Selasa, 24 Juni 2008

Sending Text Messages to Cellular Phones by David H. Urmann

Having a mobile phone is the latest trend nowadays. Proper "texting" and learning the so-called "text speak" is the best way in order to communicate and go with the flow of technology. Body: Text messaging is also called "texting". It is the process of sending text messages from mobile phones to other mobile devices. Text messages are usually typed in "short" sentences. The maximum number of characters including spaces per text message is 160. Any succeeding character can be sent but it will still incur charges again. This type of service is called "SMS" or Short messaging Service. Individual messages are termed as "text" or "text speak". The most common type of service is the person-to-person messaging. This is even though it can also be used in interacting with automated schemes like ordering products, mobile services or participating in games and contests.

The messages are sent to a SMSC or Short Message Service Center that provides a mechanism called the "store-and-forward" function. This mechanism attempts to send text messages to the corresponding recipients. If the attempt is unsuccessful, the SMSC stores the message so that it can still attempt to send it later. A few SMSC's provide another mechanism called "forward-and-forget" that attempts the top sending of the message once. Delays or loss of a certain message is common when it sends messages between different networks. The users can then request for delivery reports so that they will know whether the text message was sent or not.

The transmission of short messages between the SMSC and the cellular phone are done through unlike procedures like the TCP or IP inside the basic GSM MAP framework or the SS7. The limitations of messages resulted in the maximum text size of either 160 characters (7 bits), 140 characters (8 bits) or 70 characters (16 bits). Characters in Arabic, Korean, Chinese, Slavic or Japanese are to be encoded using the UCS-2 character encoding (16 bits).

Long SMS are sent via segmented multiple messages. Each part of this long message will start with a UDH or User Data Header which contains the segmentation information.

Several service providers provide the ability to send text messages to land line phones regardless of the capability to receive messages. This is done by automatically calling the recipient and using a "speech synthesizer" in reading the text messages aloud.

The small keypad in cellular phones created a form of "spelling adaptation" like the phrase "txtmsg". Moreover, some websites support the community of cellular phone users in order to help in standardizing the "text speak". The users can submit their translations to these special websites.

Listed below are some frequently used acronyms in text messages.

*2 means To/too *4 means For *4evr means Forever *C means see *Cus means Because *Cuz means because/cousin *ne1 means Anyone *ez means Easy *b4 means Before *2nite means Tonight *Brb means be right back *gtg or g2g means got to go *ttyl means talk to you later *cyl means see you later *btw means by the way *bbl means be back later *idk means I don't know *idc means I don't care *lol means (laugh/laughing) out loud *rofl means rolls on floor (laugh/laughing) *stfu means shut the fuck up *omg means oh my (god/gosh) *omfg means oh my fucking god *lmao means (laugh/laughing) my ass off *lmfao means (laugh/laughing) my fucking ass off *lylas means love you like a sister *lylab means love you like a brother *k or kk means okay *jk means just kidding *jp means just playing *jw means just wondering *wth means what the hell *wtf means what the fuck *143 means I love you *Luv means love *Ily means I love you *w/e means whatever *ttly means totally *ttyl means talk to you later *ttfn means ta ta for now *w8 means wait *h8 means hate *l8 means late *l8r means later *ty means thank you *thnks, thx or thnx means thanks *r means are *u means you *ppl means people *4nd means friend *Qt means cutie *Zzz means sleeping, Tired, bored

Text Messaging Symbols:

*= means amazed *O=-) means angel smiley *=-ll means angry *=-X means big kiss **=-) means clown *%-) means confused *d8=) means cool guy *='-( means crying *=e means disappointed *=-| means disgusted *o-&-<>-- means red rose or aaaahhh... *=-( means sad *=-@ means screaming *8-) means sunglasses face *=-O means surprised or shocked *=-P means tongue in his or her cheek *=-& means tongue tied *=-)) means very happy *;-) means winking

In order to write a message from a wireless cellular phone, select the messaging feature on your cellular phone. Customers that are under Verizon Wireless must go to the messages section or icon and select the New TXT Message icon or key. From there, just type in a text message using the cellular phone's alpha-numeric keypad. Thus, most wireless mobile phones allow the user to key in messages using one of the three text modes. These text modes are listed below:

*T9Word or T9 Mode: This is used in order to key in a text message using 1 stroke of the key per letter. The mobile phone translates the keystrokes into the common words.

*Abc or Multi-tap Mode: Any user can use this kind of mode in order to type words by using the letters on the mobile phone's keypad. The users must press each key ranging from 1 up to 3 times in order to key in the right letter they need.

*123 or Numbers Mode: The user can use this kind of mode in order to type numbers. This mode is used by pressing the numeric keypad one at a time.

Hence, with the so-called advent of these mobile phones, sending text messages are now the best and proven way to communicate with your loved ones and friends, even the ones overseas. It is not only cheap and economical; it can also be used as an outlet of one's thoughts and feelings for another person. It can also give us a sense of security. This is in knowing that our loved ones is only just a text message or a phone call away. Furthermore, we can now deliver important messages very easily. This is one way to convey vitalities in a person's life.

Thus, with this expression of thoughts and feelings, there are also those who abuse it. There are etiquettes one should follow when it comes to sending text messages. These are only some:

1.When you receive a message that tends to say something bad about another person or is more of a terrible rumor such as someone in particular that died or there will be chaos somewhere, it is best to keep this to yourself. It is better to stop forwarding these messages to your loved ones and friends. Just ignore it. Until there is enough proof that this is true, shun the bad thoughts away.

2.Avoid participating in gambling. There are TV shows, radio stations and even others in your same network that advertises games where in you can possible win prizes or rewards. Since this is very rampant in this generation, where in, instant money is the only solution of some people to their financial difficulties, involvement in this would still be a lot like gambling your way to financial freedom. Besides the fact that the chance to win is only 1:10, you will lose more money just by taking those chances.

3.Beware of "text mates". In the younger generation, having friends and fitting in is the most sacred means of surviving adolescence. There will be people who will send text messages asking if you can be their friend or so-called "text mate". There are already numerous incidents of rape and molestation that root to this. It usually happens when the two parties agree to meet at a specific place. It will still be wise to bring friends and do the meetings on public places, where in, a lot of people are present. Never meet at a place you are not familiar with or is secluded. Never meet someone alone. Never schedule a meeting at night or in the wee hours of the morning. Worse, never agree to ride in that person's car alone. You only have one life and one wrong turn may lead to your misery or death.

4.When you receive messages from people you don't know or the message seems bizarre to you, these are messages that may have been mistakenly sent to your number. You can either ignore it or give it back to the sender of the message. For the latter, it is best to do this only if you think that the message is very important. This way, the sender will know that he or she was not able to send the message to the person concerned. Thus, you also need to observe courtesy. Never reply to these messages by sending offensive words or phrases. Give the person the benefit of the doubt that it has been sent to you by mistake.

5.Never send messages that are vulgar and offensive in nature. This is a lot like not sending messages which you don't want to receive as well.

6.Avoid sending messages in the wee hours of the morning. Respect the fact that the person concerned may be sleeping already. Save this for times where in it is really important.

7.For cases where in you need to tell a concerned individual about a death of a friend or a loved one, it is best to call the person. Never inform the person by just sending text messages. This is better because you can inform the person in a way that will not come as a major blow and you can give the important details on what happened.

8.Never send text messages when you are inside a church, class room, movie house, or on a meeting. If it is necessary for you to do this, you can discreetly step outside and read or send a text message quickly. Then, get back to your class room, meeting or whatever.

9.Never send or read text messages when you are driving or crossing the street.

10.Be discreet in sending or reading text messages when you are on a public place or street. You will never know whose eyes are upon you.

Sending text messages and having a mobile is really essential these days. It makes you feel secure, updated and it is a beneficial tool you need to live with. With this, you need to understand the proper usage of having this convenience.

About the Author

For more information on Sending Text Messages to Cellular Phones please visit our website

Will Toshiba Revolutionize Gaming Laptops? by Titus Hoskins

The rumors have been confirmed, Toshiba has announced it will be introducing the Toshiba Qosmio X305, a high-end gaming laptop sporting some unique features that will turn a few heads, if not cause a revolution. Do we even have revolutions anymore?

Now the Qosmio brand was always a top-rated line within Toshiba - very popular with critics and users alike. If you can look beyond all the Toshiba & Third Party software they load these machines up with at the factory, Toshiba makes some half decent laptops.

However, in recent years, Qosmio which means "my personal universe" seems to have been slipping into a Black Hole with just one model listed on Toshiba's main product page. Not only is Toshiba releasing the Qosmio X305 but also the 15.4-inch screen Qosmio F50 and the 18.4-inch Qosmio G50 which will be the world's first to carry the Cell-based SpursEngine, re-christened by Toshiba as the Quad Core HD processor. The 18.4-inch diagonal widescreen with TruBrite® high-definition display will sport a true 16:9 aspect ratio - serious filmmakers take note.

Will these laptops and their new specs introduce a whole new level to gaming laptops? The jury is still out but Toshiba is introducing a few new things with these laptops, especially with the X305. This monster of a machine will sport a whopping 1 Gig of graphics processing power via the new dual-GPU card NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2.

(Side Note: some experts argue this is the wrong way to go - instead of a multi-GPU, they argue for keeping the single GPU since it can have advantages for faster applications and better power consumption with less heat release. This 1GB GPU is the same as putting two 512MB cards together thru SLI technology, isn't it?)

