There are many times throughout the life of your website that you may need to look at hosting options. When you first began on the web, you probably just picked a nice cheap option. But as your traffic or client base grows, you may run into problems with your website crashing. Not only is this annoying for potential visitors or customers but if you rely on online sales, you are losing money each time your server is down. Often, it’s easiest to just upgrade whatever package you have at your current web host. Some web hosts may not be equipped to manage heavy traffic if your site receives a lot of visitors or they are lacking in expertise dealing with sophisticated hacking attempts. Here are some important tips and factors to consider when shopping around for your first web host or your fiftieth web host.
First, you must run a complete back up of all the data contained in your website. You should copy every file and folder so it can be transitioned to your new host as easily as possible. This can also be a good opportunity to make some improvements in your sites structure without bringing the site down or worrying about broken links, folders, etc. If your website is growing enough to warrant a web hosting change, this may also be a good change to revamp your site with a good professional redesign.
Before signing up with a new web host, you need to check a few technical specifications out. First of all, you need to know what operating system they use on their servers. Different settings and features you have set up on your website may or may not be compatible with a different operating system on a new web host. Secondly, you’ll want to determine how much storage the server allows. One of the main reasons you may be leaving your old web host is because you are running out of room. Make sure you have sufficient room for your current files but also plenty of room for future growth. The third option you may want to look at are the extra little features. You may have taken advantage of email forwarding and auto-responders at your last web host and you wouldn’t want to forget these small features that you have grown accustomed to. The next step is to make sure your web host supports whatever program or script you may use to design and edit your site. Not all web hosts support Microsoft Frontpage so if you are using one of these programs, it is critical to know. Another possible reason you left your last webhost was because they couldn’t handle your traffic peaks and your site went down. What is the point in having a popular site if it crashes every time you get a big crowd? Many web hosts have a wonderful feature that allows your site additional bandwidth if you get traffic spikes. This is essential if your site jumps around from time to time and doesn’t have consistent traffic. Depending on the size of your site, you may be on a shared server. Having your own dedicated server is ideal but if your site isn’t big enough, you may not have the financial resources or need to have your own dedicated server. Most websites are on shared servers which is fine. You will want to ask about the other websites hosted on your server though. If there are questionable sites like adult content or gambling, they may take up a lot of resources and possible get the server you are on blacklisted which would be deadly for your site.
There are two recommended sites that can guide your hosting search. Web Hosting Unleashed is pretty old and has over 5,000 user reviews to help people find web hosting that is not going to disappoint them. They have a search and compare tool, and a best host and worst host list to let you narrow down your candidate list quickly and easily. If you have any good or bad experience with your current hosting, you can also submit a review of the company yourself, and share it with other people.
If you are looking to resell your hosting space, and so searching for a reliable reseller hosting, try Reseller Hosting Guide, which helps people who are starting a hosting company or have one.
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Google Mail, or Gmail, has been used by millions of people for more than two years now. It’s currently one of the most famous e-mail services due to the fact that Google mail is currently increasing the space of each email account even as you are reading this. When the beta version was released, there was only 1G of available memory per e-mail. Right now, a Gmail account can store more than 2G of all the mail you receive. When they say that you’ll never have to delete an email again, I think they mean that literally. After years of servicing the web, Gmail is even more powerful than ever. You would be surprised at the other things you can do with their email service.
One of the things you can do in Google mail is to store files. Any files that you would like to save can be immediately done with email attachment. Even with the limitations of 10Mb per upload, it’s still ok since you can still upload most of the documents, excel sheets and even songs if they are not more than 10Mb. All you need to do is mail them to yourself and it will be in your inbox immediately. Even if you don’t see them in your inbox, a copy of the sent mail is still there in your sent mail folder. By sending them to yourself, you’ll have at least two files. You can just go online and download them easily.
The next thing you could do with Gmail is store voicemails. If you have Google talk and want to do something with your voice or record something for yourself, just call the other e-mail account that you created and you can speak there for a few minutes. The longest that I did was two minutes, but I bet you are given even more time. This is great for those who want to do some podcasts since it will work as a recorder, and you can download the files anytime you check them.
Lastly, you can use them as your virtual drive. That’s right: an extension for your hard drive. I don’t know if Google permitted this, but it’s really easy to use. You just open a new Google mail account and then download the Gmail virtual drive that’s been floating around the internet. Install it and you can go on and log in when you clicked on the folder located in the removable folder along with the flash memory drives. Once you’re in you can just transfer the files there. Open your Google Mail you created and you will see the transferred files right away. The only limitation of it is that your files can only be up to 10mb, so movies can’t be uploaded to your mail.
