Ideas and Technologies

SOLVED Avira Antivirus June 23, 2010 Update is Alarming Warcraft III Players?

2010-06-23T11:52:00.000-07:00

Just this day, I was on the internet cafe business owned by my family. Since i am the one who configured everything, my job is to maintain it also. From the operating system setup, online and offline games, up to the security, tweaks and auto-maintain features of the workstation.

I use the Avira Anti-virus 10 on the net cafe. Not to say it's free, but it also provides concrete protection (as for my experiences and for the independent antivirus testing organizations). Most of our customers are gamers. Warcraft III: Frozen Throne and the DOTA (Defense of the Ancient) are some of the most-played games since 2004.

Since i have set the Avira Anti-virus to automatic update it's viral definition, for the past months on business, i can't compare it's stability with regards to viral protection.

Just this day, one customer complained to my cafe attendant that Warcraft III: Frozen Throne is showing an error. To be exact, it's an file-missing error that the FrozenThrone.exe could not find the war3.exe. I decided to turn off my stable cyber cafe manager I then boot up another unit beside the customer to see if another computer was also having that error. If not, i could transfer him and fix it. But after launching the Frozen Throne shortcut on my desktop, i got the same error too. Until i decided to let the other computers boot up and try if it's getting the same. Well as i've suspected, they are on the same page of the book.

I turned on my Acer Aspire 4520 laptop and check for an existing topic on the internet and for me to isolate from the network i have directly connected the modem on my laptop, but got no luck. Since i am using Microsoft Windows 7 operating system, it alerted me that my antivirus was out of date. The last virus definition was dated 2 days ago so i begun updating. After a couple of seconds, notifying that my virus definition was updated, Avira Guard notified me that he found a Malware on my system. I also installed Warcraft III on my laptop for my pastime so indeed i am infected with this Malware.

It's an TR/Patched.IV.43 and the access to that file was denied. I am pretty sure that my network is clean. I did isolation per computer units then fire up a complete system and hardisk scan, and yet i only got this malware alert. Furthermore, I also tried reinstalling the client while isolating the computer out of the network. For the past years i am also playing Frozen Throne and DOTA, my trust is with them.

To releave the business out of this false alarm, and since avira is not keeping off the trail of Frozen Throne, and my customers are craving to play DOTA, the only thing i did is put the war3.exe process on the exceptions. You could found the exception option on the expert mode of Avira Antivirus. Lying beneath the Scanner > Scan tree

PS: As far as i can remember, one of my google searches give me a result that this TR/Patched.IV.43 has a variant of war*.* filename (Where * asterisk is a wild card character). If this post mislead the fact, feel free to complain below and enlighten the readers. Thank you!

Even Animals Have Hearts

2010-06-14T06:28:00.000-07:00

This is just a total ripped-off from Care2.com, a heart-tugging video captured the extraordinary reunion of two old friends: a man and the gorilla he raised from infancy.

It had been five years since British naturalist Damian Aspinall had seen Kwibi, a lowland gorilla who was born at Howletts Wild Animal Park in England as part of an ongoing conservation program by the Aspinall Foundation to re-introduce gorillas back into the wilds of Africa.

Several years after Kwibi was released to live in Gabon, West Africa, Aspinall traveled there to see if he could catch a glimpse of his old friend. Cameras captured the scene as Aspinall glided down the river calling out to Kwibi, "C'mon! C'mon!" Incredibly, Kwibi appeared on the bank. "He heard my voice and came to the edge of the river," Aspinall explained in the video.

What happened next is astounding. Aspinall approached Kwibi cautiously. After all, the gorilla is a wild animal and he hadn't seen the naturalist in many years. And yet, Kwibi recognized Aspinall. "The moment I heard his deep, rumbling love gurgle, I knew I was OK," explained Aspinall. Kwibi nuzzled his face close to Aspinall, then wrapped his hairy arms around the man, refusing to let him go.

When Aspinall had to leave, Kwibi followed his boat down the river. "All night he hooted, calling for his friend," said Aspinall. At 6:00 the next morning, when Aspinall took a swim, Kwibi was there on the banks of the river.

"It's no different if you go see a friend in another country and you meet and you have a reunion and you go on your separate lives again," Aspinall told Matt Lauer in an interview on "Today." "I always feel I'll see him again."

Aspinall wants the video to encourage people to support the efforts to protect animals in the wild. "I hope when people see this they realize animals deserve their chance and it shows how gentle gorillas can be," Aspinall said on "Today." "We have a responsibility to this earth and I think as a species, we can do so much more for this planet."

Click here for the original post.

Excellent Ads

2010-06-13T08:31:00.000-07:00

Well i guess i don't need to say anything with this advertisements of different companies world wide. Note that these images are resized and for you to see the big picture, you have to click the images :) Good luck!

And Lastly...

Facebook, A Social Media Used as Marketing Strategy

2010-06-13T00:31:00.000-07:00

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing benefits organizations and individuals by providing an additional channel for customer support, a means to gain customer and competitive insight, and a method of managing their reputation online.
In the emergence of Web 2.0, the internet provides a set of tools that allow people to build social and business connections, share information and collaborate on projects online. The growth of social media has impacted the way organizations communicate with their customers.

Social media is information content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies that is intended to facilitate communications, influence and interaction with peers and with public audiences. This is typically done via the Internet and mobile communications networks. Today this practice is being enjoyed by executives and professionals for brand exposure and marketing.

Facebook, A Social Media Used as Marketing Strategy

Facebook is a social networking website launched in February 2004 and operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can add people as friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by workplace, school, or college.
According to Wikipedia, Facebook decided to use these demographics to their advantage. Facebook legally owns all the rights to the information that is posted on their website, and created an advertising program that targets the users of Facebook individually by grouping that information together and targeting each individual person with advertisements that will catch their eye.

This strategy created a buzz in the advertising world. Previous to this type of advertising, online advertising had not been very effective due to pop-ups and banner's lack of substance. Most people found these annoying and or distracting when using the internet. With Facebook targeting each individual on its website, 400 million users strong, it created a target market for every company. Therefore if a bridal company wanted to advertise on Facebook they could literally make sure their ads were only seen by those whose status says engaged or dating depending on how broad they wanted to go. This allowed Facebook to start using the pay-per-click strategy that many advertisers’ shy away from because of the lack of impact on internet users.

With the pay-per-click strategy in effect for Facebook, every time a Facebook user clicks on an advertisement, that company pays Facebook for the ad. Studies have shown that over sixty nine percent of online shoppers use social media like Facebook not only to reach out to people, but also to see what's popular and what are some of the in things. The original pay-per-click strategy was not effective because users did not want to be taken to another page and look at something that did not appeal to them. With Facebook's new targeting system their ratio of clicks per user is astoundingly higher than any other competitor, even Google. This makes sense since the ads appeal to the fact that they are engaged or have an interest in fashion.

Guess what, Ideas and Technologies provides a facebook fanpage for you to stay updated while you're facebook wall. Login to your account now and follow Ideas and Techs on Facebook

Adsense Competitor Yahoo Publisher Network to Close

2010-06-05T17:11:00.000-07:00

Have you already use the Yahoo Publisher Network? The Yahoo! Publisher Network (abbreviated YPN) is a beta advertising network launched on August 2, 2005 by Yahoo!. As the service is currently in Beta, it is currently only accepting US-Based publishers. YPN provides cost per click contextual advertising as well as various tools and services to assist publishers in building and improving their websites.

After conducting an extensive review of the Yahoo! Publisher Network beta program, we have decided to close the program effective April 30, 2010. We expect to deliver final publisher payments for the month ending April 30, 2010 to publishers no later than May 31, 2010. All publishers eligible for 1099s for the 2010 tax year will have those mailed by January 31, 2011.

I was once a registrant way back 2007. But since i'm from the Philippines, i am not qualified for their service. Yahoo! was never been fair for me that time. I guess the reason why they came up with a low traffic result of their study is because they have target and conduct the study for the U.S. The fact that, it is just 1/4 of the world. Unlike Google Adsense.

Chinese Water Color Artist Guan Weixing

2010-06-04T22:18:00.000-07:00

Guan Weixing was born in Dunhua County, Jilin Province, China in 1940.

In 1960, when Guan Weixing was still a first grade student in Luxun Fine Arts Academy, Eugen Popa, a Romanian Professor, broke a rule in order to accept Guan into his oil painting training class. And in 1962, he was graduated a master. So far, many of his works have been published, collected, and exhibited not only in many national exhibitions but also in international ones held in America, Japan, France and so on. These are some of the best works of
Guan Weixing featured in Water Color Artist's article entitled Profiles in Courage.

Old Farmer from Shanbei (watercolor on paper, 11x15)

Wrestler from Inner Mongolia (watercolor on paper, 44x26)

Expectation (watercolor on paper, 14x20)

Northeast Farmyard (watercolor on paper, 30x20)

Autumn Rhythm (watercolor on paper, 21x29)

First Look Into the World (watercolor on paper, 20x15)

Shanbei Folk Singer (watercolor on paper, 15x20)

Little Monk from Xishuangbana (watercolor on paper, 20x30)

The Power of Bounce Rate

2010-06-04T02:18:00.000-07:00

What is a Bounce Rate?

It essentially represents the percentage of initial visitors to a site who "bounce" away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site. A bounce occurs when a web site visitor only views a single page on a website, that is, the visitor leaves a site without visiting any other pages before a specified session-timeout occurs. There is no industry-standard minimum or maximum time by which a visitor must leave in order for a bounce to occur. Rather, this is determined by the session timeout of the analytics tracking software.

The Google Analytics is one of the best and free services offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. Its main highlight is that the product is aimed at marketers as opposed to webmasters and technologists from which the industry of web analytics originally grew.

How Bounce Rate helps your site's niche?

Bounce rates can be used to help determine the effectiveness or performance of an entry page. An entry page with a low bounce rate means that the page effectively causes visitors to view more pages and continue on deeper into the web site.

Google.com analytics specialist Avinash Kaushik has stated:

"It is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying."

On an ecommerce site, where the sole aim may be to sell products online, the bounce rate is a primary concern and useful measurement. Information sources and sites which drive the customer to make contact via email or phone may see much higher bounce rates. This may not be a bad thing as they are only viewing one page of the site.

How can you decrease your Bounce Rate?

While Bounce Rate helps you to study the success of your site, you and your site, on the otherhand, can affect the rate of bounce your visitors do. Below are some rules to decrease your site's bounce rate:

Make your blog user friendly. Your blog should be clean, orderly and appealing to the visitors. The text should be readable and the downloading should be fast. If you have an idea of what Web 2.0 means, you should be craving to minimize the use of high-weighing elements(flash animations, images, and applets) on your site/blog.
Write Quality and Relevant Contents. The articles published at your blog should be interesting and useful. Give your visitors the reason to stay longer at your blog.
Inter- linking articles. Offer your visitors more articles to read that are relevant to the landing page. This can be done by: linking to the other articles by using the relevant keywords within the article; and listing few related articles at the bottom of the article.
Proper SEO. In optimizing your blog or every pages of your blog for the search engines, you need to target the keywords that are relevant to the page being optimized.

For example, if you're targeting a specific keyword, “Pinay Scandal” on this case, make sure that the landing page(Learn Landing Page Optimization) contains relevant content because if the content is not related to the keywords used to find a page of your blog, most likely your visitors will immediately click the “Back” button of the browser to check for another websites.

Strange Houses

2010-06-03T10:05:00.000-07:00

I found these funny houses while browsing the web and i think you might like it.

Stone House Guimaraes

The Basket Building Ohio

The Kvivik Igloo

The Upside Down House at Poland

The Kerala House Boat

Thanks don't forget to share and comment!

Photojournalism, a Way of Life

2010-06-01T09:10:00.000-07:00

To fill up another entry for the category Photography, here is something great i wanna share to you. Photojournalism. This is my favorite in photography. Since you make a story of your own based on what you see and what is happening around you. About people and how they live their life.

New to photojournalism, photo stories have the same construction as news stories. There is a lead image, transitions, emotion and resolution. Throughout the story, characters, conflicts and motives are revealed, explained and concluded.

Still images remain the most powerful communication tool. Each still image can literally burn into the brain of a viewer. Images speak to every person in their own language. This power accompanies massive responsibility. Consequently, photojournalism is more than a vocation. It becomes a way of life.