The Qosmio X305 will also come equipped with a 3GHz dual-core Intel processor and dual 200GB, 7200rpm hard drives, as well as 4 Gigs of cutting-edge DDR3 RAM. This machine will also sport a 17-inch display, HDMI-out and S/PDIF audio - running HD quality films from a dedicated processor which should rival Blu-ray. In addition, it will carry four Harmon Kardon speakers with a built-in sub-woofer.

What will be interesting to watch is the whole "Blu-ray vs HD-DVD" debate that seemed to have been settled. Beta anyone? However, if Toshiba can turn/upgrade existing DVDs into a higher quality by this new transcoding/upscaling technology, the fall-out could be worth watching.

Another thing to watch is the "gesture-based controls with your hands" which is enabled by the chip found in PS3s. Look what Wii did to gaming? And the GPS Chipset adds another twist for a laptop, doesn't it?

Compare "Apples to Apples"

Impressive as those Qosmio X305's specs are, the high end gaming laptop market is becoming a little crowded. You have to compare "apples to apples" when buying a gaming rig. It will have to be compared with such high end gaming laptops as the Rock's Xtreme SL8 which sports mind numbing graphics powered by twin NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX 512MB (DX10) running SLi and Quad core Intel processors with up to 4GB DDR2 RAM (up to 800MHz). Which also comes equipped with Hi-res 17" WUXGA X-Glass (1920x1200) and the option of a Blu-ray or HD DVD Optical Drive.

And you can't talk about gaming laptops without mentioning Alienware. One of their newest machines Area-51 m17x has similar specs by offering two NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX, (dual GPU SLI configuration) which gives you the 1GB of dedicated memory and DirectX 10 graphics. The Area-51 m17x is powered by Intel Core 2 Extreme @2.8GHz and with up to 4GB of 667MHz DDR2 Memory.

Remember The Clevo!

Plus, you can't really compare gaming laptops without mentioning Clevo which is the well-respected if not well-known OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) of some pretty good high-end gaming laptops. Brand-name laptop vendors like the ones mentioned above... Alienware, Rock, Hypersonic, Voodoo... all use Clevo components.

This Taiwanese company has just released some new machines - the 15-inch M860TU and 17-inch M570TU the which offer WUXGA (1920 x 1200) resolutions. The M570TU also sports the "Montevina" Centrino 2 mobile platform. This model also has a 2 megapixel webcam, Blu-ray drive, TV Tuner, Fingerprint reader, e-SATA and HDMI ports. Sound familiar?

All of these models and laptop manufacturers will no doubt give Toshiba some competition. Keep in mind, the competition is stiff when you consider Dell has Alienware, HP has Voodoo... so you really have some marketing power as well as gaming power behind these high-end gaming laptops.

The Qosmio X305 will probably bring all these nice features up a notch and offer a superior gaming laptop. The release date for this gaming monster is said to be around July 14 of this year. No word on the price yet but this one could be worth waiting for.

Since gaming laptops are usually overpriced for what you get; will Toshiba introduce these new laptops at a reasonable price so that the ordinary person, not necessarily die-hard gamers, can also enjoy all this new mobile technology.

Now that would be truly revolutionary.

About the Author

The author, a former art teacher, has a keen interest in gaming laptops. For more on gaming laptos try here: Best Gaming Notebooks or try here: The Notebook Guide Copyright © 2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Access to the AOL, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo by Sophia Ray

An open source instant messaging system based on XML with client software available for all the major operating systems. In order to use Jabber, users must register with a Jabber server either from Jabber.org or some other provider.

Access to the AOL, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo! instant messaging services is available with Jabber, providing you have IM accounts with those services and that the appropriate software "Transports" for those services are running on the Jabber server, Inc., a leading commercial provider of presence and messaging solutions for enterprises, operators and channel partners, will be demonstrating the Jabber XCP - Excellent Coverage Partner (spades gaming) XCP - Expendable Current Profiler XCP - Explicit Control Protocol XCP - eXtended Copy Protection (First 4 Internet; UK) XCP - Extensible Communications Platform (Jabber) XCP - Xavier College Preparatory (Phoenix, Arizona) messaging and presence platform at the CMP XChange Solution Provider show, taking place in Nashville, Tenn., from March 7 to March 10.

The company, in conjunction with e-Convergence Solutions, a Jabber, Inc. distributor, will demonstrate a real-time messaging application running on both wired and wireless devices.

Jabber, Inc., a Network Computing Magazine "2004 Company to Watch," and its reseller and systems integrator partners are addressing a growing presence and messaging market that IDC estimates will double to $2.4 billion by 2007. According to Jabber, Inc., Jabber XCP has gained significant market traction because it is flexible, Capable of being expanded or customized. For example, with extensible programming languages, programmers can add new control structures, statements or data types., and interoperable, meeting the demands for secure, enterprise instant messaging as well as a wide variety of other presence-based real-time communications.

"Our message to prospective resellers and systems integrators is that Jabber XCP is the most robust and friendly messaging and presence platform for partners because of its unmatched flexibility," said Rick Emery, VP of Business Development at Jabber, Inc. "Jabber XCP can be customized, branded and extended to meet the unique requirements of our partners' customers. Competing products tend to be much more rigid in scope, limiting the opportunities for channel partners."

"e-Convergence chose to distribute Jabber XCP because it offers the most flexibility and value for the reseller channel," said Joe Heinzen, President of e-Convergence Solutions. "The platform is extremely extensible, allowing resellers to generate revenues by offering branded, customized enterprise IM solutions or any other type of message-based application."

Jabber XCP is a native, streaming XML software platform for building enterprise- and carrier-grade presence-enabled services and instant messaging systems. Jabber XCP is in use by more than 4 million licensed users, representing hundreds of organizations worldwide. Jabber XCP is built on top of the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), an open protocol that is widely used as a common denominator between disparate IM systems. XMPP was named a "2004 Standard to Watch" by Network Computing Magazine and has been approved by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as an Internet standard for instant messaging and presence.

About Jabber, Inc.

Jabber, Inc. is the developer of Jabber XCP, an XMPP-based commercial software platform for building enterprise- and carrier-grade presence-enabled services and instant messaging systems. Jabber XCP is in use by more than 4 million licensed users, representing hundreds of organizations worldwide. Jabber, Inc., a Network Computing Magazine "2004 Company to Watch," counts France Telecom, Hewlett-Packard, EDS, BellSouth, Lehman Brothers, Sony Corporation, CapWIN, Netsize, AT&T, and Juniper Networks amongst its customers. Jabber, Inc.'s investors include France Telecom (NYSE:FTE - News), Intel Capital, Intel's strategic investing arm, and Webb Interactive Services, Inc. (OTCBB:WEBB - News). Please see www.jabber.com for more information.

About the Author

Did you find this article useful? For more useful tips & hints, Points to ponder and keep in mind, techniques & insights pertaining to promotion, Do please browse for more information at our website :- www.thedesignbuild.com

Email -10 helpful Email Tips by Kamal Kaushal

Most of us weren?t born with a genetic predisposition for email, so it?s only natural to take a few missteps along the way If you want to look like an email pro and avoid the most common errors, follow these ?Netiquette? tips 1 Most of us weren?t born with a genetic predisposition for email, so it?s only natural to take a few missteps along the way. If you want to look like an email pro and avoid the most common errors, follow these ?Netiquette? tips:

1. Use the Subject Line - Always include a brief Subject line that provides some insight into the focus of your email. Given the volume of email that most people receive, the Subject line is becoming a ?must-have? if you want your message to be read or noticed. Avoid generic "Hi" or non-specific Subject lines that tell the recipient nothing. Some spam filters will block messages without a Subject line, so for the scant few seconds it requires to enter a few words, it's in your best interest to always include a Subject.

2. Don?t Forget the Bcc Field - When sending email to multiple recipients, place email addresses in the Bcc field (Blind Carbon, Courtesy, or Cyber Copy, depending who you ask) to hide them, unless you specifically want each recipient to know who received your message. In this day and age when many people protect their email addresses as aggressively as they do their unlisted telephone numbers, it is grotesquely inappropriate to publish all recipient email addresses without permission.

3. Cool Off! - Never send an email written in anger. If you're upset, go ahead and write your email, pound the keyboard, stomp your feet, vent your spleen to your heart's content, but do not send it. After you've spewed your digital venom, save the message and review it a minimum of 12 hours later. Chances are you'll be very glad you didn't send it?a phenomenon known as "dodging a digital bullet."

4. Personalize Your Message - Email is informal, but it still needs a greeting. It can be "Dear Mr. Smith," or "Dear Bill," "Hi Susan," or ?Yo, Joe,? but failure to use the recipient's name can make your message seem a bit cold and aloof, even if that's not your intention.

5. Sign it - Conclude a message with your name, and in most instances, first name alone is fine, particularly if your full name appears in the From: field. If only your email address appears in the From: field, and your address provides no clue as to your identity, it's even more important to sign your message. Most email programs will permit you to create a signature block which can include your full name, address, and other contact information, if you wish. Don?t overdo the signature line, though. Nobody cares about your life?s philosophy. Save it for your autobiography.

6. Tone Matters - More than 90 percent of face-to-face communication is non-verbal. Because email has no accompanying body language or facial expressions, and the reader cannot hear the tone of your voice, choose your words carefully. Sarcasm, for example, doesn't always translate well via email, but using an emoticon or other parenthetical, e.g. (laughing), can help. Try to place yourself in the recipient's position and think how your words might be perceived or even more importantly, misperceived.

