Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

With the internet providing more means of communication, businesses have expanded. These days, it is no longer a big surprise to find out a boss from Europe maintaining operations in mainland US without having to visit its headquarters every year. Thanks to the advancement in communications technology, businesses now know no geographical boundaries.

A  phone call is no longer enough to satisfy. Audio conferencing has taken its place, and you can have more than three people talking in one line, in different locations and time zones! International toll free numbers, full-time operator, operator provided Q&A, digital record and playback and a lot more are just one of the many options available for an audio conference feature. Video conference meetings can take the place of board “people” meetings. Audio and visual meetings are more effective this way.

Web conferencing is also an innovative way to maintain a business.

1. You can communicate real time with clients “face to face”.

2. You can provide online training and support.

3. With the ability to share files, present PowerPoint presentations and discuss Excel files – you can accomplish multiple things at once, with just the help of one communication tool and client!

Any online business that relies heavily on communication needs to be using Video Web Conferencing solutions. It can be easy to spend hundreds of dollars in obtaining the software and capability to do this.

The Conference Group gives high quality teleconferencing services which enable clients to stand above their competition by giving them the ability to quickly and effectively manage communications.

With almost everybody’s business going mainstream and building a site on the world wide web, the challenge of today is how to make your presence felt and known in today’s way of technology advertising. While doing business online is virtually cheaper than advertising costs in real life, one must also be willing to invest on optimizing tools and advertising to make their sites more efficient and web-site ready. You would need to hire a professional seo company that can do that like Globe Runner SEO. With them, they can guarantee to analyze your site, optimize it for search engines to crawl and get indexed and have in-depth analysis for search engine rankings. They offer marketing and positioning strategies even as far as going to paid submissions to search engines to make sure your site will get its revenue.

Search engine rankings are important – this is the number one source for web site visits. Penetrating the top results in a search engine is a challenge Globe Runner SEO is willing to do for you. Search engine optimization simply makes your site easier to get indexed. The keywords also need to be specific to your site but not too general so that when potential visitors look for specific keywords, they are sure to get your site.

Burglaries are on the rise these days as Christmas is approaching. Add to that the recent tragedies of flooding and earthquake (couple with illness outbreaks), people can become quite desperate and will do anything to stay afloat during hard times. It will be the best time to invest in Home Security Systems.

Home Security should always be a priority for households. Would you not protect your most valuable belongings, especially your family who resides in your home. A friend recently got the ADT Home Security Surveillance System which has the following:

• Digital Keypad
• Up to 3 Entryway Contacts
• Keychain remote
• Pet-Sensitive Motion Detector
• High Decibel Alarm
• Backup Battery

And they now can sleep peacefully at night! I personally would want to have my own security system when I have my own dream home. I labored blood, sweat and tears for that home and it would follow that I will do anything to protect it as much as I can!

You can call me weird. Because I am as girly as you can get but I detest shopping at malls. I have always been the type who goes to the mall with a specific item in mind, buys it, then goes home. These days, instead of going home, I go eat and have a coffee. I hate walking, I hate window shopping and I hate the need to check out a dozen stores to compare which one offers the best item.

That is the reason why I think online shopping was made just for me. Nothing beats shopping in the comforts of your home at 2AM in your pajamas. I often wonder how much it takes to open up one’s online store. For one thing, just stocking the shopping cart and securing payment gateways must be tiring. I know since I worked for a hosting company before that a reliable hosting company is essential for a success of an online store.

JustHost.com has recently been names best ecommerce hosting company by Web Hosting Choice because not only do they take orders online and process credit card payments, their control panel is user-friendly enough for users to load their cart with stocks and take inventory. Plus their site is loading with tutorials and videos on how to get along the site.

Here are a few of their features:

• Unmetered Web Space and Visitor Traffic
• Unlimited MySQL Databases, Hosted Domains and Email Addresses/Space
• Huge Library of FREE Scripts
• REAL 24/7 Support
• Anytime Money Back Guarantee
• Free Instant Setup with No Strings Attached

Everything is being carded these days. Most restaurants and stores accept major credit cards so it will be easy to attract customers (It is just easier to charge everything to the card, right?). But along with credit card availability and its convenience, steps are needed to ensure that credit cards swiped are protected against stealing and stores are protected from fraud.

