The Buzz nurter

Creating, Managing and Building Your Opt-In Lists

admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:03:43 +0000

An opt-in list is a list or database containing email addresses of
individuals who have chosen to receive your email messages. Your messages may be
web site updates, product updates or an ezine. They provide you with a direct
line of communication with potential customers and enable you to promote your
products or services.

In order for you to start collecting email addresses, you’ll first need to set
up a system that will enable your visitors to submit their information,
automatically subscribe them to your list and enable you to send out messages.

Before we go any further, I want to make sure that you understand that this
article pertains to "Opt-In" lists. Not Spam. Under no circumstance should you
ever add anyone to your list without their knowledge.

Collecting Email Addresses

There are many free list services on the Internet that will enable you to set up
a mailing list however, they won’t allow you to personalize your messages. They
require that your subscriber reply to a confirmation message and they can choose
to shut your list down at any time.

Your first step in setting up your system will be to get a good form processing
script. This script will be used to enable your subscriber to submit their
information via a form and send the information to a specified address.

The best form I have found is called, Master Form. This form will enable you to
have the results emailed to you or to a specified address, can write your
information to a database file and even have a personalized thank you page. In
addition, you can even have multi-page forms with no limit on the
number of pages. This script costs $35 and can be found here: http://hop.clickbank.net/hop.cgi?wsnet/willmaster

You can find a free script with similar features here:
http://cgi.tj/scripts/alienform/

Whatever form you select, make sure that it will allow you to use email
templates, as you will need each subscription request to contain certain words
in the subject for processing. Email form templates will enable the email
messages sent to your subscription address to contain any information you’d
like.

After you’ve gotten your form set up, you’ll need to set up a pop email account
on your server just for your list(s). You can name it "lists" or whatever you’d
like. In addition, you will need to create two email aliases for subscription
requests. Example, yourlist-subscribe@yourdomain.com and
yourlist-unsubscribe@yourdomain.com.

Setting up a database

Your next step will be to set up a database to enable you to store your
subscriber’s information, process subscription requests and email your
subscribers. I use a great program called Group Mail by Aureate. This program
will process the information from your form, process your subscription requests,
store your subscribers information in a database and enable you to send
personalized email messages. Best of all, it’s free. You can find it here:
http://www.group-mail.com/
Note: Make sure you download all of the extra, free plug-ins.

Once you’ve gotten Group Mail and the plug-ins installed, your next step will be
to create your mailing list. Simply follow the instructions provided. After
you’ve set up your new list, click on "Plug Ins" then on "Subscribers." You’ll
now have to set up your subscription filters to enable the program to process
your subscription requests.

Now that you have your system set up and ready to collect email addresses,
you’ll need to place a form on your web site. Create two input fields for your
form; one for your subscribers name and another one for their email address.

Your new system will take some time to set up, but it will work for you
continuously. It will take care of all of your subscription requests and
undeliverables and will store your subscriber’s information in a database for
easy access. In addition, you’ll be able to send personalized messages with any
of the following:

first name
last name
user name
email address
address
company
contact
four additional customizable fields

Now, you’re ready to begin collecting your visitors’ email addresses and start
building your targeted list of potential customers.

Building Your Subscriber Base

There are many powerful ways to build your subscriber base however, we’ll only
focus on a few of the best ways.

- Place your subscription information in your signature
- Place a sign-up box on every page of your web site
- Offer a free gift just for subscribing
- Write articles and include your subscription information within your bylines
- Create and distribute free e-books with your subscription form on each page
- Provide a free service and require those using your service to agree to
receive your publication
- Create a member’s only site with special resources, content or downloads for
subscribers only
- Create a contest and submit your contest to all of the free giveaway sites.
Place your subscription information on your contest page

If you’re not collecting your visitors’ email addresses, don’t wait another day
to start. Opt-in lists are one of the most powerful marketing tools on the
Internet.

Develop content for a wireless Web

admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:26:15 +0000

Chances are, if you develop healthcare, legal, finance, manufacturing, or
sales applications, your clients have already asked for wireless access to their
data. In which case, you may have wondered how to begin such a project. If they
haven’t asked—they will. Just take a look at the explosive growth of
cellular/digital phones and other handheld devices, and it’s easy to see that
providing wireless content will soon become the norm and not the exception. In
the future, this emerging technology could be used by and for real-time
inventory, census takers, homebuilders, distribution centers, centralized client
contact information for consultants, real estate, and transportation (trucking,
cab, and limo services).