7. Check Your Spelling - In the early days of email, spelling errors were generally accepted or at least overlooked. We were a simpler people back then, but those days are pretty much gone. While spell-checking is certainly not as important when communicating with casual friends or dysfunctional family members, other individuals will form immediate impressions about you from your messages. Integrated spell-checkers make it easier than ever to use correct spelling. Proper capitalization (never type messages in ALL CAPS) and correct punctuation can't hurt, either. Keep in mind that your messages represent you, and particularly within a business context, that can cost you.

8. Get to the Point - Try to keep your messages succinct, to the point, and be generous with your paragraphing. No recipient wants to be confronted by a massive, wall-to-wall screen of text. That's a good way to ensure that you either won?t receive a response, or that your message is quickly skimmed, or moved directly into the Trash folder.

9. Nothing is ?Off the Record? - Never write in email that you wouldn't want the world (or your mother) to see. Once a message has departed your mailbox, you have no control over where it will end up. Diamonds are forever; email lasts even longer.

10. Patience is a Virtue - Don?t expect an immediate response. Not every person is sitting in front of his or her computer checking email. People check messages at their convenience and respond at a time when it's best for them. If your communication is so vitally important that you need a response right away, use the telephone.

Happy emailing!

About the Author

Did you find this article useful? For more useful tips and hints, points to ponder and keep in mind, techniques, and insights pertaining to Google Adsense, do please browse for more information at our websites. http://www.100computertips.com

Many Users Hesitate to Install Windows Vista by Terry Detty

Many people who rushed into the download and installation of the new Windows Vista are having second thoughts. Like everything new, the bugs are not quite worked out. Microsoft has a great concept in Windows Vista, except it has some potential problems. Many businesses run Windows XP or Windows 2000 and have established great success with their current product and tend to be a little apprehensive about installing the new Windows. They may have good reason. The Window Systems they are using now has been around longer, are tested and have been proven to work for the businesses with IT technicians. Many businesses are waiting for the Service Pack 1 to become available before installing Windows Vista.

The biggest downfall to installing Windows Vista is that some applications are not as compatible as Microsoft had hoped for and this is a major concern. Many companies that have older computer systems are worried that when they install the operating system on their older computers, they are going to have additional cost in upgrading computers and other applications and software that they currently use now. This concern is not only been proven by businesses but also by personal computer users.

If you are a personal computer user, your software and other applications may be compatible with Windows Vista, as for business owners, they have many different programs that will more than likely not run correctly once they install the new Windows System. This is the top concern. If a business relies on the communication through computers, they are going to want a compatible Windows System that will allow them to use their current software and applications. This concern is the biggest problem that businesses have with Windows Vista.

Another concern is coming from people who work at home as a freelancer. Many companies that are hiring for work at home jobs are not accepting people who have Windows Vista. There computer systems and software will not work with the new Microsoft Windows. This is causing concern for home workers who are buying new computers in hopes of making a living at home.

Since the issues with the compatibility of Windows Vista have become such a hot computer topic, many have expressed concern about not being able to use the program. Many would like to use it, but feel it may hinder not only a business environment but also a home environment. If you have a newer computer with Windows XP and the newer software, it might not become an issue with the software, but if your computer is older and upgraded to Windows XP and then Windows Vista, then you will probably run into software issues.

Many people are upgrading without reading the reviews and issues about upgrading, how it affects their current software and the possible problems. After they have installed the new Windows Vista, people are having problems with programs not running. They are finding that they have to also upgrade all the software or not use it at all. This causes concern for people who need the software they have and cannot afford to upgrade everything at one time. Many people also have slower running computers and find out that the computer is running slower after the upgrade. Windows Vista is a hot computer topic because of the concerns and issues, but also because people are waiting for the service pack to be released. Once the service pack is released and more people start having better performance from Windows Vista, it might then sell faster. Right now, the reviews of the Windows program is split fifty-fifty on the ease of use and the performance. Of course, like any new Microsoft product that comes out, Windows Vista is no different, many people wait to make sure all the glitches are worked out before rushing out to buy the product. This is something more of a personal choice more than anything.

About the Author

Terry Detty knows this Site Promotion and Internet Promotion is valuable to his Firm.

Rabu, 11 Juni 2008

7 Winning Search Engine Optimization Tactics

Search engine optimization should always be considered long before your website structure, colors, layout, and overall site design. But, the majority of people usually get caught up "in the moment"... thinking of riches instead of "how" they're going to attract more website visitors. This article is meant to get you back on track, and provide you with 5 winning search engine optimization tactics.

Identify Keywords

1. The single biggest mistake that most business owners make is trying to think of a "cool name" for their website, when they should have chosen a keyword-rich site name like 'prevent-corporate-bankruptcy.com' instead of SmithLawOffice.com' (as an example). Your potential customers search for keyword phrases... not business names... unless you're already a household name like Wal-Mart, eBay or Apple. Facing reality, many business owners gave up on websites ever helping their business a long time ago... usually because of a poor website name choice. And, it doesn't have to be this way.

Simply, discover what terms people are searching for. Identify the "action" keywords and phrases that people are actually using when they are searching Google, Yahoo, MSN or any of the other major search engines. I highly recommend looking for keyword phrases that incorporate the following keywords: buy, want, need, order, download, etc. I'm sure you're getting the idea now. Then, you need to purchase website names that are centered around the most popular keyword phrases. And, redirect these visitors to your current website. And, I promise that you can setup a website redirect in less than one minute... even if computers scare you. You just need to have access to your website hosting interface, with cPanel being the most popular choice.

Optimizing Your Web Page

2. After identifying a minimum of 10 keyword phrases, I recommend optimizing your current website pages' title tags, meta tags, image "alt" tags. You need to start using these keywords within your webpage content in bold text, underlined text, and as text links. Do not overuse these keywords though. These keywords should only comprise 4-6% of each page. So, if you have 500 words on a webpage, limit your keyword usage to 20-30 words. Most of the major search engines index every word of your page and compare them to your title META description and META keywords. So, you should never hide or add non-related keywords to your webpages: like Anna Kournakova, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, etc. This is a "black hat" tactic and should never be used, unless your want your website to be permanently banned by the search engine directories.

Most of the major search engines don't even consider the META keywords anymore, which is why the actual content of your webpages is becoming more and more important. Excessive repeating of keywords is considered as spamming, which will get your website penalized with a lower ranking. And, be sure mix your keywords in different combinations throughout the page and in your ALT tags, instead of using the same phrase over and over again.

Link Popularity

3. One of the most important factors to achieve a high ranking in the search engines is link popularity. The overall number of links to your web site is important, but the quality of the links are even more important. All the search engines are very fond of "on topic" links. Links from sites that contain your same keyword content and are focusing on the same topic as your site, are known as "on topic" links. Three of the best ways to get "on topic" quality backlinks are to comment on other industry-related blogs, make comments in industry-related forums, and to submit articles to article directories. Just make sure that you're adding comments or articles to high pagerank sites, avoiding low page rank sites.

Misspellings

4. Adding misspelled keywords within your META tags can also boost your website traffic, because many people are likely to misspell your keywords when browsing the search engine directories. As an example, here are several popular misspellings I found people making when they searched for a site submission service, as follows: "free search engine submision", "sumit", "subit", "search egnine submission", "submition", and "saerchengines".

Add Fresh Content

5. Adding fresh content to your website on a regular basis is another key factor that plays a critical role in your search engine rankings. Adding new content regularly gives your visitors a reason to come back. Search engine robots will also visit your website more often, once they notice that you update regularly. This is one of the main reasons why WordPress blogs are so popular right now. When visitors leave comments about blog posts you have made, the search engine bots see this as new content. And, it really helps your site rankings when a visitor makes a comment with a permalink back to their high pagerank site. This helps website owners save time, by allowing website visitors to create content for them.

Don't Kill the Search Engine Crawlers

Avoid using flash intro pages where it says "Click Here to Enter Site", because the search engines have a very difficult time indexing (seeing) anything beyond the intro page... unless you've submitted every webpage of your site to the search engine directories manually, which is very time consuming. Even if you use the alt attribute to specify alternate text for flash images, that text will not be anywhere near as important as real text on a main index page.

Provide Relevant Title Tags

7. Making your page titles simple, descriptive, relevant and "keyword rich" makes it easier for search engines to know what each page is about. Keyword rich titles help the search engine directories provide consumers with more relevant search results, helping them determine whether your website contains what they are trying to find. The title description is the most important element of your website design, after you have chosen your website domain name.


About The Author

Lee Kendrick has been featured by numerous magazines & article directories as a successful internet marketer, search engine optimization expert, and aspiring writer. Visit http://get-more-website-traffic.com to discover the tools, tips & "white hat" tactics that Lee uses to dominate Google on a daily basis. I also recommend registering for his 'Insane Website Traffic Tips' newsletter at http://leekendrick.com/internet-expert too.

The Different Between One Registry Cleaner Software And Another

Here’s a fact: 92% of computers run on Windows, and every 32-bit edition of Windows has a storage sector where options and settings are saved. This sector is called the registry, and it is one of the busiest databases in a computer. As such, it is one of the databases that are most susceptible to corruption and breakage. This is why the demand for an efficient registry fix is consistently high.

But there are many options on the internet when it comes to a quick registry fix.

Which is the best one? Which registry fix is worth the download? Which registry fix will provide the best results?

In this article, we will review five of the most popular registry cleaners available on the World Wide Web today. It is hoped that you, the reader, will be guided properly on how to choose the best registry fix for your needs.

Registry Fix No. 1: Stompsoft Registry Repair

Stomp is known as the most thorough and most aggressive registry fix in the market today. Where other registry fixers can only diagnose 50 to 70 registry-related errors, Stomp can pinpoint more than 700.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Some say that Stomp merely counts errors in the registry that Windows will auto-correct eventually. Some say that Stomp merely looks for errors in places where files don’t really have a bearing on the processes conducted by the system.