However, be careful with these virtual drives in Google Mail. It may be free, but it might also be spyware. Just make sure you upload your assignments or book reports and not credit cards just to be sure to protect everything about yourself.
With creativity, Google mail can be more than your mail. It can be your online drive, podcast recorder and virtual hard drive in your PC.
In the Internet world, instant messenger services are mostly offered by search engine companies. AOL, Yahoo, and Google have their very own instant messaging system that lets users talk, send files and chat freely without any fuss. Yet there exists another instant messaging system that was built independently, and it is now owned by eBay, the largest online auction in the world. It is only known by one word: Skype.
Skype was created in August of 2003 and is now solely owned by eBay since October 2005. However, even before its incorporation into eBay, it has been making waves in the instant messaging world by attracting millions and offering services no other instant messaging software has ever dreamt of doing. It’s primarily offering the ability to transmit clear voice calls to individuals at very cheap rates when calling around the world. This is done through its Voice-Over-Internet-Telephony (VoIP) system. Currently there are more than 75 million users, and the company continues to grow.
What is it that makes this instant messaging software so popular all over the world? Read on and see what cool services Skype has to offer. You would be surprised at how many services Skype has that clearly rivals other popular Instant Massaging software.
Skype has been beneficial to everyone all over the world who wants to make phone calls using their PC. Skype offers very low rates, and anyone in the world can call the continental US for as low as $.024 per minute. This has opened up many opportunities for everyone who wants to establish their business globally. All they need is to buy some credit, and this can be done through PayPal, credit cards, or even bank accounts.
Why is it good compared to other service providers like Yahoo? Most VoIP service providers only offer their services to developed countries. If you’re located in a country that’s still developing, you can’t purchase any credits. However, in Skype, you can actually make arrangements wherein Skype can charge directly you bank account.
Another cool addition to Skype is Skypcasts. Loosely based on a podcast, Skycasts were created by Skype to accommodate persons who want to hold a meeting online. The unique feature allows people to create a room and freely talk to the moderator or anyone the moderator has chosen to participate. Skypcasts work like an auditorium, where anyone can just go in and listen while the only people who can participate and talk are those chosen by the moderator who also presides in the auditorium. From the Internet to other people’s singing, people can just go in and talk about anything the monitor fancies.
Lately, Skype updated its software so that people can also send money through PayPal. If you are a Skype user, you will notice this in the dialogue page wherein you’ll be given two choices if you want to send something. You can choose to send a file or money through PayPal. Who knows what Skype will offer for us next.
Continuing from Protecting Yourself on MSN Messenger - Part 1:
Display Pictures
There have been reports of malware being transmitted by display pictures. Since display pictures can be anything you choose, hackers may attach some malware in the same was as emoticons. This is quite rare, but to be extra safe follow the directions below:
- Go and click tools
- Go under options
- Go under to the tab called Personal
- Uncheck the box that says ‘Show my display picture and allow others to see it’
Display pictures are quite important, and since cases like this are rare, you may only want to disable display pictures if you talk to people you do not know in real life regularly.
File Transfer
Probably the most common ways of getting infected by malware over an Instant Messaging program is by the sending and receiving of programs or other files. It is important that you never accept any files from someone that you do not know personally. If you really do need to accept a file from someone you do not know personally, you can help keep yourself safe by scanning the
incoming file.
- Go and click tools
- Go under options
- Click the tab File Transfer
- Check the ’scan files for viruses using:’
- Click the browse button
- Go to your Antivirus software and double click it
- Click ok
Now every file that you accept will be scanned by your antivirus software. Be warned that not all antiviruses can catch every virus out there.
Hacked MSNs
Every now and then you are going to have a friend that has had his/her MSN account hacked. When this happens, you should immediately block that person on MSN until your friend tells you that they have control over their account again. However, you will not always know when your friend’s MSN has been hacked or even taken over. You can not go around being suspicious of everyone you talk to, but there are a few precautions you can take.
- If a conversation is started with the other person wanting to transfer a file, do not accept it! Make sure you talk to them first and be sure that it is really them.