Fortunately, offering wireless content shouldn’t be too much of a stretch for
you. Using the basic steps we’ll provide in this article, you’ll be able to whip
up wireless Web content like that shown in Figure A. You’ll also learn what you
can reasonably promise to clients when they ask for wireless Web access. We’ll
provide some instant development resources, and offer sample code that will let
you read and write from a handheld device.

Introducing the HTML of wireless – HDML
What, you’ve never heard of HDML? Neither had we, until we tried to pull up a
Web site on a digital phone. The resulting error message proclaimed, invalid
content type, no hdml read. A quick search of the Internet reveals that HDML
came into being in 1997 as the Handheld Device Markup Language. We’ll get more
into the specifics in a moment.

These days, you’ll find a good starting point for HDML resources at the
Phone.com developer Web site at updev.phone.com. Not only do they offer HDML
documentation and forums for problem solving, but they also have a digital phone
simulator packaged with a minibrowser to save air and developer time. We used
this simulator to develop this article’s examples.

If you don’t have a digital phone at your disposal, we encourage you to download
the simulator from this invaluable Web site. While HDML is available for Windows
and UNIX platforms, you can only use the simulator on a Windows system.
It’s just a house of cards
At first glance, HDML looks similar to HTML—you start the content with
and end it with . However, HDML contains some notable differences of
which to take note.

First, you’ll find HDML organized differently than HTML. In the simplest case,
when you request an HTML document, the browser loads that file’s contents and
you see everything that it downloaded. Wireless devices, on the other hand,
retrieve HDML in a container called a deck, marked using the tags.
As you’d expect, a deck contains 1 to N cards. The handheld’s minibrowser
regards each card as a individual Web page. Imagine downloading many HTML pages
in a single http transaction, and you’ll have the general concept of how HDML
works.
Displaying content
To write content to a handheld’s minibrowser, you use a display card, which uses
the tags and . For instance, to list three names on a
wireless device, you’d create the following deck:

Letterman

Leno

Hall

This code displays content like that shown in Figure B. If you have a
minibrowser minibrowser-enabled device, you can pull this text from:

http://www.wirefreedeveloper.com/ts.hdml

Notice that this deck contains only one card and requires, as do all HDML files,
an .hdml extension.

Using bitmaps for images
Handhelds offer a very small display screen, so forget about hi-res JPEGS,
Applets, and most of the fun toys that HTML gives us. If you absolutely must
have graphics, most handhelds can display small bitmaps. The HDML download from
Phone.com contains many icons to choose from. A typical card that incorporates
images might look like Listing A. Figure A, at the beginning of this article,
shows the results.

Listing A: Incorporating bitmaps

Unplugged with ZDJ!

*Home:

*Movies:

*Mail:

Entering data with a handheld
Displaying content is all well and good, but eventually, you’re going to need to
provide a way for users to enter data. Keep in mind that data entry in the
digital phone world is limited, at best. You’ll find it easy to enter numbers,
but it isn’t so easy to use with letters. A handheld’s keypad can be challenging
for the best of us. Until true voice recognition becomes the norm, wireless
device users are stuck with pushing a key several times until the correct
character appears.

Listing B shows the example code we created for a data entry task. It contains
two cards. One lets you enter an employee name and the other a phone number. The
name consists of only one field, so we separated first and last name with a
period, as seen in Figure C. The phone number field only allows numeric entries
and uses a display format for ease of use. If you have a minibrowser
enabledminibrowser-enabled device, you can pull this text from:

http://www.wirefreedeveloper.com/empadd.hdml

Listing B: Data entry deck

DEST="#enterphone">

Name:

FORMAT="(NNN)NNN-NNNN">

POSTDATA="clientname=$(clientname)&phone=$(phone)"

DEST="http://www.wirefreedeveloper.com/empadd2.asp">

Phne #:

A breakdown of the code
So, what does each tag and its attributes mean? As we mentioned, the deck
consists of two cards. The first card stores the user-entered name value in the
clientname KEY parameter. In the HDML tag, a key acts like a variable
with a scope that spans the entire deck.

