Net - Article

Google Acquires SocialDeck - What Does This Mean For Google’s Future?

2010-10-24T09:44:00.000-07:00

It seems that in recent times, Google has made some mistakes when coming up with new programs. Google Accelerator, Google Answers, and Google Wave are all examples of programs that flopped. And with the recent merger of Yahoo and Bing, Google might be losing its grip on the search engine monopoly. However, it seems that Google may have something up its sleeve. Recent acquisitions reveal that the Internet giant has big plans for their social network platform that is currently under development. And it seems they are taking every measure to ensure that this next project of theirs won't be a flop, and can even rival social media giant Facebook.

This is evident by the fact that Google recently purchased social gaming developer SocialDeck, which is one of five acquisitions made in August. The popular games created by SocialDeck, such as Pet Hero and Color Connect, are available across a variety of platforms, including Blackberry, iPhone, and Facebook. SocialDeck uses their own social gaming platform technology, which enables simultaneous game play across mobile devices and social networks.

With the acquisition of SocialDeck, Google will be able to integrate SocialDeck's games into their future social network. In addition, Google is looking to either purchase or work out deals with other social gaming companies which work over multiple platforms, such as Zynga, Playdom, and Playfish, which all currently produce games popular on Facebook, such as Mafia Wars.

It seems Google may have some big plans in store. Chris Morrison of InsideSocialGames.com mentioned the possibility that Google is working on a viral platform for the web and its own mobile devices, like Android. Earlier this summer, Google purchased social application developer Slide, and also has purchased other companies involved in social gaming and other aspects of social networking. Just days before acquiring SocialDeck, Google purchased Angstro, which developed Knx.to, an address book that combines a user's connections from social networks. Google also has acquired Jambool, which makes "virtual currency," and visual shopping engine Like.com. Each acquisition is another piece to the puzzle of what Google is planning.

Google's activity has been generating a lot of buzz over the Internet. Many speculate, "Will this social network," rumored to be called Google Me, "be the ultimate social network? Will it dethrone Facebook as king of social media?" While the growing popularity of Facebook caused many people to flee from MySpace, there is no guarantee we’ll see people fleeing from Facebook to join Google Me in the same manner, but it's certainly a possibility. With confusing and ever-changing privacy policies, some Facebook users might be eager to make the transition to a new social network. There are also rumors that the way Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was negatively portrayed in box-office smash The Social Network might turn away Facebook users if they have another option for social media.

While some are predicting success for Google, others are not so optimistic. Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Land, has taken note of Google's unsuccessful attempts at social media, such as Google Buzz, and doesn't foresee Google Me as an instant success. He states, "So far, Google's failed to have a hit in the social-networking space, swinging and largely missing with both Orkut and Buzz. It's unclear whether a third, new service (or a renamed Buzz) will do that much better."

Negative press regarding Google Buzz alone has caused some to be doubtful that Google can gain a foothold in the realm of social media. Harry McCracken, the founder of tech site Technologizer.com, believes that the failure of Buzz shows that people may not want their relationship with Google to be a foundation for social networking.

When Google's social platform emerges, possibly later this year, we'll see how these applications integrate and whether or not Google will achieve the success it's after. If Google has made wise choices and can provide a social site that provides users what they want, and has features not found on Facebook, including clear-cut privacy policies, Google Me just might prove to not be another Google Wave.

Download E-Book Ajax in Oracle JDeveloper

2009-04-17T11:57:00.000-07:00

Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) is a web technique used to transfer data between a browser and server asynchronously without posting the web page to the server. "Asynchronously" implies that the processing of the web page continues while the Ajax request is sent to the server and a response is received from the server. The web page, or section(s) of the web page, is refreshed with the Ajax response without reposting the web page. Ajax has the following advantages over non-Ajax web applications.

- Reduced response time and reduced server load, as the complete web page is not reposted.

- Reduced bandwidth of web applications as only data is transferred and the HTML format is applied in the browser.

- Separation of data, format and style.

The book covers web search and RSS Feed with Ajax as well as form validation with Ajax frameworks for Java, JSP, JSF, and PHP. It discusses using Ajax in Oracle JDeveloper and is IDE based. JDeveloper has the following advantages over Eclipse IDE.

- JDeveloper 11g provides an integrated JavaScript Editor for Ajax/Web development.

- It also provides a PHP extension.

- JDeveloper has a built-in support for JSF and for JDBC.

Download Now

Dowbload E-book BSD Hacks

2009-04-13T12:31:00.000-07:00

Looking for a unique set of practical tips, tricks, and tools for administrators and power users of BSD systems? From hacks to customize the user environment to networking, securing the system, and optimization, BSD Hacks takes a creative approach to saving time and accomplishing more with fewer resources...

Download Now

Download e-book 3D Modeling and Animation: : Synthesis and Analysis Techniques for the Human Body

2009-04-10T09:02:00.000-07:00

3D Modeling and Animation: Synthesis and Analysis Techniques for the Human Body covers the areas of modeling and animating 3D synthetic human models at a level that is useful to students, researchers, software developers and content generators...
Download Now

Foundations of Mac OS X Leopard Security (Foundations)

2009-04-09T15:13:00.000-07:00

Foundations of Mac OS X Leopard Security is written in part as a companion to the SANS Institute course for Mac OS X. It contains detailed Mac OS X security information, but also walkthroughs on securing systems. By using the SANS Institute course as a sister to the book, the focus includes both the beginning home user and the seasoned security professional not accustomed to the Mac, and allows this title to establish the “best practices” for Mac OS X for a wide audience. Additionally, the authors of the book are seasoned Mac and security professionals, having built many of the largest network infrastructures for Apple and spoken at both DefCon and Black Hat on OS X security.

What you’ll learn

* Security overview
* Walkthroughs to secure systems
* Walkthroughs and suggestions for third–party applications on systems
* Mac forensics
* Mac hacking
* Apple wireless security
* Mac OS X security

Who is this book for?

A wide audience of users, power users, and administrators who wish to make sure their Mac platform is secure.
Related Titles

* Getting StartED with Mac OS X Leopard
* Mac OS X Leopard: Beyond the Manual
* Foundation Mac OS X Web Development
*
* AppleScript: A Comprehensive Guide to Scripting and Automation on Mac OS X
Download Now

Apple Training Series : Mac OS X Support Essentials (2nd Edition) (Apple Training)

2009-04-09T15:04:00.000-07:00

The only Apple-certified book on Mac OS X, this updated best-seller will take you deep inside the latest big-cat operating system, covering everything from networking technologies to system administration, customizing the operating system, command-line programming, and more...

Download Now

Download E-book Paypal hack

2009-04-09T14:26:00.000-07:00

If you've bought or sold items through eBay, or through hundreds of other online sites, then you're familiar with PayPal, the online payment service.

With PayPal, a valid email address, and a credit card or bank account, you can easily send and receive payments online. Not a bank or financial institution itself, PayPal describes its service as one that builds on the financial infrastructure of bank accounts and credit cards, and using advanced propriety fraud prevention systems, creates a safe, global, real-time payment solution. Put simply, PayPal provides the means for people to conduct financial transactions online, instantly and securely.