Everyone entering the field must understand they must be better than established pros at everything. They need superior technical skills, access, and a unique style. They must capture stories the world has never seen, or be able to tell old stories better than anyone ever has.

They must pursue difficult stories. Much of the news industry has been reduced to pop culture and delivery speed. Instead of following celebrity and entertainment, focus on the issues affecting everyone. Look for the emotion of the events unfolding in the world around us. People are hurting across the planet. Find the cause of the pain, and show the results to others. Whenever possible, show readers a way to help others.

Below are some of my shares about Photojournalism. Hope you like it!

Title: Through The Struggles...

Title: Love Your Children

Title: World

Title: Preparing for that single step

Title: When i just have to carry the world to feed you....

Benefits of Using Web Proxy Server

2010-05-31T16:24:00.000-07:00

There are, in fact, many benefits of using a web proxy server.

Some of the more common ones involve maintaining your privacy and getting around blocks placed upon your IP address, such as the ones placed on school computers.I wouldn't recommend using a proxy service to get around blocks - they are there for a reason - but for many other legitimate uses they can be a real boon.

In simple terms, a proxy works thus:

You want to connect your computer (1) to another computer or website (2) but you either cannot, or you want to do so privately.
In this case you would then use a proxy (3) to connect to computer or website (2), thereby gaining access without the computer or website the other end knowing it was you that had made the connection.

Here are a few reasons why you might want to do something like this -

Improved Security

If you visit a website that you think may pose a risk to your computer for some reason then using a proxy can give you an added layer of protection, much like using a firewall does.

You will not connect directly to the website in question and so you will have a further degree of protection from any malware that the site may try to infect you with.

Hacking Protection
Using a web proxy server between your computer and the web will prevent hackers from obtaining your IP address, thereby drastically redusing the risks of them being able to gain access to your cache or hard drives.

Website Filtering

The ability of a proxy to filter certain sites is quite variable so you will need to put in a little research time to take advantage of this feature.

Big players who use proxies to block certain sites include the United Arab Emirates and, more famously, China who block large parts of the world wide web from their citizens.

On a more personal note, you could employ a proxy service to prevent your kids watching porn or your employees from accessing social networking sites such as Facebook, Friendster, Plurk and Twitter.

Basic Understanding of CSS Frameworks

2010-05-26T20:45:00.000-07:00

You don’t have to write the same CSS-code or (X)HTML-Markup over and over again. Whatever project you’re starting to work with, at some point you have to define classes and IDs you’ve already defined in your previous web-projects. To avoid unnecessary mistakes you might want to start not from a blank file, but from an almost “perfect” scratch. The latter might contain some basic definitions you’d write in your code anyway. However, once you’ve decided to create such a scratch, you need to make sure it is really bulletproof — besides, if the stylesheet also sets up optimal typographic rules and basic form styling you manage to kill two birds with one stone.

And this is where CSS Frameworks and CSS Reset are becoming important. Using them, you can get yourself a perfect default-stylesheet and markup, save your time and ensure the best quality of your code from the very beginning. But what are CSS Frameworks? And why do you need the Reset for?

So What is a CSS Framework?

A framework is a basic (usually abstract) conceptual structure which you can use as a “scratch” for your web-projects. For instance, instead of defining global reset, consistent baseline, typographic rules or basic styles for forms over and over again — every time you work on a new project — you can prepare a default-style once and reuse it in all your future projects. This is what you call a CSS Framework.

CSS frameworks don’t have to be complex or large, they may contain a set of simple CSS-styles such as

typography.css for basic typographic rules,
grid.css for grid-based layouts or
layout.css for general layouts,
form.css for basic form styling,
general.css for further general rules

and so on. In your code segmentation you can also go further, for instance: structure, typography, design presentation, specialist sections (e.g. menus, navigation), print, mobile web, tweaks (mostly old style browser hacks), browser specific workarounds (via IE conditional statement).

List of CSS Frameworks Available on the Web

The Blueprint CSS framework, created by Norwegian tech student Olav Frihagen Bjørkøy, is a very promising foundation for developing typographic grids using CSS. The framework offers an easily customizable grid, sensible typography, a typographic baseline and a stylesheet for printing. It also uses relative font-sizes, provides a CSS reset and is supposed to be cleaned of code bloats. The latter isn’t always true.

YAML is based on web standards and supports every modern web browser. All Internet Explorer’s major rendering bugs are countered. YAML fully supports all IE versions from 5.x/Win to 7.0.

Apart from a number of standard-conform layouts the framework also offers a debugging stylesheet, print stylesheet as well as various robust tools for web-development in YAML. All CSS components of the framework as well as the various layout methods are thoroughly documented in both English and German, supplemented by numerous examples.

That's it for now. On my future post i will discuss about CSS Resets. If you have any suggestions comment below. Meanwhile, for additional topic relating to Web Design and Web Development you might consider reading What is really Web 2.0 and Mashup means?

The House Attack

2010-05-25T07:36:00.000-07:00

In 2006, artist Erwin Wurm had an art exhibit at Austria’s MUMOK (Museum Moderner Kunst), displaying work that was often architectural in nature such as ‘fat houses’. Outside the building, the theme continued with an installation called ‘House Attack’ – an actual house imbedded in the museum’s roof.

Photos are from An-Architecture

Choosing A DSLR Camera

2010-05-04T06:39:00.000-07:00

There are a wide range of options and features available for DSLR (digital single lens reflex) cameras and it can be confusing if you are buying this type of camera for the first time. This guide will help you decide which features are important to you and hopefully help you to choose your ideal DSLR camera.

Price

A major factor in your decision is, of course, the price. DSLR cameras start at about $400 and can be as much as $8000 for a top of the range camera. A camera of between $400 to $1000 would probably be a good choose for a newcomer. Lenses tend to be expensive and can cost more than the camera body do make sure you take this into account when you make your budget.

Format Size

There are four format sizes at the moment for 35mm DSLR cameras.

Full Frame

This format, with a sensor size of sensor size is 36mm x 24mm, is found on most higher end cameras and is the same size as that used in 35mm film cameras.

APS-C

On a Canon camera this format has a 15mm x 22.5mm sensor and on a Nikon 15.6mm x 23.7mm. This format is used by most DSLR cameras except some higher end cameras and Olympus makes. Nikon call it a DX format.

APS-H

This format is only found in a few cameras such as the Canon EOS 1D MkIII and has a 18.7mm x 28.7mm sensor.

Four Thirds

This is a smaller format at 13.5mm x 18mm and is found on Olympus and Panasonic cameras. The aspect ratio is 3:4 unlike other cameras with an aspect ratio of 2:3.

All of the formats will give a good print out up to 11″ x 14″ which is the largest most amateur photographers will usually need. Most cameras below about $1000 dollars use the Four Thirds or APS-C format so the choice is usually dictated by the price rather than performance.

Image Stabilization Systems

Systems for image stabilisation vary between manufacturers. Some systems are mounted in the camera body others on the lens itself. Nikon and Canon use a lens based system and use gyros on the lens to sense movement and keep the optical groups stable. Gyros mounted on the camera body are used by Sony, Panasonic and Olympus in a stabilisation system called a sensor shift. The sensor shifts to compensate for any movement. Although both systems perform equally as well the lens mounted systems need to be included on every lens which adds to the cost. In addition not all lenses have the system included especially prime lenses under 200mm.

Size and Weight

Cheaper cameras tend to be smaller and lighter although, as no DSLR camera is going to fit into a pocket anyway, the size is not of primary important.

Pixel Count

DSLR camera start at about 6 mega pixels (MP) and can be as much as 22 MP for a high end camera. The pixel count will dictate the size that a print can be blown up to and you need to decide how large you would like your prints before you decide on which model to buy. 240 pixels per inch will give a very good quality print so a 6 MP camera will be adequate for a high quality 8" x 10" print.

If you need larger prints a 10 MP camera will be capable of producing a good print at a size of 11″ x 14″. A top of the range camera with a pixel count of 22 MP will give excellent 11″ x 14″ prints.

ISO Settings

ISO ranges between 100 and 1600 are found on most lower end cameras. Mid range cameras may have settings up to 6400 and a high end camera can reach as high as 25,500 and as low as 50. Most DSLR cameras will give pictures with low noise at ISO settings between 100 and 800 but the noise dramatically increases above this. The noise at the higher levels can vary considerably between models so, if possible, try to see images taken at higher setting with the cameras you are considering.

Noise

All digital images will have some noise which will be more noticeable at higher ISO settings. Noise comes from the electronics and sensor when the digital signal is produced from the analog signal. All DSLR cameras have noise filtering systems but this works less well above an ISO setting of about 800. Noise reduction softens the image so try to see images taken in low light if you will be using the higher range ISO settings.

Autofocus

Autofocus systems vary a great deal between manufacturers. All auto focus systems work well for static images but can vary a great deal for moving subjects, especially in low light. Check reviews of specific cameras for information on how well auto focus works for the model you are considering.

Buying A Used Computer? Then Learn to Evaluate it

2010-05-03T07:23:00.000-07:00

Used computers are available plenty in number. But, the prime concern is that how it will satisfy the needs of the purchaser. The next one is about the functionality of the used computer and the longevity of the computer parts of the used computer. Many people decide to purchase used computers due to a tight budget, but they should not end up buying a showpiece rather than a working piece. This makes it very important to evaluate the used computer before buying it. Evaluation can be done by the purchaser himself provided he has some knowledge on computers and their parts. If not, he can get some help from their friends or relatives who are good in evaluating computers.

The used computer’s physical parts should be inspected thoroughly. First step is to look for any damages and then trying to turn on and off. It should be done by the buyer or by his friend rather than watching the computer sales person do it as it will alert for any glitches. Checking needs to be done to find out if the used computer has an original version of the operating software without which the computer is not worth buying. Manuals, licenses for software applications, discs and fonts should be got along with the computer.

The operating system of the used computer should be compatible enough to run the required applications of the buyer. Some times the seller may sell a used computer along with used disk drives, scanners and printers and include the cost of them too. It is not wise to buy used scanner, printers or disk drives as they have peripherals with moving parts which wear and tear with the passage of time and also the cost of them can be deducted making the price of the used computer even lesser.

The speed of the central processing unit needs to be checked. If it is not up to the expectation of the buyer, it needs to be found out if the used computer system can be upgraded for improving the speed and functionality. The entire hardware components should be checked including the keyboard, speakers, monitor, mouse and microphones. It should be if all the hardware components inside the computer like the CD-ROM drive, sound card, number of RAM sockets etc are if present or not and if present what are the components in use. Also it needs to be checked whether it has a provision for adding different type of cards etc.

If the purchaser has already got some computer components like the monitor, printer and so on, the used computer which is bought should be compatible with them. Nowadays used Pentium machines and power PCs are available at very low price. It is not advised to buy a used computer which is very old. Also it is good to find out if the used computer comes with a transferable warranty or service, if so it is worth buying.

The buyer should not end up overpaying as used computers depreciate at a lightning speed. There are many online auctions, which can give the idea of how much people are ready to pay for a used computer. Unfortunately, there is no reputed or unbiased source for knowing the prices for used computers.

How to Fix Cyber Cafe Pro Runtime Error

2010-03-03T08:49:00.000-08:00

Cyber Cafe Pro (CyberCafePro) is one of the most popular cybercafe management software packages available. Here is a short review of the software.

CyberCafePro is aimed at Internet Cafe, Cyber Cafe, and Internet Gaming Cafe owners for easy management of cybercafe security, pricing, timing, POS, chat and more. The software is flexible on many configurations, running over standard peer-to-peer networks including Wireless LANs (On any Windows OS). From managing your customers point-of-view, it is not intrusive to your system files but locks control of the computer except for programs you allow customers to run.

Your cybercafe is unique, so your software should be customizable. With CyberCafe Pro, you can customize most aspects of the client interface, as well as languages for both the server and the client software. Because of the software's flexibility, it is a very popular option among cybercafe owners, and often referred to as the world's no.2 Internet cafe management software package (after Internet Caffe software).

Other features in the Cyber Cafe Pro include:

Multi-Location Account/Timecode Usage
Unique Employee Logins
Employee Restrictions
Reporting by Employee
Other Product Sales
Sales Reports
Receipts
Cash Drawer Setup
Print Monitoring
Discount Plans
Tax Setup
Inventory System
Reservation System
Block Internet Explorer Functions
Disable File Downloading
Disable Hotkeys
MSN Messenger Security
Unlimited Accounts or Timecodes
Grouped Accounts/Timecodes
Overtime Mode Option
Bulk Pricing
Pricing Options, such as Basic Pricing, Bulk Pricing & Scheduled Pricing
Manual timing of Laptops, Xbox, PS2 etc...
Sales Reports
Auto-Email Reports
Shutdown All Computers feature

Runtime Error 339

NOTE: This commonly occurs on versions 5.x. If you're using later or latest version (v6) you won't might encounter this problem but worth sharing your experiences.