After you press the handheld’s OK or Send button, the DEST="#enterphone"
parameter tells the minibrowser to navigate to the second card, prompting you
for a phone number. The second card has more action to it. The POSTDATA
parameter specifies what keys to send. Delimit each key with an ampersand (&).
Once you press OK or Send on the second card, the minibrowser uses the Post
method to submit the data to the Web server. As you can see, we used an Active
Server Page (ASP) to process this data.
Responding to HDML requests on the server
As stated, we use ASP to handle the data, however you can manipulate the posted
variables using the server language of your choice. On our server, the script
simply obtains the parameters passed from the phone’s minibrowser and stores
them in a local file. The code knows that it’s encountered an HDML client and
returns a message indicating that it successfully added the record. In more
sophisticated solutions, the same code can serve different client types (HTML or
HDML) reusing the same logic. Listing C shows the ASP code we used to
distinguish between HDML and HTML browser types and respond accordingly.

Listing C: Responding to the correct client type with ASP

<% Dim uaString, startTags, endTags, content

uaString = request.ServerVariables("HTTP_USER_AGENT")

If (InStr(uaString,"UP")) Then

startTags = ""

endTags = ""

content = "text/x-hdml"

Else

startTags = ""

endTags = ""

content = "text/html"

End If

Response.ContentType = content

Response.Write startTags

Response.Write "Data saved…"

Response.Write endTags

%>
For further details, dial…
To see a more complete version of storing data in a local file using VBScript,
visit www.wirefreedeveloper.com. In the example you’ll find there, we use a
local file system to store the employee name and phone number. For higher volume
transactions, you’ll no doubt want to add a relational database. You can add or
view the phone list using your Internet browser or a digital phone with a
minibrowser. The same server-side code serves the data to either client. This
simplifies the programming task and reduces future maintenance.

Use CGI to Automate Your Web Site

admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:09:44 +0000

Are you taking advantage of the powerful
automation technology available on the
Internet? Common Gateway Interface, better
known as CGI, is one of the most widely
used server applications on the Internet.
This software resides on your server and
automatically performs specified functions
on your web site.

If you’ve been on the Internet for a while,
you’ve probably seen many examples of CGI
use and didn’t even realize it. Search
Engines, Directories and Forums all use
CGI scripts. Scripts can run everything
from a form on your web site to an affiliate
program. They can give you the power to
completely automate your web site.

There are scripts online that can automate
all of the following:

* Make your product available for download
* Take the customers order
* Approve it right online
* Send your customer a password
* Send you a confirmation of the order

You can sell your products around the clock
and never lift a finger.

SuperScripts – http://www.superscripts.com/

If you have a subscription box on your web
site, then you’re already using a program to
process the information. That’s a good start
however, there are many additional ways you
can use this powerful technology.

Here are some great scripts to get you started.

The Master Series:

Master Form

This form will enable you to have the results
emailed to you or to a specified address. It
can write your information to a database file
and even enable you to have a personalized
thank you page. In addition, you can even
have multi-page forms with no limit on the
number of pages.

Master Feedback

Allow your visitors to provide you with
feedback. Master Feedback enables you to
add your own information fields with radio
buttons, checkboxes, dropdown lists and
text fields. The great thing about using
Master Feedback is that it helps you spam-
proof your site by not requiring your
email address anywhere on your page.

Master Recommend

Word of mouth is one of the best forms of
advertising. Master Recommend will enable
your visitors to recommend your web site to
a friend. This great script is multi-lingual,
which means that the emails sent can be
written in any language.

Master Subscriber Pro

Enable your visitors to subscribe to multiple
ezines by checking the boxes beside the
publication they wish to subscribe. They’ll
only need to enter their email address one
time and won’t be forced to leave your web site.

The great thing about this script is that it
is compatible with ezines hosted with Egroups,
Topica, etc., or any ezine that uses an email
address for subscriptions.

Master Syndicator

If you write articles, Master Syndicator will
enable you to syndicate your content. You
simply copy and paste your article into a
form and click on submit. Your article will
instantly be ready for syndication. To
display your content, webmasters will need
to place two small lines of JavaScript
within their web page where they’d like the
article to display. Each time you update
your article, every web site using your code
will automatically be updated.

The Master Series scripts can be found here:
http://hop.clickbank.net/hop.cgi?wsnet/willmaster

WebBBS

This great script will enable you to set up
your own forum. Unlike most bulletin board
scripts, WebBBS stores messages as simple
text files and creates HTML pages as needed.