- Do not click any links that they may send until you talk to them, and they reply
Hackers usually break into more than one MSN account at a time. It would be difficult for them to personally manage all of the addresses. Therefore, most of the time, it is not the hacker themselves talking to you. It is an automated message that is sent to you. When they start to talk to you, you
should reply and ask them a question or two. If they don’t answer, you should not click any links or accept any files they may want to send. Since it is unlikely that they will leave the computer right after trying to contact you if they sign out immediately, it is safe for you to assume that they have been hacked. Even if you are mistaken, you can always unblock them or reset your contacts.
MSN Messenger is a popular Instant Messaging programs that are now being used more and more across the world. With millions of people registered, it is no surprise that viruses and other forms of malware get passed back and forth without the knowledge of users. Recently there has been a large increase with malware passing through programs just like MSN. Even so, there are many simple steps to take to protect you from any harmful content.
Contacts
For the most part, the people you talk to on MSN Messenger are people that you know in real life. Conversations with people that you know in real life are almost always safe and you do not have to have any precautions with them. When a contact adds you on MSN, you will receive a box notifying you. By looking at the email that comes along with the box, you should be able to tell if you
know this person in real life or not. Unfortunately, some emails do not reveal the name of the owner of that address. When this happens, if you are at all suspicious about the email address that has added you, uncheck the box that says “Add this person to my contact list”. After doing this, you will not be able to see each other’ display picture and you will not be able to see their nick name.
Until you can be sure who the person is, keep them off your contact list and thereby prevent them from seeing some of your information. If you find out that the contact is really someone you know in real life, you can add them to your contact list by clicking “Add to contact list” button towards to the top of the conversation window.
Some email addresses are easy to spot and you can immediately block them. MSN staff won’t ever add you as a contact on MSN. They will email you instead through Hotmail. Addresses such as updater@hotmail.de are called phishing scams. By pretending to be an administrator or a staff of some sort, this scam will try to direct you to a harmful site or make you tell them information about yourself. You can block these kinds of email immediately and ensure your safety.
Emoticons
Emoticons can be very fun and you are even allowed to create your own emoticons to show to friends. Unfortunately, some people have developed a way to store malware on emoticons. When an emoticon is sent to you, you have to download the picture to see it just like any other. If malware were attached to that picture, you may be effectively ‘downloading’ a virus without knowing it. By following these steps you prevent custom emoticons from being shown.
- Click tools
- Go under options
- Go under the tab Messages
- Towards the right, uncheck the box saying ‘Show custom emoticons’
- Click ok
Now you can no longer send or receive custom emoticons. Though you may not be able to see a friend’s new emoticon, you make yourself much safer.
Mozilla Firefox is the first major Internet browser to compete with Internet Explorer and Apple’s Safari. One of the awesome features of Firefox is the ability to add on extensions. Firefox has always featured its open source nature and the extensions are no different. Most of the Firefox extensions are created by Firefox users and available for free. You can find some of the Firefox extensions by going to Tools, then Extensions, then Get More Extensions. With so many extensions out there, which are even worth downloading? Here are some of the best and most useful extensions that you should have.
StumpeUpon – This Firefox extension is a social networking application that lets you vote whether you like or dislike a website. After you download this extension, it installs a tool bar on your browser that lets you do the voting. You can view favorite web sites from different categories by pressing the Stumble! button.
Mail notification – Yahoo and Gmail both have e-mail notifiers that will let you know whenever you receive a new e-mail message. The Gmail notifier has a few more options than the Yahoo e-mail notifier but they essentially do about the same thing.
Firefox Showcase – When Internet Explorer finally updated its Internet browser, it introduced an interesting feature that allows you to see multiple tabs open at the same time so you can easily find what you are looking for. The Firefox Showcase extension brings Firefox up to date so you aren’t missing out on anything.
Cooliris Previews – Ever wanted to check out a website without clicking through and leaving the web site you are already on? Cooliris Previews does just that. When you hover over a link, a blue icon appears and if you click on the icon, a pop up window appears showing you a quick preview of the web site.
Colorful Tabs – If you are taking advantage of the great multiple tab feature of Firefox, you can add on to this feature with Colorful Tabs. This extension is pretty simple. Install it and the tabs at the top of your browser will appear different colors so you can easily tell how many you have open and pick between them.
Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer – If you frequently use multiple computers, you know how annoying it can be to not have the bookmark you need on the computer you are currently using. With Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer, you can synchronize your bookmarks in a central location so you can access them anytime; regardless of what computer you are using.