Regardless, Stomp’s aggressiveness wouldn’t hurt, and at the end of the day, it’s still about how well the registry is fixed, and on this, Stomp has a pretty good record.

Registry Fix No. 2: CCleaner

Being a free registry cleaner, CCleaner has built a huge and solid following, with most of its patrons claiming that they have been using this registry fix as soon as it was released almost 5 years ago, and they have never looked for any other reg cleaner since then.

For a free registry fix, CCleaner’s features are simply amazing. CCleaner does things right. It erases the useless and redundant files in the registry, and it never meddles with files that may affect the performance of Windows.

And it is constantly updated! This is something that free registry fixes can seldom afford.

Registry Fix No. 3: Registry Mechanic

Registry Mechanic is likewise a stable registry fix. With the newest update, Version 6.0, Registry Mechanic is now capable of recognizing previously unrecognizable errors, and correcting the same, resulting in a cleaner, better performance for your Windows-based PC.

Many online authorities attest to the integrity of Registry Mechanic, mainly because of the aforementioned stability and consistency of this registry fix. This has created a wave of acclaim for the program, which has been translated to many downloads for the same.

Registry Fix No. 4: Registry First Aid

Speaking of acclaims, if the number of awards is to be used as gauge, then Registry First Aid should top this list.

Registry First Aid is a registry fix that boasts of a seamless cleaning process for your Windows operating system. It promises a stable program that will provide the registry fix you need fast and easy.

Registry Fix No. 5: Registry Medic

Registry Medic’s claim to fame, on the other hand, lies in three things: its amazing user-friendly interface, its powerful scan engine, and its ability to remove and immunize your system from spyware and malware infestation.

Registry medic is indeed more than just a mere registry fix. It aims to be a spyware cure and prevention solution as well, making it one of the top downloads of people who wish to speed up and protect the integrity of their PCs.


About The Author

Mehmet Onatli has over 10 years experience in repairing computer. Download a free trial of RegCure http://www.registryheal.com/ today!

Understanding the Components of a Home Network

Home networks are becoming more common. People want to be able to share a single broadband Internet connection to several computers in the house. There are many different devices that you can use to make up your home network. If you have never heard network terminology device names like router, hub, etc may seem confusing.

The purpose of most of these devices is to control how the network passes around information. This information is sent in the form of "packets". I will refer to the term packet several times in this article. It simply means the data that the network is transporting. I will now explain the purpose of the major components of a home network.

What is a Hub

A hub is a device that has several Ethernet ports on the back of the device. One of these ports will likely be labeled “Uplink”. This port allows you to connect multiple hubs together, if you run out of ports on your hub. If you do not have an uplink port on your hub, the hub cannot be easily extended if you run out of ports.

A hub is a device that attaches multiple computers on an Ethernet network. If you have a number different computers that you want to connect together, you could connect each to the hub. Any packet that is sent out by any computer on the network will immediately be transmitted to the other computers. Each computer will determine if the packet was really intended for it, and filter out packets that were intended for other computers.

You really should not use a hub in a modern home network. You should always use a switch in place of a hub. Switches will be discussed in the next section.

What is a Switch

A switch is a device that has several Ethernet ports on the back of the device. One of these ports will likely be labeled “Uplink”. This port allows you to connect multiple switches together, if you run out of ports on your switch. If you do not have an uplink port on your switch, the switch cannot be easily extended if you run out of ports.

A switch serves the same function as a hub. It allows you to connect multiple computers together, so that they can exchange packets. However, a switch is much more efficient than a hub. A switch will only send Ethernet packets to the computer that the packet was intended for. Because of this you should always use a switch in place of a hub.

What is a Router

A router is a device that has several Ethernet ports on the back of the device. One of the connectors will be labeled WAN. You should connect the WAN port to the Ethernet connection on a broadband source, such as a cable or DSL modem. The other ports on the router can be connected other computers or switches/hubs that will share the WAN connection.

Routers allow you to share your broadband connection with multiple computers in your house. Rather than connecting your computer directly into your cable or DSL modem you connect the router to the cable or DSL modem. Now any computer that you connect to the router will have access to the Internet.

If you run out of ports on your router you can always connect an additional switch to the router. To connect a switch to a router simply connects the switch’s "uplink" port to one of the routers Ethernet ports. Of course, don’t connect to the router’s WAN port. The WAN port should only be connected to something such as a cable or DSL router.

Some routers come with additional features installed. Most routers also include a firewall. Firewalls are discussed in the next section. Some routers will also include a wireless access point (WAP). The WAP allows you to use wireless devices, such as wireless laptops, with the Internet.

What is a Firewall

A firewall controls traffic flow between your network and the Internet. A firewall can be either hardware or software. Windows XP SP2 or higher includes a software firewall. A hardware firewall is included with most routers.

A firewall is a very good idea. It can protect you from inbound virus attempts. By inbound virus attempt I mean other computers that will connect to your computer and attempt to infect your computer. You do not want to run a computer directly connected to the Internet, without a firewall. There are just too many other computers out there that can connect and infect you without you even noticing.

What is a Network Attached Storage (NAS)

A network attached storage device is a device that allows a hard drive to be shared across the network. This hard drive is NOT attached to any of your computers. It is simply made available by the NAS. This can be a convent way to add a hard drive that can be accessed by several computers on your network. The other common way to add a network hard drive is to simply share a folder on one of your computers. However, with the NAS, you do not need to keep one of your computers on at all times.

There are two types of NAS commonly available. The first type comes with a build in hard drive. The second accepts a USB or Fire wire external hard drive. The advantage to using a USB or Fire wire hard drive is that you can upgrade the hard drive if it ever were to become too small.

What is a Print Server

Just like you can buy a device to allow you to share a hard drive, you can do the same with a printer. A print server connects directly to your printer. Your printer is then shared to all of your computers on the network. This is convent because you do not need to leave the printer hooked to a computer, which must be turned on to print.

Conclusions

As you can see there are many different components. Perhaps the final component that I ave yet to mention is the cable. These components are connected together with CAT5 Ethernet cable.


About The Author

Manbeer Singh

For more Free Resources http://www.100computertips.com

Website Sales Purpose

When designing a website, it is important that webmasters ask some general questions before they begin the design process...

What Is The Purpose Of Your Website?

Many companies use websites to establish their brand. Others use websites as a communication tool. Some companies see websites as sales vehicles and "billboards". Still others use their website as an educational tool. And some may be any combination of the above. The website must have a purpose in order for it to be effective.

What Is It That You Are Trying To Accomplish With The Website?

A strong understanding of the website will allow a webmaster to emphasize the action they want the website visitor to take on the website. By defining and understanding the purpose of the website, webmasters and publishers can better structure the information on the website. Information can be provided with the appropriate emphasis and navigation. An ideal website will lead the web visitor to take the action the webmaster wants.

Who Is Your Audience?

You must identify and understand your target audience. Understanding your demographic will allow you to cater content specific to that group.

What Are The Objectives Of The Website?

You also need to determine what the objective of your website is. What are you attempting to accomplish? Are you trying to sell something? Are you looking for downloads, or is sales your real objective? Is your website trying to promote a specific product or service? Do you want your visitors to take a specific action? Is the intent to profit from ad space in general or to have website visitor's click on specific ads? Are you trying to build a brand? Do you want visitors to purchase a product, or provide an email address?

When attempting to solicit a specific action, there are some general guidelines that you should follow. Your website should be designed to solicit the action you desire, so the navigation should intuitively lead the visitor to take the desired action. If clicking a link is the goal, then that link should be clearly indicated and prominent on the page. This will not only help insure that the maximum number of visitors will be able to adequately view and navigate your content, but it will also help prompt those visitors to take the action you wish to have occur.

For example: Many software companies struggle with the action they wish to solicit from the website visitor. Software companies and eBook publishers are often guilty of pushing users to download, at the expense of the actual sale. Some companies prefer to have users download prior to making a purchase decision, while others lose impulse purchasers by only pushing the download rather than the sale.

In Order To Maximize The Websites Sales Purpose And Objectives, Follow These Simple Steps...

Address Compatibility Issues

If a website visitor is unable to view the website's content, they are obviously going to be unable to complete the desired action. The compatibility issues could be related to technology or usability. Avoid using technologies that require the website visitor to download a plug-in before they can view the website content. If providing content using flash is important to you, you should also provide a flash-free version as well. Also, do not alienate website visitors who might have a disability -- use proper web construct, provide alt tags for images, and avoid using a color scheme that will cause confusion.

Define A Clear Navigation Path

A website's navigation should provide the visitor with a clear path. Information architecture is the organization and categorization of online content -- the process of creating clarity and organizing online information in a purposeful, and logical way. Prioritize and emphasize the most important items on the website. Give visitors a clear path to what they are seeking. Each and every page should intuitively provide them links to additional information and purchase options.

Minimize Distractions

Minimize choices and other website distractions. Website visitors should be provided a clear path of action. Do not provide the website visitor an abundance of choices -- studies show that a large number of choices often puts the consumer off. It is generally recommended that you provide no more than 3 choices. Keep your message concise and on-topic. Website visitors will often just scan a webpage rather than reading it, so bulleted lists and headlines might be used to emphasize your message.

It may sound like a cliche, but it's the little things that can make the biggest difference. Pay attention to all aspects of your website. Defining the specific website objectives and purpose will help to encourage the desired action or behavior from your website visitors.