With all of these tremendous gifts of Cyber Cafe Pro, there is a known bug on it commonly encountered with Windows XP Service Pack 3.

And this error is so annoying. Well, the best way you opt to do is to remove the current copy and have a fresh install according to many forums. But it won't actually solve the problem.

The solution is so simple. Since these dependencies SHOULD be on the system's root directory (\WINDOWS), the installer wrongly copied the dependencies to another CCP folder on System32 causing the application to miss these important files. Therefor, you need to copy all the contents of that folder (\WINDOWS\System32\ccp4) to the system's root directory (\WINDOWS). That's it! Enjoy using Cyber Cafe Pro!

Online Property Investing: Smart Way To Invest Your Money

2010-02-11T04:13:00.000-08:00

Needless to say, property investing is one of the greatest money-making vehicles of our time. Not just that, property investing is also a smart and sound way to invest your money. It definitely is better than hoarding cash. Just think about it, properties will always be needed. One of the most important bare essentials that we need to in life is properties. That, together with clothing and food. All else equal, it all depends on how much value you can put on a property.

For some individuals, investing in the stock market or on start-up companies is too bland and boring. Property investing is a hands-on business. It involves surveying pieces of properties, evaluating their assets, and eventually calculating its profit potential. If you're trying to find a more stable yet aggressive investment, putting your money on properties is definitely the way to go.

Of course, investing on properties isn't a walk in the park. It will take a lot of work and if you're not the kind of person who can fathom a lot of work and sometimes stress, it would be better for you to leave this profession to somebody else. With property investing, you can certainly make a lot of money. It takes work, charm, persistence, some luck, and wit.

In order to start investing in properties, it would be best if you arm yourself first with knowledge and connections. It wouldn't be such a smart idea to jump into this kind of business without a good foothold on how things work. By doing that, you're asking for trouble. In addition to that, you wouldn't want to spend thousands of dollars on a property only to see your investment go belly up. Again, education, research, and connections will help you go a long way in this business.

Evidently, you're going to want to start looking for classes regarding property investing. A good place to start is online. There are a lot of noteworthy and credible programs for property investing online. Just be careful because occasionally, there will be programs that will do more harm than good to you. Once you've found the right classes, it's now time to study and immerse yourself on all the principles of the business. While attending classes, you will also meet other like-minded individuals whom you can possibly be partners with in the future.

The Effects Global Warming May Have On Our Planet

2010-02-10T05:06:00.000-08:00

While many realize that global warming is occurring on our planet, few understand the implications that this may have on our way of life. These rising global temperatures are going to cause a host of changes on our planet, and we need to act now or prepare to adjust to some very profound changes.

First, these rising temperatures present a huge threat to our ice-caps. Layers of ice that have not melted for thousands of years are beginning to break apart and fall into the ocean. One of the biggest ice sheets on the planet, located on Greenland, is at a great risk of splitting apart and falling into the ocean.

While it doesn't sound like too big of a deal, the loss of the Greenland ice sheet will cause catastrophic circumstances world wide. The world's sea level is expected to rise as much as 23 feet when the sheet falls, and that spells disaster for the coastal cities that represent some of the largest and most important centers of trade and commerce across the planet. Manhattan would be sunk; much of Florida would be underwater, and that's not even to mention the worldwide consequences. Every area of the globe would be affected by this rising of sea levels, and the disaster caused would make hurricane damage seem like a blessing.

Millions of refugees from the coastal cities will be without home or workplace; it would be one of the hugest human issues ever faced in our history. The changing of the climate could also affect a host of circumstances on our planet; crop yields can be affected by the rising temperatures, which would also pose significant problems to a planet of refugees. Much of the land may become barren due to the effects of temperature change, and we may find some of our most arable lands subject to the effects of soil erosion, and eventually, a transition into desert land. Also, water supplies, forests, and plant and animal life would be affected by the planet's changes, and we may not be able to see how significant these changes may affect our lives until they are already upon us.

For that reason, it's important that we increase our knowledge of global warming, and do our best to prevent it in the coming years. While it may have adverse affects on our economy and our way of life, we owe it to our children to give them a peaceful, safe planet to grow up in.

Naturally Increase Your Traffic with Google Trends

2010-02-07T06:37:00.000-08:00

There is a big secret behind the Google Trends. Which became one of of the ways to boost traffic. As we known that in online business, visitor is “the king” and one of the most influential factor to monetize your blog/website. This tips may boost your adsense’s earnings since it based on keywords targetting

Google Trends is one of Google's popular services where in this service we can find what things are being trends today. Google Trends displays the most wanted keywords results which are being searched by lots of people now, even on this day. Whatever it is, Google Trends is a very useful service to help website or blog owners to boost their web/blog traffic. Recently, I'm using Google Trends’s service to activate one of my blog that has not been updated for quite long time and has only visitor up to 10 people a day .

Google Trends has a collection of the top keywords which are being searched by the mostly USA visitors. So, keywords that often appear on Google Trends is a keywords that are always changing according to how many times people searched for those keywords.

Keywords that often appear on Google Trends is an advantage for us to use it as topic and post to blog/ website. Especially keywords that have traffic’s graphics trend increasingly , because these keywords describe how many people seeking these information.

After posting the article to your blog/website, do not forget to bold the letter keyword. Furthermore submit the post URL to social bookmarking.

To gain more traffic, try posting an article more than 5 posts in 1 day, with “hot” keywords target that appear on Google Trends.

Buying an Ebook Internet Marketing Strategy Guide

2010-02-07T06:08:00.000-08:00

More and more people are becoming interested on learning how to do internet marketing and most of them wan to purchase an ebook internet marketing strategy, so the business minded people in the internet are coming up with their own versions of an ebook that talks about internet marketing. Sadly, there are a lot of internet marketing strategy ebooks which are just pure deception and do not teach you what you need to learn. But things like this should not discourage you for there are still a number of internet marketing strategy ebooks that turn out to be true to what they promise.

Nevertheless, if you shall encounter an ebook which would promise you to be some impossible things like making you a millionaire in as short as 24 hours and without having to do any work at all, then be on guard for that is more of a scam than true. Do not allow them to deceive you!

Methods in Making Profit with an Ebook Internet Marketing Strategy

It's good that now you know what to look for in an ebook internet marketing strategy so when you purchase one, you only get what an authentic version and one that gives you value for your money. First thing is that you have to be able to promote product of other people as with any marketing strategy and get commissions on sales. Actually there are more and more people who have started doing this and they are actually getting a good income from it. The next thing you can do is come up with your own ebook which discusses various internet marketing strategies that can be done for free.

After constructing your ebook internet marketing strategy, start advertising your ebook and market it online. Or if you are not really good when it comes to sales, you can have someone do the selling for you and then pay them commissions. This guarantees you to make a sale and earn even if you are not the one doing the promotions. Coming up with your own ebook internet marketing strategy and letting other people do the promotion and marketing is a proven and profitable method.

If you really want to buy ebook internet marketing strategy now, always keep in mind or better yet ask yourself what you really want to and why are you buying this ebook. If you are doing this to campaign for the product of other people, otherwise known as affiliate marketing, you can acquire membership to some sites that will teach you the basics of internet marketing.

The usual purpose people buy ebook internet marketing strategy is to get some help in succeeding with their online business. Finding the perfect ebook internet marketing strategy is absolutely easy with just a few clicks of your mouse. For those who need something to drastically improve the sales of their online business, the ebook internet marketing strategy is the answer.

Being the latest trend that it has become in the world of internet marketing, more and more people buy ebook internet marketing strategy. When compared to traditional books, an ebook is easier to obtain, easy to understand and there is no need to keep it in a bookshelf. You can keep those ebooks in your PC which saves a lot of space.

What exactly is landing page optimization?

2010-02-05T05:31:00.000-08:00

For most search marketers, optimizing landing pages means A/B testing and multivariate testing (MVT). It means using tools such as Google Website Optimizer to experiment with different arrangements of a page – or different variations in the content of a page – to maximize its conversion rate.

We may ask questions about many different elements of a page. Which headline works best? Is the offer button better with “complimentary shipping” or “free shipping”? Does a picture of the product compel more people than an image of a friendly customer service representative, or the other way around? What about a blue color scheme versus a green one?

This is landing page optimization as most people know it. And for what it does, it is a good approach. Let’s call it content optimization – finding the best presentation of content on a particular landing page.

But content optimization is not the only way to optimize landing pages. In fact, when it comes to boosting your conversion rate, it may not even be the most effective method.

Segment optimization offers a new approach

Segment optimization is about determining how many different landing pages are optimal for a given campaign, and determining how each should be different from the other.

Instead of stretching one page to try to please everyone, which is quite hard to do – segment optimization breaks out several specialized landing pages that each focus on pleasing a particular segment of your audience.

For example, say you’re marketing language learning software. Although everyone who clicks on your ads wants to learn a language, there are different motivations among them. Students hope for better grades in their classes. Vacationers crave more authentic trips. Business travelers are most concerned about efficiency.

It would be difficult to have one page that speaks passionately to all of those distinct audience segments simultaneously.

Just consider the headline. If you were deploying one page to fit everyone, you might try lots of variations (content optimization) to discover that “Learning French is easy!” is the best headline (on average) for all respondents. Let’s say it achieves a 5% conversion rate, not bad, but not earth-shattering either.

But if you had three different landing pages, one for each of these segments – you might find that “Ace your French exams!” works best for students, “Experience France as only a French speaker can!” works best for vacationers, and “Business French in 10 minutes per day!” works best for business people. These might achieve conversion rates of 12%, 11%, and 14% respectively for each segment, a tremendous success that more than doubles your overall conversion rate.

You could never achieve this using one page for everyone. “Ace your French exams!” would perform disastrously for vacationers and business people. If you tried that headline for all respondents, content optimization would throw it out as suboptimal because 2/3 of the audience would think it was awful. But when it’s presented to students (and only students) – it is the indisputable champion.

In that example, segment optimization was achieved by deploying three different pages instead of just one. Content optimization was then used to determine which headline was most effective for each separate segment.

How can you begin using segment optimization in your campaigns?

Start by making a list of possible segments within your audience. Who are the different types of people who look for you online – and why? Don’t restrict yourself to the way you may have segmented people in your database or your business plan. Brainstorm what’s important and relevant from the respondent’s point-of-view, by considering any or all of the following issues:

the specific “problem” the respondent wants to solve
the demographic/psychographic “persona” of the respondent
the respondent’s stage in the buying process
the role of the respondent in their organization
the respondent’s geographic location
the respondent’s industry or the size of their organization

These are your initial buckets into which respondents could be segmented. Don’t worry if there’s overlap between buckets, as these won’t necessarily be either/or choices.

Next, review the keywords and ad creatives you’re running in your search marketing campaigns. For each keyword/creative pair, ask yourself – is there a particular segment that its respondents would clearly belong to? If the answer is yes, add it to that bucket along with the number of clicks per month it generates. If there answer is no, leave a question mark next to it – perhaps with a handful of segments it might appeal to.

For instance, in our example above, the keyword phrases “french exam” and “college french” are obvious candidates for the student segment. Phrases like “business french” and “executive french” fall into the business traveler bucket. But “learn french” can’t be segmented just from the keyword.

Now, look over your segment buckets and see which ones have the most number of clicks per month. These are your best targets for segment optimization.

For each one, create a dedicated landing page that is focused on the needs, wants, and characteristics of that particular segment. Here you can use content optimization such as A/B testing or MVT to find the best headline, imagery, layout, etc. for each page.

You can almost be guaranteed that these segment-specific landing pages will outperform your more generic ones. With your first few big segment wins in place you can move further down The Long Tail, to less popular, but still easily identifiable keywords to meet each segment.

What about keywords that you can’t automatically associate with a particular segment? In those scenarios, you can use techniques such as multi-step landing pages and “directed behavioral segmentation”. But that’s an article for another day.

Power Saver: How it works?

2010-01-29T08:43:00.000-08:00

Can you really save 40% on your electricity bills by plugging a small box into your AC socket?