This great script supports automatic quoting
of message text and email notification of
those who want to be informed of new posts.
http://awsd.com/scripts/webbbs/index.shtml

WebAdverts

Set up a rotating banner system on your web
site and track response rates. WebAdverts
will enable you to not only set up a rotating
banner system, but if you’d like, you can set
up your own banner exchange. Banners can be
displayed on your pages using SSI tags, IFRAME
tags, or standard IMG tags.

The great thing about this script is that you
can include banners on CGI-generated pages.
In addition, you can filter the banners by
allowing certain banners to appear only on
certain pages. This script is a little
complicated, but well worth it.
http://awsd.com/scripts/webadverts/index.shtml

Links

If you’ve ever wanted to set up a directory,
this great script will make it simple. It is
modeled after Yahoo and inspired by The CGI
Resource Index. It can be completely
customized to match the look and feel of your
web site.
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/scripts/links/

POD

The Personal Open Directory script will enable
you to pull the contents of the Open Directory
Project into your own web pages. It is
completely customizable and will enable your
visitors to have access to this great
directory without leaving your web site.
http://grohol.com/downloads/pod/dmoz/

Learn more about CGI:
http://www.howstuffworks.com/cgi.htm

Locate CGI Scripts:
http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Perl/

If you’re not utilizing the full benefits that
CGI has to offer, you’re missing the boat. Not
only will it save you a great deal of time,
but it will also process your information
around the clock. Scripts can assist you in
making your web site an interactive community
and bring your site to life.

B2B for the Newbie Entrepreneur

admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:04:41 +0000

1. a. Could you explain, in simple terms, the concept of the B2B,
for someone who might be new.
Business to business simply means selling your products and services
to other businesses instead of consumers.

b. What is in the hype/frenzy of the B2B ie. off-line to the internet?
Some offline businesses want to capitalize on what they think is
easy riches. The ones that have done their homework see the Internet as a
way to expand their businesses and get access to 24/7 selling opportunities

2. What are some of the top criteria for a newbie entrepreneur to succeed
in the B2B world ie. off-line to the internet?

a. Financial – You don’t need a lot of money to really launch a
business on the Internet. Sometimes having access to a lot of capital makes
an entrepreneur careless.

b. Networking – Networking is very important when you launch a
business online. You need to be around business people who can provide you
with information, advice, and referrals.

c. Partnering – Partnering is a vital part of traffic building.
Having access to a noncompetitive site’s visitors is the easiest and
smartest way to get your products and services in front of a receptive
audience.

d. Quality Resources – If you want to attract and keep your visitors
coming back, you need to provide them with resources. Giving them access to
business tools, articles, directory of resourceful sites, etc., will turn a
browser into a bookmarker. Refreshing the content daily, weekly, or monthly
will solidify your relationship with your visitors.

Women’s News Bureau Media Desk
http://www.imakenews.com/womensnews/index.cfm

Netting Dollars Radio Talk Show
http://www.NettingDollars.com/

Web Developer’s Virtual Library
http://www.stars.com/

HTML Web Tips
http://www.projectcool.com/developer/tips/design01_tips/index.html

WWIO
http://www.certificate.net/wwio/business.shtml

Working Capital
http://www.cof.org/foundationnews/0700/handson.htm

CCH Tool Kit
http://www.toolkit.cch.com/text/P10_3310.asp

Women’s News Bureau
http://www.womensnewsbureau.com
Media Kits, PR Boot Camp, "Niche" Press Release Distribution & Daily
eCommerce News for the Businesswoman to Businesswoman Market.
(770) 603-6521
445 River Rd.
Jonesboro, GA 30236

3. What do you see for the future of the newbie entrepreneur in
2001 and beyond?

If they use the resources available to them online to build their
business presence both offline and online while they use its information to
increase their knowledge, they will be smarter than the newbies of the past.
The playing field will be level for newbies. By setting up a professional
web site, they can acheive a big business image. Hundreds of publications
are launched every day on the Internet. Newbies have access to unlimited
PR opportunities. A lot of the offline publications are launching online
versions to spotlight web businesses. The number of Internet users
increases every hour. Prospective customers are abundent.