About The Author

Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for RecordForAll http://www.recordforall.com audio recording and editing software.

Jumat, 06 Juni 2008

How to Clean Disc Drives

When your CD or DVD (disc) drive starts giving you problems, your first thought may be to replace it or take it to the repair shop, but a good cleaning may be all it needs.

Below are three methods to clean the disc drive. The easiest method is the least effective. The hardest method is the most effective. Since the hardest method takes some time to do, I recommend that you start with the easiest method. If it solves your problems, congratulations. If not, try the next method.

The Cleaner Disc method - this, the easiest method, uses a special cleaner disc which can be purchased in computer stores. The disc usually comes with a little bottle of cleaner solution. Apply a few drops of the solution to the disc and insert it in the disc drawer (be sure to read and follow the instructions that come with the cleaner disc). The drive will turn the disc and clean the lens. Unfortunately, this only works adequately about half the time.

The Cleaning Stick method - this is what I do in desperation when the cleaner disc does not work and I don't want to disassemble the drive. Since all that is needed (at least in my mind this is true) is a little more pressure applied to the lens, I start out in search of a thin, flexible stick of some type which is at least six inches long. It should not have sharp or rough edges that would scratch the lens. Next, get a soft, thin cloth and put water or rubbing alcohol in the middle of it. Place one end of the stick under the wet part of the cloth and slide it into the opened disc drawer. The goal is to rub the wet cloth on the lens to clean it. Do not apply so much pressure that you will scratch and ruin the lens. Also try blowing into the disc drive to remove any dirt that may have accommulated in it. If you do not succeed at this, proceed to the next method.

The Disassembly method - this method should work but it requires you to disassemble the drive. So if you are not comfortable with taking the drive apart, please take it to a computer repair shop and let them do it.

Take the cover off your computer, unplug the cords from the back of the disc drive, remove any screws holding it in, and slide it out (you may need to remove the face plate on the end of the drawer to get the drive out). Remove the screws in the drive housing and take the cover off. The bottom side of the drive is a circuit board, so if that is what you see when you take the cover off, figure out how to access the other side. On the correct side, you should see a lens that runs on a track (there is no harm in moving the lens along the track but do not touch the lens itself). Use a wet, soft cloth to clean the lens.

Sometimes a disc drive malfunctions because there is too much dust or debris in it, so be sure to clean out the inside with either compressed air, a soft cloth, or a cotton swab. Reassemble the disc drive, put it back in the computer case, and cross your fingers. Hopefully, it will work when you turn on the computer.

If these methods work, you just saved yourself some money. If not, you needed a better disc drive anyway.


About The Author

Ray Geide writes a free weekly newsletter called Ray's Computer Tips and moderates a discussion board answering computer questions called Computer Q&A.

He is an experienced computer programmer who has been writing top-rated software for over a decade. Though he has written for some big-name companies, he prefers to write for his own company, Super Win Software, Inc. http://www.superwin.com/

Download Full Length Movies For Free - Facts You Must Know

Download Full Length movies for free legally is not possible, you might say. But still each day people types "download full length movies for free" into the search engine to search for it. You are right, if it is for legal download, there is no such thing as free.

If there is a way to download full length movies for free legally, DVD shops would have closed, why would anyone pay their hard-earned cash to pay the rental fee or to buy the DVDs if all the movies are available for free?

If you are looking for illegitimate way to do that there is one alternative such as using P2P program. But I do believe that you do not want to take such risk, by using that method you are putting your computer in the risk of spyware and viruses and you risk yourself as well, if you are caught, you know how much cash you have to pay and you could be put in jail in the worst case.

There is a perfect solution to download full length movies for free. There are several legal membership download sites that allow you to download all the movies you want for a flat fee of less than $50, you can calculate the fee you have to pay for each movie if you are to download more than a hundred movies. Now you know what "free" means.

If you are looking to download full length movies for free including the latest blockbusters, you should be a member of the site like others. What convinced them or probably you to join should be the benefits and value the site can offer. What are they?

  • Safe from Spyware, Adware, and Viruses

  • It gives convenience, you can save time even save money (Sitting in front of your computer is enough to get all the movies you want, no rental fee or even paying fine for being late in returning the DVDs)

  • You can download in lightning speed(approximately 10 Minutes for one movie)

  • Download movies that are high in audio and video quality

  • You can find the movies you want very easily with the search feature on the membership area

  • Not only movies, you can too download TV shows, music and games

Download free full length movies for free seems to be possible now right? But do not rush to the search engine and join the download site randomly. You should know that there are many scams out there.

If you want to avoid this, read as much information about the site as you can. You can shortcut the research phase and start downloading your favorite movies right now by visiting Download Full Length Movies For Free - Facts You Must Know to read about the top three sites available on the internet.

Nicholas is a movie and TV show freak. Buying every DVD of his favorite movies and TV shows is wasting too much money. He, at last, found a way to download all those at almost zero cost. view his recommendation at Download movies and TV shows at almost Zero cost.

Download Full Version Movies

Over recent years downloading of movies and music on the internet has grown astronomically, the volume of daily searches on the internet for terms such as 'movie downloads', 'music downloads', 'bootleg movie download' have become very popular in the search for free or low cost entertainment.

This growth has become prevalent with the availability of broadband and as bandwidth grows, the demand for large file structured entertainment material increases proportionately. At one time this technology was almost US targeted but as the rest of the world wakes up to broader broadband and the availability reaches more remote areas of the globe the demand for downloading full versions of movies will also increase.

If we look only a few years back we notice that movies were only available to rent on tape at a local 'Blockbuster' video shop, technology evolved very quickly to disc based DVD formats which are cheaper to produce and easier to store in the home. These mediums were steps closer to consumer convenience, driving to the local DVD rental store is still a very popular activity globally on a Saturday night, but still the consumer has to get in the car, drive to the DVD store, choose a DVD, Pay for it at what is still an extortionate price, take it home and watch it and then return it at the very last moment the day after to avoid late return charges. Renting DVD's is hardly convenient in today's 'disposable' entertainment society.

Satellite TV companies around the world are now competing directly with DVD rental companies, providing box office streaming viewings of new release movies at the same price of a DVD rental, there is however a premium charged for the monthly service, but this doesn't matter to most consumers because they receive the entertainment 'on demand', they don't have to leave their homes and they don't risk late return charges (not to mention fuel costs for driving to and from the store, but let's not make this a political issue!)

Newer systems allow the consumers to record TV programmes and movies to a hard drive system for viewing later (with some time and storage restrictions), once again a step closer to convenience. The next step is surely to allow the consumer to download Movies and TV shows, Music and Games to their home cinema systems to keep for as long as they wish?

The advent of movie downloads, music downloads and gaming downloads creates great opportunities for piracy on a global scale, in the consumers search for convenience at an affordable price. Surely the media companies now understand that we are willing to pay for entertainment and to avoid piracy on such a huge scale, they need to create access at a more affordable price and in a more convenient manner/medium!

Nigel Handley is a movie reviewer and gaming expert.

http://www.moviedownloadsinc.com


Mentoring In IT

This article is also available as a "The Sniffer Guy" podcast on iTunes.

ATTENTION AMERICAN IT MANAGERS: Within the next decade most of your best people will retire or die. Your senior staffers are baby boomers with twenty years or more of experience in their field. They built the systems: they learned the operating systems as they were created: they know what they know from real life experience that cannot be learned in school. They are also somewhere between their late forties and early sixties. They rose to the top while competing within the largest workforce America has ever seen. When they leave they will take a level of efficiency and expertise with them that will take twenties years to replace.

To make matters worse, the population of appropriately educated Americans coming up behind them is far smaller than the population getting ready to move out. Do the math. Start now. To try to buy that talent later will not only cost you a fortune but you will be competing for a very small population of such individuals, with the entire world.

In this corporate environment where everyone is disposable and so much work is done by contractors so that companies can avoid having to make a commitment to personnel, it is far too easy to miss this growing danger. Business Managers may have learned this—but probably not. However, IT managers usually have not had much exposure to this concept. They live in a world of projects that staff up for the project and then disband. How to you bring up the next crop of leaders in such an environment? This is going to take far too many companies by surprise! But IT is going to be hit much harder than most other departments. I know of no other area of corporate life that is so project oriented. In the IT world, you build a team and disband it a few months later--even when they do outstanding work. All in the name of avoiding long term cost. It also avoids long term success.

There is also an emotional and psychological component to this problem. After the Dot-Bomb debacle, many people with decades of smarts were kicked out due to layoffs, or companies failing, or being eaten by a bigger company that had its own staff. Why do we eat our seed corn? Those that survived are still concerned about it happening again. And it could. It makes them conservative. Possibly even a tiny bit timid and less likely to share their knowledge freely. I don't blame them. Because our corporate mentality is to cut the expensive people and replace them with contractors—that we can easily get rid of when the job is done. What a vote of no confidence! This is considered to be a strategy. OK…I will accept that. It is a strategy. But it is a very short sighted one. Where is the mid-range planning?

So, what do you do? In this article and podcast, let us restrict our focus to Mentoring. Future articles and podcasts will explore other activities that are also proven and available.

Do you have a mentoring plan in place? I don't mean the typical, "oh, we believe in mentoring around here" kind of plan. I mean a thought out purposeful plan whereby you determine which journeyman IT personnel have the potential to grow into those senior roles and have your baby boomer senior staffers truly mentor them to bring them along. I doubt it. It does exist; I know of a few such companies. But it is rare.

