DVD Repair, Scratched DVDs and Unfinalized DVDs recovery tips and tricks.

By: Lance Carr

Simple and (hopefully!) free procedures to handle unsuccessfully finalized DVDs, damaged DVDs or DVDs that have not been burned correctly by a video camcorder,recorder or burner and has some corrupt data.

It is a good idea for you to first consider other possible causes of what appear to be DVD errors such as a dirty disc surface, a dirty lens in the DVD reader or other software and hardware related problems. Prior to embarking on any of the following you need to eliminate all possible causes for having trouble with a DVD. Check to see your DVD burner has the latest firmware by going to the manufacturers website. Check to see if the media (brand and type) is compatible with your DVD burner/reader. Once you are certain that you have an unsuccessfully finalized DVD or a corrupt DVD you can get started.

Scratched DVD Disks

A simple visual inspection of the surface of the disc will tell you straight away whether your first problem is physical damage to the disc. If you can see a scratch or scratches on the surface then this may need to be addressed first. I say "may" because personally I use DVDFab to check to see if the disc will copy before I embark on any other course of action. DVDFab can read through a lot of surface errors because of its superior algorithms so I always take the lazy route and see if I can simply make a new copy. Now failing that you could go online and buy some expensive DVD scratch repair kit. Or you could do as I do and go to your local hardware store or even your own garage! All you will need is a bottle of any neutral colored (clear) car polishing product. Turtlewax happens to be the one I use. Take a VERY soft cloth (NOT paper towel), apply a little polish to the surface of the disc and GENTLY (remember, it's not a car!) rub the disc. Use straight strokes from the centre of the disc to the outer edge and continue to do this until you can see the scratch either disappear or reduce noticeably. Then using the same motion and fresh cloth buff the disc back to its original shine. Now try it with DVDFab. If you are still unsuccessful repeat the process until you can be certain, again by visual inspection, that the problem is now not coming from a damaged disc surface.

DVD Data Repair/Recovery

The software you can use for this are DVDFab, Nero 8 (trial) and Isobuster. In the case of Isobuster you can try the free features first but failing that the full featured version needs to be purchased. A straight search of Yahoo or Google will find you the relevant sites.

Put the problem disc in the DVD drive of your computer then:

1. DVDFab. Try to use DVDFab first, as it has the best algorithms for reading anything on a DVD including how it integrates with the DVD drive, honestly sometimes I think it would read a bagel if you put it in there!

Select "DVD to DVD." DVDFab will now try to read the contents of the disc and, if it can, write the contents to a folder on your hard drive. It is as simple as that. It is either going to work or not! If it does do it then the copy you now have on your hard drive will be fully repaired and you can then burn a new copy.

Failing that:

2. Isobuster. Using the free functions try to make a disc image file and burn to another DVD. Isobuster has three alternate methods of dealing with data corruption. It can replace the corrupted area with nothing, with fake data or with a series of zeros. It will give you the choice and just select them in order to try each until one works. Isobuster will not create the disc image file unless it knows it will be successful. If Isobuster has created the file (note where it was going to put it first!) you will have to re-name the extension to .iso. Use the disc image file to burn a new DVD disc. At this point, if you now have a new disc, you need to check that new one carefully. There is always the possibility that Isobuster has just made a perfect copy of your faulty disc! So now you have a brand new faulty disc!

Failing that: You will need to pay for the full version of Isobuster but ONLY buy it if you got this far. If Isobuster free couldn't even read the disc then don't bother.

>From this point forward the best you can hope for is the extraction of the MPEG video files or data files on the disc. You ARE going to lose the video menus and you may lose some of the video or data.

a. Start Isobuster then load the disc.

b. When Isobuster has detected the files on the disc run the "Find Missing Files and Folders" option under the "File" menu.

c. You will now have an entry on the left hand column of "files and folders found by their signature."

d. Select that, then go to "File," "Files found via their signature" then "Extract files found via their signature." Choose a location and let it run.

Now you will have all the files where you selected them to go. The ones with the extension .VOB are the MPEG files from your disc wrapped in the VOB container. They can then be imported into a video editing program using the "Import DVD/VR" function or can be read by most DVD burning software.

Unfinalized discs.

If at all possible try to get the original device used to create the disc to finalize it. If this is not possible or the original device is failing to successfully finalize the disc you may have to resort to the Isobuster routine above.

If you have been left with an otherwise perfectly good disc, but unfinalized, do the following.

This requires Nero 8 (Trial version).

Go to the Nero website, download and install Nero 8. Yes, it's big…sorry!

Place the unfinalized disc into the computer DVD tray. Open Nero 8 StartSmart.

Click "create and edit" at the top of the screen.

Click "author, edit and capture video." NeroVision 5 will start.

Click on the disk tools drop down menu then click "finalize disk."

In the option box that appears choose "no menus" and let it run.

Hopefully you now have a fully finalized disc that is readable.

Hope this helps!

Lance Carr

http://www.myeasydata.com

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/computers_and_internet/article_4115.shtml

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Post Regularly Because…

By: Len Hutton

Keeping people interested in your blog, whether it is a business or personal blog, is key to attracting a lot of regular visitors. Many blogs have died because people have just lost interest. The main reason for the lack of interest is simply a lack of posts by the blogger. Regular, frequent posting, which will boost your blog’s ranking in search engines, is essential to the survival of any blog.

You might be asking yourself, what is frequent posting? How many blog entries should I make on a given week? How do I make frequent consistently good posts? What are the reasons for me to post frequently? In this newsletter, we will go over all of the above.

What is frequent posting?