IE Tab – Although most web sites appear fine in Firefox, some still only work or just work better with Internet Explorer. With IE Tab, a small icon appears in your status bar that will allow you to display the same page in Internet Explorer. If you are a web site designer, this tool is very helpful so that you can make sure the site you are designing renders correctly in both Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Yahoo has been the forefront in search engine technology. Since its inception people have gone crazy about their technology as they index almost every website in the world, which at the time was small when compared to websites today. The company then grew bigger and bigger as they begin to offer other services such as email and instant messenger. Today, Yahoo Mail is one of the major free e-mail providers in the World Wide Web, and its instant messaging service is the premier in this type of services. With Yahoo Messenger, you can have free video calls with anyone around the world.
Yahoo isn’t stopping there. Even though the e-mail and instant messaging services has really helped humanity, Yahoo is still hitting the development table. They are still on the verge of developing something beneficial to the market, and today we will take a look at three services, all of which are currently at the beta version and could help us even more.
The first of them is the Yahoo Mindset. Released in May 2005 and still on their Beta Version, this kind of internet research will revolutionize the way you search the internet. Using this mindset, a person can actually customize the search of a certain product towards something more informative or for shopping purposes. There is a little meter that gauges whether the customer is looking for informative websites or shopping websites about a particular product, and websites are screened according to the meter. If the cursor is placed on either end of the meter, screened websites will be purely about either shopping or information. This is beneficial for shoppers and researchers. Researchers can weed out online stores and go directly to known documents about something. The same thing happens with the shoppers.
Next is the Yahoo Podcasts. This service is a reaction to the ever growing popularity of digital podcasts. Podcasters can enjoy this service since all they have to do is to inform the website of the RSS feed and let yahoo do the rest. Yahoo will search for the latest Podcast in your webpage and display them on your own yahoo podcasts webpage. People can directly listen there, make comments and even rate and download your episodes.
Lastly is the social bookmarking service of Yahoo called MyWeb. This Yahoo service can help you save all your bookmarks online. These bookmarks can be tagged as you can create short comments or introductions about these webpages. These bookmarks then are shared with the people you know and even the whole world. MyWeb is like Squidoo and Digg where you introduce the people to a website with your personal experience about it.
These are just a few of the services that Yahoo is currently developing. Yahoo has put up the beta version so that the public can test drive the website and report something they don’t like such as a feature than doesn’t work. Forums are created where developers and Yahoo users share ideas on what they like, don’t like, and expect from the service. This way, when the final release is introduced to the public, the service is already near perfect as it is.
The world’s largest and most successful search engine is no stranger to controversy regarding people’s privacy. Google strives to bring new and innovative products to the web that generally make information more accessible to everyone. In their latest attempt, Google made an interesting addition to their Google Maps feature. It’s called “street view” and it gives users the ability to zoom down to the street level of a city on a map and see actual photographs and panorama views. Obviously this isn’t the case in every single neighborhood but in most big cities you are able to see what was going on in the city at the time the photographs were taken.
It has become an interesting and quite exciting feature. You can zoom down to the ground level of your favorite big city. You can cruise the streets of New York and revisit some areas you haven’t been to in a long time or cruise the Las Vegas Strip and check out the marvelous casinos. While more and more people are using the Google Maps “Street View,” people are starting to discover some interesting moments that were recorded and available to the public. In San Francisco, you can find a man standing on the street corner picking his nose, people taking out the trash and one man looking a little suspicious climbing on the outside of an apartment building. If you journey down to Stanford University, you can find a couple younger coeds catching some rays in their bikinis. In other parts of California, you can find homeless people living on the streets, groups of protesters picketing in front of an abortion clinic and many people have found embarrassing moments showing men walking out of adult strip clubs in the middle of the day.
With all these potentially embarrassing or private moments available to the entire world, the privacy question comes into play. Many people were bothered by the images they discovered in “Street View.” Google Spokeswoman Megan Quinn said, “This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street. Imagery of this kind is available in a wide variety of formats for cities all around the world.” The “street view” ability is currently only available in San Francisco bay area, New York, Las Vegas, Denver and Miami but Google plans on expanding to more U.S. cities.
Legal analysts believe that Google has every right to take pictures in public places so any lawsuits filed again the Internet giant would most likely be dismissed. Google also mentions that they have no intention of harming anyone with the new tool but helping. They have provided a way to submit a request that a certain image be removed if it causes any serious privacy concerns although they claim they have had very few removal requests. They are also working with different organizations to blur out any images where someone’s privacy or anonymity would be in jeopardy. Although most people probably find this mildly intrusive, it is a good sign of times to come in the changing world of technology.