But there's more to PayPal than meets the eye. PayPal Hacks shows you how to make the most of PayPal to get the most out of your online business or transactions. Authors Shannon Sofield of Payloadz.com and PayPal evangelist David Nielsen guide you through the rigors of using and developing with PayPal. Whether you're building an ecommerce site using PayPal as a transaction provider, or simply trying to pay for an eBay auction without getting burned, PayPal Hacks will give you the skinny on this leading global online payment service.

The collection of tips and tricks in PayPal Hacks shows you how to find or even build the right tools for using PayPal to buy and sell on eBay or as a transaction provider for ecommerce on your own site. Written for all PayPal users, from those just starting out to those developing sophisticated ecommerce sites, this book begins with the basics such as setting up your account, then moves quickly into specific tips and tools for buyers, sellers, and developers.

With PayPal Hacks, you can:

* Learn extra steps to help protect yourself while buying or selling on eBay
* Save time and money with advanced tips and undocumented features
* Learn dozens of easy-to-follow procedures to help you request and receive payments and fill orders
* Use PayPal to handle subscriptions, affiliate systems, and donations
* Create and customize your customers' checkout process
* Effortlessly integrate PayPal's shopping cart system into your own website
* Implement digital fulfillment with Instant Payment Notification (IPN) and Payment Data Transfer (PDT)
* Develop and distribute ecommerce applications with the PayPal API

Each hack consists of a task to be accomplished or a creative solution to a problem, presented in a clear, logical, and task-oriented format. PayPal Hacks provides the tools and details necessary to make PayPal more profitable, more flexible, and more convenient.

Download Now

Download E-book Google Hack

2009-04-09T14:18:00.000-07:00

Google Hacks is a collection of industrial-strength, real-world, tested solutions to practical problems. This concise book offers a variety of interesting ways for power users to mine the enormous amount of information that Google has access to, and helps you have fun while doing it. You'll learn clever and powerful methods for using the advanced search interface and the new Google API, including how to build and modify scripts that can become custom business applications based on Google. Google Hacks contains 100 tips, tricks and scripts that you can use to become instantly more effective in your research. Each hack can be read in just a few minutes, but can save hours of searching for the right answers.
Download Now

Download E-book BSD Hacks

2009-04-09T14:12:00.000-07:00

Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days, Second Edition

2009-04-08T20:19:00.000-07:00

Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days, Second Edition is a hands-on guide to learning object-oriented programming design and analysis...

Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days, Second Edition is a hands-on guide to learning object-oriented programming design and analysis.

Download Now

Teach Yourself Linux in 24 Hours

2009-04-08T20:13:00.000-07:00

While this guide won't make you an expert in Linux, it will explain how to get Red Hat Linux to work and how to do basic things with it...

Organized into 24 lessons that take about an hour apiece, this book helps you ensure that your system can handle Linux and walks you through the process of installing Red Hat Linux and the Xfree86 windowing system. Ball's coverage of installation is rather weak, through paying only cursory attention to this confusing process. From there, however, Ball hits his stride in detailing the ins and outs of file-system commands, shells, Internet connections (by PPP), various Internet tools, and administration. For example, in the lesson on graphics programs, Ball explores the most popular graphics program of recent memory: the GNU Image Manipulation Program, affectionately known to its users as the GIMP. Similarly, he covers the popular but cryptic Emacs in his lesson on text editing. In brief, this book introduces you to Linux and the world of Unix tools in a palatable, easy-to-follow way

Download Now

Beginning Microsoft Office Live: Build Your Own Web Site Quickly and Easily (Beginning from Novice to Professional)

2009-04-07T22:38:00.000-07:00

Having a web site is almost mandatory whether you are an individual promoting yourself, part of a company showcasing its products or services, or even a member of a band promoting its music, for instance; but unless you want to hire an expert to put your web site together, you’ll need a good deal of experience and knowledge of web technologies to make your site look professional and convincing...

Microsoft Office Live provides a complete solution for creating attractive and effective web sites through a series of easy-to-use interfaces. The basic version is free, and you don’t need any coding knowledge to start making use of it.

Learn all the basic functions with Beginning Microsoft Office Live and get advice on how to improve site usability for your visitors, as well as explore more advanced topics. Your web site will soon be better designed and even more effective once you’ve mastered the more sophisticated aspects, such as sending e-mail to and from your site and adding dynamic functionality.

* Create your own web site without any coding knowledgeâ€”ANYONE can use Microsoft Office Live!
* Learn how to use all the standard functions.
* Improve your web siteâ€”you’ll easily grasp the more advanced topics, such as improving site design and usability, e-mail, and adding dynamic functionality.

What you’ll learn
# What the different parts of the Office Live family are and its capabilities
# How to sign up for Office Live and get a domain for your web site
# What the most important aspects of creating a web site are
# How to create a new site and add pages to it
# How to manage resources such as images and documents
# How to improve your site’s look and feel
# How to make web site easier for your visitors to use
# How to make your site easier to find on the Web
# How to send e-mails to and from your site
# How to manage your site effectively
# How to add dynamic functionality to your site using JavaScript
Who is this book for?

This book (and Office Live itself) is for anyone who wants to create a web site but doesn’t have much in the way of coding knowledge

Download Now

Microsoft Office 2003 Step by Step

2009-04-07T21:46:00.000-07:00

Discover the new features of Word and master the fundamentals for creating great-looking documents. Topics include using styles, templates, and Smart Tags; formatting, editing, and publishing your ideas in print and online; organizing information and adding impact with tables, chartes and graphics

Download Now

First Look 2007 Microsoft Office System

2009-04-07T21:27:00.000-07:00

What’s inside the newest release of the Microsoft Office system? How will the new interface change the way you work and make you more self-sufficient and effective? How can your business put the new workflow capabilities to work right away in this new world of work? With FIRST LOOK MICROSOFT OFFICE 2007, well-known author and columnist Katherine Murray gives you an exclusive introduction to the next generation of Microsoft Office.
You’ll get an expert overview of new and enhanced applications, features, and capabilities in addition to advance insights and straight talk from the Office product group, Discover the new user interface and revolutionize the way you use Office; learn about the Live Preview feature that allows you to see how a format will look before you make a change; introduce yourself to the new collaboration products and services, including Microsoft Office Live Meeting and Microsoft Office Groove. In addition, learn about enhancements to existing ! Office applications, including new graphics capabilities in Microsoft Office PowerPoint®, easier database creation with Microsoft Office Access, easier time-management capabilities in Microsoft Office Outlook®, and improved charting capabilities in Microsoft Office Excel®. It’s an exclusive, guided preview for business decision makers, early adopters, and users—and anyone else who wants to start planning and hit the ground running with the next generation of Office.

Download Now

2007 Microsoft Office System Inside Out

2009-04-07T21:03:00.000-07:00

This book packs hundreds of time-saving solutions, troubleshooting tips, and workarounds for using the 2007 release of Microsoft Office. Whether you are upgrading from Office 97 or Office 2003, youll be able to dig in to the work-ready resources that help you take your Microsoft Office experience to the next level. This comprehensive guide to the 2007 Microsoft Office suites helps you navigate new features and capabilities in the Office programs you use everyday, including the new, easy-to-use user interface and new formatting and editing capabilities. Youll learn how to use the new graphics features in Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office PowerPoint, create a database with Microsoft Office Access, and manage tasks by using Microsoft Office Outlook and more.