Frequent blog posting is posting enough to keep your readers interested. Obviously, people will not want to come back to a blog that hasn’t been updated in months. They want to see consistent posting so that they know coming back to check the blog next week to see if there are more posts won’t be a waste of time.

How many blog entries should I make each week?

This is one of the tougher questions to answer. It really depends on the purpose of your blog. If it’s a personal blog, a weekly or twice weekly update is an excellent idea. A political/sports/music/religion blog should have 3-4 posts per week. Business blogs should have at least 2 posts, but preferably 4 each week.

The thing to remember is that quality counts. Posting frequently just for the sake of posting frequently tends to result in subpar posts which people won’t care about. It is important to find a balance—frequent, quality posts that won’t result in burnout on your part. Why create 4 poor quality posts each week when you could post 2 quality posts per week?

How do I create quality postings on a consistent basis?

It’s all about following a consistent pattern of writing. Maybe you’re not a natural writer and this is difficult. That’s why we’ll give you an outline to help you.

1. Pick a topic that is interesting to you and to your readers. Maybe if your blog is a personal blog, you could write about the latest happenings in Hollywood.

2. Carefully think about what you’ll write about the topic. It makes it easy to make quality blog postings if you know exactly what you’ll write. Plot out everything about the post before even beginning to write it.

3. Before writing your content, pick out some keywords that are relevant to your blog. If you naturally use keywords throughout your post, you will please search engine spiders which will get your blog ranked higher on search engines. Your visitors won’t mind the use of keywords if they are used in a tasteful way.

4. Begin writing your post. Don’t limit yourself to a particular amount of words. Just do what’s natural. And if any blog post is hard for you, just take a timeout and relax. You should be able to finish the post a bit later on, after you’ve had some time to think things through, you should be able to finish the post with no problems.

Why is frequent posting important?

Blogs are meant to be outlets for individuals or businesses. They are used to get an opinion out on something and to engage readers. Readers need to have something that makes them want to keep coming back to a blog. That something is usually quality, frequent posts.

Gaining and maintaining visitors isn’t the only reason to post often in your blog. Catching the eye of a search engine—and achieving a high ranking—is another valid reason for posting frequently. Most likely, each posting in your blog features some keywords or keyword phrases scattered throughout it. Logic says that the more natural keywords you have on a blog, the better. Thus, the more posts you make on your blog, the more keywords you have on there. And the more keywords you have, the more likely a search engine bot is to crawl your site. The more your site is crawled by bots, the more likely it is that you will have a high ranking on a search engine.

Frequent blog posting can be easy as long as the person who is posting takes the time to plot out what they’ll write about. So take a few minutes to think about your post and then just do it!

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/computers_and_internet/article_4116.shtml

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Enabling High - Quality C/C++ Software, Automatically-Coverity Prevent

By: Coverity

What Is It?

Coverity Prevent SQS™ is the market-leading automated approach to identify and resolve the most critical defects in C, C++, and Java source code. By providing a complete understanding of your build environment, source code, and development process, Prevent SQS sets the standard in enabling high-quality software across organizations worldwide.

Prevent SQS for C/C++ automatically analyzes large, complex C and C++ code bases and detects critical, must-fix defects that could lead to system crashes, memory corruption, security vulnerabilities, unpredictable behavior, and performance degradation.

Prevent SQS features:

• 100% path coverage: Prevent SQS for C/C++ analyzes 100% of the paths through your source code, ensuring that all possible execution branches are followed, while avoiding impossible paths to maintain fast execution.

• Low false positive rate: Prevent SQS for C/C++ maintains a very low false positive rate , ensuring that developers’ time spent inspecting defects will result in noticeable quality improvements.

• Highly scalable: Prevent SQS for C/C++ analyzes millions of lines of code in a matter of hours, easily integrating into your regular build process with little or no additional hardware and no disruption to your development process.

What Makes It Great?

Unlike other C/C++ analysis tools that focus on programming style and syntax-based checks, Prevent SQS for C/C++ performs deep, interprocedural analysis to uncover the critical, must-fix defects that matter most to developers. Prevent SQS for C/C++ leverages multiple analysis engines to uncover hard-to-find defects including:

• Path Flow Engine understands the control flow through each function in your code base, allowing Prevent SQS to analyze 100% of the paths through your code.

• Statistical Engine tracks behavioral patterns throughout your entire code base, allowing Prevent SQS to infer correct behavior based on previously observed behavior.

• Interprocedural Summary Engine enables Prevent SQS to perform a whole program analysis of complex call chains at any depth across files and modules in a form that is most similar to the eventual executing Binary. This result in the highest-fidelity results available.

• False Path Engine solves each branch condition to determine if it will be true, false, or unknown on the current path. This allows Prevent SQS to efficiently remove obvious false positives from the set of defects reported.

A sample of the critical defects reported by Prevent SQS for C/C++ include:

Concurrency Issues

• Double locks, missing locks.

• Locks acquired in incorrect order.

• Locks held by blocking functions.

Memory Corruption and

Mismanagement

• Resource leaks.

• Calls to freeing functions using invalid arguments.

• Excessive stack use in memory constrained systems.

Crash-causing pointer errors

• Dereference of null pointers.

• Failure to check for null return values.

• Misuse of data contained within wrapper data types.

C++ Specific Errors

• Misuse of STL iterators.

• Failure to de-allocate memory by destructors.

• Incorrect override of virtual functions.

• Uncaught exceptions.

Window/COM Specific Errors

• Incorrect memory allocation with COM interfaces.

• Incorrect type conversions.

Security Vulnerabilities

• Buffer overruns.

• SQL injection.

• Cross-site scripting.

• Integer overflows.