In the past six month a number of products have been advertised on TV and online which seem too good to be true. I’d like to explain the reality of these exciting claims and give you a layman’s understanding of how Power Savers work.

A Power Saver is a device which you plug in to your power socket. Apparently just by keeping the device connected it will immediately reduce your power consumption. Typical claims are savings between 25% and 40%.

The technology behind Power Saver units comes from German research coupled with Asian manufacturing and it is based on sound scientific principles.

Electricity is not stable. When electricity flows the voltage can rise and fall all the time. The rises in voltage are known as ‘spikes’ and they cannot be used by your appliances at all. All these spikes do is waste your electricity. These power spikes also convert electrical energy into heat energy which leaks power from your circuit. Not only that but the heat will also do long-term danage to your wiring and to your appliances.

There are a few Power Saver models on the market but they all work along the same principle. They store the electricity inside of it using a system of capacitors and they release it in a smoother way to normal without the spikes. The systems also automatically remove carbon from the circuit which also encourages a smoother electrical flow. This means that you will have less power spikes. More of the electricity flowing around your circuit can be used to power your appliances than before.

There are many factors which do affect the efficiency of your Power Saver. The device works immediately after plugging it in although it can take as long as 8 days before it has adjusted itself for peak performance. The rate of savings will depend on what kind of appliances you have connected. All appliances are different but expect savings of up to 25% on lights, 30% on air-conditioning units and up to 35% on other appliances.

The highest savings will be in areas where voltage supply is less stable. Locations close to shops, restaurants and light industries tend to gain additional savings from Power Saver devices.

So how can you be sure that your Power Saver is working correctly?

Most often Power Savers come fitted with a light to indicate that it is working. If you have access to an electricity meter then you should see it immediately slowing down. Assuming that the light is on and that you leave the device unattended you can expect savings immediately. Be aware that often electricity companies will not take meter readings each month. Often bills are calculated on monthly averages which self-correct over time so please be aware of that in using your bill as a guide.

Finally, it is highly recommended to order your Power Savers from companies offering 100% guarantees for longer than 30 days. Remember that 30 days may not be sufficient time to truly know if the device is working as effectively as you expect. Try to work with companies that extend their guarantee dates to at least 60 day which gives you a much longer period to assess the benefits.

Niche Swanky House of Wilkinson Residence in Portland

2010-01-21T06:11:00.000-08:00

Evoking the feeling of being in a tree house is exactly what the beautiful Wilkinson Residence in Portland does. Located on a flag lot, the extraordinary house is brilliantly designed to perfectly blend with the natural landscape. A steep sloping grade provided the opportunity to bring the main level of the house into the tree canopy.

Catering to the desire of the client, Wilkinson Residence designed a dwelling that not only became part of the natural landscape but also addressed the flow of music. It has a natural wood ceiling that wonderfully floats on curved laminated wood beams, passing through a generous glass wall, which wraps around the main living room. The interior space of this amazing house flows seamlessly through to the exterior. Taking a walk through the house will help you see its complexities and its connection to the exterior.

Squid Proxy: How To Make a Transparent Squid Proxy Server on Ubuntu

2010-01-20T08:40:00.000-08:00

Squid is a fully-featured HTTP/1.0 proxy which is almost HTTP/1.1 compliant. Squid offers a rich access control, authorization and logging environment to develop web proxy and content serving applications.

This is a short guide on how to set up a transparent squid proxy server on an Ubuntu Distro. Squid is a caching proxy for the Web supporting HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and more. It reduces bandwidth and improves response times by caching and reusing frequently-requested web pages. Squid has extensive access controls and makes a great server accelerator.

So Let's Install Squid!

The first step is to install squid 3

apt-get install squid3

Edit the squid 3 configuration file in your favorite editor

sudo vi /etc/squid3/squid.conf

And set the transparency and the allowed hosts

http_port 3128 transparent
acl our_networks src 192.168.0.0/24
acl localnet src 127.0.0.1/255.255.255.255
http_access allow our_networks
http_access allow localnet

where 192.168.0.0/24 is the IP range of local network. Probably you need adjust the swap size

cache_dir ufs /var/spool/squid3 7000 16 256

where the first number denotes the size of cache in megabytes. Save you changes and restart the squid proxy by

sudo /etc/init.d/squid3 restart

For more detailed configuration read the manual of Squid or check the configuration examples on Squid wiki page.
Remember, the memory and processor usage of squid is a function of swap size.
Last but not the least we need to redirect the HTTP traffic to your new shiny proxy

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth1 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.0.1:3128
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 3128

where eth1, eth0 are the LAN, WAN devices and 192.168.0.1 is the IP address of your LAN device.

After all, probably you feel the need to monitor the performance of your proxy. Unfortunately, most of the squid log parsers in the Ubuntu repository are configured for Squid 2.x. Nevertheless, squid 3 uses the same log format, so you can change the log file path in your parser config file (sarg, calamaris, etd.) or simply link the log directory of squid 3 to the correct path

ln -s /var/log/squid3 /var/log/squid

Useful Tips for Buying Used Computers

2009-11-08T23:15:00.000-08:00

In this modern era, high tech devices that are very expensive like the computers can be replaced with cheaper ones. Such cheap computers mostly come in the form of used computers. Used computers can be found in abundance in the used computer warehouses in various places, even in the local area of the prospective buyer’s residence. However there is no guarantee of quality when buying a used computer.

The buyer has to take his own personal risk in doing so. But, if the buyer is ready to spend some money in upgrading the level of the used computer and also some time checking the quality of the used computer before purchase, it will save him from loss. Used computers can save a lot of money for the buyer when compared to buying a new computer. There are many who cannot afford to buy a new computer like the students who do not have any source of income but definitely require computers. For such people, used computers come as a boon.

Also, used computers need not always be second hand computers. They can also be recertified or refurbished computers. Refurbished or recertified computers are those, which are checked for any faults, if any corrected and sold with a warranty ensuring the working condition of the computer to be perfect. Hence, such computers are considered to be the safest form of buying a used computer. Refurbished computers can be bought from many of the online stores at very less prices. Quality computer manufacturers also sell such kind of recertified or refurbished computers. However, certain measures need to be taken while buying such kind of computers.

The prime aspect to be considered while purchasing a used or refurbished computer is to look for a good branded one. There are various companies who sell used computers or refurbished computers. The main reasons for opting for a branded one is that it comes with a warranty and also the buyer can be sure that the parts used are of good quality.

While buying used or refurbished computers related software documents, licenses and paperwork have to be got from the seller as this will avoid stolen computers being passed off as used computers to the buyer. If possible working for some time on the used computer will determine its efficiency. Most of the reputed dealers would allow the purchaser to use the computer for a shorter period to check the quality before purchase.

While checking for the efficiency of the used computer, it is good to check if the booting process is smooth, as most of the problems occur during booting and also to check all the sound drivers, video, graphics, monitor, mouse, keyboard etc. CD drives and hard disks also need to be checked. Another aspect is the support system offered for the used computer whether technical or non-technical, support staff capabilities and the number of support staff which determine the quality of service offered. If the purchaser is not satisfied, he can very well think of another choice.

Mission: CHANGE

2009-11-04T07:16:00.000-08:00

It’s the second day of classes and I’m still stuck in my vacation moments. I’d still like to travel almost anywhere without thought of school projects left undone and without though of school obligations which leads to stress at some point.

As I sat sluggishly in one of my minor subjects, the teacher wrote something on the board that made me follow it until the last stroke was finished. It was one word that puts me in a dilemma most of the time- MISSION.

It was a flat piece of written art on the board but it struck me and left the biggest question that might change me forever once I find the answer. “What is my ultimate mission?” Most people wait for signs and others just don’t care. But there are those who would do everything to find their mission. What’s the fuss all about? Why do we have to know and find out if we will still turn to ashes someday?

Our ultimate purpose in this world is to find our mission, or purpose and our direction. As the juvenile members of the society, we have a mission of being heard and of making a CHANGE. We have the mission to be able to have a voice in every issue and discussion when it comes to both national and international concerns.

To create CHANGE amidst the turmoil and disasters.

To CHANGE ourselves to become better.

These changes are easy to say but it’s a work as big as the galaxies and we need battalions of people to be one to make change happen. That’s where the youth comes in!!!

On November 16-17 2009, YES2009 or the YOUTH ENGAGEMENT SUMMIT 2009 will be held and the CHANGE experience begins!

Sign up and join! You might win a FREE TRIP to Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. You will be joining 500 South East Asian Youth and meet icons of change.

TO JOIN Click the link below and ask others to join you too…
http://philippines.youthsays.com/seachange/go/s14

TO CHECK OUT THE YES2009 TRIP DETAILS Click the link:
http://blog.youthsays.com/seachange/yes2009-trip/

Deadline is extended until this Sunday. This is YOUR time to be heard. YOUR time and chance to make a change!!!

Join Now!

By: Widowed Patch, join her with her mission to change

Protect Yourself From Cyber Crime

2009-10-28T04:17:00.000-07:00

One of the most powerful mediums of communication is the Internet and today we see almost everyone using it. Many transactions take place on the net which has resulted in the eruption of cyber crime. Though internet is the main platform used to commit cyber crimes, other communication devices such as computer networks and cell phones are also mediums of this type of crime.

Cyber crime may include activities such as computer hacking, child pornography, stalking, spam marketing, credit card fraud and identity theft. Releasing malware, spyware and viruses to steal information is also a part of cyber crime.

Here are a few tips which when followed can protect your sensitive financial or personal information.

If you are a member of online forums and communities, ensure you are very careful sharing your personal information. Predators on social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace can steal and use this information to stalk or harass you.

Ensure all your online transaction passwords are really difficult to guess and strong. It is a good idea changing your password on a frequent basis to avoid any problems.

Equip your computer with reliable antivirus software for maximum protection. If you are posting photographs on profiles, choose your picture with care. Ensure you do not post pictures that could harm your reputation.

Never leave your personal information details such as address, telephone numbers, passwords, account numbers and social security number lying around. Also ensure they are not placed on cell phones, mp3 players and multimedia devices.

The moment you receive your credit card bills and bank statements, check for any discrepancies. If you are keen on shopping online, choose a reliable and secure website. Ensure you get a free credit report yearly from the credit bureaus. This makes it easy for you to find out if someone is using your social security number unauthorized. If you do come across any cyber crimes, be sure to report to the authorities immediately

The Value of Google Adwords

2009-09-10T06:12:00.000-07:00

Highly targeted traffic is one of the most important entities in the internet universe. Any website owner or administrator recognizes the importance of driving traffic to a website. The success of any website does not rely entirely on the site itself. You may have a terrific idea for a website, offer an excellent product or service, or have an exceptionally designed site with superb content, but if you do not use the right strategies to advertise, your site would not attract the high traffic you need. Attracting targeted traffic is a task that should be taken seriously for any site to succeed or make a profit. Fortunately, there are internet-marketing tools that help the website marketer to drive traffic to his website. One of the most significant, and effective, of these tools is Google's Adwords. Adwords is one of Google's advertising services.

How does Google Adwords work?

Google is the largest search engine on the web receiving over 200 million queries each day through its various services. As Google is the most popular search engine today, webmasters are keen on having their websites achieve a higher ranking in the search engine results it provides. A high ranking can mean high traffic for that website. The search engine results page is also a great venue for advertisers to promote a product or service through ads and links. Consequently, Google launched its Adwords service, as a way for businesses to advertise products and services to a targeted audience. Google Adwords can guarantee instant traffic. In this service, Google displays relevant text based ads within its search engine results page termed as "Sponsored Links". Whenever a particular keyword is searched on, these relevant links appear in a separate section giving excellent exposure to the sites listed.

How do you use Google Adwords? First, you have to open an account with the Google Adwords Service. Then, you should indicate your target language and country. This is important because you would not want your products advertised in countries where your product or service cannot be sold. Afterwards, you should now create an ad group. This involves designing the ad, selecting keywords and determining maximum cost per click that you are willing to spend and defining bid amounts. The most important step in creating a successful Adwords campaign is selecting an effective title tag that will catch the attention of your target audience. The title tag, generally a short phrase, is the most important part of your Adwords campaign so make sure that it is attractive and catchy. You should describe the website clearly and accurately. The most effective advertising conveys a clear message to the target audience. With a clear message, you will be attracting qualified leads, which can eventually convert to sale. Thus, the importance of selecting the right keywords cannot be overemphasized.