Download Now

50 seriously useful Windows 7 tips

2009-03-04T11:36:00.000-08:00

Read on for 50 ways in which Windows 7 will make a real difference to your PC.

1. Problem Steps Recorder
As the local PC guru you're probably very used to friends and family asking for help with their computer problems, yet having no idea how to clearly describe what's going on. It's frustrating, but Microsoft feels your pain, and Windows 7 will include an excellent new solution in the Problem Steps Recorder.

When any app starts misbehaving under Windows 7 then all your friends need do is click Start, type PSR and press [Enter], then click Start Record. If they then work through whatever they're doing then the Problem Steps Recorder will record every click and keypress, take screen grabs, and package everything up into a single zipped MHTML file when they're finished, ready for emailing to you. It's quick, easy and effective, and will save you hours of troubleshooting time.

2. Burn images
Windows 7 finally introduces a feature that other operating systems have had for years - the ability to burn ISO images to CDs or DVDs. And it couldn't be much easier to use. Just double-click the ISO image, choose the drive with the blank disc, click Burn and watch as your disc is created.

3. Create and mount VHD files
Microsoft's Virtual PC creates its virtual machine hard drives in VHD files, and Windows 7 can now mount these directly so you can access them in the host system. Click Start, type diskmgmt.msc and press [Enter], then click Action > Attach VHD and choose the file you'd like to mount. It will then appear as a virtual drive in Explorer and can be accessed, copied or written just like any other drive.

Click Action > Create VHD and you can now create a new virtual drive of your own (right-click it, select Initialise Disk, and after it's set up right-click the unallocated space and select New Simple Volume to set this up). Again, you'll be left with a virtual drive that behaves just like any other, where you can drag and drop files, install programs, test partitioning software or do whatever you like. But it's actually just this VHD file on your real hard drive which you can easily back up or share with others. Right-click the disk (that's the left-hand label that says "Disk 2" or whatever) and select Detach VHD to remove it.

The command line DISKPART utility has also been upgraded with tools to detach a VHD file, and an EXPAND command to increase a virtual disk's maximum size. Don't play around with this unless you know what you're doing, though - it's all too easy to trash your system.

4. Troubleshoot problems
If some part of Windows 7 is behaving strangely, and you don't know why, then click Control Panel > Find and fix problems (or 'Troubleshooting') to access the new troubleshooting packs. These are simple wizards that will resolve common problems, check your settings, clean up your system and more.

5. Startup repair
Windows 7 is more reliable than we'd expect from a beta, but you still might run into problems, and the worst might stop it from booting. Even into Safe Mode. And that's very bad news if you downloaded Windows 7, as you've no CD or DVD to use for re-installation. Which is why you need to click Start > Maintenance > Create a System Repair Disc, right now, and let Windows 7 build a bootable emergency disc. If the worst does happen then it could be the only way to get your PC running again.

6. Take control
Tired of the kids installing dubious software or running applications you'd rather they left alone? AppLocker is a new Windows 7 feature that ensures users can only run the programs you specify. Don't worry, that's easier to set up than it sounds: you can create a rule to allow everything signed by a particular publisher, so choose Microsoft, say, and that one rule will let you run all signed Microsoft applications. Launch GPEDIT.MSC and go to Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Application Control Policies > AppLocker to get a feel for how this works.

7. Calculate more
At first glance the Windows 7 calculator looks just like Vista's version, but explore the Mode menu and you'll see powerful new Statistics and Programmer views. And if you're clueless about bitwise manipulation, then try the Options menu instead. This offers many different unit conversions (length, weight, volume and more), date calculations (how many days between two dates?), and spreadsheet-type templates to help you calculate vehicle mileage, mortgage rates and more.

Don't take any Windows 7 applet at face value, then - there are some very powerful new features hidden in the background. Be sure to explore every option in all Windows applets to ensure you don't miss anything important.

8. Switch to a projector
Windows 7 now provides a standard way to switch your display from one monitor to another, or a projector - just press Win+P or run DisplaySwitch.exe and choose your preferred display. (This will have no effect if you've only one display connected.)

9. Automatic PC clean up
If inexperienced PC users sometimes access your system then you'll know that, well, this can cause problems. Leave them alone for too long and they'll mess up your settings, install dubious programs, delete important files and cause all kinds of havoc. But Microsoft feels your pain, and Windows 7 will include a possible solution: PC Safeguard. This lets your less technical users log on, play games, use the browser or chat on an instant messenger, say, just as normal. But when they log off, any settings they've changed are undone, and any files they've saved are deleted. Which means it's much more difficult to mess up your PC.

This isn't a new technology. Microsoft have made their Shared Computer Toolkit (aka Windows SteadyState) freely available for years, and this does exactly the same thing (it's more configurable, too). This is the first time it's been fully integrated with Windows, though, which makes it much easier to use.

To give PC Safeguard a try, go to Control Panel > User Accounts and Family Safety > User Accounts > Manage another account > Create a new account. Enter an account name, click Create, then click the account, select Set Up PC Safeguard > Turn on PC Safeguard > Apply. Log on as that user, try downloading and installing a program, then restart and log on again to confirm that the software has gone.

10. Understanding System Restore
Using System Restore in previous versions of Windows has been something of a gamble. There's no way of telling which applications or drivers it might affect - you just have to try it and see.

Windows 7 is different. Right-click Computer, select Properties > System Protection > System Restore > Next, and choose the restore point you'd like to use. Click the new button to 'Scan for affected programs' and Windows will tell you which (if any) programs and drivers will be deleted or recovered by selecting this restore point.

11. Set the time zone
System administrators will appreciate the new command line tzutil.exe utility, which lets you set a PC's time zone from scripts. If you wanted to set a PC to Greenwich Mean Time, for instance, you'd use the command

tzutil /s "gmt standard time"

The command "tzutil /g" displays the current time zone, "tzutil /l" lists all possible time zones, and "tzutil /?" displays details on how the command works.

12. Calibrate your screen
The colours you see on your screen will vary depending on your monitor, graphics cards settings, lighting and more, yet most people use the same default Windows colour profile. And that means a digital photo you think looks perfect might appear very poor to everybody else. Fortunately Windows 7 now provides a Display Colour Calibration Wizard that helps you properly set up your brightness, contrast and colour settings, and a ClearType tuner to ensure text is crisp and sharp. Click Start, type DCCW and press [Enter] to give it a try.

13. Right-click everything
At first glance Windows 7 bears a striking resemblance to Vista, but there's an easy way to begin spotting the differences - just right-click things.

Right-click an empty part of the desktop, for instance, and you'll find a menu entry to set your screen resolution. No need to go browsing through the display settings any more.

Right-click the Explorer icon on the taskbar for speedy access to common system folders: Documents, Pictures, the Windows folder, and more.