About Coverity

Coverity (http://www.coverity.com) is the market leader in improving software quality and security. Coverity’s groundbreaking technology automates the approach to identifying and resolving critical defects and security vulnerabilities in C/C++ and Java source code. More than 300 leading companies have chosen Coverity Prevent SQS because it scales to tens of millions of lines of code, has the lowest false positive rate in the industry and provides total path coverage. Companies like Ericsson, HP, Samsung, EMC, and Symantec work with Coverity to eliminate security and quality defects from their mission-critical systems.

Coverity also has customers like Symbian, RIM (Blackberry), Juniper networks, Cisco, Texas instruments and is also used by the Department of Homeland security to scan lots of open source projects.

Free trial

Coverity offers a free trial of Prevent SQS that will detect a wide range of crash-causing defects in your code base within hours. No changes to your code are necessary, there are no limitations on code size, and you will receive a complimentary report detailing actionable analysis results. Register for the on-site evaluation at: http://www.coverity.com .

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/computers_and_internet/article_4091.shtml

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Web 2.0 And Why You Shouldn\'t Fake Reviews

By: Simon Dance

The latest offering from Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares aired on Channel 4 last night, followed the somewhat disastrous adventures of ex-boxer Mike and his wife Caron Ciminera as they struggled to run the Fish & Anchor, a restaurant in Lampeter, West Wales. Whilst the couple's arguing appeared to better the food they were originally sending out (a mix of jarred sauces and home cook book trophy dishes) they did let slip on a fantastically poor bit of black hat optimisation, which I hope made all white hat SEOs laugh out loud.

If there was one lesson to take away from the show, it would be - Don't fake reviews!

In order to gauged the feeling of the local community for the failing restaurant come sports bar, Ramsay conducted a search on Google for the Fish & Anchor, to which he was presented with a range of reviews, two of which were rather suspiciously from a character calling himself Michael or Mike Burns.

On the Wales portal of the BBC website Burns had posted "Well i don't get excited about food too often, and having dined in Rick Stein's, and Gordon Ramsay's,I think i have found a better restaurant in West Wales". On the SugarVine website he also posted "what a fantastic restaurant for couples, and families. it seems to have everything, the food has to be the best i have eaten (home or abroad) this place will go far". Other online reviews echoed what has already been said, but with the dire state of the restaurant, its food, its reputation and its perception from both the local community and Ramsay itself, would it not be right to question who was telling the truth?

The restaurateur confessed to posting the reviews, his rational pointing to stimulating custom, however with any reactive strategy it requires a degree of foresight - and I am not sure he really thought through the wider ramification of posting these "inaccurate" reviews.

Firstly, a warning must be expressed. For example, if someone finds your restaurant or hotel via a positive (fake) review and they have a bad experience, there is a chance that they will post a true review to assist fellow users and generally have a rant. The initial seeding of this true review has the potential to lead to an onslaught of further reviews from other visitors who might not have otherwise posted. Don't forget the saying "people don't lead… they follow".

But how can you manage your reviews and ultimately what your customers are saying about you? Well first and foremost, address the problem(s)!

You wouldn't put a sticking plaster on a gun shot wound, so why think that a positive review about the quality of your food or the softest of your sheets is going to counteract the adversities of your customer service?

The customer is king, a point stressed by Ramsay, and one that should ring true for any business, after all, without them, where would we be?

By rectifying or at least making plans to manage any failings within your business, regardless of its size, will be the first step in managing your online reputation, but this is an area I will not going into comprehensive detail for this post. Instead, I will offer some simply pointers as to how to harness online reviews for good.

Sites like Trip Advisor, which boasts over 10,000,000 user generated reviews of various hotels, holidays and restaurants is gaining increasing weighting as an resource for honest and unbiased review and via its system of community recommendation it really has the power to drive custom, and in many instances, divert customer - the key factor being positive, and consistent reviews.

But if you do run a successful hotel or restaurant and wish to harness these social spaces, but wish to do so in a more ethical way than that demonstrated in Kitchen Nightmares than why not encourage your diners of hotel guests to post a review after their stay.

When the customer is paying their bill or even booking their hotel room why not take their email address, or even ask them to submit their business card in return for entry into a monthly prize draw for a free meal in the restaurant?

In addition to building up a client database by collecting this data - for use in promotional mailings including notifying customers of events, promotional and the launch of a new menu - you can also harness it to stimulate online reviews by dropping your customers a short email after their stay / meal, which might look something like the following example…

"Good afternoon Simon, and thank you very much for your booking at the Leapfrogg Restaurant, we hope you had an enjoyable meal.

We pride ourselves on the quality of our food and our attentive staff however we're always striving to enhance and improve what we do, and as such we would appreciate you taking two minutes of your time to write a review for us at Trip Advisor (http://www.tripadvisor.com), a free travel guide and research website that allows users to post review and ratings.

Your comments are important to us, and will be used to improve the Leapfrogg restaurant.

Thank you very much for your time and we look forward to welcoming you again to the Leapfrogg restaurant in the near future.

Sincerely,

A Restaurateur

Leapfrogg restaurant

Brighton

Tel: 01273 669 450"

Of course, many of your requests will be ignored, but providing you are personal in your emails (a point we at Leapfrogg have mentioned previously in this blog) then you are more likely to get a response, and even if you only have a 5% success rate, this is still 5% of valuable customer feedback.

A point to which I will conclude this article is one which has stuck with me from London's SMX, and one that I will most certainly be repeating from here on out is that "Yesterday's news no longer wraps today's fish and chips". Online news and online content, including user generated reviews do not simply get binned like a newspaper at the end of the day, but they remain live, and can even appear within the search results for a brand keyword search… so isn't it worth paying attention to what your customers are saying?