Part of the problem for those that want to create a mentoring program is that it is not so simple to identify candidates. Let me help with that. Not everyone is a candidate for mentoring and few people are cut out to be mentors. It's sad but true. Don't spin your wheels and exhaust your enthusiasm backing the wrong plan and/or individuals. You need to have some way to identify in whom you want to invest. And, please understand, it is an investment. You will invest money but not only money. You will invest the time of very busy and critical people. That will hurt a bit—but you don't really have any choice. If you are responsible for future planning in your organization, ignoring this process is irresponsible.

Here is a handy way to help make these determinations. A friend once told me that he had learned in a sales course at IBM, decades ago, about a concept that went something like this—and I may be mangling it so please forgive me. It was not meant for IT or Mentorship purposes, but I have adapted it.

There are four levels of competence. They are listed in order from least capable to most capable in performing their job. Oddly, this does not represent the order in which they are most effective in a mentoring program.

- Unconsciously Incompetent
- Consciously Incompetent
- Consciously Competent
- Unconsciously Competent

UNCONSCIOUSLY INCOMPETENT: This person doesn't know that they don't know. They are not a candidate for this program—but may need help in learning to learn.

A famous story about Thomas Edison says that he used to test fresh new Engineers who wanted to work for him by putting them in a lab with a very unique and oddly shaped glass container. He would tell them to figure out the internal volume of the container. One time he watched a new graduate work out the problem by measuring all the diameters of the odd twists and turns of the glass and carefully making the calculations on his slide rule. When he presented the answer, Edison said, "You got the right answer, but I can't give you the job." The young man asked why and Edison responded by picking up the container, filling it with water and pouring into a graduated beaker, getting the answer in ten seconds. He said, "Son, I am glad you know the answer, but I'm afraid you just don't know the question." The Unconsciously Incompetent person does not know the question.

CONSCIOUSLY INCOMPETENT: This person knows that they don't know and is probably working to get better. They are a junior person with potential. Such an individual bears watching—and possibly a little testing. Don't make it something too hard, but it should be a little scary, something that makes them stretch. See what happens. This is a good candidate to groom for middle management and in future years, senior management.

CONSCIOUSLY COMPENTENT: This is where the high performers stand. They will be in middle to senior management already. These people are two-for-one sales, all by themselves. They are both someone to be seen as a candidate to RECEIVE mentoring—for senior management—and the ideal person to PROVIDE mentoring for the Consciously Incompetent candidate. They have a high level of skill and consistently perform very well.

This person knows what they are doing, and remembers learning how to do it. They are not as capable as the Unconsciously Competent person. Nevertheless, they know what they know and they know how to transfer it to someone else--if they are motivated and are not afraid of losing their own place. If they know that they are part of something stable and long term and can afford to create their replacement—they are who you need. Because that is exactly what you want them to do. You want them to create their own replacement. You want them to bring up someone that will ask management for less, has a longer run in front of them and to know that they are not committing financial suicide by doing so.

Not all people in this category will make good Mentors as communication skills and a desire to teach are critical components to performing well in the role. I know many individuals who are extremely skilled and have the sort of knowledge that is transferable—but who could never serve this role with someone successfully. You need to keep other variables in mind.

- Communication Skills
- A temperament that tends toward explaining what they are doing, rather than keeping things "close to their vest."
- Good people skills

The people that will make the best Mentors are already doing it. They are respected by their peers as someone that is very free with their knowledge. They are just informal about it as there is no real structure. Find those people and give them a mandate, the time and some guidance and they will do a wonderful job for you.

UNCONSCIOUSLY COMPENTENT: The highest level. This person doesn't even know why they are so good anymore. Everything is so effortless that it is unconscious. This is the best you can get and you may only meet a handful of people like this in your career. Don't touch this person! There are two very good reasons why.

1) They are not replaceable or reproducible. They really are unique. Give them whatever they want to keep them doing what they do and don't distract them!

2) The other reason to keep them away from a mentoring program is because they make terrible mentors. They have no idea how they are doing what they are doing. They just do it--better than anyone else. But, they can't teach what they themselves don't really understand. Treat them as the gift that they are and get out of their way. Additionally, the probable failure in their attempt at mentoring will mess with their confidence. You don't want that.

There is a lot written on mentoring techniques, so I will not belabor the point. You, the IT Managers, may not have the authority or sense of security to set up this sort of program. I understand. However, if you want to do it and you have the authority, it isn't really hard to begin. There is a lot of material already in publication about various approaches. This is not a new concept. Available resources will probably not be specifically IT management related, but you can apply their lessons. My goal in this article is not to present something you have never heard of before. Rather, it is to remind you of what you already know--and to demonstrate how critical it has become to use that information.

Projects are also an opportunity. If you allow less capable people to work with more capable people, or more accurately, tag along, relationships can be created. Make the project oriented nature of our industry, which is its greatest weakness in this regard, become a new strength.


About The Author

Barry Koplowitz founded http://www.interpathtech.com Interpath Technologies Corporation in 1999. He was an instructor for Network General and NAI traveling around the USA teaching for Sniffer University and is a executive consultant to large enterprise environments in the area of Processes-Network/Application Analysis and Troubleshooting. He is the writer and host of http://www.itunes.com/podcast?id=270919666 The Sniffer Guy podcast. http://www.interpathtech.com

MS Word - Hate To Type - Five Ways To Avoid Typing In Word

If, like many people of a certain age, you were thrown into the world of computers without ever having learned keyboarding (or as we used to call it, "typing"), you probably struggle with many everyday tasks you're expected to perform. Fortunately, Word comes with many features designed to limit the amount of typing you actually have to do.

1. AutoText

Have you ever noticed that when you start to type a day of the week, a little label appears that has the day you were typing followed by (Press ENTER to Insert)? This is an example of AutoText, a list of commonly-typed words and phrases that Word will complete for you if you press Enter.

2. Re-use similar documents

Make a new copy of the document you want to reuse by clicking on File, Save As, and giving it a different name. If you need to replace, say, every occurrence of the name "Smyth" with "Lynch", click on Edit in the Menu Bar and click on Replace.

In the Find and Replace window that appears, type Smyth in the Find what: box, type jones into the Replace with: box, and click on Find Next. Word will highlight the next occurrence of Smyth. If the highlighted occurrence of Smyth is one that you want to replace with Lynch, click on Replace, and Word will replace this occurrence of Smyth with Lynch and automatically highlight the next occurrence of Smyth. If you do not want to replace the occurrence of Smyth with Lynch, click Find Next and it will simply highlight the next occurrence of Smyth without making any changes. If you feel brave enough, go ahead and click Replace All: this will replace all occurrences of Smyth with Lynch without checking with you first. But be wary: if you have, say, the word Smythfield in your document, it will now say Lynchfield, without your being aware of it!

3. Make a template

Once you have typed and formatted a document that you will use over and over again with few changes, turn it into a template. Delete any text that will change every time you use the document, and click on File in the Menu Bar, click on Save As. In the File name: box type in the name you want to give to your template, and in the Save As Type: box just below the name, click on the dropdown list and select Document Template. You can now close your file. To find and use the template, click on File in the Menu Bar, click on New. On the right side of the screen, click on On my computer. The Templates window will appear, and your template will be displayed.

4. Better yet, use one of Word's ready-made templates

If you click on File, then click on New, you will be able to choose from the templates already stored on your computer (by clicking on On my computer), or from the hundreds available at the Microsoft website by clicking on Templates on Office Online.

5. Create some shortcuts to automatically turn into blocks of text that you often use

For example, create shortcuts for your company name; for your signature block; for the typical opening and closing sentences of emails or letters that you often send. To create the shortcut, first type and format the text exactly as you want it to look. Select the text, click on Tools in the Menu Bar, and click on Autocorrect Options. The Autocorrect window will appear. In the Replace: box, type in the shortcut you want to use (I suggest you always begin a shortcut with the forward slash /). Click the Add button; click the OK button. To use the shortcut, type it in and press Enter.

Frances Christ, certified Microsoft trainer for over 10 years, is the author of the book "Hot Tips for Excel', with easy-to-use tips for using Excel to work faster and easier. For a free weekly emailed computer tip or to order the book "Hot Tips for Excel", see website http://bitbybitlearningny.web.officelive.com/default.aspx

E-Commerce Strategy Development - Online Music Case Study

The UK online music market is a potentially huge market. Over the last eighteen months a great number of legitimate music services like ourselves have emerged to take advantage of the new music distribution model pioneered by Napster’s Shawn Fanning in 1999. Although we currently hold 35% of the online music market, we will have to continue to develop our strategy and online practises if we want to build our market share and compete with the big international competitors, namely the iTunes network. This document is both an analysis of our current strategy and a proposal to extend it.

Analysis of current system

The strategy we have developed over the last two years centres around selling songs on a price per song basis. This is one basic strategy that all online music vendors have adopted. One of the key factors in Apple’s success was its famously low 99 cents per song price tag. Because of this, we, like many other online music providers will find it very difficult to compete in pricing. According to popular legend, Apple secured this low price by refusing to sign the terms offered by the record labels then going ahead and launching iTunes anyway, daring the record labels to pull out. Labels have repeatedly tried to renegotiate this deal to no avail. None of the labels are willing to risk pulling out of the iTunes network and losing their foothold in the paid download business. As well as ‘pay per song’ there are a number of other tactics for selling music online. One method proposed by Ken Hertz, who represents Alanis Morrissette among other recording artists, is a flat fee collective licensing system. In flat fee collective licensing customers pay a fixed subscription fee to be allowed to download as much content as they want. This income is then divided among the content providers based on the percentage uptake of their content, as opposed to the unit uptake of their content (Fisher. WW, 2004). Fisher believes this model will lead to a reduced profit per song but an increased uptake of the service. This has already been shown to be an effective business model when applied to video rental. Having been pioneered by Blockbuster with their £13.99 online video rental service it has since been adopted by Amazon and Screen Select to provide similar services. I believe this model would be successful for us as it lets customers believe that by using the service regularly they are getting good value for money. Value for money has been a sticking point for music fans for a long time. Often, many people justify using illegal services like Emule or Limewire by claiming that the cost of purchasing music legally is excessive for

the product. The main problem with this model is that it would require the content owners (the record labels) to license their work to distributors.