There are keyword variations you can adapt to reach more prospects. Using these varieties, misspellings and derivatives can help increase the chance of your ads being served. Broad match is targeting keywords in a loosely defined manner. Here, the ads appear based on the keywords that have been queried by other users as opposed to exact match, which calls for the keyword to match the query exactly. Meanwhile, a keyword phrase set to phrase match will only appear when the exact phrase is searched on. A negative keyword is helpful in filtering unrelated pages.

After you have decided on what title tag to use in your ad, you must now define a budget in order to maximize exposure. Google Adwords recommend a daily budget for each campaign. However, you should determine a budget that is suitable and affordable. You should also determine the maximum cost per click. Google will offer a recommended cost per click, but you do not have to stick with this. Usually, a number one position is not ideal as it can also attract unwanted traffic and useless clicks. A number two position is more preferred as it can filter useless clicks and provide traffic with a higher conversion rate.

To conclude, Google Adwords is an excellent strategy and tool in giving your site maximum exposure. Nevertheless, Google Adwords should not be your sole advertising campaign. It will definitely help you find the all-important, highly targeted traffic you need.

Top Up Your Website With These 5 Tips

2009-09-01T04:52:00.000-07:00

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, it means optimizing ones website in such way that the search engine will deem its contents more relevant than other websites towards a particular keywords searched by users. It demonstrates the links from other websites & analyzes the keywords to fit properly in a page that complement to each other in order to getting top ranking position.

There are following 5 tips which can help you to get your website ranked on the top position:-

1) Domain Name
Registration of a domain name is the first step one takes towards having a website. When you start thinking of having a website for your business, you must understand the importance of SEO from that stage only. Many people take domain names related to their corporate identity and others prefer to have shorter domain names. Search Engine give a lot of importance to domain names, hence you should include the main keyword in your domain name. For example, if you sell flowers in india and your company name is ABC florist private limited, I suggest you to take a domain like abcflowersindia.com. Or abcfloristindia.com. You can go for other TLDs as well if .com is not available.

2) Make your website Content Rich
While designing your website, most people focus more on graphics and animation and lesser on content. You can hire a content writer or if you can do it at your own, make your website content rich. As search engines are content hungry and also more content mean more number of keywords. Try to use text instead of images where ever possible and also use ALT tags for your images and give considerable importance to naming of your webpages, images and folders. You should name them including your keywords. For example, if there is a image of Tulip, instead giving it a name like a1.jpg, name it tulip.jpg, similarly your webpages names should include the keywords instead abc.html or a1.html etc.

Also organize your website into different pages avoid stuffing all the keywords and phrases into one page. Also attempt to avoid the use of tables, flash, frames & java script & commented text in your webpage.

3) Meta Tags
Meta tags are also an important section of your web pages, they describe what the web page is all about. Be very careful while defining them. Leaving them empty or keyword stuffing both is harmful for your webpages. Following are most important meta tags -

a) Title Tag
Instead of having a title like welcome to ABC Florist Pvt. Ltd., you should have title like Send Flowers to India, New Delhi, Mumbai, Banglore. Try to include your main keywords within your title tag.

b) Description
Description tag is the text which is displayed under the title on result page. Write here a nice description of your webpage, so that a user can have an idea about your website while searching it in the search engines.

c) Keywords
keyword Meta tag is very important but be very careful while defining them. Keywords should be relevant to the webpage and there should not keyword stuffing in the webpage.

4) Create a site map
It improves the efficiency of the web pages by searching its content easily. It provides relevant result by getting their index quickly. It helps in navigation of all pages includes in the website. With the help of site map search bots can easily crawl link pages. Also generate a google and yahoo site maps and submit them.

5) Increase your Links
Link popularity is measured by both the quantity and quality of sites that link to your website. The ranking of your website is based on the quality of links. Once your site is complete and running, Focus on getting links from other websites. You can easily generated links using the following :-

Directory submission increases in the link popularity. It is fast and affordable way to get one-way links.
Article submission is a powerful method to gaining quality one way incoming links to your website.
Blogging is also good way to popularize your website and getting back links.
Social book marking is a method to store, manage, search, and organize bookmarks of web page on the internet with the help of metadata.
Reciprocal link building is exchanging links with the theme based website. It help you increasing your PR and back links.Make sure that the site you are exchanging has good ranking area & major search engines.

Finding Online Jobs

2009-08-29T06:44:00.000-07:00

Are you looking for a work-at-home job? Have you searched online only to become frustrated and confused with the array of offerings? Are you weary of looking at site after site trying to make sense of what is real and what is a scam? How can you know whether or not a work-at-home offer is legitimate?

YOU SHOULD BEWARE OF THE FOLLOWING:

Sites that make outrageous claims about earning potentials; they should be considered scams.

Outdated listings containing phone numbers, links and/or email addresses that don't work.
Work-at-home sites and companies that claim to find you jobs but only sell you information on how you might be able to make money.
Pyramid or MLM schemes that try to get you to join them without selling a product or service.
Someone who asks for your money without answering your questions.
Use your common sense. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

LEGITIMATE WORK AT HOME JOBS:

Legitimate work-at-home jobs can be found if you know where to look. There are thousands of companies worldwide, on and off the Internet, who are willing to pay people to work from home.

Some companies require you to spend some time working at home and some time in a regular office environment. There are many major corporations now that offer this kind of flexibility for their employees. You might even be able to convert your present job into a telecommuting one. It never hurts to ask your employer.

There are many companies that allow you to work exclusively from home. The many possibilities in this category can include customer service, telemarketing, writing, sales, and graphic design. These jobs are usually pay-per-project or commission-based and can be full-time or part-time. If they are full-time, they may provide benefits such as health insurance, vacation time, and retirement plans.

There are many web sites that specialize in work-at-home jobs. Some sites offer a list of job openings that can be viewed by category. These categories include, but are not limited to, accounting, administration, clerical, finance, graphic design, marketing, sales, web development, and writing.

Other work-at home sites provide only a list of companies that will hire employees to work from home. A lot of these websites also offer excellent information on starting and maintaining a home business.

Legitimate work-at-home opportunities require certain skills and experience just as any regular position would. For some of these jobs you will also need office equipment such as a computer, software, printer, Internet access, phone, and maybe a fax machine.

In your quest to find a job, you should research all opportunities available in the work-at-home industry, as well as other online resources. There are many sites where you can search for home-based work.

THE BEST PLACES TO SEARCH FOR HOME-BASED WORK:

Company and corporate websites - (IBM, Penney's, Disney, etc.) Whatever store, company or corporation you can think of, they will probably have a website. If they have a website, there will be a link for jobs.
General employment sites - (jobs.com, monster.com, careerbuilder.com, etc.) There are MANY websites for general job searches. Just do a search for 'jobs' and you're off!
Online Newspaper Classified Ads - Whatever newspaper you can think of, they will most likely have a website. You can also do a general search online for 'online newspaper classifieds' and you will get thousands of links.
Work-at-Home Directory listings - If you do a search for 'work at home' or 'work at home directories', you will receive thousands of possibilities.
Paid online survey sites listing companies seeking marketing research participants - Do a search for 'paid online surveys' and you will amazed by the number of results that come up!

The only requirements to finding a job online are time, commitment and perseverance. If you stick with it and stay focused, you WILL find something that works for you. There ARE jobs out there and there are good jobs out there. Hopefully, the tips listed above will help you in your quest to work from home.

Jobs Hunting Through Social Networking Sites?

2009-08-23T05:16:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (AFP) - – Nearly half of US employers research the online profiles of job candidates on social networks such as Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn, according to a new survey.

Forty-five percent of the employers surveyed for CareerBuilder.com, the largest US online job site, said they use social networking sites to check on job candidates, up from just 22 percent in a survey conducted last year.

Another 11 percent said they plan to start using social networking sites for screening.

"As social networking grows increasingly pervasive, more employers are utilizing these sites to screen potential employees," CareerBuilder said in a statement.

It said job seekers should "be mindful of the information they post online."

CareerBuilder said that of those who conduct online searches as background checks on job candidates, 29 percent use Facebook, 26 percent use LinkedIn and 21 percent use MySpace.

Eleven percent search blogs while seven percent follow candidates on micro-blogging service Twitter.

Thirty-five percent of those surveyed said they have found content on a social network that caused them not to hire a candidate, CareerBuilder said.

Examples included "provocative or inappropriate photographs or information" or content about drinking or using drugs.

Other reasons cited were badmouthing a previous employer, co-workers or clients, poor communication skills, making discriminatory comments, lying about qualifications or sharing confidential information from a previous employer.

Information found on social networking profiles was not always a negative factor in finding a job.

Eighteen percent of employers said they have found content on social networking sites that caused them to hire the candidate, CareerBuilder said.

Some profiles "provided a good feel for the candidates personality" or supported their professional qualifications while others demonstrated creativity or solid communication skills.

Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder, recommended that candidates "clean up digital dirt" before beginning a job search by removing photos, content and links which could hurt their chances.

The survey of 2,667 hiring managers and human resource professionals was conducted by Harris Interactive between May 22 and June 10. It has a sampling error of plus or minus 1.9 percentage points.

Source: Yahoo News!

Free e-books offerings

2009-08-09T04:33:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK - James Patterson's latest best seller, "The Angel Experiment," is a little different from his usual hits. The novel isn't new; it came out four years ago. Readers aren't picking it up at bookstores, but mostly on the Kindle site at Amazon.com.

And the price is low even for an old release: $0.00.

"I like the notion of introducing people to one book, while promoting the sales of another," says the prolific and mega-selling author (and co-author) of numerous thrillers." His Kindle download is the first book of Patterson's "Maximum Ride" young adult series.

"We've given away thousands of free e-copies," Patterson said. "`Maximum Ride' is big already and we think it could be a lot bigger. That requires getting people to read it."

Patterson is among the biggest brands added to the growing list of free e-book offerings. Over the past few months, top sellers on the Kindle — with downloads in the tens of thousands, authors and publishers say — have included such public domain titles as "Pride and Prejudice" and "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," and novels by Jennifer Stevenson and Greg Keyes.

In recent days, the top three Kindle sellers have been free books: Patterson's, Joseph Finder's "Paranoia" and Keyes' "The Briar King."

"There's always going to be someone who wants free things. What we're trying to do is link free with paid," Maja Thomas, senior vice president of digital media at Patterson's publisher, the Hachette Book Group, said. "It's like priming the pump."

"What we like to do is make the first book in a series free, usually a series that has multiple books," said Scott Shannon, publisher of the Del Rey/Spectra imprint at Random House, Inc., which published Keyes' fantasy novel.

Shannon said Del Rey has had especially good luck with Naomi Novik's "Temeraire" fantasy series after offering the first book for free. He said sales for the other Temeraire novels increased by more than 1,000 percent. "It's been stunning," he said.

Publishers and authors have been nervous that the standard cost for electronic editions of new releases, just under $10, will take away sales from the more expensive hardcovers and set an unrealistically low price for the future. They are concerned, but open-minded, about free books, which present a chance and a challenge: Readers may buy other books, or, they may simply seek more free titles.

"It's a huge hot-button topic we've been discussing within our division and at the corporate level," Shannon said. "We have had phenomenal success with using free books to get people to buy others by an author. But in the long term, we have to guard the market. We have to make sure people understand that time and energy goes into writing a book."

"Consumers love free — free is a good price. But the opportunity they present to publishers is to experiment, and I stress experiment," Ellie Hirschhorn, Simon & Schuster's chief digital officer, said.

The dominant e-book seller Amazon.com has been aggressive about keeping prices low, and has given free e-books high visibility by including them on the Kindle best-seller list. A leading rival, Sony, does not include free works among its best sellers, although some free books have popular downloads.

"We do withhold them from the best-seller list, so that it's an accurate reflection of what people are actually buying," says Sony eBook store director Chris Smythe.

In an e-mail statement about free ebooks, Amazon.com spokeswoman Cinthia Portugal, said, "We work hard to provide customers with the best value possible and pass savings on to them whenever possible." Portugal added that Amazon includes free books among its top sellers because the list is "based on customer orders — customers are still ordering these books, they just have a price tag of $0.00."

David Bailey, 56, a systems analyst in Tacoma, Wash., is the kind of customer publishers and authors want to get. He has downloaded free texts by Kelly Link, Scott Sigler and others, but has then purchased other books by those authors, sometimes "just to support them."