And if you don't plan on using Internet Explorer then you probably won't want its icon permanently displayed on the taskbar. Right-click the icon, select 'Unpin this program from the taskbar', then go install Firefox, instead.

14. Desktop slideshow
Windows 7 comes with some very attractive new wallpapers, and it's not always easy to decide which one you like the best. So why not let choose a few, and let Windows display them all in a desktop slideshow? Right-click an empty part of the desktop, select Personalise > Desktop Background, then hold down Ctrl as you click on the images you like. Choose how often you'd like the images to be changed (anything from daily to once every 10 seconds), select Shuffle if you'd like the backgrounds to appear in a random order, then click Save Changes and enjoy the show.

15. RSS-powered wallpaper
And if a slideshow based on your standard wallpaper isn't enough, then you can always create a theme that extracts images from an RSS feed. This isn't fully implemented in the beta yet, but Long Zheng has created a few sample themes to illustrate how it works. And Jamie Thompson takes this even further, with a theme that always displays the latest BBC news and weather on your desktop.

16. Recover screen space
The new Windows 7 taskbar acts as one big quick launch toolbar that can hold whatever program shortcuts you like (just right-click one and select Pin To Taskbar). And that's fine, except it does consume a little more screen real estate than we'd like. Shrink it to a more manageable size by right-clicking the Start orb, then Properties > Taskbar > Use small icons > OK.

17. Restore the Quick Launch Toolbar
If you're unhappy with the new taskbar, even after shrinking it, then it only takes a moment to restore the old Quick Launch Toolbar.

Right-click the taskbar, choose Toolbars > New Toolbar, type "%UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch" (less the quotes) into the Folder box and click Select Folder.

Now right-click the taskbar, clear 'Lock the taskbar', and you should see the Quick Launch toolbar, probably to the right. Right-click its divider, clear Show Text and Show Title to minimise the space it takes up. Complete the job by right-clicking the bar and selecting View > Small Icons for the true retro look.

18. Custom power switch
By default, Windows 7 displays a plain text 'Shut down' button on the Start menu, but it only takes a moment to change this action to something else. If you reboot your PC a few times every day then that might make more sense as a default action: right-click the Start orb, select Properties and set the 'Power boot action' to 'Restart' to make it happen.

19. Auto arrange your desktop
If your Windows 7 desktop has icons scattered everywhere then you could right-click it and select View > Auto arrange, just as in Vista. But a simpler solution is just to press and hold down [F5], and Windows will automatically arrange its icons for you.

20. Disable smart window arrangement
Windows 7 features interesting new ways to intelligently arrange your windows, so that (for example) if you drag a window to the top of the screen then it will maximise. We like the new system, but if you find it distracting then it's easily disabled. Run REGEDIT, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop, set WindowArrangementActive to 0, reboot, and your windows will behave just as they always did.

21. Remove 'Send Feedback'
Microsoft has released Windows 7 to get feedback from the public, so it's important to take advantage of that. If you don't like something, or have a good idea, then click Send Feedback and tell them what's on your mind. You really could make a difference. But once you've done all that then you might want to get rid of the Send Feedback links on your windows, and this is very easy to do. Just launch REGEDIT, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop, set the FeedbackToolEnabled value to zero and restart your PC. (Set it to 3 if you'd like the Send Feedback links back again.)

22. Display your drives
Click Computer in Windows 7 and you might see a strange lack of drives, but don't panic, it's just Microsoft trying to be helpful: drives like memory card readers are no longer displayed if they're empty. We think it's an improvement, but if you disagree then it's easy to get your empty drives back. Launch Explorer, click Tools > Folder Options > View and clear 'Hide empty drives in the computer folder'.

23. See more detail
The new and improved Windows 7 magnifier offers a much easier way to zoom in on any area of the screen. Launch it and you can now define a scale factor and docking position, and once activated it can track your keyboard focus around the screen. Press [Tab] as you move around a dialog box, say, and it'll automatically zoom in on the currently active control.

24. Protect your MP3 files
Along with many good new features, the Windows 7 beta also includes a nasty bug. Its version of Windows Media Player 12 will automatically add missing metadata, including album art, and this can overwrite the first few seconds of the file. Oops. Installing an update may fix this (see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961367) but it would probably be a very good idea to back up your MP3 files, too.

25. Customise UAC
Windows Vista's User Account Control was a good idea in practice, but poor implementation put many people off - it raised far too many alerts. Fortunately Windows 7 displays less warnings by default, and lets you further fine-tune UAC to suit your preferred balance between security and a pop-up free life (Start > Control Panel > Change User Account Control Settings).

26. Use Sticky Notes
The Sticky Notes app is both simpler and more useful in Windows 7. Launch StikyNot.exe and you can type notes at the keyboard; right-click a note to change its colour; click the + sign on the note title bar to add another note; and click a note and press [Alt]+[4] to close the note windows (your notes will automatically be saved).

27. Open folder in new process
By default Windows 7 opens folders in the same process. This saves system resources, but means one folder crash can bring down the entire shell. If your system seems unstable, or you're doing something in Explorer that regularly seems to causes crashes, then open Computer, hold down shift, right-click on your drive and select Open in New Process. The folder will now be launched in a separate process, and so a crash is less likely to affect anything else.

28. Watch more videos
Windows Media Player 12 is a powerful program, but it still won't play all the audio and video files you'll find online. Fortunately the first freeware Windows 7 codecs package [shark007.net/win7codecs.html] has just been released, and installing it could get your troublesome multimedia files playing again.

29. Preview fonts
Open the Fonts window in Windows XP and Vista and you'll see the font names, probably with icons to tell you whether they're TrueType or OpenType, but that's about it. Feeble, really, but Windows 7 sees some useful font-related improvement.

Open the new fonts window and you'll find a little preview for every font, giving you a quick idea of how they're going to look.

The tedium of scrolling through multiple entries for each family, like Times New Roman, Times New Roman Bold, Times New Roman Bold Italic and so on, has finally ended. There's now just a single entry for each font (though you can still see all other members of the family).

And there's a new OpenType font, Gabriola, added to the mix. It's an attractive script font, well worth a try the next time you need a stylish document that stands out from the crowd.

30. Restore your gadgets
Windows 7 has tightened up its security by refusing to run gadgets if UAC has been turned off, so limiting the damage malicious unsigned gadgets can do to your system. If you've disabled UAC, miss your gadgets and are happy to accept the security risk, though, there's an easy Registry way to get everything back to normal. Run REGEDIT, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Sidebar\Settings, create a new DWORD value called AllowElevatedProcess and set it to 1. Your gadgets should start working again right away.

31. New WordPad formats
By default WordPad will save documents in Rich Text Format, just as before. But browse the Save As Format list and you'll see you can also save (or open, actually) files in the Office 2007 .docx or OpenDocument .odt formats.

32. Protect your data
USB flash drives are convenient, portable, and very easy to lose. Which is a problem, especially if they're carrying sensitive data. Fortunately Windows 7 has the solution: encrypt your documents with an extension of Microsoft's BitLocker technology, and only someone with the password will be able to access it. Right-click your USB flash drive, select Turn on BitLocker and follow the instructions to protect your private files.