Review of competitor activity

Our market is currently divided among a number of legal and illegal music services. These include services like Amazon where you can order a physical copy of a music CD online, services like the new Napster where you can search and download both free and paid for music and (semi) illegal services like Emule P2P where you can download anything you want for free.

Napster:

Napster has been involved in mainstream online digital distribution of music longer than any other company, and is arguably the most famous company in the field. Napster was launched as a free music sharing facility in 1999, and faced legal battles from the outset. It was finally forced to succumb to business pressure in 2001, at which point it began the six month process of re-inventing itself as a legal service. This brings us to the Napster we see today. Napster currently offers its customers three packages, ‘Napster To Go’ for £14.95 a month, Napster Membership for £9.95 and Napster lite. ‘Napster To Go’ and Napster Membership allows customers to download as much music as they like to their Computer. ‘Napster To Go’ also allows music to be downloaded via special terminals in high street stores and internet ready televisions direct to MP3 players. Napster Lite is Napster’s basic free package. It allows customers to pay for music on a per song basis at 79p. Customers can choose what they want by listening to 30 second segments of the content before they commit to purchasing. Napster lite also allows its users to access music stored on other Napster users shared space, but this is carefully screened to prevent piracy. One flaw in the Napster system is that in order to continue using the content you download, you need to keep paying for the service. This will to lead to consumer scepticism as people won’t like the idea of being trapped in the service to keep their music collection.

iTunes Music Store:

iTunes music store opened its door for service on 28th April 2003. Its strongest asset is its seamless operation with the Apple iPod. The iPod is the most popular MP3 player currently available and like most Apple products, usability was high on its priority list during development. The existing popularity of the iPod and iTunes combined made the process of extending the commercial attributes of the system a simple task. The music content is protected with Apple’s fair play digital rights management (DRM) but there are several hacks for this which Apple has so far been unsuccessful in blocking. Since its launch the range of features it offers has continued to expand. You can now buy gift certificates, download video and special content, create your own iTunes store and upload your own music via garage band, Apple’s music production suite. By allowing their users to produce and sell their own music apple has opened the door for their service to be used in many novel ways. For example Stanford has recently started using iTunes to freely distribute special academic and promotional content centred around learning and living on campus.

P2P networks:

The P2P networks are arguably the greatest threat to our model of business. Despite frequent law suites and attempts at sabotage record labels have been unable shut them down. A peer to peer network is basically a distributed file system where the shared content on every connected computer gets grouped together into one super directory. A search facility then allows connected users to find and download what they want to their local shared directory. As content gets spread across the network it becomes more accessible to other users. From the users perspective this has the advantage of being free, but the disadvantage of being unreliable. Content is often mis-labelled or incomplete. There are a number of tactics employed by content owners to further disrupt P2P activity including suing downloader’s, distributing mis-labelled content, and distributing content that harms a downloader’s computer. Record labels have also attempted to stop piracy at the source, by preventing users from uploading their music to their computers. However, this method has proven unsuccessful as it can be easily circumvented using real time encoding software, which encodes the music straight off the microphone jack. Record labels have also been sued by consumer rights groups and had their reputations tarnished over the legality of this tactic.

Online CD sales:

Among many consumers a consensus seems to have formed that paid music comes with CD and downloaded music is free. I personally like to have something physical to own when I purchase music. For this reason online CD sales are still very popular. CDNOW, Amazon and HMV online are some of the most popular retailers for this in the UK. A CD has the advantage of being a more tangible asset than a download and is therefore better suited to being given as a present, which will make a big difference to sales over the holiday season. It also doesn’t require the same expertise to use as a downloaded track. A CD essentially works like a little metal version of a vinyl. It is self explanatory to every generation how to make a CD player play a CD where as many people, particularly in older generations don’t know how to use a computer. This gives a CD a much wider potential audience. It may be beneficial for us to also consider selling music on physical media.

E-Commerce strategy

In order to plan our future direction we need to take stock of our current position. We can do this using a SWOT analysis.

Strengths:

1) We currently hold 35% of the UK downloaded music market, in business terms this equates to a majority. This is a large base of customers who will hopefully stay with us if we can continue to extend our services to compete with those of our competitors.

2) With the help of this plan we have a number of new revenue streams that we will hopefully implement soon. These will, if implemented properly, lead to an increase in our revenue and customer base.

Weaknesses:

1) We have not attempted to compete in the international downloaded music market. It makes no sense for us to only sell to UK customers. Traditional geographic limitations don’t apply on the internet. The complication of extending our system to sell music in many currencies is small compared to the benefit of increasing our potential customer base a hundred fold.

2) We don’t yet have systems in place to deal with things like gift vouchers or coupons that could be used for promotion.

Opportunities:

1) We current only allow our customers to purchase one song at a time off us. We could also allow them to purchase whole albums or customised content off us.

2) Although iTunes has secured a much better per song price than we could, they do not currently offer a subscription service. Our second most popular competitor, Napster does offer a subscription service but their customers have to continue paying for the service to continue using the content they’ve downloaded. If we can negotiate a subscription service that doesn’t lock the customer in we will be seen as the superior service.

3) iTunes is never advertised by itself. It’s always ‘iPod + iTunes’. If we can adopt a similar music player, develop our software to work seamlessly with it and negotiate cross promotion we will be doubling our exposure and simplifying the use of our service for the customers. This would also allow us to extend our service in a similar way to ‘Napster To Go’. We could begin to sell our content in high street stores using dedicated terminals or via internet television. This would allow our customer base to grow beyond the computer literate.

Threats:

1) File sharing networks offer the same service as us for free. Attempts to close these services down have so far been mostly ineffective. Although the close of Napster in 2001 was highly publicised it was ineffective as by this point many more services with more tenable legal position had emerged.

2) Many people expect to get something tangible like a CD or DVD when they buy music. One of the major tasks that faces the downloaded music industry is convincing people of the value of an intangible asset like a computer file.

3) Our primary competitors, Napster and iTunes continue have a larger international customer base than us. They have more exposure and more assets to extend their service with. We can’t hope to compete by trying to out compete in existing models, we need to develop new methods of selling music.

4) Our primary competitor, iTunes, has negotiated excellent prices with the content providers. Without the same economies of scale on our side it will be difficult to make the same deal.

In order to build what we have achieved so far I have compiled the following list of extension to our service that we could implement in the near future:

1) Develop a subscription service – We should develop a subscription service based on flat fee collective licensing that doesn’t trap customers in the same way as Napster’s services. This will be seen as a superior product by our target audience as it allows them to get good value for money from the service.

2) Custom CD service - In order to take advantage of gift buying in the holiday season, we should provide a service where customers select a set of tracks to be put on a CD or DVD, design a cover, and maybe add a personal message. The CD will then be burned and the packaging will be printed and sent to the customer for an additional fee. Basically what I’m proposing is a professionally produced version of a mix tape. This provides an extra income for us on top of the audio track sales and gives the customer something physical to give as a present. This is a service that none of the music-download companies I have found currently offers.

3) Ally ourselves with a popular MP3 player – A big part of iTunes success is its strong links and seamless operation with the iPod. By adopting a similar MP3 player, possibly the iRiver, we could tightly integrate our software with it, negotiate cross promotion and develop special terminals to sell our content in music stores, super markets, airports, train stations or anywhere else people are likely to be in need of quick entertainment.

4) Develop our international presence – We should extend the functionality of our site to allow it to sell music in many currencies. By accepting Euros and dollars we would be extending our potential customer base to twelve European countries, America and a number of smaller countries. This is potentially ten times as many customers.

5) Host a music community – We should allow customers to upload and sell their own content, taking a percentage of the income for administration. We could get a much better percentage of income from independent artists than we could off a major label with bargaining power and experience. Some of the artists we host may well end up becoming the next big thing. This would be great advertising for our company.

6) Incorporate gift vouchers, coupons and special offers – Gift vouchers are a popular Christmas present. Coupons distributed in the music culture magazines or by email like “Buy two tracks, get one free” or “First five tracks free when you sign up” would allow people to try our service before committing to it.

7) We could extend our system to recognise the sort of music a particular customer is likely to want based on past purchases. This would allow us to promote the right content to the right users so long as they’re logged in. Amazon has a similar technology built into their website and it has prompted me to buy books and DVD’s I wouldn’t have otherwise found. People often have very specific music tastes, so once we ascertain which genres of music a customer likes it will be a simple task to predict what they will purchase in the future.

Social/legal challenges

If we are to start selling internationally how should we approach pricing? The relative value of currencies changes daily. If for instance we were to offer our subscription service for £19.99 GBP per month, at the time of writing this would exchange to $35.00 USD and €30.00 EUR. When the exchange rate changes what should our policy be about updating prices? A policy that results in a rapidly changing price scheme will confuse our customers but a policy where prices can’t change quickly could result in us offering our service for too much or too little financial return. Another option would be for us to offer our service at different prices in different countries. This would allow us to better match the pricing trends in the local music industry. However, if we choose this option there is a possibility that our customers would start signing up in the region that has the lowest prices.