One of Bailey's free downloads was Finder's "Paranoia," a thriller first published in 2004. Finder, whose "Vanished" comes out Aug. 18, said he initially saw the free offering as a "no lose" deal since "Paranoia" wasn't selling many copies anyway and sales for his other books, including "Power Play" and "Killer Instinct," have gone up. But, noticing all the free best sellers on the Kindle, he wondered if readers will get used to not paying.

"I get a lot of e-mails from people, saying, `I hadn't even heard of you until I read your free book.' So no question, it does bring in free riders," Finder said. "But I'm also increasingly concerned. There are so many free e-books that basically you could stuff your Kindle or Sony Reader with free books and never have to buy anything."

Porn Continues to Plague iPhone Apps Store

2009-07-04T08:37:00.001-07:00

Just one week after pulling an X-rated iPhone app offering photos of nude women, Apple has yet again found itself fighting off attempts to upload mobile porn.

An image of a teen girl, purported to be 15 years old who is topless and mostly bottomless appeared in the free app BeautyMeter, which lets users upload photos of themselves that are then rated by others, according to Wired magazine. The app is like an iPhone version of the rating site Hot or Not.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Wired said the app (including the same teen image) was still available in Apple's App store. But on Thursday, it appeared that Apple had removed it.

Funnymals, BeautyMeter's developer, and Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment from ABCNews.com.

But in a note dated July 2 on Funnymals' Web site, the developer said that because of " inappropriate content upload we hardened our review process so the release time can be higher since now. As described in our terms and conditions, NO nude content is allowed (bikini content is allowed)."

Another note on the site says, "We don't review each uploaded photo exclusively but from time to time we will clean up."

Last week, after photos of nude women started appearing in the app Hottest Girls, the blogosphere lit up in disbelief.

The application previously displayed photos of women in lingerie and bikinis. But about a week after Apple unveiled a new operating system that includes parental controls that could filter out explicit content, the developers took off what was left of the clothes on the women, and turned up the heat on their product's content.

Read the rest of the story about Apple Porn Apps

Aliens and UFO, are they really existing?

2009-05-21T20:16:00.000-07:00

Many of us does not believe on these fictional endoparasitoid extraterrestrial species that is the primary antagonist of the Alien film series. Its existence remains hypothetical, because there is no credible evidence of extraterrestrial life which has been generally accepted by the mainstream scientific community. And yet, need to be proven by bare naked eye.

On the other hand, there's what we called UFO (unidentified flying object). UFO is the popular term for any aerial phenomenon whose cause cannot be easily or immediately determined which is more or like similar to Aliens. Both military and civilian research show that a significant majority of UFO sightings are identified after further investigation, either explicitly or indirectly through the presence of clear and simple explanatory factors, or the Occam's Razor.

The video compilation includes many of NASA UFO encounters/sightings that have been archived by Luna Cognita Productions over the years. All of these examples (with the exception of the second-to-last one) were captured on film by NASA astronauts or Russian Cosmonauts over the past half-century - showing many amazing examples from different eras - Gemini, Apollo, Apollo/Soyuz Test Project, Skylab, STS, the ISS, plus a couple Russian-source additions from their unmanned Zond and Mir Space Station programs as well thrown in to round things out.

Dr. Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist specializing in string field theory, and a futurist, will help us to open our minds to our so called, science fictions.

Dr. Kaku appeared in the short documentary Obsessed & Scientific. The film is about the possibility of time travel and the people who dream about it. It has appeared at the Montreal World Film Festival and is in developmental talks about becoming a feature. He also appeared in the ABC documentary "UFOs: Seeing Is Believing," where he suggested that while he believes it is extremely unlikely that extraterrestrials have ever actually visited Earth, we must keep our minds open to the possible existence of civilizations a million years ahead of us in technology, where entirely new avenues of physics open up. He also discussed the future of interstellar exploration and alien life in the Discovery Channel special Alien Planet as one of the multiple speakers who co-hosted the show, and Einstein's Theory of Relativity on The History Channel.

Online Bash Shell For Beginners

2009-05-08T04:42:00.000-07:00

If you want to learn Linux bash shell commands in a fun way this is the place for you.

This website provides Unix-like virtual online bash shell command line interface where you can try out bash commands easily online in a web browser without the fear of installing Linux.

Once you gets your hands over bash shell commands you can easily move on to Linux because the knowledge of bash shell commands are essential for operating any Linux distro to its full potential.

Online Bash Shell

CDR-King 12” Tablet Review by Nurses & Geeks

2009-03-27T10:39:00.000-07:00

For some of you who doesn’t know about tablet, it is an input device used by artists which allows one to draw a picture onto a computer screen without having to utilize a mouse or keyboard.

A tablet consists of a flat tablet and some sort of drawing device, usually either a pen or stylus. It may also be referred to as a drawing tablet or drawing pad. While the graphics tablet is most suited for artists and those who want the natural feel of a pen-like object to manipulate the cursor on their screen, non-artists may find them useful as well.

The smooth flow of a graphics tablet can be refreshing for those who find the mouse to be a jerky input device, and repetitive stress injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome are less likely when using a graphics tablet.

It’s a Wacom Bamboo on a Dell Latitude D830 from Ken Schaefer’s Wacom Review. The tablet is quite small (about 19cm on each edge), thin (<1cm) and weighs about 300 grams. It has four buttons at the top (illuminated in blue) which can be programmed, as well as a little touchpad which allows scrolling up/down in windows using a motion similar to the click wheel in an iPod. Price is over $100 or over 4000Php (Philippine Peso). On the other hand, if you’re looking for a starter, low price, and fully featured alternative tablet, I recommend, CDR-King 12.1″ Slim Tablet.

Read the rest of the Nurses & Geeks' CDR-King 12” Tablet Review

Assessing Internet Security Risk, Part One: What is Risk Assessment?

2009-03-25T05:47:00.000-07:00

The Internet, like the Wild West of old, is an uncharted new world, full of fresh and exciting opportunities. However, like the Wild West, the Internet is also fraught with new threats and obstacles; dangers the average businessman and home user hasn't even begun to understand. But I don’t have to tell you this. You’ve heard that exact speech at just about every single security conference or seminar you’ve ever attended, usually accompanied by a veritable array of slides and graphs demonstrating exactly how serious the threat is and how many millions of dollars your company stands to loose. The “death toll” statistic are then almost always followed by a sales pitch for some or other product that’s supposed to make it all go away. Yeah right.

Am I saying the threat isn’t real? Am I saying the statistics aren’t true? No. What I’m saying is that many users fail to see what relevance any of this has to themselves and their company. Should the fact that e-Bay supposedly spent $120,000 dollars recovering from Mafia Boy's DDoS attack really have an impact on the reader's corporate IT policy? Perhaps not.

And yet, users can't afford to ignore these facts completely. That would be just plain dumb. What they need to do is to recognize that there are new threats and challenges and, like the other threats and challenges that businesses have always known, these need to be met and managed. No need to panic. No need to spend any money. Yet.

What users really need to do is to understand what the specific risks are that their company or home network faces from being connected to the Internet. In the same way that you don't borrow your business strategy from e-Bay, you probably shouldn't borrow your IT security strategy from them either. You need to develop an IT security strategy to meet your unique needs. You understand your company's own unique risk profile.

As with so many other things in life, the key to effective information security is to work smarter, not harder. And in this case, working smarter means investing your valuable time, money and human resources on addressing the specific problems that are the most likely to cause the most damage. The math is really quite simple. But before you can do the sums, you have to identify the variables. Here are some of the questions you'll have to ask yourself:

What are the resources - Information & Information Systems - I'm actually interested in protecting?
What is the value of those resources, monetary or otherwise?
What are the all the possible threats that that those resources face?
What is the likelihood of those threats being realized?
What would be the impact of those threats on my business or personal life, if they were realized?>

Having answered the five questions above, you can then investigate mechanisms (both technical and procedural) that might address those risks, and then weigh up the cost of each possible solution against the potential impact of the threat. Once again, the math is simple: if the cost of the solution is higher then the potential financial impact of the risk (or risks) being addressed, then one may need to investigate other solutions, consider accepting and living with a part of the risk, or accepting and living with the risk completely.

This article is the first of a series that is designed to help readers to answer questions three and four in the context of Internet-connected systems: What are the threats that my Internet-connected systems face and what are the chances of those threats being realized. Over the next few weeks we will explore the thinking around Internet Security Assessments, not only why they are done, but also how they are done. By the end of this series you should understand how performing an Internet security assessment can contribute to an effective information security strategy, what you should expect from such an assessment and even how you could go about performing such an assessment yourself.

The Reasoning Behind Security Assessments

Background

An Internet Security Assessment is about understanding the risks that your company faces from being connected to the Internet. As already discussed, we go through this exercise in order to effectively decide how to spend time, money and human resources on information security. In this way our security expenditure can be requirement driven, not technology driven. In other words, we implement controls because we know that they’re needed, not just because the technology is available. Some firms refer to security assessments as ethical hacking or penetration testing. Although I also use these terms, I see them as referring to something completely different than risk assessment and thus do not see their use as appropriate in this context.

Security Assessments vs Risk Analysis

Later in this article, I'll show you a diagram of what is know as the "security life cycle", a depiction of the concept that security is a continual cycle with a number of distinct phases being repeated on an ongoing basis. You'll notice that this cycle distinguishes between a risk analysis and a security assessment. You may even have come across both terms before and wondered at the distinction. It's not my intention to argue semantics here. Indeed, I'm not even convinced that there is universal consensus on the precise definition of each term. Here's how I see it, briefly: A risk analysis is typically performed early in the security cycle. It's a business-oriented process that views risk and threats from a financial perspective and helps you to determine the best security strategy. Security assessments are performed periodically throughout the cycle. They view risk from a technical perspective and help to measure the efficacy of your security strategy. The primary focus of this paper is on this kind of assessment.

Internal vs External Assessments

I have further limited this paper to a discussion of Internet Security Assessments. Let me point out right from the start that this is only a part of the picture. An Internet security assessment can consist of one or both of two things: an internal assessment and an external assessment. The company for which I work distinguishes between the two in the following way:

"An external assessment is also known as perimeter testing and can be loosely defined as testing that is launched from outside the perimeter of the private network. This kind of testing emulates the threat from hackers and other external parties and is often concerned with breaching firewalls and other forms of perimeter security.

On the other hand, in internal testing the analyst is located somewhere within the perimeter of the private network and emulates the threat experienced from internal staff, consultants, disgruntled employees, or, in the event of unauthorized physical access or a compromise of the perimeter security. These internal threats comprise more then 60% of the total threat portfolio."

Although an Internet assessment is attractive because it is finite and answers a direct question, the following should be noted at the outset:

An Internet assessment will not identify all the risks to your information resources. Areas that are clearly not addressed include the following:
Threats from within the trusted environment;
Threats from RAS and other external connections; and,
Threats from your extranet and connections to 3rd parties.
There are other ways of assessing risk, without doing a technical assessment.

Although it's beyond the scope of this discussion, the scope of an Internet Assessment can easily be expanded to include areas like RAS and the Extranet (which is why we actually refer to the service as an external assessment). However, even with the limited scope, there are a number of strong reasons for performing an Internet Security Assessment.

But first, let's remind ourselves why we want to do an assessment in the first place.

Reasons for performing a Technical Security Assessment

I've often thought, at the end of a security assessment project, that I probably could have advised the customer without having to perform the entire analysis. Internet installations are generally fairly similar and one sees the same mistakes being made at different installations all over the world. And yet I haven't quite given up on the idea. There are a number or reasons for my continued faith in technical assessments.

Firstly, a technical assessment allows me to fully familiarize myself with the customer's architecture. By the time the assessment is finished, I usually understand the client's Internet architecture at least as well they do, often even better. This puts me in a unique position to offer then real and useful advice and ongoing technical support.

The technical familiarity I've acquired also very often buys me the respect of the customer's technical personnel. That, in turn, puts me in an even better position to advise them. Because our clients themselves are often non-technical people, such as risk managers and financial managers, it is essential that we also win the trust and respect of the technical team. Penetration testing, a later phase in the assessment methodology during which we actually attempt to breach security and compromise the customer's systems, is particularly effective in this regard. It's hard for someone to argue that their security is sufficient when you've already clearly demonstrated that it can be compromised. The fact that our findings are based on a formal assessment methodology lends weight to the recommendations we make.

