of the keywords or phrases that you could possibly work with. You can add these words later on your keywords Meta tag and insert them into the content of the page for increased value. The more relevant keywords your site has the more chances it has of getting noticed by the SE’s.

Link Popularity

Checking the link popularity of websites that rank top ten in Google could give you an idea of how many links you would need to place in order to rank higher. This is probably the easiest task to accomplish. There’s many websites that offer free link popularity checks. You can go to http://www.imomms.com/FreeTraffic.html under the Link Exchange category and use the free link popularity checker. Just type the url of the website your spying on and check their numbers. You could also check the websites that they are linking to and try to exchange links with them, since they are also most likely related to the content of your site.

As you can see, spying on other quality websites, although a little time consuming, is a simple task that if accomplished right could give you great results. It could help you add more quality content to your website, try new keywords, find new sources of income, discover what attracts more customers, increase your link popularity and get higher Search Engine rankings. It’s worth it! Try it out and you will see! So keep your mask and rope handy, your mission is about to begin!

Offline Can Pay Off – Ten Ways To Increase Website Activity Without Being Online

• July 28th, 2009

Increasing your website activity does not mean you have to be online all of the time, ducking into chat rooms and onto bulletin boards only long enough to scream out the title and url of your website before they cyber drag you out of the room kicking and screaming. There are a number of ways you can promote your website without sitting in front of your computer all day every day.

The first way to increase your website activity while you are offline is by adding your website address to all of the printed material your business makes. This includes company letterheads, envelopes, newsletters, fax cover sheets and business cards. This is not to say you should not include your traditional company contact address, but your website address certainly deserves a place on all of your literature.

The second way to promote your website activity while you are offline is to write about your site on a regular basis in your company’s newsletter. Be sure to announce it if you are re-launching (or launching for the first time) your company website. You also want to announce major site changes, like the addition of a section from your CEO. You may even want to include a regular feature that highlights changes and special sections of the website your customers should check out.

The next way to increase your website activity while you are offline is to get the best, and easiest to remember, website address for your company. This will ensure that people can remember it and find it easier to return on a regular basis. If staff members stumble over the address on a regular basis, or customers find it difficult to remember or type into the address bar of the internet service they use on a regular basis, it is unlikely to be visited as often.

Another way to increase your website activity while you are offline is to be sure your entire staff is knowledgeable about the site and its contents. Even the person who answers the main phone line should be able to answer general questions about the website. This ensures that any customer who has even the slightest question about the site will find your staff helpful and intelligent, increasing site activity.

The fifth way to promote website activity while you are offline is to add the website address to your company’s voice mail. If a customer calls after hours and gets your voice mail, they are likely to want to make an immediate connection with your company. Adding the site address to the message they will hear makes it more likely they will turn to an online connection to see your company.

An additional way to promote website activity while you are offline is to be sure that your website appears in any printed media attention your company receives. Ask that it be printed with your name or with the bio section of the article.

The seventh way to promote website activity while you are offline is to be sure to mention your website address whenever you deal with any type of media. If the local news station is interviewing you about your accounting firm at tax time, it is a good time to bring up your website address.

The next way to promote website activity while you are offline is to add your website address to all press releases you make to the media. Press releases can seem a bit naked if you cannot give customers a way to directly connect with the company after the article has been printed. A website address can do just that.

The ninth way to promote website activity while you are offline is to be sure that your website address appears on all promotional materials. Most companies have promotional materials like t-shirts, jackets, duffle bags, Frisbees, and notepads, that they offer customers and their employees as free gifts. Printing the website address on these is a good way to reinforce the idea that customers should go to your site.

The final way to promote website activity while you are offline is to get a magnetic sign or bumper sticker to add to your fleet of company vehicles and add to your employee’s personal vehicles advertising the site. When you are stuck in traffic on the freeway, the guy next to you or behind you might just punch up the site on his blackberry for lack of a better activity.

The Global Village Never Sleeps

• June 8th, 2009

The Internet is like New York, a city that never sleeps, except for the fact that it is not actually a city. The Web’s ‘anytime’ nature is a boon for people who want to talk to someone at 4 am such as anyone who is doing shift work. Before the Internet, if you finished work at 4 am, the only people awake were other shift workers such as your co-workers. The only people you could unwind with after work were the co-workers you probably wanted to get away from. Your only company were the people you were most likely to want to complain about to some understanding third party.

Thanks to the Internet shift workers can go into a chat room at any time and talk to people about their day. Some of these people will be in other time zones where everyone has just finished work and won’t think twice about anyone who has just gotten home. The rest of the chat room will at least be used to people in other time zones on different schedules. This creates the interesting possibility of a shift worker establishing a friendship with someone a few streets away, who assumes their new friend who works from 10 pm until 4 am must be in another country.