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/computers_and_internet/article_4129.shtml

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Web Hosting Explained. Not All Hosting Providers Are Created Equal

By: John E Adams

Web Hosting. Some Basic Facts To Consider Before You Take The Plunge!

Web hosting Companies which offer Internet-connected servers that provide space and bandwidth for websites, are called Web Hosts. Big companies deliver private electronic networks which allow for them to host multiple domains on their own equipment and IP address range.

However, for the bulk of beginners that desire an online presence, a rented web host is essential.

There is a broad assortment of hosting plans available. A few are free, other hosting companies charge up to a hundred dollars or more per month. Some companies supply nothing but a small amount of disc space and minimal network bandwidth.

The website owner is on their own for anything else. Others providers offer an array of services, including server and electronic mail administration, backups, website design help, troubleshooting and many other services.

In the world of web hosting, you might frequently discover yourself sharing a server with anywhere from one to one thousand or more other websites, which allows web hosting companies the ability to keep equipment and staff expenses at a lower cost.

Many websites are simple and low-volume enough that this agreement works best.

When you or one or more of the other members grow, it might be helpful to consider a dedicated server. A dedicated server, as the name indicates, hosts only your domain. You can put one website on it, or as many any way you want. You control the access.

You may also consider taking over much of the server administration yourself. That may save you money on support costs, but cost you considerable time. If you do not have the expertise, it may end up costing much more money than you save!

In order to execute those administrative procedures yourself, it is desirable to have some technical knowledge.

Some of that knowledge will be of value, even for daily projects apart from addressing emergencies. FTP, electronic mail administration, backup techniques and additional technical areas are amongst the more common areas you will need to be at least somewhat acquainted with.

As your internet site develops to a certain size and degree of complexity, you will begin to find it worthwhile to consider implementing a database. However, that brings with it a higher level of ability.

Applying a database can be comparatively simple. Designing one which provides what you want, with adequate performance and maintenance that does not become a nightmare, will call for some careful thought.

Not everybody has the disposition for that type of work, particularly those who favor graphical design, content creation or development, and the numerous other Internet site chores that are part of every implementation.

There are other, more low level administrative matters; Managing disc space, maintaining domain names, dealing with registration and alterations, and a number of other functional tasks are not every bodies cup of tea. Some understanding of how domain name server works, in addition to the design of the Internet itself, are helpful. That allows a good context for understanding the role of some of those tasks.

Once you begin to seek out a web host to implement your website, consider all these factors. What kind of web hosting you should go after is determined by a combination of who you are and what is being being offered. Always take the time to research a hosting company before you commit your time and money.

Remember, not all hosting providers are created equal.

Some providers just want your money, whilst other better hosting companies actually want you to succeed. Which one you choose to help you get your website ideas online is paramount to how quickly you taste success.

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/computers_and_internet/article_4074.shtml

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Post Regularly Because…

By: Len Hutton

Keeping people interested in your blog, whether it is a business or personal blog, is key to attracting a lot of regular visitors. Many blogs have died because people have just lost interest. The main reason for the lack of interest is simply a lack of posts by the blogger. Regular, frequent posting, which will boost your blog’s ranking in search engines, is essential to the survival of any blog.

You might be asking yourself, what is frequent posting? How many blog entries should I make on a given week? How do I make frequent consistently good posts? What are the reasons for me to post frequently? In this newsletter, we will go over all of the above.

What is frequent posting?

Frequent blog posting is posting enough to keep your readers interested. Obviously, people will not want to come back to a blog that hasn’t been updated in months. They want to see consistent posting so that they know coming back to check the blog next week to see if there are more posts won’t be a waste of time.

How many blog entries should I make each week?

This is one of the tougher questions to answer. It really depends on the purpose of your blog. If it’s a personal blog, a weekly or twice weekly update is an excellent idea. A political/sports/music/religion blog should have 3-4 posts per week. Business blogs should have at least 2 posts, but preferably 4 each week.

The thing to remember is that quality counts. Posting frequently just for the sake of posting frequently tends to result in subpar posts which people won’t care about. It is important to find a balance—frequent, quality posts that won’t result in burnout on your part. Why create 4 poor quality posts each week when you could post 2 quality posts per week?

How do I create quality postings on a consistent basis?

It’s all about following a consistent pattern of writing. Maybe you’re not a natural writer and this is difficult. That’s why we’ll give you an outline to help you.

1. Pick a topic that is interesting to you and to your readers. Maybe if your blog is a personal blog, you could write about the latest happenings in Hollywood.

2. Carefully think about what you’ll write about the topic. It makes it easy to make quality blog postings if you know exactly what you’ll write. Plot out everything about the post before even beginning to write it.

3. Before writing your content, pick out some keywords that are relevant to your blog. If you naturally use keywords throughout your post, you will please search engine spiders which will get your blog ranked higher on search engines. Your visitors won’t mind the use of keywords if they are used in a tasteful way.

4. Begin writing your post. Don’t limit yourself to a particular amount of words. Just do what’s natural. And if any blog post is hard for you, just take a timeout and relax. You should be able to finish the post a bit later on, after you’ve had some time to think things through, you should be able to finish the post with no problems.

Why is frequent posting important?

Blogs are meant to be outlets for individuals or businesses. They are used to get an opinion out on something and to engage readers. Readers need to have something that makes them want to keep coming back to a blog. That something is usually quality, frequent posts.

Gaining and maintaining visitors isn’t the only reason to post often in your blog. Catching the eye of a search engine—and achieving a high ranking—is another valid reason for posting frequently. Most likely, each posting in your blog features some keywords or keyword phrases scattered throughout it. Logic says that the more natural keywords you have on a blog, the better. Thus, the more posts you make on your blog, the more keywords you have on there. And the more keywords you have, the more likely a search engine bot is to crawl your site. The more your site is crawled by bots, the more likely it is that you will have a high ranking on a search engine.