33. Search everything
Windows 7 can now try to search the contents of just about any file type, useful if it's not currently finding the data you need. The problem? Searches can be much, much slower. If you'd like to try it anyway, then launch Explorer, click Tools > Folder Options > View and check "Try to search the content of unknown file types".

34. Configure your favourite music
The Windows 7 Media Centre now comes with an option to play your "favourite music", which by default creates a changing list of songs based on your ratings, how often you play them, and when they were added (it's assumed you'll prefer songs you've added in the last 30 days). If this doesn't work then you can tweak how Media Centre decides what a "favourite" tune is- click Tasks > Settings > Music > Favourite Music and configure the program to suit your needs.

35. Customise System Restore
There was very little you could do to configure System Restore in Vista, but Windows 7 improves the situation with a couple of useful setup options.

Click the Start orb, right-click Computer and select Properties > System Protection > Configure, and set the Max Usage value to a size that suits your needs (larger to hold more restore points, smaller to save disk space).

And if you don't need System Restore to save Windows settings then choose the "Only restore previous versions of files" option. Windows 7 won't back up your Registry, which means you'll squeeze more restore points and file backups into the available disk space. System Restore is much less likely to get an unbootable PC working again, though, so use this trick at your own risk.

36. Run As
Hold down shift, right-click any program shortcut, and you'll see an option to run the program as a different user, handy if you're logged in to the kids' limited account and need to run something with higher privileges. This isn't really a new feature - Windows XP had a Run As option that did the same thing - but Microsoft stripped it out of Vista, so it's good to see they've had a change of heart.

37. Search privacy
By default Windows 7 will remember your PC search queries, and display the most recent examples when searching in Windows Explorer. If you're sharing a PC and don't want everyone to see your searches, then launch GPEDIT.MSC, go to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Explorer, double-click "Turn off display of recent search entries..." and click Enabled > OK.

38. Tweak PC volume
By default Windows 7 will now automatically reduce the volume of your PC's sounds whenever it detects you're making or receiving PC-based phone calls. If this proves annoying (or maybe you'd like it to turn off other sounds altogether) then you can easily change the settings accordingly. Just right-click the speaker icon in your taskbar, select Sounds > Communications, and tell Windows what you'd like it to do.

39. Find bottlenecks
From what we've seen so far Windows 7 is already performing better than Vista, but if your PC seems sluggish then it's now much easier to uncover the bottleneck. Click Start, type RESMON and press [Enter] to launch the Resource Monitor, then click the CPU, Memory, Disk or Network tabs. Windows 7 will immediately show which processes are hogging the most system resources.

The CPU view is particularly useful, and provides something like a more powerful version of Task Manager. If a program has locked up, for example, then right-click its name in the list and select Analyze Process. Windows will then try to tell you why it's hanging - the program might be waiting for another process, perhaps - which could give you the information you need to fix the problem.

40. Keyboard shortcuts
Windows 7 supports several useful new keyboard shortcuts.

Alt+P
Display/ hide the Explorer preview pane

Windows Logo+G
Display gadgets in front of other windows

Windows Logo++ (plus key)
Zoom in, where appropriate

Windows Logo+- (minus key)
Zoom out, where appropriate

Windows Logo+Up
Maximise the current window

Windows Logo+Down
Minimise the current window

Windows Logo+Left
Snap to the left hand side of the screen

Windows Logo+Right
Snap to the right hand side of the screen

Windows Logo+Home
Minimise/ restore everything except the current window

41. Faster program launches
If you've launched one instance of a program but want to start another, then don't work your way back through the Start menu. It's much quicker to just hold down Shift and click on the program's icon (or middle-click it), and Windows 7 will start a new instance for you.

42. Speedy video access
Want faster access to your Videos folder? Windows 7 now lets you add it to the Start menu. Just right-click the Start orb, click Properties > Start Menu > Customize, and set the Videos option to "Display as a link". If you've a TV tuner that works with Windows 7 then you'll appreciate the new option to display the Recorded TV folder on the Start menu, too.

43. Run web searches
The Windows 7 search tool can now be easily extended to search online resources, just as long as someone creates an appropriate search connector. To add Flickr support, say, visit I Started Something, click Download the Connector, choose the Open option and watch as it's downloaded (the file is tiny, it'll only take a moment). A "Flickr Search" option will be added to your Searches folder, and you'll be able to search images from your desktop.

44. Schedule Media Centre downloads
You can now tell Windows Media Centre to download data at a specific time, perhaps overnight, a useful way to prevent it sapping your bandwidth for the rest of the day. Launch Media Centre, go to Tasks > Settings > General > Automatic Download Options, and set the download start and stop times that you'd like it to use.

45. Multi-threaded Robocopies
Anyone who's ever used the excellent command-line robocopy tool will appreciate the new switches introduced with Windows 7. Our favourite, /MT, can improve speed by carrying out multi-threaded copies with the number of threads you specify (you can have up to 128, though that might be going a little too far). Enter robocopy /? at a command line for the full details.

46. Really remove the sidebar
At first glance you might think Windows 7 has got rid of the sidebar, but don't be fooled. Gadgets are still hosted by the Sidebar.exe process, it's just that this is now launched automatically when Windows boots. If you don't plan on ever using gadgets then you could delete the Sidebar Registry entry at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run, and recover a small amount of RAM. That might be a little risky, though, as we're not quite sure what else the sidebar process does in Windows 7. The safest approach is to disable it temporarily by launching MSCONFIG.EXE, clicking the Startup tab and clearing the box next to the Startup entry. Now reboot and test Windows 7 for a day or two to confirm everything is still working, before finally deleting the sidebar Registry entry.

47. Load IE faster
Some Internet Explorer add-ons can take a while to start, dragging down the browser's performance, but at least IE8 can now point a finger at the worst resource hogs. Click Tools > Manage Add-ons, check the Load Time in the right-hand column, and you'll immediately see which browser extensions are slowing you down.

48. An Alt+Tab alternative
You want to access one of the five Explorer windows you have open, but there are so many other programs running that Alt+Tab makes it hard to pick out what you need. The solution? Hold down the Ctrl key while you click on the Explorer icon. Windows 7 will then cycle through the Explorer windows only, a much quicker way to locate the right one. (And of course this works with any application that has multiple windows open.)

49. Block annoying alerts
Just like Vista, Windows 7 will display a suitably stern warning if it thinks your antivirus, firewall or other security settings are incorrect.

But unlike Vista, if you disagree then you can now turn off alerts on individual topics. If you no longer want to see warnings just because you've dared to turn off the Windows firewall, say, then click Control Panel > System and Security > Action Centre > Change Action Centre settings, clear the Network Firewall box and click OK.

50. Parallel defrags
The standard Windows 7 defragger offers a little more control than we saw in Vista, and the command line version also has some interesting new features. The /r switch will defrag multiple drives in parallel, for instance (they'll obviously need to be physically separate drives for this to be useful). The /h switch runs the defrag at a higher than normal priority, and the /u switch provides regular progress reports so you can see exactly what's going on. Enter the command

defrag /c /h /u /r

in a command window to speedily defrag a system with multiple drives, or enter defrag /? to view the new options for yourself.