This ‘anytime’ aspect also helps insomniacs. When you can’t sleep you can jump on the Internet and talk to people to get your mind off whatever it is that’s keeping you awake. If you are lucky you can talk out your problem online with a bunch of anonymous strangers. Then you can go back to bed and straight to sleep. My advice for when you can’t sleep is to avoid lying in bed and dwelling on the time slowly passing, worried that you will never sleep again. Better to get up and do something, to make yourself even more tired so you can get to sleep.

Not only does the Internet let you talk to people twenty four hours a day, but you can find people with similar interests anytime. My brother-in-law Brad is currently obsessed with a board game called Stratego. It is my brother’s fault for showing him this dice-less board game. My brother has since lost interest in the game and Brad was having trouble finding some to play against him. Brad doesn’t seem interested in any of the games the rest of us want to play, especially not if they involve dice. Luckily, Brad discovered he could play Stratego online and play against real people all day and all night, which according to his wife is exactly what he has been doing since discovering the online version of the game. So from her perspective, maybe there is a downside to him being able to play his favourite game with someone, somewhere, anytime.

All About Spyware

• June 5th, 2009

You’ve heard about and, you know it’s bad. We hear alarming statistics like “over 90% of personal computers are already compromised by spyware” and “spyware and other potentially unwanted programs are rapidly becoming the number one threat to business systems”. But just what is it?

According to McAfee Inc., the leader in spyware protection solutions:

Spyware is any software whose function includes the transmission of company or personal information to a third party without their knowledge. The consequences of undetected spyware and other potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) could include identity theft, system and network corruption, slower Internet access, reduced system productivity, and an increased number of pop-up ads.

To put it another way, spyware on your computer can send out to another computer, and ultimately another person, anything and everything on your computer and everything you do on your computer.

A better but much longer (and my personal favorite) definition of spyware comes from geekpatroloncall.com. They define spyware as:

Spyware is potentially more dangerous beast than Adware because it can record your keystrokes, history, passwords, and other confidential and private information. Spyware is often sold as a spouse monitor, child monitor, a surveillance tool or simply as a tool to spy on users to gain unauthorized access. Spyware is also known as: snoopware, PC surveillance, key logger, system recorders, Parental control software, PC recorder, Detective software and Internet monitoring software. Spyware covertly gathers user information and activity without the user’s knowledge. Spy software can record your keystrokes as you type them, passwords, credit card numbers, sensitive information, where you surf, chat logs, and can even take random screenshots of your activity. Basically whatever you do on the computer is completely viewable by the spy. You do not have to be connected to the Internet to be spied upon. However you define it, spyware is plain old bad.

Here are a few tips to help protect you from spyware:

1. Buy a good, comprehensive software program that protects your computer. I use McAfee Internet Security Suite and XoftSpy, which is a malware scanner. These products can stop spyware. If it’s already on your computer, they find it and delete it for good (http://www.delete4good.com)

2. There is no such thing as a free lunch. When you download freeware or shareware, chances are that you are downloading spyware with it. Therefore, only download software from sources that you can absolutely trust.

3. Certain “types” of websites are notorious for injecting your computer with spyware. Those “types” of websites include: peer-to-peer sites, free games websites, and pornographic sites. If you frequent these type of website, make sure your computer is protected (see number 1 above).

4. Make sure that your web-browser security settings are configured correctly. This can prevent spyware or other malicious software from automatically downloading on your computer.

5. Never, never, never click on pop-up ads. I know that some pop-up are irresistible. But they are irresistible for a reason. Pop-ups are meant to get your attention. But if in the pursuit of your attention, they get you to click on them, you may get more than you bargain for.

If you happen to see a pop-up that is advertising something that you just have to have more information on, just take note of the item it’s advertising and do a keyword search on it. But never click on the actual ad.

Spyware protection has turned into a multibillion-dollar business. But, even the best spyware protection is useless if you don’t take necessary precautions. Reducing your risk to being exposed to spyware better than anything. Doing just a little bit of research and taking a few precautions can greatly reduce your risk of being exposed to not only spyware but also adware, viruses, trojans and other so called malware.

Internet Sharing using a Linux Box

• May 26th, 2009

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

– George Bernard Shaw

The computer world was similar to all of us having an apple each till some time back. And then the wise men from the industry made networks. Ideas started flowing all over and soon came in the internet. The internet has been the best thing that has happened to the computer world so far. It has created a platform where we can share our ideas.