Google is primarily known as a search engine. For years, it has become a forefront of everything that you need to know about something. Google has even become an informal verb where you “Google” someone or something for information. If you “Google” someone, that basically means you looked into the internet to get certain information about that someone or something.
Then comes to the services that revolutionized the Internet and cemented Google’s reputation as one of the best search engine out there. Gmail, or Google Mail was released in April 1, 2004 by invitation and the beta version was opened for public registration on February 7, 2007. Google mail introduced the 1 gigabyte capacity that made other e-mail services look into their own email and upgrade. Google upgraded it even more by increasing the capacity of the mail box literally every second.
Its success only prompted Google to offer more services to the public. In this article we take a look at the services they offer, which might be unknown to most of us but are equally as important as the next web-based software you use.
First is the Google Reader. Released in October 7, 2005, Google reader works as an aggregator. The Reader can subscribe to any RSS feed that you provide. It can extract information to any website with RSS feeds and update your reader with the latest news, movies, comics and all the information you need daily. You can even subscribe to a set of popular websites and read them all on one page. This is a great tool for people who want to visit only one site with all the information they need.
Next is the Google Scholar. Google Scholar indexes the works of various scholars, professors and authors regarding a single subject. Released in November 2004 and still on its beta version, Google Scholar can give you all the links regarding a single subject or author you would like to discuss. It’s a nifty website for academic researches and learns about the basic subjects that are available online.
Another great Idea introduced by Google is the Google Books. This was introduced by Google to the public in October 2004 and created some stir. Some people claimed that Google is guilty of copyright infringement for all the books. To understand their claim, the Google Books can provide its users a digital copy of various books indexed by Google. Somehow it died down since some of the important books that were indexed can be viewed only in limited pages. Its main difference with Google Scholar is that Google Books works as an online library of all the books they already indexed. Just type in the name of the author or title and you can view some books. Some of them are free and some of them can be viewed on limited pages.
There are many other projects that Google is working on and will be released for public use. There is also a part of Google that deals with that. That service is called the Google Labs. Google Labs indexes the projects the company is currently working on. You can try out their website and drop in a note or two on what you don’t like or like about the website.
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Bookmarks are an important tool in all computers. The ever increasing capacity of computers to hold information makes them all too important. Without bookmarks, remembering the specific location of a file or website can be a drag since you need more information than you can actually remember all at once.
In computer terms, bookmarks work just like “physical” bookmarks which remind you where you did end reading and should start. Computer bookmarks work the same except that it can mark not only one site but all the websites you need to access most of the times. You can even categorize your bookmarks. For example you can create a folder which concerns all the comic websites you like and another folder that will remember all the links that are work related. You never have to remember anther www dot anymore.
The problem comes when you are not using your own personal computer. If you’re traveling and using another computer, especially in the Internet cafe, don’t expect to have your bookmarks magically stored there.
Thankfully, Internet whiz kids have thought about it long before we posed the problem. There are various websites that specifically offer to place your bookmarks there. Yahoo toolbar can even serve as a mobile bookmark. Just sign in and store them in my web toolbar. When transferring to another PC, all you need to do is sign in to the toolbar and all the websites you stored and categorized are already there. Other online bookmarks also work in the same way except that some don’t really require you to have a toolbar with them. Just sign in and all your important websites you store will be there. The best thing is, all of these are free forever.
If you think this kind of bookmarking is all that you need, think again. Website companies have created the next step for Internet bookmarks. This kind of Internet bookmark is now popularly known as “social bookmarks.” Social bookmarks are a combination of blogging and bookmarking. In social bookmarking, not only can you mark your favorite websites, you can also talk about it. People can then see your preferred websites and maybe make some comments from time to time. In social bookmarking, you will have a blog like page and everything you like will be there.
These web tools, especially the latter one is taking the web by storm. Some people are cashing in since some of the website that offer these services are sharing the profits with bloggers. Squidoo and Digg are the websites known for this very reason. People simply visit the website and place their favorites.
It is important to remember that these online bookmarks don’t guarantee safety and privacy. Yes, you can place all your favorite websites concerning your dog, your favorite TV show, your favorite place to eat and all the other favorites you can think of. However, it’s not really a bright idea to place other sensitive websites since people can and will visit these sites.
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