Sometimes an organization needs an objective assessment from an independent third party is necessary to convince others that they are taking security seriously. This is becoming more of an issue in certain sectors, where government, shareholders and other regulatory authorities are expecting companies to provide proof of proper information security.

Moreover, the fact is that a properly executed assessment may very well identify problems that otherwise may have gone unnoticed. A single small finger-fault in your firewall configuration may be all that's needed by an attacker and a thorough technical assessment may be the only way of determining this.

But most importantly, an assessment introduces objectivity. With the overwhelming number of security products and vendors in the market, it's important that security-conscious organizations and individuals spend money for the right reasons. A good assessment should help you to understand and prioritize your security requirements, allowing you to invest resources effectively. Very often, the most serious requirements will not be addressed by the simple acquisition of more technology, and it's important for the customer to understand that.

Actually, this last point is nothing new and security assessments have been seen as an important phase in the security lifecycle for as long as there has been information security theory. One version of the lifecycle looks like this:

The Security Lifecycle

Notice how the assessment phases (threat/risk analysis and security assessment) are the first and last step in the process. The analysis is used to identify what needs to be done, and the assessment is used to measure how effective the other phases in the cycle have been. A number of companies are even starting to use the outcome of these repeated assessments to measure the performance of their technical personnel. Some companies even use security assessments as a key performance area for regular personnel. Now there's an interesting idea.

Reasons for performing an Internet Security Assessment

Hopefully I've convinced you now of the value of a technical security assessment. But I've also said that this paper is limited to a discussion of Internet security assessments only. Does it make sense to focus on one area of your system like that? Actually, no. But Rome wasn't built in a day, and a complete assessment of a large environment will typically need to be broken up into a number of distinct and manageable phases. The Internet is only one of a number of different areas we could examine. However, Internet-connected systems are the single area we assess more than any other. And, given limited time and resources, it is sometimes the only area we consider for clients. Here is a summary of the reasons that companies still perform Internet security assessments:

Internet systems are an obvious part of the problem: Given the almost overwhelming size of the complete information security problem, it's often hard to know where to start. Internet systems are very often a clearly defined subset of the complete infrastructure and can be easily isolated, analyzed and secured. Although we realize that this only a small part piece in a much larger puzzle, it very certainly is a piece. If we can confirm that the Internet systems are secure many managers feel "Whew, at least that's out of my hair."
The Internet is a unique network: The tools and methodologies that we apply in analyzing Internet security are different from those we use when looking at "internal" spaces like WANs, LANs and Extranets. For this reason we tend to see an Internet assessment as a separate body of work from the rest of the assessment and tackle it separately.
Internet systems are an obvious target: Attack via the Internet is by no means the only threat your company faces, but it is a clear and obvious threat and one would be foolish to ignore it. And, just as you want to be sure you've locked your front door, you want to be sure you've secured your connections to the Internet. The threat of attack via the Internet is easily identified, tested and eliminated. We test our Internet security because then we can know that it has been done and move on.
Internet systems are a high-profile target: It smarts to be hacked from the Internet. Even though the financial impact of such an attack is often smaller then other forms of attack, a defaced Web site and other forms of Internet attack can often do huge damage to your company's reputation. For this reason we want to know that our Internet security has been taken care of.
Internet systems are often beyond our control: The Internet began its life a utopian exercise in community collaboration. Although this early utopianism has long since evaporated and the Internet has now developed in a battlefield for new-world commerce, there are still a rather scary number of uncontrolled inter-dependencies that make it possible for your company to operate on the Internet. The magical routing of IP packets from one network to the next is one example of this. The mapping of machine names to IP addresses via the Domain Name System is another. Yet we have no real control over these systems. They are critical to the safe operation of our Internet infrastructure and yet their security is beyond our control. Similarly, we have no control over when new vulnerabilities will be discovered in our Internet technologies. Quite simply, the only defense we have is to regularly assess this infrastructure for safe and secure operation. This is probably more true for the Internet then for other areas of your infrastructure.

Conclusion

In this section I've tried to convince you of the value of doing a technical risk assessment and to explain why we often consider the Internet systems separately from the rest of the infrastructure. In the next installment in this series, I'll give you an overview of the steps that we follow in performing this kind of assessment. The methodology is designed to ensure that our work is complete and consistent.

By: Charl van der Walt on Security Focus

AMD lawyer: Intel would 'like us dead'

2009-03-19T05:46:00.000-07:00

In the wake of the latest kerfuffle between Advanced Micro Devices and Intel, AMD's chief counsel seized the moment to sound off on a primal fear at his company: Intel is bent on its destruction. Intel, of course, doesn't quite see it that way.

After Intel accused AMD on Monday of breaching a 2001 patent cross-license agreement with Intel, AMD's top lawyer had some choice words for its bigger rival.

In a phone interview Tuesday, AMD general counsel Harry Wolin refuted Intel's claim that the AMD manufacturing spin-off Globalfoundries is not a subsidiary--and thus cannot legally use Intel intellectual property--and talked more broadly about Intel's tactics.

Intel's ultimate goal, Wolin believes, is to crush rivals into oblivion. "In their perfect world, we wouldn't exist. If they had to deal with the government every now and then, that's fine, and they're still extracting monopoly profits from the industry," he said.

Wolin doesn't buy into the oft-repeated theory that Intel needs AMD to keep the industry honest and to keep the U.S. government at bay. "I don't agree with the premise that they have to have us and they think they have to have us. I think they would absolutely like us dead," Wolin said.

The Dickensian depiction of AMD as the impoverished, distressed victim of Intel's bullying and manipulation is inaccurate and, more importantly, misses the relevant point, according to Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. "It's nice of them to try to speak for us. AMD has been a competitor for almost 40 years in one form or another. This is not about AMD going away," he said. "This is about our rights and AMD's rights under the patent cross-license agreement."

Ashok Kumar, an analyst at investment bank Collins Stewart, said the premise of a remorselessly predatory Intel set on killing off its rivals is attention-getting but not that realistic.

"Could Intel put them out of business? Probably. But is it a likely outcome? I don't think so," he said. "Because they'll get a lot of significant push back from the OEMs (PC makers). The OEMs will essentially be making a beeline to Washington, D.C."

Intel contends this is a very localized dispute about whether Globalfoundries is a subsidiary or not, and not a manufactured issue "to distract the world from the global antitrust scrutiny (Intel) faces," as AMD said in a statement Monday. "AMD cannot unilaterally extend Intel's licensing rights to a third party without Intel's consent," said Bruce Sewell, senior vice president and general counsel for Intel, in a statement on Monday. Intel maintains the issue is that Globalfoundries is 34.2 percent owned by AMD and 65.8 percent-plus owned by Advanced Technology Investment Co., an investment company. So, in effect, Globalfoundries is not an AMD subsidiary.

Wrong, AMD says. It is not about ownership. AMD has met the conditions that qualify it as a subsidiary. "It requires that AMD originally contributed at least 50 percent of the assets. If you look at the fact that we've thrown in the German factories, we've thrown in the people, we've thrown in the technology, we've thrown in the intellectual property. I don't think there's any credible argument that says we haven't thrown in more than 50 percent of this. It says nothing about owning. It says you have to originally contribute 50 percent of the assets," Wolin said.

And what happens from here?

"Let's say the parties end up in a lawsuit at the end of 60 days," Wolin said. (Intel says it will terminate AMD's rights and licenses under the cross license in 60 days if the alleged breach has not been corrected.) "Well, you know, that lawsuit doesn't come to court for years and wouldn't come to court until well after the antitrust suit would come to court, which is currently scheduled for February of next year," according to Wolin.

Intel says the next step is mediation, where Globalfoundries is brought to the table. If this doesn't resolve the issue, then they would both be off to the races and the lawsuits would begin.

Source: CNET News

Koobface, Other Worms Target Facebook Friends (NewsFactor)

2009-03-06T21:28:00.000-08:00

- As Facebook works to make itself more relevant and timely for its growing member base with a profile page makeover, attackers seem to be working overtime to steal the identities of the friends, fans and brands that connect though the social-networking site.

Indeed, Facebook has seen five different security threats in the past week. According to Trend Micro, four new hoax applications are attempting to trick members into divulging their usernames and passwords. And a new variant of the Koobface worm is running wild on the site, installing malware on the computers of victims who click on a link to a fake YouTube video.

The Koobface worm is dangerous. It can be dropped by other malware and downloaded unknowingly by a user when visiting malicious Web sites, Trend Micro reports. When attackers execute the malware, it searches for cookies created by online social networks. The latest variant is targeting Facebook, but earlier variants have also plagued MySpace.

Koobface's Wicked Agenda

Once Koobface finds the social-networking cookies, it makes a DNS query to check IP addresses that correspond to remote domains. Trend Micro explains that those servers can send and receive information about the affected machine. Once connected, the malicious user can remotely perform commands on the victim's machine.

"Once cookies related to the monitored social-networking Web sites are located, it connects to these Web sites using the user log-in session stored in the cookies. It then navigates through pages to search for the user's friends. If a friend has been located, it sends an HTTP POST request to the server," Trend Micro reports.

Ultimately, the worm's agenda is to transform the victim's computer into a zombie and form botnets for malicious purposes. Koobface attempts to do this by composing a message and sending it to the user's friends. The message contains a link to a Web site where a copy of the worm can be downloaded by unsuspecting friends. And the cycle repeats itself.

An Attractive Face(book)

Malware authors are investing more energy in Facebook and other social-networking sites because that effort pays off, according to Michael Argast, a security analyst at Sophos. Facebook alone has more than 175 million users, which makes it an attractive target.

"Many computer users have been conditioned not to open an attachment from an e-mail or click a link found within, but won't think twice about checking out a hot new video linked to by a trusted friend on Facebook," Argast said.

Argast called the Koobface worm a mix of something old and something new. The new is using social networks as a method to spread malware. The old is using fake codec Trojans linked to a saucy video to induce the user to install the malware.

Read the rest of the article here:
Yahoo News

Latest Pinay Scandal

2009-01-11T19:15:00.000-08:00

And you're bringing your fantasies here don't you? Sad to say this is not the right post for you again. This is the second post to fight these real porno sites promoting Filipina Scandals. If you're interested about this battle, join with us. I'm urging everyone to join this campaign especially the female bloggers and to those who believe on justice.

How will the campaign work?
The Google Trends can show how internet surfers demand a single keyword, for example the keyword "Sex Scandal". With this Google application, we are able to study how these keywords drive traffic on a scale of time. So imagine if the good sites will promote keywords similar to the keywords the real pornography sites promote, Google, Yahoo and other search engines will help us to drive the traffic out of them.

How this will benefit your blog?
As what i've told you earlier, keywords such as "Sex Scandal, Download Scandal Pinay, Pinay University Scandal" are those keywords driving more and more traffic to the real pornography sites. Why? Of course there are so many unhappy-liberated surfers looking for fun to satisfy their fantasies. What will this post do is to drive traffic on to your site. So, lesser real porn sites will appear in Google and Yahoo! Don't worry about the Google Adsense TOS (Terms of Condition), you're not promoting the real pornography.

How will i join this campaign?
You could simply discuss this thread on the comment section. Link back to this post and comment, informing you're joining. By this, you'll be given credit by us joining the campaign, the women involved on any scandalous video clips, and your families.

So, who are you people at my side?!

You might want this related post:
Naked Hot Pinay Sex Scandal

Asian Pride, Historical RP Cyberterrorism

2009-01-08T03:07:00.000-08:00

In November 16, 2001, Saturday, a group of so-called "white hat" Filipino hackers called Asian Pride launched a series of attacks on several local websites. The hackers, who apparently are based outside the Philippines, claim they are out to teach Filipino local Internet service providers (ISPs) a lesson in Internet security.

Calling it "the 4 o Clock project," Asian Pride, which claims to be composed of Filipino freelance security enthusiasts, was allegedly able to intrude into the servers of local ISP Mosaic Communications Inc (MosCom), uploading executable programs that would eventually modify a website’s main page.

White hat hackers claim that they are not out to cause any damage, but only hack into systems to test vulnerabilities.

Jerry Liao, operations manager of local portal Brainshare Online at www.brainshare.com.ph, claimed that they were among the first to report the incident to MosCom administrators on Saturday morning. A mirror of the defaced website is at http://www.expressions.com.ph/img/10101/asianpride/www.brainshare.com.ph.htm.

Apart from Brainshare Online, dcoder claimed that the group also defaced the website of broadcast giant ABS-CBN.