That is where Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard comes in. This standard was created to help organizations that process card payments prevent fraud through increased controls around data and its exposure to compromise.

The best PCI compliance solution was developed by Braintree Payment Solutions. They handle everything from online credit card payment processing to completely eliminating the handling, processing and storage of credit card data. All these are PCI compliant.

I personally would want all stores where I charge my card to to be PCI compliant. There are so much credit card fraud these days that I don’t want mine to be compromised.

I own and write several blogs. And while it has been financially rewarding, maintaining it is a big chore and finding a good web host is a necessity. You would want to have your blogs or your sites to be up all the time, right? For me, my web hosting choice came from two factors: 1) Account Manager interface and 2) Reliability. Price would only be secondary to the two.

I’m not really a techie person so having an account manager interface that is user-friendly and easy to navigate is a must for me. Plus, I’d like for my web host to have 99.9% uptime so I looked around for web hosts that have good reputation and good customer service.

It’s a good thing I came across a site that has impartial reviews and feedbacks about web hosting companies – WebHostingChoice.com. It’s a free guide to help customers like me find my perfect match for a web hosting company. As of April 15, 2009, they have listed the Top 10 Web Hosting Companies on their homepage and I’m glad Host Monster is number two on the list – that is where I have my blogs hosted! The site has different categories which would fit what you would really need and are looking for a web host. If you need dedicated servers, e-mail hosting, or just blog hosting like me.

This piece of information may just be useful for all of those who need a new host or have plans of replacing their current hosts.

I just read a justhost review and this web hosting company seems promising. The recently launched web hosting company is London-based but has offices in the US too. Having offices situated at both ends of the world means customer service is guaranteed to be always 24/7.

Look at the massive list of features their hosting packages include:

unlimited email accounts, unlimited sub-domains, free site builder with templates, instant setup, shopping carts, unlimited SQL databases, site statistics and analyzer tools and much more. For the more tech-savvy webmaster there’s a range of features including PHP support, a CGI script library, Dreamweaver support, Ruby-on-Rails and Perl.

PLUS! If you open an account with Just Host, it entitles you to have $25 worth of advertising credits with Google, Yahoo and Miva.

They currently just offer two types of hosting packages but the two of them are designed to service the technically challenged to the techie geeks. They guarantee an uptime of 99.9%. What actually takes the cake is their customer service. I am all for customer service! They have 24-hr email and toll-free phone line support with loads of tutorials in the help section of their web site.

I may sound like a loser (I maybe am!) but the biggest asset I have right now is my computer. It’s not as high tech as I want it to be, is dying for an upgrade but it has served us dutifully and rightfully for the past three years – only conking out once because the power supply flipped. But it has brought us money (thousands of it), entertainment (through movies and games), communication (mail, twitter + don’t forget Facebook!), and hobbies (scrapbooking + virtual online games). We take good care of it and aside from the TV and ref, it is the most used appliance in the house. That is why computer protection is very important for us. I update our virus protection as often as I can (it’s my responsibility now since the husband is away at work most of the time) and I employ the most efficient virus removal programs when it becomes infected, which hasn’t happened more than once thankfully.

Every year I renew multiple domains and hosting packages for my blogs. I am not a techie person so I had a friend host my multiple blogs so she can install WordPress for me and maintain everything. It is such an easy and hassle-free way for me (worry free too!). What is ironic is that my previous work had me as a technical support for web hosting and development! And yet I am quite clueless with codes and databases. Web Hosting and technical stuff have never been my forte.

In all honesty, I am willing to pay more for what is usually worth for hosting if it means it will 99.9% up all the time and is maintained all through out. Exactly why I got hosting from my friend.

A cousin of mine is a reseller of domain names and hosting packages but his forte is his customized e-commerce carts that are for business owners wanting to set up shop online. Just thinking about makes me head ache.

Why am I writing all of this? Well, since it is the beginning of the year, I actually renewed all of my domain names. There are quite a lot so it sure made a dent in my PayPal account. At least I am comforted that they will be secure all throughout the year so I’m good!