4. What are some of the Pros and Cons in the B2B world ie. off-line
to the internet?

There are more PROS than cons when a business moves its offline
business to the Internet. The pros include unlimited sites, ezines, and
webzines that have free articles on ecommerce, marketing, web design, PR,
business plans, capital, etc. It is simply remarkable that you visit a site
that has a professional business plan template for you to use to input your
own
information. The vast amount of knowledge that an offline business
has access to makes the Internet a valuable tool.

The CONS include forgetting to promote and advertise your online
venture offline and not being able to offer face to face service. You must
remember that your local target market surfs the Internet every day. If
they
don’t know that you are online, they will use another company’s products and

services. Give your customers your phone number so they can speak to
a live person. A lot of people feel uncomfortable giving out personal
information online.

5. Could you please give some of your experiences in this B2B world
that may give you the replies to these questions?

The need to reach a larger target market led me to launch my
business online. I had no knowledge about how to run a business online. I
taught myself how to use the search engines so that I could learn html,
java,
web pr, and ezine publishing. The Internet is my teacher. Without it, I
would be lost.

Form New “Success Habits” To Succeed Online In The New Year!

admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:59:10 +0000

Like it or not, we are very much creatures of habit.

What time you get up each morning. What you eat for
breakfast. The route you take to work.

After awhile, it all starts to look pretty much the same.

Call it routine. Call it habit. Call it patterns of daily
living.

Whatever name you want to use, after awhile you find
yourself doing pretty much the same things over and over
again.

SUBCONSCIOUS TAKES OVER

Have you ever taken a particular exit off the freeway,
then realized you didn’t intend to take that exit at all?

What happened?

You let your subconscious mind take over. You fell into an
old habit. You took a familiar course – a route you had
gone so many times before. Almost without thinking, you
were going that way again!

THE LEVEL OF "A HABIT"

Every year people make New Year’s resolutions.

Every year they keep them for a week or two – or maybe
even a month – if they are lucky!

Somehow the resolutions always seem to get broken.

Why?

Because they never seem to reach the level of becoming a
habit – a part of a routine – a pattern of living!

Recently I tried hard to get into a pattern of exercising
each day.

I knew I needed the exercise. But every day I would get to
the end of the day and forget to exercise.

Then I would remember and almost beat myself over the head
for forgetting.

It was easier not to exercise and it was easier to forget!

And the lack of exercise really wasn’t doing me much good
at all!

I was procrastinating and I wasn’t accomplishing my goal!

Finally, I devised a way to get myself to exercise.

How?

By forming a new habit!

TO SUCCEED – FORM A NEW HABIT!

I have a habit of eating breakfast each morning. And I’m
someone who reads while I eat. It’s a habit, pure and simple!

So I decided to exercise each morning before eating
breakfast?

Could I do it and exercise – say for even 10 or 15 minutes?

How long would it take before I did it almost
automatically each morning?

So I enthusiastically started down this route.

It’s now two or three months later.

How am I doing? Good and bad.

Occasionally I forget.

Most of the time, though, I remember and fit the exercise
in.

And when I do forget – it seems like something is missing.
I try hard to remember what it is. Usually it hits me right
after eating breakfast.

What did I forget? Oh, yeah, to exercise!

And usually after eating breakfast is not a time when I
really want to exercise!

YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS WILL REMIND YOU

But I can tell that it is becoming a habit.

How?

Because most of the time I remember. And when I do forget,
my subconscious mind reminds me that I forgot something!

The point I am trying to make is that you can change your
life by changing your habits – your daily routine.

What if you wanted to succeed on the internet? And then
you learned some important new marketing techniques.

What if you made these marketing techniques part of a
daily or even weekly routine?

Would you start to succeed – whereas before you were
having little if any success?

And what kind of techniques would be good to incorporate
into a routine?

Regularly submitting your web pages to the search engines,
for one, would be a good start.

TURN YOUR SUCCESS STRATEGY INTO A HABIT!

So how do you turn it into a habit?

You could start by picking a particular day and time – say
Wednesday at 5 p.m. – you will submit any new pages to your
site to eight of the major search engines.

So, now that is solved!

Every Wednesday at 5 p.m. you know exactly what you will
be doing from now on!

Submitting web pages to the search engines!

Write it into your day planner, if you have one, or put it
on your calendar.

Plan on it!

YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS WILL TELL YOU IF IT’S A HABIT

How will you know when it is starting to become a habit?

Because when you forget, you will start to feel uneasy -
the feeling that something is missing.