For his part, Liao said that they detected problems around 7:30 a.m. on Saturday.

According to Liao, Brainshare Online was restored around 7:45 a.m. that day, but at around 9 a.m. he received error messages, as the server could not be accessed.

In a separate interview, Robertson Chiang, vice president for technology of MosCom, said that the ISP decided to direct surfers to another server after getting reports of the hacking incident on Saturday.

"It was only an attack on one machine. It was an old one where we host a few dozen clients," Chiang said.

Asked how the hackers were able to get into the server, he said that considering it was an "old Unix machine," they were not able to patch security holes.
"It was partly our fault," he added.

Liao said that MosCom was able to restore "normal" operations between 6 to 7 p.m. on Saturday.

"The server was completely reformatted using a new system that already includes the security patches," Chiang said.

MosCom is now conducting an inventory of all its servers, to check if similar security problems exist in the "new" systems.

"It’s been a long time, I hope you can wake those arrogant administrators, specially those with PH-CERT (Philippine Computer Emergency Response Team). We tried to warn and help them on securing (local) websites, but they just laughed at us and ignored us," the hacker codenamed dcoder told INQ7.net via e-mail.

"So my fellow haxor keech of FDN [Filipino developers network] organized a Project called 4'Oclock, where we will be defacing all ph sites, to give this administrators a wake up call.
"Well I can't explain much right now, but if you read all the messages on the selected defacements, it might give you an idea on what we are fighting for," dcoder added.
In the mirror of the defaced Brainshare Online website, Asian Pride explained:
"The 4 o Clock project is a system composed of Filipino freelance security enthusiasts that aims to disseminate the importance of Information security here in the Philippines. This team has conducted a survey, scanning random (website) hosts and informing the people (Internet service provider administrators) about (problems). (We then) encourage them to fix their servers. We have no intention, however, of destroying, and/or hijacking information, ... We are not paid to do this."

Liao somehow agreed. He observed that while the hackers were able to "penetrate" MosCom’s servers, they did not delete or destroy any files.

The hackers uploaded programs (executable files) that will only run when a website administrator begins uploading the new main page (index) into the server. The program blocks anyone from uploading into the server, but prompts the user to download a new file, which includes a message explaining the purpose of the defacement.

Liao, however, said that the hackers also offered the option not to accept the new file. "It sort of gives you permission to delete the files," he added.

Asian Pride claimed that "more than 90 percent of (MosCom’s) servers can be exploited through common vulnerabilities, therefore jeopardizing the security of their clients as well as their office."

The group said that they have warned administrators of MosCom of vulnerabilities, "but were just subjected to insult, despite their professional approach."

"They scorned us with their witty remarks, bragging about their degrees, and that we knew less. So what did they accomplish? Absolutely nothing productive," the group added.
Local websites hit by hackers were hosted at the virtual server with the address at kenshin.mozcom.com.

The list of websites that the group claimed to have attacked on Saturday may be seen at http://www.expressions.com.ph/img/10101/asianpride/kenshin.mozcom.com.txt and http://www.expressions.com.ph/img/10101/asianpride/.

"This ain’t no kiddy games, and were ain’t your average script kiddies. We broke into these sites not randomly, but we targeted specific sites, specially those sites that are 100% secure..." Asian Pride said.

The hackers are out to target other Philippine ISPs, and dcoder claimed that the next victim might be PhilOnline.

MosCom’s Chiang, however, insisted that these hackers are only script kiddies.
Other alleged members of the group include "sch1z0phr3n1c," "jollogs," "jayv[ee," "marcster," "batusai_slasher," and "keech."

http://progsystem.free.fr/hackingnews.htm#Hackers%20launch

What is really Web 2.0 and Mashup means?

2009-01-08T00:55:00.000-08:00

Andy Gutmans, Zend co-founder, will going to talk about what is really Web 2.0 means. Furthermore, the executive editor of ZDNet, David Berlin, will discuss the mashup.

What is a mashup?

The Idea of Online Business

2009-01-07T20:42:00.000-08:00

Some Filipinos think online money making is tough in Philippines? No. There are a lot of ideas to make online money from not only Philippines but from anywhere in the world . You can find advertisements on online money making opportunities and businesses that you can do right from Philippines. But remember, the Internet not only connects your business to big traffic, but also your servers to Internet hackers and malware. Thats why Internet security is so vital. So, along with some ideas on making money online, you also need some knowledge on how to improve the Internet security of your business.

Online Money making ideas
Online money making can be quite tough for people in Philippines, especially when they don't want to spend money or if they don't have a website. But ideas do exist if you want to go the “free” way. You cannot expect to get rich in a flash nevertheless there are some online money making opportunities to help you make money without any investment. One way is to start a blog on free platforms like Wordpress or Blogger, and add Google Adsense or other pay per click ads. You can add niche content on something you are passionate about and also something people are looking for, so that more traffic is driven to your blog.

You will be paid for every click on these ads. You can also market affiliate links to earn money. There are some free affiliate link programs available. All you have to do is market the link through advertisement techniques like forums, blogging, articles etc. You will be paid when people buy through your link Another online money making technique is taking part in free online paid surveys. Businesses conduct surveys to know about trends in a particular locality like our own Philippines for example. You can make use of these surveys, but don't expect big money.

Advertisement Ideas for better Traffic
If you own an online money making website, you should not only concentrate on design but also on traffic. You need traffic to get repeat visitors. Remember, repeat visitors are the ones who are going to buy something from your website. You can achieve this by using good advertisement methods like journals, web, news media and magazines. The goal of the advertisement should be to persuade the visitor on the legitimacy of your business. Another way of improving your online money making efforts is including well written and related articles on your website. You can also take part in forums to meet fellow Internet entrepreneurs from Philippines and share business ideas. Remember, traffic is directly proportional to the profit you are going to get.

Ideas for improving Internet security
If you have employees working for your e-business, you need to educate them about viruses, Trojans and others that can attack via the web. You can use web filters to prevent your employees from visiting harmful websites. Also install a centrally controllable anti-virus software and Firewall to prevent worms from web traffic accessing your computer.

Pinay Sex Scandal, Hot as Always

2009-01-02T18:58:00.000-08:00

Well oh well, you’ve just visited this post. First off, im gonna tell you that you’re on a wrong site and wrong bad time. This post has nothing to do with Naked Hot Pinay Sex Scandal! I am also joining the battle against the real porn sites promoting Pinay Scandal materials such as Pinay Sex Scandal Video, Pinay Sex Scandal DVD, and other related materials.

More on Sex, and Pinay Scandal related stories:

Looking for Free Pinay Sex
Pinay Sex Video (Vedio), An Experiment
Sex with You
Sex, Sexual Romance, Sexual Intercourse: Questions Answered
S.E.X. - Lyfe Jennings

Cool Sex Lamp

Sex Freak

No Blog No Sex Policy

The Right Timing for Sex to Have Baby

How To Enjoy Sex

Looking for Wife

Hentai Movie

Hentai Download

Hentai Popular

Hentai New Release

Naruto Hentai

Naruto Hentai images

Pinay Sex Video (Vedio), An Experiment

Pinay Teen Sex Experiment On First Stage of Success

Maasin City Scandal, Online Show

Pinay Teens

University Scandal

Club Sex

Cute Teen Rape

Boso

Stripped

Nip Slipped

Dressing Room

Pinay Scandal Experiment Success and Clarification

How Important Are The Visits Made by Porn-Loving Guys To This Blog?

Porn Traffic Is Now Dying

How will this help?

Simple, it will help take control the real porn sites offering to view to these Pinay Scandals by giving to Google and other search engines like Yahoo the most trafficked sites. By the way, this is a repost from my Ideas Loading Blog

Remote Control PC with Hamachi

2008-12-24T10:50:00.000-08:00

Hamachi is a centrally-managed zero-configuration virtual private network (VPN) freeware application capable of establishing direct links between computers that are behind NAT firewalls without requiring reconfiguration (in most cases); in other words, it establishes a connection over the Internet that very closely emulates the connection that would exist if the computers were connected over a local area network. Currently available as a production version for Microsoft Windows and, as beta, for Mac OS X and Linux.

How It Works
Hamachi is a centrally-managed VPN system, consisting of the server cluster managed by the vendor of the system and the client software, which is installed on end-user computers.

Client software adds a virtual network interface to a computer, and it is used for intercepting outbound as well as injecting inbound VPN traffic. Outbound traffic sent by the operating system to this interface is delivered to the client software, which encrypts and authenticates it and then sends it to the destination VPN peer over a specially initiated UDP connection. Hamachi currently handles tunneling of IP traffic including broadcasts and multicast. The Windows version also recognizes and tunnels IPX traffic.
Each client establishes and maintains a control connection to the server cluster. When the connection is established, the client goes through a login sequence, followed by the discovery process and state synchronization. The login step authenticates the client to the server and vice versa. The discovery is used to determine the topology of client's Internet connection, specifically to detect the presence of NAT and firewall devices on its route to the Internet. The synchronization step brings a client's view of its private networks in sync with other members of these networks.

When a member of a network goes online or offline, the server instructs other network peers to either establish or tear down tunnels to the former. When establishing tunnels between the peers, Hamachi uses a server-assisted NAT traversal technique, similar to UDP hole punching. Detailed information on how it works has not been made public. The vendor claims "...to successfully mediate P2P connections in roughly 95% of all cases ..." This process does not work on certain combinations of NAT devices, requiring the user to explicitly set up a port forward. Additionally 1.0 series of client software are capable of relaying traffic through vendor-maintained 'relay servers'.

In the event of unexpectedly losing a connection to the server, the client retains all its tunnels and starts actively checking their status. When the server unexpectedly loses client's connection, it informs client's peers about the fact and expects them to also start liveliness checks. This enables Hamachi tunnels to withstand transient network problems on the route between the client and the server as well as short periods of complete server unavailability.

Each Hamachi client is assigned an IP address from the 5.0.0.0/8 address block. This address is assigned when the client logs into the system for the first time, and is henceforth associated with the client's public crypto key. As long as the client retains its key, it can log into the system and use this 5.x.x.x IP address.

The 5.0.0.0/8 network is used to avoid collisions with private IP networks that might already be in use on the client side. Specifically - 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12 and 192.168.0.0/16. The 5.0.0.0/8 address block is reserved by IANA and is not currently in use in the Internet routing domain, but this is not guaranteed to continue. The IANA free pool is expected to be exhausted by February 2011.^[1] If this range is allocated, Hamachi users will not be able to connect to any Internet IP addresses within the range as long as the Hamachi client is running.

Additionally, using a /8 network prefix creates a single broadcast domain between all clients. This makes it possible to use LAN protocols that rely on IP broadcasts for discovery and announcement services over Hamachi networks. Hamachi is frequently used for gaming and remote administration. The vendor provides free basic service and extra features for a fee.

SEO: Drive Traffic On Your Site

2008-12-10T08:59:00.000-08:00

Getting people to visit your Web site can often be a difficult task, especially if your Web site is small. There are several main things you need to consider, and things you need to do, if you are hoping to get some traffic to your Web site. These are not the only things you can do to get traffic to your Web site, but they are a good start.

Keywords - Decide what your page is going to be about and write the page around that keyword or keyword phrase. If your page is going to be about cat collars, then make sure you use the phrase "cat collars" several times while writing the page, especially in the first couple paragraphs.
Title & Meta Tags - When considering a title for your page make sure to use the keyword or key phrase of your page in the title. If you are using HTML, then you need to be concerned with meta tags. Make sure to use your keywords in the meta description several times, and the title tags at the top of your HTML at least twice, and put the keyword in the meta keyword area too. Cat Collars - Cat Collars for your Precious Kitty
Good Content - If your page is about something important, is written well, and includes the right keywords it will probably do well in the search engines. On top of search engines, other sites will also link to your page if it is well written.

Search Engines - Submit your pages to the most popular search engines. Go to each of the search engines and submit your pages to them individually.

Similar Web Sites - Find Web sites that are similar to yours and offer to link to their site in exchange for a link back to your site. If they have a page for links they will probably do it.
Forums & Message Boards - Go to forums and message boards that are about your site and answer questions or offer advice or even ask questions. Create a signature under your name for your message posts that links back to your site. If people like what you wrote on the forum, they may click on your link and visit your site.
Update Regularly - If you don't add content to your site, then why should someone keep coming back. Update your site regularly with new content and watch your traffic grow.