I failed to mention this.

We live in the boondocks. Therefore, cable TV is virtually impossible. It is a good thing that we can now have Direct Satellite TV!  Direct TV subscriptions are being offered by MyTVOptions and we are going to be taking advantage of the offer.

Here are what Satellite Directv has to offer:

1, High Definition TV Service

2. DVR (This has got to be the coolest invention since the internet)

3. Sports Channels

4. Movies, Local and International Channels.

When you get the NFL Sunday Ticket for only $59.99/mo for 5 months, you get 5 months free!

Let’s face it – blogging is the new trend. People have been migrating from blog platforms and buying their own domains (sometimes, multiple domains at that – it is cheap!) and even making money out of all it.

Count me in as one of the people sucked in by the trend. But consider me as one of the few who started even before it was a trend. I have been blogging since 2003 – that’s going to be six years of stuff online you can find if you are good enough (and have stalker abilities). I started from blogger communities like Live Journal and had mine at friends’ only. I was not ready to bare it all, so to speak, and I was quite paranoid about my parents discovering what I wrote. Of course, my writing there was no-holds barred, it came from the heart, and it was real. NOT that I’m saying what I’m writing now isn’t, but blogging is like public speaking, you need censure and be remindful that even if it is YOUR blog and you can WRITE anything you want, you still have a responsibility to yourself and to other people to moderate your stuff. And just imagine – once you put it on the web, it’s there for the whole world to see. (If that doesn’t censure you at all, I don’t know what will!)

On to the technicalities of blogging, domain names cost around USD8-10 so it is really pretty cheap. I actually register all of mine with go daddy. Go Daddy offers hosting packages too but since I’m techie-impaired, I decided to hitch and share a hosting package with a techie-enabled friend (who does all the backend work for me, bless her kind soul). You can find reviews about Go Daddy and its hosting packages at WPDesigner.com.

Windows 7 (formerly codenamed Blackcomb and Vienna) is the latest version of Microsoft Windows, a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs and media center PCs.[2] Windows 7 was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009,[3] with general retail availability set for October 22, 2009,[4] less than three years after the release of its predecessor, Windows Vista. Windows 7’s server counterpart, Windows Server 2008 R2, is slated for release at about the same time.

Windows 7, the latest operating software from Microsoft, was slated to have launched last July this year. As with the my recent experience with Windows Vista, I didn’t download the new software as I am so sure there will be bugs in the system and several incompatibility issues with the common drivers I use for work. I also have not collated all the computer drivers at home for back-up so all the drivers software programs are located in different drives.

What plugin do you use?

I have been trying to decide which ones to spiff up the blog with and yet I still cant decide.

I think Im going with these recommended ones:
Top 10 WordPress Plugins To Improve Readers Experience
Bloggers R Us – Plugins

If you use one and highly recommend it, please do tell.

Some say that having a favicon is like putting on cosmetics. This is only partly true. More importantly, having a favicon on your blog allows the visitors to quickly identify your site in their Favorite folder among the other bookmarked site. Take a look at the example below:

If you do not have a favicon currently and you are interested to, here’s how to can do it.

1. First, you will need an image. Any image will do provided that it is royalty-free and not copyrighted (meaning, you cannot use Coca-Cola’s corporate logo as you favicon).
2. Go to Chami.com’s Favicon Tool page.
3. Upload you image by clicking the “Browse” button and click “Generate Favicon”
4. After Chami’s tool completed the generation, you will be presented with the link to download you favicon. Click the download link and save the favicon on your computer. (You can also test your favicon by clicking on the “Test in Browser”
5. Unzip the contents you have just downloaded and upload the favicon to your webhost (”public_html” folder, for most of you).
6. You will now need to edit your header.php of your wordpress blog. Depending on the theme you use, locate the header.php folder and edit the file by adding the following code:
   

   

7. Save your header.php file
8. Hard refresh your browser by pressing the Ctrl+F5 keys. You should now be able to see your favicon next to your URL.

Note: If you wish to change your favicon, simply replace the .ico file with another. Enjoy.

Source

Here’s a fun little tool to play with – make your own candy hearts with the Acme heart maker.