Your subconscious mind will remind you!

It will probably happen – maybe Thursday evening at 5 p.m.

You forgot to do something – what was it?

Oh, yeah! That’s right! Submit web pages to the search
engines.

Pretty soon you stop missing. Soon it’s just part of your
routine!

Pretty soon you don’t even have to think about it, really.
It’s just something you do every week.

Soon you’re on your way to developing a habit that will
greatly contribute to your success.

Success can indeed be habit-forming! Make your success on
the internet more than just a matter of chance!

Make it a regular habit – by forming new habits!

And soon you’ll find yourself in the best habit of all -
the habit of success!

Top Ten Business Fun-damentals

admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:35:32 +0000

You just won the lottery and in order to receive your check, you must have a full time job. What would you be doing? Would it be what you are doing now?If you wouldn’t be doing what you’re doing now, ask yourself why. Do you need to add some fun into your career or business, or are you not happy with your current position and feel ready to go for what you REALLY want to do? Following are some ideas on how you can make the most of where you are, or take the steps to get to where you want to be.

Choose a career that “makes your heart smile” and turn it into an enjoyable game that people take pleasure in engaging you in everyday!

Know what your values are, what keeps you in integrity and your needs. Base your decisions on what’s important to you.

Be prepared financially when transitioning into your business so that your decisions are wants based vs. needs based. Have a reserve of money in the bank or another income. Even with the best planning strategies “things do occur” that end up costing us more money than we planned to spend. So create a reserve before you start your business.

Build a strong support system – business and volunteer network, and friends. Join a success team for support or hire a coach to assist you in your business evolution.

Recognize your strengths and work from them. Acknowledge your weaknesses and failures (life’s way of providing feedback) and grow from them. Read the E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber… its a “have to have” business book.To E-Myth Revisited Link

Create a strong business foundation. Have a business plan, marketing plan, operations manual. Follow them. Create forms and processes to keep you on track, etc. Choose to be organized!

Evaluate your boundaries and stan dards. They affect your business too! There are some wonderful Top Ten Lists on both topics listed at www.topten.org

When business seems like work and is no longer fun, it is time to reassess what you are doing. Even better – step back and assess your “fun” quotient every six months. Hey! Maybe its time to take your vacation!!b

If you do not have enough time in your life, work with your coach to pinpoint tasks that you may be able to delegate or eliminate. Maybe you might want to look into hiring one of Maria’s Places Virtual Assistant’s www.coachmaria.com/valinks.html

Listen to others and consider outside advice. Incorporate what you like into your plan. However, do not feel pressured to adopt others practices as your own. Ultimately, you are best equipped to implement how and why you run your business.

Don’t use Internet Explorer

admin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:21:46 +0000

I think its the right time to get rid of internet explorer once and for all. I am a big fan of microsoft products, I use windows, MS office and media player, these are great products, but not internet explorer. Consider for a moment why you use the browser you use, and humor me by entertaining the notion, if even for a second, that switching to another might be worth your while.

My argument is simple: the benefits of using IE are too few, and the faults too great, to put off the adoption of an alternative any longer.

Security
Internet Explorer is a very vulnerable browser. It allows many trojan-horses, worms, spyware and adware and other viruses through without the user doing anything wrong or knowing that anything has gone wrong.

In June of 2004, the US Government’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), produced an article which advised users to stop using Microsoft Internet Explorer.

This is just some of the controversy surrounding Microsoft and IE regarding security. Many Internet Explorer users are now setting security settings to ridiculous levels, which slows down and stops certain sites from displaying.

What makes other browsers better than IE at protecting vs. spyware and other attacks? Well, it’s simple really – most other browsers don’t make it so easy to install malicious software on your system without you knowing about it. IE makes it relatively trivial through two features called ActiveX and Active Scripting. These technologies were designed specifically for the purpose of giving websites more control over a user’s computer. Unfortunately, as we have seen with exploit after exploit – that’s not always a good thing.

In addition to the spyware issues, IE in general has had a terrible track record when it comes to all types of serious security issues. For years now, it’s seemed like every time you turn around there is a new way to have your computer taken over via Internet Explorer. Put ‘internet explorer’ and ‘allow an attacker to execute commands’ (with the quotes) into Google and you’ll see what I mean.