Frequent blog posting can be easy as long as the person who is posting takes the time to plot out what they’ll write about. So take a few minutes to think about your post and then just do it!

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/computers_and_internet/article_4116.shtml

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SEO Training – How to Get the Most Out of It

By: Tracy Fredrychowski

Let’s set the stage…

You’ve just invested valuable time and money by completing your hands-on SEO Training. You are now sitting back in your office contemplating all the wonderful information you just gathered, but you’re really confused on where to start. You pick up your notes leafing through them hoping something will inspire you to know what to do next. You start to drift back to class wishing you where still there. You hated to leave, you didn’t want it to end, you silently wish your instructor was there telling you where to begin.

Good news! I am going to share with you a detailed search engine optimization and internet marketing plan to get the most out of your seo training and to get you started today.

Step #1 – Setting Goals

Before you can really get started you have to know what you want to achieve with your Web site. There could be a number of goals that you have in mind but your first step is get a clear picture of what you want the outcome to be. It could be:

• To gain higher rankings.

• To redesign your Web site to be more user friendly.

• To implement SEO basics throughout your site to make it search engine friendly.

• To increase your visitor response online.

• To open additional windows to your site through social media marketing.

• To launch an article marketing plan.

• Or all of the above.

What ever your goal is it is important to write it down and post it where you can see it every day. “Goals that are not written down are just wishes.”

Step #2 – Keyword Research

Any new project should always include this step. Keyword research is the basis for any successful page on your site. Let’s take the goals above and see how the keyword research you learned to perform in your seo training can be used.

• Higher rankings can be achieved by finding those keywords in your industry that have a high KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) and low competing pages. You should concentrate on finding five phrases that you can work on simultaneously.

• By redesigning your Web site you can be including your new found phrases and work them into your sales copy. If you are creating a new site this is the ideal time to make sure you are concentrating on your visitors experience while on your site.

o Include a call to action above the fold

o Contact information above the fold in straight html including area code and zip code.

o Only use Flash in small elements and not as the whole page.

o Include something that will grab your user’s attention. Something out of the normal that will make your visitor stop and take notice of your page.

• Implementing SEO basics can be a daunting task if your site is large or it is many years old. Tactics that where used years ago are no longer useful and most times are being flagged as spam. Depending on how many elements need to be addressed you need to determine if it would be better to start with a fresh page or redo the existing page. A determining factor would be if the current page is already indexed. If this is the case then it would be best to fix the existing page. If the page has too many errors and creating a new one would be wiser be sure to name the new page the same as the old one or do a 301 redirect to the new page. Include your keyword phrase when implementing your basic search engine optimization.

• Visitor response will increase if you are giving your visitors exactly what they are looking for. Only your keyword research will help you with this. We are in an instant gratification world and your visitor will only give you a few seconds to answer their search, so make sure it exactly what they are looking for.

• Open additional windows into your site by using your keyword phrases in your social media avenues. A couple great places to include your keyword researched phrases would be in your blog post and creating a lens in Squidoo around your researched phrase.

• Article marketing is not for everyone but it does allow you to open multiple windows into your site but writing articles around your phrase and submitting them to places like Scribd, ArtcileFactory.com and EzineArticles.com.

Step - # 3 – Which one to choose?

I know you want to implement each and everyone of those goals into your site and you still don’t know where to start.

Stop here and go find five phrases to work with and don’t even think about anything else at this point.

After you find those phrases refer back to your SEO training notes and refresh your memory on how to create a search engine friendly Web page and create content for each of the new keywords you found.

It is going to be hard not to get side tracked but stick to the project at hand. Your only concern is finding 5 phrases, creating content and designing five search engine friendly pages.

Once that is done go ahead and publish the five pages to your Web site. Include each page on your site map, link it from and to relevant pages on your site and include keyword rich link text within the body of the page.

Make a note of the day you added the new pages to your site for later use.

Now that you have the first three steps under your belt you are ready to move onto step four.

Step #4 – Addressing Existing Web Site Issues

Now that you have gotten a good start with the above steps, you can start working on bringing your current Web site up to par while you are actually waiting for indexing on your 5 optimized pages. Your next plan of attack would be working on existing pages within your site. You may not be able to change every issue with your site but remember every small change could result in increased ranking for your site. You may only be able to change your title and Meta tags and not be able to change your corporate sites navigation so tackle what you can and don’t worry about the rest. Each and every issue is just one of the over 200 factors so learn to pick your battles and fix what you can.

Step #5 – Social Media and Article Marketing

Your whole goal is to open as many windows into your site as possible. You have already started this by creating 5 new pages into your site now it is time to open the windows even further. Whether you decide to use article marketing or all the endless possibility of social media marketing now is the time to concentrate on one or both of these window opening wonders.

You can use the five phrases you found in your first step or you can find 5 new ones but at this stage you are creating content to be used in articles, on blogs or bookmaking pages within the many social media avenues. Your title is the most important element when tackling this step. Make your title keyword rich, compelling and deliver what your title describes in the article or blog post.

If you are not quite ready to dive into social media start at least with adding a blog to your Web site. Your best results will come from the blog residing on your server and not one that is hosted on a free blogging site. Make a commitment to blogging regularly and always about your industry so your site and your blog are industry related.