In order to implement a subscription service we will first need to negotiate a collective licensing scheme with the content owners. As discussed earlier a collective licensing scheme will likely lead to a reduced profit per track downloaded but an increased uptake of the service. We therefore have to convince the content owners that this model is potentially more profitable than the current model of setting a fixed price per unit or collection of music content.

We will need to protect the rights of the content owners by incorporating anti-piracy measures. Preventing piracy is a very difficult task that no one has yet mastered. Every time a new anti-piracy measure is introduced it is usually circumvented within three months (Moser, 2001). Apple currently uses fair play digital rights management and Napster currently uses Windows Media digital rights management. Both of these systems have already been circumvented. Content owners might not want a new service to operate on a security system that’s no longer effective.


About The Author

Sam Harnett MSc mBCS

Pixeko Studio – Web Developers in Kent

http://www.pixeko.com

Ecommerce Implementation - A case study

Technical Report

The e-commerce implementation at CanCric

Sam Harnett

Document Introduction

This document presents the analysis of an e-commerce implementation in the CanCric, a Canterbury based company that sells cricket products to sports stores around the UK. This document will aim to give a more inside picture of the e-commerce implementation the management has envisaged and will provide a basis for the feasibility analysis of the project.

Document Audience

This document has been prepared primarily for the senior management. However, as there are no current employees who have sufficient in-depth expertise to develop the application ‘in-house’, it is likely that a commercial service provider will be contracted for the job. This document will provide the basic understanding of “what to do” for the contractor.

Document Contents

This document contains analysis of the CanCric e-commerce implementation and following artefacts will be included in the overall report.

· Project Introduction

· Project Benefits

· System Requirements

· Implementation Plan

· Risk Assessment

· Conclusion

Project Introduction

CanCric is a Canterbury based company that sells cricket products to sports stores around the UK. Their products include crickets equipment (gloves, helmets, balls, bats, pads, shocks etc.) and memorabilia (flags, T-Shirts, prints etc.)

CanCric is a market leader because of its high quality products and listening to its customers. The company wants to further improve the quality of its products and create a stronger relationship with its customers by implementing an e-commerce system.

Project Benefits

The project will bring following envisaged benefits to the company:

1. The new website will provide a better marketing place for the company to capture much more business by publicizing their products on internet.

2. The company will be able to increase its profit by the increasing sales. Increase in sales is part and parcel with the e-commerce implementation.

3. The company will be able to expand the size of the market from regional to national or national to international. Currently the company is only selling its products within the UK.

4. The company will be able to decrease costs in different areas elicited below:

a. Costs of creating the product

b. Cost of Marketing since online marketing is cheaper than other print media

c. Costs of distribution in few cases, like providing online brochures will reduce cost of printing and shipping information to prospective clients

d. Costs of processing orders from the customers are the most important cost reduction the project will achieve. The online application will ease the repeating activities and information processing for the overall order processing.

e. The cost of handling customer phone calls will also be reduced by providing online discussion forums and suggestion boxes which most of the customers will willfully accept.

f. Online presence of information will decrease the manual handling of sales inquiries, thus reducing a lot of cost in terms of time and resources.

g. E-commerce project implementations can be enhanced to perform thousands of other operations to provide the user with very rich information. One is the inventory forecast. E-commerce systems can be enhanced to forecast the sales in the upcoming months by analyzing the past trends. This can greatly reduce the cost of extra inventory management.

5. Electronic content management services will be provided to reduce the cost of content retrieval and provide security and controlled access rights features.

6. Websites provide easy change management. The point here is that with a web site, you can have the prices listed, and change them - you simply edit the web page - whereas in a printed catalogue you are stuck with the expense of printing a new version if you need to change many of the prices.

7. Websites enables customization of products if CanCric ever want to support it.

8. The project will enable CanCric to build more collaborative and stronger relationships with its suppliers. This includes streamlining and automating the underlying business processes, enabling areas such as

a. Online procurement of material

b. Replenishment

c. Information Management

d. Reduced inventories due to efficient information exchange

e. Reduced delivery delays.

System Requirements

Given below are the requirements of the system, listed with respect to the modules in the system

Web Site

1. The website of the system should be very user friendly

2. The website should show the overall mission statement and vision of the company

3. The website should clearly give a complete catalogue of all products the company is manufacturing, along with the pictures of the product.

4. The website should also highlight the future plans of CanCric about the product expansions.

5. The search functionality should be provided on the website

6. The website search should be to display the closest results to the search strings

7. The search functionality should support input of multiple search criteria.

8. The functionality to display the whole site map of the website should be provided.

9. The website should also be maintaining the sponsored players’ information

10. The sponsored players’ information should be shown in the column form

Discussion Boards

11. The website should also have functionality of online discussion boards

12. The registered users should be able to participate in the discussions

13. Any visitor can see the discussions

14. The system should be able to maintain discussions in the form of tree and chronological order

15. User should be able to delete the post from discussion boards

16. User should not be able to edit the discussion posts

17. Administrator should be able to administer the discussion boards.

Online Order Processing

18. The website should allow users to maintain their user profiles.

19. The website should make sure that the user information will not be misused.

20. The website should provide the facility to the user to pre-enter the credit card information of the user for the future use by the user

21. The website should allow the user to maintain a shopping cart along with its profile

22. The user should be able to add cricket products in its shopping cart.

23. The user should be shown the overall cost of the current selection in the shopping cart

24. The user should be able to delete entries from the shopping cart

25. The user should be able to preview the shopping cart any time it want to

26. The user should be able to save the current shopping cart for future use

27. The facility to buy the items in the shopping cart should be provided with complete security measures.

28. The shopping cart should be empty after the transaction

29. The delivery options should be shown to the user.

30. The user should be given option to choose a courier company of its choice.

31. The user should be able to change the billing details any time during the whole procedure of online order processing.

32. The payment options available should include:

* Payment through personal credit card
* Payment through company credit card
* Payment through the monthly billing option

Research and development

33. The option to host a online survey should be provided

34. The data collected from surveys should be available for reporting and analysis purposes

35. Support to generate reports on given criteria should be provided in the system

36. Multiple types of reports should be available in the system

37. The sales data, the visit history on the websites and the survey results; all should be available for the analysis purposes.

38. For the analysis purposes, application should support technologies like data mining and data warehousing.

Implementation Plan

The iteration from current business to new computerized system will take following steps to be completed:

1. Training of resources who will be using the new application

2. Development of confidence for the new system among the CanCric employees

3. Web Hosting Plan


Web Hosting

E-Commerce Web hosting is adding an e-commerce application to a Web hosting package, which is what allows you to have a store on the Internet. To have a Web site or store on the Internet we will need a Web server. Unfortunately, owning a Web server can be very costly and requires technical expertise that CanCric lacks. So, we will have to outsource this management and hosting to some Web Hosting Company. Web hosting companies will provide the equipment and other technical resources.

I have identified these ecommerce packages and hosting plans as suitable for CanCric’s needs.

Hosting:

1. http://www.bluehost.com – This site offers 10 GB of storage and 250GB of transfer each month as well as SSL, PHP and MySQL, which are commonly required for a lot of ecommerce applications. It also has an excellent account administration system that incorporates management of databases and private server settings. The package also comes with free wiki and forum software that can be easily integrated. Bluehost is available from £30 per year.

2. http://www.newnet.co.uk – Newnet offers hosing packages from £57 per year and collocation from £150. Although our needs don’t require co-location yet, having the option to upgrade to co-location on the same premises will be an asset. The host offers scripting and SSL services necessary for ecommerce and a managed back up timetable to secure our businesses data.

3. http://www.ukip.co.uk – UKIP is a broadband provider that also offers hosting services. They offer the same hosting scripting services as Bluehost and Newnet, they also offer support for active server pages and java server pages which will allow us to consider a wider range of ecommerce applications.

Ecommerce:

1. http://www.actinic.co.uk – Actinic is one of the most popular systems currently available with over 10,000 users in 40 countries. Actinic can integrate with dreamweaver MX and has a range of features not just suitable to the ecommerce but also to many other facets of business management such as stock monitoring. Actinic Business is suitable for our level of development as cost £799 per license. Actinic is also capable of both B2B and B2C practises.

2. http://www.storefront.net – Storefront is an API that can be integrated into dreamweaver or front page or used independently. It provides mechanisms form displaying products and managing a shopping cart. It is designed to allow maximum creativity for the designer while still taking part of the technicalities such as shopping and paying.

Risk Assessment

There are also a few risks associated with the e-commerce system implementation at CanCric, which must be mitigated to make the project successful.

1. The hardware and network infrastructure should be sufficient to run and access the system

2. A level of confidence must be built within the company for the usage of the new system. The employees are expected to resist to such change in the organizations.

3. Customer fear of personal information being used wrongly. Such issues should be catered in the system.

4. Rules and regulations must be redefined according the new system.

5. Security and privacy must be handled carefully since the CanCric system involves online transaction support.

Conclusion

The e-commerce implementation will definitely provide CanCric an excellent opportunity to capture the international markets of cricket goods. However, there are few things we should take care of; first of all we must avoid over-expecting e-commerce lest we create a backlash when its promises are not fulfilled. E-commerce will not, in and of itself, correct all the businesses problems. Secondly, the benefits of e-commerce will be restricted if we do not recognize its full system implications, and instead implement it in limited ways that only partially meet its requirements.


About The Author

Sam Harnett MSc mBCS

Pixeko Studio – Web Developers in Kent

http://www.pixeko.com