Why do people use Internet Explorer?
Internet Explorer is used by most people simply because it is on their computer when they buy it. We shouldn’t just cave in to microsoft’s tricks about using the default browser, we need alternatives and we have better alternatives.

Other Alternatives
Lucky for us, we have alternatives. The good news is that the alternative browsers are actually as good or better than IE. There are many out there, but in my opinion the Mozilla products are the best. I personally prefer and recommend Mozilla Firefox. Not only does it keep your browsing sessions a lot more secure and spyware-free, but it also supports the standards religiously and has a wide range of powerful features. Arguably the biggest benefit to using a Mozilla-based product is something called tabbed browsing. What this allows you to do is have multiple pages open within a single browser window. Rather than going from window to window in the taskbar, you can simply switch between clearly visible tabs, all within the same view. You can even do this and many other commands via the keyboard if you are into that sort of thing.

Using Firefox will not require any major shift in your daily browsing habits. It’ll import your favorites automatically, and you can benefit from the improved security starting the first time you open it. With the popup blocking enabled, you can breath quite a bit easier when browsing to unknown sites. Attempts to install garbage on your system that could have easily succeeded if you were using IE will simply be ignored by Firefox. Plus, the whole time you’re browsing you’ll know that you are doing your part to keep the soul of the Internet alive by choosing to use a browser whose developers actually care about standards.

Of course, I still use IE. (pause for effect); it’s how I get my Windows security updates. : Seriously though – Windows Update is a must, and it only works in IE, so that in itself is a good reason to fire up IE once in a while. Aside from Windows Update though, there is still the occasional site that I go to that doesn’t look right in any other browser. Those sites, by the way, are all the more reason to not use IE. They weren’t written according to the standards, and they look bad in any browser other than IE as a result of that fact. Using IE all the time just because the occasional site is designed so poorly as to look like crap in other browsers is utterly bad form. I implore you not to give into this temptation.

I ask that you consider these points and pull down a copy of Firefox, Opera, or another alternative browser. Run it for a week and see how it feels. As mentioned above, I personally recommend Firefox due to its excellent development team and large user base. Once you have had some time to get to know your new onramp to the web, I think you’ll find that you’ll wish you had switched sooner. No longer will you have to worry about garbage clogging up your system because of your browser, or having to make a mad rush for a patch every time an IE vulnerability is released.

Finally, and most importantly – spread the word. It’s time now for us to put alternative browsers on the map and let it be known that we are aware of our choices. We need not settle for what we are being fed when there are better, more secure alternatives out there.

How to become a computer geek?

admin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 08:59:41 +0000

Here are some of the steps that could potentially make you a computer geek. Disclaimer : NO GUARANTEES…

Steps:
1. Update your computer software and hardware regularly to keep your system state-of-the-art.

2. Purchase and install several superfluous peripherals for your computer, such as a video camera and a CD burner.

3. Get a DSL or a cable internet connection.

4. Attain mastery of a variety of mainstream programming languages, such as C and C++. (Web scripting languages, such as JavaScript, don’t count.)

5. Refuse to use “wimpy” graphical operating systems, such as Windows and the Mac OS: Instead, prefer Unix variants, preferably the free and popular Linux.

6. Add so many hacks and patches to your system that others are clueless in its wake.

7. Contribute to GNU or other open-source projects.

8. Establish a minimum of three separate e-mail addresses.

9. Build your own Web page using advanced programming techniques.

10. Subscribe to a variety of computer and computer-related magazines, serials and periodicals to keep up with the latest trends and developments in the computer world.

11. Get involved in other hobbies that tend to be associated with computer geekdom, such as network gaming, trading card games, and anime (Japanese animation).

12. Establish a network of fellow computer geeks with whom you can have long conversations about computers and online adventures that non-computer geeks cannot hope to understand.

13. MOST IMPORTANT : Use firefox instead of internet explorer.

Tips:
Many computer geeks build their computers out of separate components rather than buying a preassembled package. If you’re serious about computer geekdom, consider earning a degree in computer science from a major college, university or technical school.

Why I dig Digg?

admin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 08:52:11 +0000

This is not a fan post for digg. I am just comparing digg with other social bookmarking websites. If anybody feels that my comparison is no-good, you are free to do so since we have our own preferences. Well, that’s my one line disclaimer.

It was a few months back that I started hearing about delicious. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to check it out or not because the way the domain is spelled was too complicated and confusing. Finally one day, I opened delicious and I hated the layout and design and decided never to come back to delicious again. I started hearing some positive comments about delicious about how people find some good links to other websites.