Step #6 – Tracking Your Progress

Web analytics can show you information about all of your optimization projects. Not only will it show you your results for the 5 keyword phrases you are working on but it will open your eyes to how your visitor is moving through your site. Record your results on a weekly or daily basis. This step will help you in testing each one of your projects and help you decide which one you should concentrate more on. Usually I find 2 or 3 phrases that are really performing and those are the ones I concentrate on blogging and adding it to the social media venues.

Step #7 – Keep Up With the Changes

There is no other step as important as this one. The internet changes its landscape on a daily basis so it is imperative that what you learn in your SEO Training is always the latest information. Your Web site and or clients are depending on your expertise so don’t let them down by applying out of date or useless techniques. There are many places you can turn to for guidance.

The first place would be Google, Yahoo! and MSN’s Webmasters guidelines. Each is posted on their site and is updates each and every time they have made changes to them.

Another place would be to subscribe to one of many search engine optimization and marketing blogs created by industry leaders. Your instructor should be able to point you in the right direction to their most trusted resources.

Continue learning by attending your favorite SEO Training provider’s courses on a yearly basis. Principles and techniques change often so always keep on top them.

Often students are overwhelmed with the amount of information they are given at class but if you learn to take them in small steps starting with setting your goals you will find that your seo training is working for you and your Web site.

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/computers_and_internet/article_4061.shtml

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How to Clean your Mouse

By: Ray Geide

If your mouse is working sluggishly or not at all, don't go out and buy another cheap mouse. The cause is probably just a dirty mouse. A quick cleaning could fix the problem.

First, you need to identify which kind of mouse you have. If you turn your mouse over and part of a ball is showing, you have a ball mouse. If you see a lens, you have an optical or laser mouse. Each type of mouse requires a different type of cleaning.

The optical or laser mouse does not need to be cleaned near as often as the ball mouse, but it and the surface it runs on can still get dirty. If you do not clean the surface that the mouse moves on, it will soon turn black. So about once a month or so, wipe the surface off with a wet rag. The lens probably never will get dirty, but if it does, take a soft cloth, cotton swab, or q-tip wetted with window cleaner or alcohol and clean the lens.

The ball mouse may need cleaning quite often, so you should get well acquainted with the following cleaning procedure. The dirtier the ball mouse gets, the harder it is to get it to move the cursor on the screen smoothly. If you have to move the mouse across the mouse pad several times to get the cursor to move halfway across the screen, it needs to be cleaned.

The mouse does not need to be disconnected to clean it, but you should close all of the programs that are running, so that you don't accidentally click on something and mess it up. If you do decide to disconnect the mouse, be sure to turn off the computer first. The mouse cord should never be unplugged from the computer while it is running. Doing so could ruin your motherboard.

Turn the ball mouse over and find the cover that holds the ball in. Look for arrows on the cover to show which way it needs to be turned. Place two fingers on the cover and push in the direction of the arrows. Once the cover has been turned about an inch, cover it with your hand and turn the mouse back over to the upright position. The ball and cover should fall into your hand. If it doesn't, shake the mouse gently.

Wipe the ball off with a wet rag.

Now look in the ball well and find the three rollers. Start by cutting across the buildup on the rollers with your fingernail (a knife or steel dental pick may also be used gently), then turn the roller and remove the buildup as you go along. If you do this correctly, you will end up with one curled strip of buildup for each roller. Make sure to remove the buildup from the well. If it falls inside somewhere, blow and gently shake it until it comes out.

Take a wet rag and clean each of the rollers by wiping across it, then turning it and wiping again. Continue until the entire roller is cleaned. Put the ball back in the ball well and lock the cover back in place.

If the mouse still has problems once it is assembled, try cleaning it again. If that doesn't work, you may need to buy a new mouse.

It is a good idea to regularly clean the surface that the mouse is on because the cleaner the surface, the less dirt will get inside the mouse and the less often you will have to clean it.

If your mouse is shared by many people (especially if one of them is sick), you may want to disinfect the top of the mouse between users.

Follow these instructions and your mouse will be up and darting again in no time.

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/computers_and_internet/article_4125.shtml

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The Battle of the Browsers – The History and the Future of Internet Browsers

By: Nicholas C Smith

With Internet Explorer 8 now available, can Microsoft hope to retain market dominance over fierce open source rivals such as Mozilla's Firefox or the feature packed Opera web browser. Can history give us a clue to what the future of web browsers/browsing might hold? How did Netscape Navigator go from having a dominant 89.36% market share of all web browsers in 1996 and yet only 3.76% by mid 1999?

Let us take a journey that will begin long before even the intellectual conception of Internet Explorer, that will glance at its long defeated rivals, examine the current browsers available and will end with a prediction of what the future of browsing will offer us – and which browser(s) will still be around to offer it.

People often think that Internet Explorer has been the dominant web browser since the golden age of the internet began. Well for a very long time now it has indeed been the most popular browser and at times been almost totally unrivalled. This was mainly a result of it being packaged free with Microsoft Windows, in what some would later call a brutal monopolisation attempt by Microsoft. The last few years however have heralded the arrival of new, possibly superior browsers. Mozilla's Firefox has been particularly successful at chipping away at Explorers market dominance. So where did it all begin, and why were Microsoft ever allowed to have a hundred percent market dominance?

Origins

The truth is they never did have total dominance, but at times they have come very close. Microsoft actually entered the Browser Battle quite late on. Infact a man named Neil Larson is credited to be one of the originators of internet browsers, when in 1977 he created a program – The TRS-80 - that allowed browsing between “sites” via hypertext jumps. This was a DOS program and the basis of much to come. Slowly other browsers powered by DOS and inspired by the TRS 80 were developed. Unfortunately they were often constricted by the limitations of the still fairly young internet itself.