Since the Internet is a large network composed of smaller networks, it made sense to break the address space into smaller chunks. Network classes enable us to break down this address space. In IPv4 the various classes of networks are -

Class A networks have an address range between 1.0.0.1 to 126.255.255.254 and support 16 million hosts on each of 127 networks.
Class B networks have an address range between 128.1.0.1 to 191.255.255.254 and support 65,000 hosts on each of 16,000 networks.
Class C networks have an address range between 192.0.1.1 to 223.255.254.254 and support 254 hosts on each of 2 million networks.
Class D networks have an address range between 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255 and are reserved for multicast groups.

Class E networks have an address range between 240.0.0.0 to 254.255.255.254 and are reserved for the future

Such a system makes things simple and networks are manageable. However, they cannot communicate with each other. The scenario is very similar to how communities grew around the world. With time people from different communities needed to communicate with each other, however language was the barrier. The solution they found was people who understand both the languages i.e. translators. So if you need to talk to a beautiful French girl, all you need to do is get somebody who understands French and can translate English to French and vice versa. Routers /gateways do the same in computer networks. Different networks communicate with each other using routers.

A router allows hosts that are not on the same logical network, like an IP subnet, to communicate with each other. The router receives packets (chunks of data) on an interface and routes them to where they need to go based on a routing table; the table allows the router to have knowledge of where a given logical network is located.

Most offices and homes have small class C private networks. These networks need to communicate with the servers in the internet. The only logical way for them is to use a gateway/router. Linux has routing functionality in the kernel itself which makes it an ideal choice for as routing box.

One simple way of sharing the internet connection using linux is using the IP forwarding feature of the kernel and network address translation (NAT). For NATing one can use either ipchains or iptables. It is assumed that the private network is in the 192.168.1.0-255 range.
Let us take the example of a simple network. The server is used to connect to the internet. It’s IP address is 192.168.1.1. There are 4 workstations 192.168.1.2-5. They are connected to the server via the switch. All the workstations share the internet through 192.168.1.1

The first step is to enable ipforwarding in the kernel of the server (192.168.1.1).

$ vi /etc/sysctl.conf
Change the line
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0

to

net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1

This would enable ip forwarding.

Then we need to get the server to NAT which can be done via ipchains or iptables.

If ipchains is used, create a file called rc.fw and add following lines

$ vi /etc/rc.d/init.d/rc.fw

#!/bin/bash

# First Load the ipchains kernel module. Required only if ipchains is compiled as a module
.
/sbin/modprobe ipchains
insmod ipchains

# MASQ the full 192.168.1.0/24 network
/sbin/ipchains -A forward -s 192.168.1.0/24 -j MASQ

# List the rules
/sbin/ipchains -L -n

If iptables is used instead of ipchains, create a file called rc.fw and add the following lines -

$ vi /etc/rc.d/init.d/rc.fw

#!/bin/bash

# First Load the ipchains kernel module . Required only if iptables is compiled as a module
/sbin/modprobe iptables
insmod iptables

# MASQ the full network
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -j MASQUERADE

# List the rules
/sbin/iptables -L

This would look after all the entire data traffic from the local network to the internet.

Finally add this to the startup -

$ vi /etc/rc.local

Add the line

/etc/rc.d/init.d/rc.fw

This ensures that the settings are retained after a reboot also.

After rebooting the server would do all the routing functions for the entire network.

On the client side all that is required is to set the default router/gateway as the server’s IP i.e. 192.168.1.1. The entire network is now set to share the internet connection.

Amarjyoti Krishnan heads bobcares.com, a tech support company for webhosts and ISPs. He is the co-founder of Poornam Info Vision Ltd., a software and IT services company which specializes in Linux based solutions for Webhosts and ISPs. Poornam Info Vision is an ISO 9001:2000 certified company with a team of over 100 engineers.

Amarjyoti is a Computer Engineer based in India and has over 7 years of experience in the hosting industry. He has spoken and written extensively on the subject. His articles have been published both online as well as in print in magazines.

http://poornam.com

http://bobcares.com

http://amarjyoti.com

The Next Marketing Tool: Deisgn

• May 20th, 2009

Design sells. It’s something that all of us know, but few of us consciously acknowledge. There is an age old adage that warns people not to “judge books by their cover.” In other words, we shouldn’t judge people or products by their appearance. But this isn’t true in America. We do judge books by their cover – in fact we spend billions of dollars on products that have prettier “covers.”

Many people are aware how easy it is to create a web page and put your business online, but you have to ask yourself: is it going to be enough? Sure, you can get all the vitals of your business online and available for the whole world to see, but will your visitors remember your site? Will they trust it? More importantly, will your site cause them to contact you after leaving the web site?

iPods, cargo pants and cell phones

Oh my! What do these three items have in common you might ask? Design, of course.