Delicious was second time lucky because I just loved the website with so many links. Don’t ask me what changed my mind. When other people tell you that a website is good, it usually ends being good even if it is not. For the next few months I used delicious abundantly storing bookmarks and checking out popular bookmarks. Then, I was convinced that tags were the state of the art and nothing could beat it.

With delicious, I used to surf through blinklist and technorati and still I was convinced that delicious is quite delicious to my brain.

I had checked out digg a few months back but didn’t think anything great about it until last month when I accidentally stepped on it following a link from a different website. I took sometime in going through the links and to my surprise, I didn’t find a single link that I wasn’t interested in. Everything were good links and I just started to question myself about how I missed this website all these days.

I have been using digg for a month and I think I have known enough of it so I can compare it with delicious and with reddit which is another social bookmarking website.

Delicious uses tags which the user provides and depending on the number of people who bookmark it, the link goes into the popular section. Mind you, the link is shown up on the main screen for less than 2 seconds because of plenty of links being shoved down delicious’ face. People who end up going to this linked website through delicious are few, fewer than 5. So, for a particular link to become popular, multiple people have to find this link on their own and bookmark it on delicious. This is tedious and I am positive about some good links going unnoticed.

Reddit is another bookmarking website which doesn’t use tags. They have a rating system, both positive and negative. So, when you submit a link, it shows up in the new section, users can look at the link and rate it positive or negative. I think this is an improvement over tags but not quite.

There are bound to be some users who just rate it negative because they want to. That way, it’s difficult for a good link to get recognized. One of the downsides is that reddit doesn’t have categories even which makes it so much harder to organize the bookmarks. They have a statistics page which I find it no use for.

Coming to the hot one, digg, it doesn’t have tags. It’s based on rating system just like reddit but it doesn’t have negative rating. So, if a user doesn’t like a link, he/she can’t push it down the drain. When you store the link, it appears in your list, the link is automatically rated positive. So, if more people save a link (digg it), the link gets as many diggs (points) and based on how many points it gets, the link makes it to the frontpage. So, for a link to make it to frontpage, it has to be worth it and many people should digg it and only then it makes it to frontpage. So, you get the best links on the frontpage.Digg has categories in it, so when you suggest a link, you submit it in the category, and it’s more organized and users can go through each category to find links. I have hardly seen any good link go unnoticed.

I find digg much superior to any of the other social bookmarking websites. But, the sad thing is digg is limited to technology related links only. If they could expand it to other areas like humor and religion, there is no stopping digg.

As I said in the beginning, this is just my opinion and if you feel that I have offended you, then stop reading this article and I wouldn’t get disappointed as the post is almost over. If you have a good link, submit it to digg and it will get recognized.

Virus Warning : Kamasutra

admin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 08:23:04 +0000

The Blackworm virus which is also known as Kama Sutra virus because it lures users with messages of sexual content, will destruct files on unprotected PCs on February 3. It has already affected more than 500,000 PCs worldwide.

Nyxem-E aka Kama Sutra is a mass-mailing worm which attempts to disable security-related and file-sharing software and destroys files of certain types. When run on a Windows PC, the worm copies itself to shared network locations, and sends itself to e-mail addresses found on the target computer. Nyxem-E, according to F-Secure, is programmed to disable anti-virus and firewall software, and delete certain files including Office documents, on the third day of every month.

The Kama Sutra worm arrives as an e-mail attachment, with different subject lines including “School girl fantasies gone bad,” “The Best Videoclip Ever,” “A Great Video,” “give me a kiss,” “Fwd: Photo,” “Fw: Sexy,” “You Must View This Videoclip!” “Miss Lebanon 2006,” etc. The text differs; it may include references to the Kama Sutra – the ancient Sanskrit book on sex and related matters.

The primary objective of the virus is destruction of files. It can permanently overwrite and corrupt common user files such as Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PDF s and digital photos.

Individuals and Small businesses are the main victims of the virus because they do not have up to date anti virus protection.

Experts have advised users to avoid opening unknown or suspicious attachments to prevent their system being infected by the virus.

They also encourage PC owners to download the latest versions of their anti-virus software to protect themselves.

If you ask me, I would recommend free anti-virus software called AVG (most of you would have heard of it).