Windows 7 Build 7048 Leaked

2009-03-04T11:30:00.000-08:00

First reports are in that another Windows 7 build has been leaked to the Internet. After magazines like Winfuture posting screenshots of Windows 7 build 7048 yesterday first reports have emerged that this build is available on various Bittorrent sites on the Internet. The complete build string of the release is 7048.0.winmain.090219-1845 indicating that it was compiled on February 19, 2009 at 18:45. It is surprising that this build got leaked as it only got distributed to internal testers and several Microsoft partners who participate in the Technology Adopters Program.

Windows 7 build 7048 is supposed to be distributed to beta testers on the Connect portal later this month according to the article at Winfuture.

Internet Explorer 8 Can Be Uninstalled In Latest Windows 7 Build

2009-03-04T11:23:00.000-08:00

You might have noticed the legal battle between Microsoft and the European Union about the integration of Internet Explorer in the Windows operating system.The European Union is pressuring Microsoft to provide alternatives or ship the next installment without Internet Explorer much like the Media Player-less installations that are available in the European Union as well.

It should also be noted that uninstalling Internet Explorer 8 from the Windows 7 installation will not remove all of its components from the computer system. Microsoft has integrated Internet Explorer into the Windows operating system that it would practically require a full rewrite to get rid of it completely.

Only the actual Internet Explorer executable will be removed from the Windows 7 build if the option to remove Internet Explorer 8 is selected. Here are the steps to undertake to remove Internet Explorer from Windows 7:

* Enter the Control Panel and look at “All Control Panel Options”
* Click “Programs and Features”
* In the left sidebar, click “Turn Windows Features On or Off” (you will be thrown a UAC prompt if you elevated UAC)
* Wait for the list to load.
* Look for Internet Explorer 8 in the list and uncheck it.
* Click OK. You will see a prompt notifying you of a reboot.
* The machine will reboot once, configure things, and reboot again.

There is no word yet if the uninstallation of Internet Explorer in Windows 7 affects any other areas of the operating system. Several components but also third party tools use the rendering engine of Internet Explorer.

Microsoft Open Source

2009-01-28T11:33:00.000-08:00

Solution for Securing Web Content Through Isolation

Source code available through Apache License 2.0

Microsoft has made the source code for Web Sandbox available under the open source Apache License 2.0. The Web Sandbox is designed to secure web content through isolation, while at the same time delivering quality of service and extensibility capabilities for both web content developers and website users. Ultimately, the Web Sandbox provides an interception layer set up to deal with pieces of untrusted code via virtualization.

“The Web Sandbox was created in response to limitations found in the current web platform, and is designed to explore potential solutions. Having a more secure and robust architecture as a foundational building block will help drive the next wave of Web innovation,” revealed Open Source Community Manager Peter Galli. “The Sandbox is a framework that works on most modern browsers that support the"ECMA-262, 3rd Edition" (JavaScript) standard, and provides the same features in all modern web browsers.”

Microsoft informed that the adoption of the Web Sandbox would be sufficient to deliver an extra tier of security through virtualization. In this regard, leveraging the technology would not require any additional components. Because it aims to provide not only additional security but also the normalization of different browsers while also delivering W3C DOM support, Microsoft aims for widespread adoption of the Web Sandbox, and is emphasizing the need for interoperability with existing complementary technologies.

“The goal? An open and interoperable standard that will help foster interoperability with complementary technologies like script frameworks and drive widespread adoption of the Web Sandbox,” Galli added. “This move is good news for Microsoft and the open source communities. But, it is important to note that while an Apache license is being used, the Web Sandbox project is not an Apache Software Foundation project and is not sponsored or endorsed by the ASF.”

15 Activation Keys For Windows 7 Pre-Beta

2008-12-17T01:13:00.000-08:00

Vista glories seems to be gone windows 7 (build 6801) is taking the place, i noticed many people trying new pre-beta but this new windows 7 m3 (build 6801) pre-beta gives you 30 day trial period after that its gona seize the way vista used to which results data loss. If you are stucked in the middle and need activation key to activate your copy of windows 7 pre-beta simply scroll down and use anyone of them.

Note: These 15 Multiple Activation Keys (MAK) works with windows 7 (32bit and 64bit both) and you can use them on as many pc’s as much you want. you can activate Windows 7 online or by phone activation.

J7PYM-6X6FJ-QRKYT-TW4KF-BY7H9

D67PP-QBKVV-6FWDJ-4K2XB-D4684

HQDKC-F3P6D-C9YYM-HRB89-QDBB7

76DX2-7YMCQ-K2WCP-672K2-BK44W

2RG93-6XVFJ-RKHQ7-D2RTT-3FMQT

TT63R-8JGWP-WWT97-R6WQC-4CVWY

YQJX6-D6TRM-VWBM7-PHDJK-YPXJH

Q7J7F-GQHBT-Q42RQ-2F8XV-2WKKM

KH4X7-JY8G7-RCD7G-BYDJW-YTPXH

WYBJ8-8QVP3-24R82-VV2VP-72Q9W

9DP2R-W78GJ-GJBKW-CKR46-H3WYT

CXB7F-WWCM4-BP9V3-2YH43-RK8Y6

W9BYV-K2TB8-4YDJT-QBQWP-KFDHB

WGDJW-B8DYC-WVKX4-6MKF4-B8PK8

2PHXF-9PBDW-D3WWY-CPDKD-XG87V

Is it your first time? if you did’t installed Windows 7 yet then head over to this post and grab a copy of Windows 7 M3 (build 6801) pre-beta, use the keys mentioned above to activate it.

Enjoying Windows 7? enhance your desktop experience with coolest and huge windows 7 wallpapers collection

Blue Badge patch for Windows 7 unlocks additional features

2008-12-17T00:49:00.000-08:00

On November 2, Rafael Rivera, announced that his indications that the Windows 7 Pre-Beta Build 6801 has some locked additional options, were right. The locked content is primarily related to the UI that actually is one of the most looked-upon things in Windows 7. By his notices, it is not hard to conclude that some contents are locked with reason, because they are far away from stable, even for a pre-beta release.

He explained the type of protection that Win7 PB build 6801 has on his entry, and a way how he got to it. The entry also includes the way to get that content yourself.

By that scheme, an unlocking tool, called the Blue Badge is available for download. This tool should make the already announced steps much easier. Of course, this is still a risky operation, and you take it on your own risk.
These files are to be patched with Blue Badge. The patch is available only for x86 versions; the x64 is still not released.

~~If case you already have a superbar patch applied, Blue Badge will NOT work.~~ Correction, users have reported that the Blue Badge will work even with the superbar patch applied.

windows 7

2008-12-17T00:38:00.000-08:00

Introduction

It’s that time again. Has it been that long? Windows Vista has been Microsoft’s most public, most controversial yet most important release in the Company’s history. Consumer reception of the operating system released world-wide in January of 2007 was one of hesitance, let’s wait and see, and for those who adopted early, unforgiving. A lot of things with Windows Vista were not coordinated well, from communication, its system requirements, Industry Partnership and what value does it really offer to a Windows XP user which has dominated the market for nearly 7 years. The Company’s (OEMs) who were supposed to represent Windows Vista on their systems did so poorly initially. A lot of debate has started over this, which includes Microsoft’s alleged deal with Intel to support a particular integrated graphics chipset, the Windows Vista Capable branding and the perception that Vista was never ready out the gate. I would describe myself as being at the centre of most of these issues.