In 1988, Peter Scott and Earle Fogel created a simple, fast browser called Hytelnet, which by 1990 offered users instant logon and access to the online catalogues of over five thousand libraries around the world – an exhilarating taste of what the internet, and web browsers, would soon be able to offer.

In 1989 the original World Wide Web was born. Using a NeXTcube computer, Tim Berners-Lee created a web browser that would change how people used the internet forever. He called his browser the WorldWideWeb(http://www., which is still likely to sound familiar to internet users today. It was a windowed browser capable of displaying simple style sheet, capable of editing sites and able to download and open any file type supported by the NeXTcube.

In 1993 the first popular graphical browser was released. Its name was Mosaic and it was created by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina. Mosaic could be run on both Unix, and very importantly, on the highly popular Microsoft Windows operating system (incidentally it could also be used on Amiga and Apple computers). It was the first browser on Windows that could display graphics/pictures on a page where there was also textual content. It is often cited as being responsible for triggering the internet boom due to it making the internet bearable for the masses. (It should be noted that the web browser Cello was the first browser to be used on Windows – but it was non graphical and made very little impact compared to Mosaic).

The Browser Wars - Netscape Navigator versus Internet Explorer

Mosaic's decline began almost as soon as Netscape Navigator was released (1994). Netscape Navigator was a browser created by Marc Andreessen, one of the men behind Mosaic and co-founder of Netscape Communications Corporation. Netscape was unrivalled in terms of features and usability at the time. For example, one major change from previous browsers was that it allowed surfers to see parts of a website before the whole site was downloaded. This meant that people did not have to wait for minutes simply to see if the site they were loading was the actual one the were after, whilst also allowing them to read information on the site as the rest of it downloaded. By 1996 Netscape had almost 90% market dominance, as shown below.

Market Share Comparisons of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer from 1996 to 1998

………………..Netscape…….IE

October 1998……….64%………32.2%

April 1998…………70%………22.7%

October 1997……….59.67%……15.13%

April 1997…………81.13%……12.13%

October 1996……….80.45%……12.18%

April 1996…………89.36%…….3.76%

In these two years Netscape clearly dominated the internet browser market, but a new browser named Internet Explorer was quickly gaining ground on it.

Microsoft released their own browser (ironically based on the earlier Mosaic browser which was created by one of the men now running Netscape), clearly worried about Netscape's dominance. It was not so much the worry that it would have a 100% market share of internet browsers on their Windows operating system, but more the worry that browsers would soon be capable of running all types programs on them. That would mean foregoing the need for an actual operating system, or at the most only a very basic one would be needed. This in turn would mean Netscape would soon be able to dictate terms to Microsoft, and Microsoft were not going to let that happen easily. Thus in August 1995, Internet Explorer was released.

By 1999 Internet explorer had captured an 89.03% market share, whilst Netscape was down to 10.47%. How could Internet Explorer make this much ground in just two years? Well this was down to two things really. The first, and by far the most important was that Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer in with every new copy of Windows, and as Windows was used by about 90% of the computer using population it clearly gave them a huge advantage. Internet Explorer had one other ace it held over Netscape – it was much better. Netscape Navigator was stagnant and had been for some time. The only new features it ever seemed to introduce were often perceived by the public as beneficial for Netscape's parent company rather than Netscape's user base. (i.e., features that would help it monopolise the market). Explorer, on the other hand, was given much attention by Microsoft. Regular updates and excellent usability plus a hundred million dollar investment would prove too much for Netscape Explorer.

2000 – 2005

These years were fairly quiet in the Battle of the Browsers. It seemed as if Internet Explorer had won the war and that nobody could even hope to compete with it. In 2002/2003 it had attained about 95% of the market share – about the time of IE 5/6. With over 1000 people working on it and millions of dollars being poured in, few people had the resources to compete. Then again, who wanted to compete? It was clearly a volatile market, and besides that everybody was content with Internet Explorer. Or were they? Some people saw faults with IE – security issues, incompatibility issues or simply bad programming. Not only that, it was being shoved down peoples throats. There was almost no competition to keep it in line or to turn to as an alternative. Something had to change. The only people with the ability and the power to compete with Microsoft took matters into their own hands.

Netscape was now supported by AOL. A few years prior, just after they had lost the Browser Wars to Microsoft, they had released the coding for Netscape into the public domain. This meant anybody could develop their own browser using the Netscape skeleton. And people did. Epiphany, Galeon and Camino, amongst others, were born out of Netscape's ashes. However the two most popular newcomers were called Mozilla and Firefox.

Mozilla was originally an open sourced project aimed to improve the Netscape browser. Eventually it was released as Netscape Navigator 7 and then 8. Later it was released as Mozilla 1.0.

Mozilla was almost an early version on another open source browser, Firefox. With it being an open source the public were able to contribute to it - adding in what features it needed, the programming it required and the support it deserved. The problems people saw in Internet Explorer were being fixed by members of the open sourced browser community via Firefox. For instance, the many security issues IE 6 had were almost entirely fixed in the very first release of Firefox. Microsoft had another fight on their hands.

2005 – Present

Firefox was the browser that grew and grew in these years. Every year capturing an even larger market share percentage than before. More user friendly than most of its rivals along with high security levels and arguably more intelligent programming helped its popularity. With such a large programming community behind it, updates have always been regular and add on programs/features are often released. It prides itself on being the peoples browser. It currently has a 28.38% market share.

Apple computers have had their own browser since the mid 1990's – Safari - complete with its own problems, such as (until recently) the inability to run Java scripts. However most Apple users seemed happy with it and a version capable of running on Windows has been released. It has had no major competitor on Apple Macs, and as such has largely been out of the Browser Wars. It currently holds a 2.54% market share and is slowly increasing.