Back in 2001 Apple Computers unveiled their new offering to the tech world: the iPod. This smart looking little gadget was an MP3 player, one of thousands already on the market. Against all odds, the iPod has risen above its vast competition and become a common household term. What can we attribute to Apple’s success? The iPod did not offer any features that other MP3 players were already offering, except a sleek design, stunning advertising and Apple’s clever branding. Great design has obviously paid off for Apple. In the first quarter since releasing the iPod, Apple more than tripled its net profits and sold nearly 900,000 iPods! Some may even speculate to say that the iPod has taken Apple from a failing company to the leader in portable music.

Old Navy started off as just another value clothing store spawned from the successful Gap Inc. While this company had the advantage of already having a multi-billion dollar brand backing it, it had no incentive for customers to actually buy the clothes. Old Navy has since become one of the leading clothing retailers in America becoming a multi-billion dollar brand on its own feet. Old Navy’s president, Jenny Ming, attributes this success to design. Old Navy has taken a new approach to advertising and clothing style relying on fresh, new design. It seems to have worked, attracting millions of customers to their cargo pants, PJ bottoms and fleece jackets.

Cell phones. They’re everywhere: on the street, in cars, and even the hands of thirteen year old girls. No amount of numbers is needed to prove that cell phones have become an everyday accessory as common as a pair of sunglasses. Back in the early nineties, Nokia realized that cell phones might one day catch on and become something of an accessory. The idea was brought up that cell phones could be made in a variety of colors and in attractive shapes. Shortly after concept, Nokia’s rounded cell phones with changeable plates were introduced into the market. They were an instant success. Since then Nokia has come to be the world leader in cell phones, owning nearly 40% of the world market. Cell phone design hasn’t been the same since.

Taking these ideas to the internet

Okay, so it’s understandable how design sells, but web sites aren’t tangible products like iPods or cell phones. Design of web sites goes beyond designing something that “looks cool” or uses fancy fonts. The design of web sites goes into the realm of usability, information design and graphical appearance. All three of these aspects must come together to create a great web site design.

First off, your web site must be usable. This means that the web site visitor must be able to read, navigate and use the different elements of your site. A web site is no good if visitors cannot find where your nearest office is located. Secondly, the information contained within the web site must be arranged in a way that visitors will naturally find the information they need in the least amount of effort possible. Lastly, your web site has to look great. It has to have a professional look and one that’s both pleasing to the visitor and conveys the image you need your company to portray. Would you expect a criminal defense attorney’s site to be composed of light blue and pink hues? Strong, vibrant colors project authority and power; qualities you would definitely want in a criminal defense lawyer.

Wrapping it up

Design is a major part of modern day business. Making sure your business has a well designed web site ensures you are giving your business the best possible chance. A poorly designed site can be a waste of money and effort. Don’t take the chance; hire a professional to do the job.

About The Author

Kyle Neath is an experienced web developer, developing dozens of successful web sites across California. See more of his work at www.neathdesign.com

Data Back-Up in Web Hosting Industry

• April 7th, 2009

Data is very important in any business whether it is online or offline. Data stored in your server cannot be lost as it puts a full stop to your business. If you lose data then you have to spend a lot money, time and effort to replace them. In some critical applications it is not even easy to replace the data. Hence a wise decision is to find some ways to retain your data. This is where Back-up comes into picture.

Data back-up is a process in which you save your valuable data to some remote server or in some media which can be used to restore them back when you need it. You may face situations in which you application becomes corrupt or your data file is corrupted. Intentional damage, natural disasters, and hardware failure are some of the other situations which makes your lose your data. During such situations you can use the data that is backed up in your remote server to restore.

A periodic backup is necessary so that you do not lose much data when a contingency occurs. Data backup in web hosting industry is common and is also a must, since they face a lot of contingencies mentioned above. With ever increasing viruses and worms you may not when you will lose your data. Hence taking backup of your data is a must in these days.

Any web hosting account that you purchase also comes up with a comprehensive backup scheme that can be used to backup the important data that you might have in the server. If you have a site that has many users (members), then it is important that you also backup the data of your users also. Under such situations it is better to backup the site data and the users’ data separately so that you can restore which ever you want.

A backup can be incremental or full backup. Full backup is to take a backup of all the data available in the site, whereas the incremental backup is to take a backup of the data that has changed since the last backup. It takes a lot of time and space to take a full backup of your site. Backup is taken usually in the tar format or the .gz format. Taking backups in these formats saves a lot of space and time.

Most of the web hosting services provides a backup plan which could be monthly, weekly, or daily basis. The data thus backed up is stored offline on a secure server. Some services charge you for the backup services provided by them. Some of the hosting providers provide you the necessary tools to take a backup so that you can schedule backup on your own. If your site has critical data then hourly backup can also be sought after. Such exclusive backups are charged by the hosting provider.

Hence taking a backup of the important data and the site is important in the web hosting industry so that the website can be restored in the minimum time with minimum interruption to the users.

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