For one, OEMs did a bad job of communicating Vista by sending systems out of their factories without properly testing real world scenario’s of what the average consumer will be doing with such a system leaving them with just the bare minimum. Second, Microsoft never gave clear understanding of what it really takes to run the OS acceptably. The coordination was pretty much a disaster in the early months of its release. Third, competitors such as Apple Inc. took the chance and ran with this hit ‘em when their down strategy and over the past couple of years defined Microsoft and Windows into a Company that cannot meet consumer expectations. Although it was mostly inaccurate when Vista was setup on systems that should have been released in January 2007, the damage in some ways seems to have already been done; regardless the OS has garnered over 180 million strong support on systems worldwide. The first Service Pack was released in 2008 improving general performance and common task like file copy/move and boot time and Microsoft is expected to release the second Service Pack some time in 2009. There is still this thing of perception though, but Microsoft known to not rest on their laurels, used this experience as a good dose of ‘we need to do extremely better’.

And so it is with this new venture called Windows 7 we arrive at the opportunity to fix the past and right the future. Company CEO Steve Ballmer has described the release of Windows 7, as ‘a better Vista’. Interestingly enough, a lot of the folks who were behind the Windows Vista Project are no longer with Microsoft, most notable are Jim Allchin, Brian Valentine and William H. Gates (former Chief Software Architect and Chairman of the Board). Familiar faces from different territories in the Microsoft platform now lead the development of Vista’s successor; some of them include Steven Sinofsky, Joe DeVaan and Julie Larson Green VP of Program Management for the Windows Experience (of Microsoft Office Fluent fame). To understand Windows 7, one needs to understand the goals behind the Project. In early August of 2008, an online journal ‘The Engineering 7’ blog was started by Steven Sinofsky and Joe DeVaan to start early communication with developers, enthusiast and end users around the next release. The site has primarily focused on reasons for what was done in Vista with little substance on how Windows 7 would improve the experience. So, this is where we at ActiveWin.com come in, we are here to give a personal, human hands on experience with this early glimpse of Windows 7 and what it means to you, me and the Windows platform in general. We do understand this is an early preview which is not even representative of BETA 1 which should be arriving sometime soon. So, if we do assume things, please forgive us.

When is Microsoft going to deliver Windows 7 to consumers? Microsoft has scoped this release to three years after Windows Vista’s general availability, which would put it somewhere around late 2009 or early 2010. This would suggest a short testing cycle and early availability to OEMs, it’s definitely sounding like a well oiled developer team. Windows 7 builds on the foundation of Windows Vista/Server 2008 SP1, the NT Kernel version remains at 6.x to maintain compatibility with certain applications and device drivers that are hard coded to check for this specific numeral. Microsoft has promised to make Windows 7 available in both 32 and 64 bit platforms.

The name, Microsoft in the past has been notorious for marketing a brand with a certain flare. During prior Windows development stages a code name would be used, e.g. Chicago, Memphis, Whistler or Longhorn. With 7 Microsoft chose to eliminate this approach and has described the development as ‘the Windows 7 Project’. Windows 7 did have code names though, Blackcomb and Vienna. The history of the OS goes back as far as the year 2000, where 7 (Blackcomb at the time) would be a major release following Vista (Longhorn at the time). The scope of the project has changed considerably since then. Microsoft chose 7 to make the branding simpler in the eyes of consumers. Although some would dispute how Microsoft reached the number 7 or even if Windows isn’t already past that number considering the amount of versions over the years. ZDNET journalist, Ed Bott best describes the versioning as based on Microsoft’s NT line of operating systems: NT 3.1 (1), NT 3.5 (2), NT 4.0 (3), 2000 or NT 5.0 (4), XP or NT 5.1 (5), Vista or NT 6.0 and we arrive at the magical number Windows 7 (NT 6.1).

Key Goals:

Under-promise and over deliver
Reduce Compatibility problems and bring investments in Vista forward
Reduce disk foot print and memory foot print
Improve performance
Secure, predictable
Make the Windows and PC Experience easier
Exceptional hardware and software support
Bring future releases to market faster
Personalized experience that defines you
Superior mobility through reliable performance, power management

All of those goals seem very reasonable; at the same time achievable and the Windows Team have been working on them since the release of Vista. In some ways, it’s back to basics for Microsoft, delivering on the core values of Windows, giving the user what they want and enabling choice through Microsoft platforms such as Windows Live. Some of the changes in Windows 7 will seem radical to users who have come to expect Microsoft to incorporate everything in the Windows OS except the proverbial kitchen sink. Microsoft has realized this is actually holding back innovation, not necessarily performance.

Coming directly from Windows Vista, the most notable thing about Windows 7 is how strikingly similar both are from face value. A lot seems almost untouched, but there is more to it than it seems. The interface has been extremely cleaned up to give Windows a less cluttered appearance. Areas such as the Desktop and Taskbar have received major improvements. The Start Menu and Windows Explorer have also received major enhancements. Familiar applications have assumed new appearances and new tools and old ones have been improved to give users a better understanding of their personal computer. It seems that Microsoft is going full steam ahead with the previous SKU strategy for Windows 7. During setup, I chose not to install with the product key and was presented a selection of Windows 7 editions that are familiar to Vista users. It’s not known what key differentiators Microsoft will be making across the board this time around, but with a lot of the multimedia applications now available through Windows Live and to Windows Vista users and even XP users, its going be a tough sell in my opinion. Since we are on the topic of Editions, Windows Anytime Upgrade is still around but with a few upgrade process improvements. In Windows 7, Windows Anytime Upgrade enables you to quickly and easily upgrade from one edition to another in about 10 minutes—without requiring physical media. All the software required to upgrade already resides on your PC, and can be “unlocked” by purchasing a software key from Microsoft or a retailer. You won’t have to download any software, and your existing customizations—including the exact look and feel of your desktop—will be retained. If you upgrade online, you won’t even need to type in an upgrade key.

The requirements for a successful installation include a 1 GHz Intel Pentium III or compatible processor or better, 1 GB or more RAM, 10 GBs free disk space, an SVGA Plug and Play monitor, keyboard, mouse, a DVD Drive, network adapter. My setup includes a Desktop machine Dell Dimension 8300 (March 2004), 3.2 GHz Intel Pentium 4, 2.6 GBs of RAM and an nVidia Geforce 6200 512 MBs of vRAM AGP. My next system, an ACER notebook (late 2006) includes a 2.0 GHz AMD Turion x2, 2 GBs of RAM and an ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with 256 MBs of vRAM.