Internet Explorer's market share has dropped from over 90% to around 75%, and is falling. It will be interesting to see what Microsoft will attempt to regain such a high market share.

Opera currently holds 1.07%.

Mozilla itself only has a 0.6% market share these days.

The Future of Web Browsing

Web browsers come and go. It is the nature of technology (if such a term can be used), to supplant inferior software in very short periods of time. It is almost impossible for a single company to stay ahead of the competition for long. Microsoft have the advantage of being able to release IE with any Windows using PC. That covers over 90% of the market. They also have the advantage of unprecedented resources. They can compete how they wish for as long as they wish. So there is no counting IE out of the future of web browsing.

Safari is in a similar position, being easily the most popular Mac web browser. Its long term survival is dependant upon Apple and the sale of their computers.

These are the only two browsers that are almost guaranteed another five years of life, at least. Firefox may seem like another candidate, but the public is fickle, and one bad release, or if it seriously lags behind the new Internet Explorer 8 for long, could easily see its popularity quickly descend into virtual oblivion.

However, it seems likely community driven browsers, such as Mozilla and Firefox, will be the only types of browser capable of competing with the wealthy internet arm of Microsoft in the near future.

As for web browsing itself, will it change any time soon? Well it already has for some online communities. For example, if you want to buy clothes you could try entering an online 'world' creating an online virtual You to go from 'shop to shop' with, looking at products and trying/buying what you see. Some 'worlds' allow you to recreate yourself accurately including weight and height and then try on things apparel such as jeans to give you an idea of how you would look in that particular item.

Will 'worlds' like this destroy normal web browsers such as IE ? - It seems unlikely. Traditional web browsers provide such freedom and ease of access that it is hard to see any other alternative taking over. However they are part of the new, 'thinking out of the box' wave of alternatives that some people will find attractive, and really who knows what the future will bring.

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/computers_and_internet/article_4137.shtml

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Remote Blog or Self Hosted Blog?

By: Len Hutton

So you’ve decided to blog, but aren’t sure whether you should host the blog yourself or sign up for a free service like blogger.com. It’s a dilemma that many bloggers face. There are pros and cons to both, which makes the decision difficult for many. Neither is perfect, and neither is for everyone. Fortunately, you should be able to make the best decision for you if you are armed with adequate knowledge of both. In this newsletter, we’ll go over services like blogger.com and others, plus software that allows you to host your own blog. We’ll also go over the pros and cons of each. After reading this, you will know which is best for you.

Who offers free blog hosting?

Many sites offer free blog hosting. Among them are Forumer, Blogger, BlogEasy, Aeonity, BlogThing and Blogates. A quick search for “free blog” on Google reveals many possibilities.

What software can I use to host my own blog?

Like free blog hosting, there are many possibilities for software that makes hosting your own blog easy. Most of them are free to use. These include:

WordPress(the most popular software)

Apache Roller

Blosxom

Geeklog

Textpattern

LifeType

There is also blog software which you can purchase for use on your site. These include:

Community Server

Movable Type

Radio UserLand

One negative about using software and hosting your own blog is that the process can often times be complicated. You have to download the software and install it to your server, which doesn’t always go easily. It’s particularly hard for those who don’t have a lot of experience installing things on servers.

Why should I remotely host my blog at a place like Blogger?

Places like Blogger allow you to host your blog there. It’s a good option for many people.

The Pros

• It’s easy to set up and maintain a blog. You don’t have to go through the trouble of installing software and configuring it to work on your server. All you have to do is sign up for an account and start posting.

• It’s friendly for beginning bloggers. Sites that host blogs offer good tutorials on how to make your blog postings, so that even someone who is completely new to the concept of blogging can do it easily.

• Most blog hosting sites are completely free to use. There is no need to pay for things like a domain name and hosting.

• Monetizing your blog is easy. Rather than having to manually put HTML/Javascript codes on your blog to manually set up things like AdSense and Pay Per Click advertising, you can select an option on most blog hosting sites that does much of the work for you.

The Cons

• You don’t have as many options to customize your blog. Remotely hosted blogs are admittedly somewhat limited in terms of what you can actually do on them. You have to stick with what is provided to you in terms of look and features.

• The URL you get is always yourname.BLOGSITE.com. You don’t get to have a custom domain name like YOURNAME.com. This can possibly hurt traffic to your blog.

• Blogs hosted on free blog sites don’t look as professional as self hosted blogs.

Why should I self-host my blog?

The Pros

• You have more options and more flexibility. You are able to tweak the blog to your liking.

• Your URL is your address for your blog. Rather than having go to where your blog is hosted to read it, they can read it right from your site.

• The ability to make your blog look professional. Blogs that are hosted on sites of their own tend to look a lot better than those hosted on free sites.

• More space for your blog. Free blog sites usually place a restriction on how much space you have for things like photos and music. By hosting your own blog, you are able to use as much space as you need.

The Cons

• There are sometimes problems with setting up blog software to run on your site and server. If you aren’t experienced when it comes to working with mySQL, the process will be hard.

• Updates aren’t as easy to post.

• You have to manually set up programs to monetize your blog. However, if you are good with HTML/Javascript, this shouldn’t be too hard.

• You have to pay for your own hosting and domain

As you can see, there are pros and cons to both. Which should you choose? Well, it depends on who you are and what you intend to use your blog for. If you intend to use it for business, then a self-hosted blog is the best idea. If it’s a personal blog, then a free hosted blog will probably be fine for you.

Closely examine all of the pros and cons mentioned above. That way, you’ll be able to make the best decision for you!

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/computers_and_internet/article_4120.shtml

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