At first glance, Windows 7 looks like Vista, but with a lot of polish, the new theme is called Scenic. Parts of the interface such as the Start menu panel, features a shinier glossy look and feel. There is more emphasis on the integrated Search box with blue highlight around it. Open Explorer and you will notice that the Command bar has been changed considerably, featuring a similar appearance to Windows Live applications, the toolbar buttons are now text based with a silverfish bluish colour scheme. Microsoft is not aiming to renovate the entire experience, just make improvements that are more welcoming, the code in itself, looks almost complete and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Windows Team has this out much earlier than promised.

Setup

For Windows XP users upgrading to Windows Vista was a hit and miss. In particular, the upgrade matrix was confusing and at times frustrating. Only users of 32-bit Windows could do upgrades, while 64 bit users were left in the cold. Fortunately the situation with Windows 7 has improved for the better. Unfortunately for those who invested in Windows XP Professional x64, not so good. Windows Vista 64 bit users can take confidence in the ability to do an upgrade to Windows 7 64 bit. The two machines we tested Windows 7 pre-beta on had a different set of Windows operating systems; I decided to do a clean install on both machines. I will do an upgrade if it is fully supported in BETA 1, since I can preserve my existing Vista Ultimate installations through Complete PC Backup, this makes BETA testing in particular a whole lot easier too. Doing the installation required careful planning; I had to ensure that after the installation I could access the Internet, so I made sure I copied my ACER Drivers folder to my external hard drive. I also checked the manufacturer’s website for more recent device drivers for my NIC (Broadcom 5788MG) and built in Wireless (Wireless Atheros ABG/BG). Windows 7 features a new ‘load driver’ feature in the case where an upgrade is blocked because of an incompatible or missing driver that is needed to properly boot the system, you can instead load a new or updated driver from the Compatibility Report and continue with the upgrade. That sounds like thinking ahead.

Installing Windows 7 was rather uneventful but very informative; throughout the installation provided regular progress updates throughout the entire install process. The installation time was considerably short, based on my testing; both systems installed Windows 7 in less than 15 minutes. Compared to Windows Vista this is a dramatic drop in the time it takes to get the OS on the system, for Vista, I recorded 45 minutes. The Windows 7 OOBE (Out of Box Experience) introduces new options for multiple PC environments, for instance homes can now make sharing personal files (Documents, Pictures, Music and Video) seamless through a new feature called Home Groups. During Windows Vista’s early phase of development, a feature was being touted called ‘Castles’ or ‘Domain for Homes’. The premise was to bring the fundamentals of Microsoft’s Network Operating System profile roaming and replication capabilities to home environments without the need for a Client/Server scenario. Home Groups, is an excellent way to manage data in families where multiple PC’s are setup throughout the home with its syncing capabilities, especially if a main PC goes down. In 2007 Microsoft introduced Windows Home Server which pretty much provided some of the capabilities of Home Groups, but Windows 7 takes the cake by simply turning your existing PC’s into their own Home Server’s. The OOBE features expanded options, in Vista, the only customized options was your User Account Picture and Desktop Wallpaper, in 7 you can personalize not only those options, but additional experiences by selecting a Glass colour, screen saver and sounds.

After reaching the desktop, the user is greeted by the desktop, not the Welcome Center, which has been replaced by the Getting Started Guide located on the Start menu. Getting started on the Start menu indicates common tasks on a new PC through a new feature called Jump List, a great way for you to access the content from the programs you use most often. The Getting Started Jump List features task you can explore, such as transferring files from your old PC, add new user accounts and more. The great advantage is it’s there when you need it and it’s out of your way. It’s one of those things I hated about Welcome Center in Vista, on the initial log in it was mandatory and would not give you the option to uncheck it until the second restart and sometimes you would end up forgetting to even uncheck it. Regardless of all these pre-requisites, the installation was successful and the fundamentals were detected. To start an early test with compatibility, I decided install the existing device drivers for components that were not detected.

Tweaking the system is probably the most common task one does after installing the system, this includes, setting appropriate screen resolution, DPI and Theme/colour scheme, Control Panel would be the place to do this. Not much has changed here; it’s just like Windows Vista’s with even more applets available for tweaking and applying changes to system settings.

Applets in Control Panel have received some significant updates; they include Windows Update and the Personalization explorer along with new ones like Windows Solutions Centre, Accelerators Clear Type Text Tuner. Old favourites like Windows Sidebar are not restricted to a certain type of presentation area on screen.

Daily Usage

Well, I have just been using Windows 7 for 5 hours so far. But I have adjusted just fine so far, the changes to the interface are not revolutionary or dramatic. The Welcome Screen is the same as it was in Vista. What are most notable are the considerable improvements to how security is handled. The controversial User Account Control utility is more controlled. Persons familiar with it in Vista resorted to disabling the feature out of nuisance. I expressed my views about it in our ActiveWin Vista review. Windows 7 takes a more passive experience with UAC; the most notable is when a system component triggers UAC it does not block out the screen. In addition to that, the dialog now features the AERO Glass theme instead of reverting to an AERO Basic look when triggered. UAC also gives the user more information about why does what it does. For instance, an application is shown which part of the system it needs to access or write to. UAC is still annoying, but it’s not in your face. In Windows Solution Centre which now replaces Windows Security Centre and Problem Reports and Solutions, a new setting called User Account Control settings provides users the option of controlling how they are notified of potential changes to the system. Similar to Windows Internet Explorers ‘Security level for this zone’ setting, users have a choice between Never and Always Notify.

Never Notify is the most drastic option and is pretty much similar to turning of UAC all together. I don’t think you want to choose this option because UAC still has a place in Windows, just that it needs to be more intelligent. For this there are more flexible options, there is the option to only be notified when programs attempt to make change to the system, but exclude user initiated actions. It kind of defeats the original premise of UAC protecting novice users from themselves, but for those who are novices and experts who find UAC in its current state too intrusive should find this to be the right balance. Two other options, ‘Always Notify Me’, notifies the user, but does not wait on a response from the user, which the obvious ‘Always notify me and wait for my response’ does.

Overall, I consider this to be progress; users finally have choice on this critical area of the system. It’s clear Microsoft is listening and users should feel more confident with changes they make to UAC. In Vista there is this nagging paranoia even for those who willingly turn it off in Vista. It’s all about choice and confidence.

Action Center is an improved applet in Control Panel, formerly Problem Reports and Solution, Security Centre and Maintenance Program group combined into one location. Within Action Center the health of your Windows 7 system is monitored, from fundamentals like Security Center, Problem Reports and Solutions, Windows Defender, Windows Update, Diagnostics, Network Access Protection, Backup and Restore, Recovery and User Account Control. When your attention is needed, an icon appears in the notification area where you can find out more information. You have the option of directly addressing the issue or go immediately to the Action Center for additional details or you can leave it until you are ready. A nice fix for Windows users, you can disable notification messages if you don’t have an Antivirus solution installed, especially for Automatic Updates. So, those nagging notification area messages should be a thing of the past if you wish. Control Panel tries to eases the sanity when navigating UI by providing related links to common areas of the system you might be situated in.

New and Notable:

Clear Type Text Tuner – helps you customize the appearance of text on your screen to suit you preferences and work well with your hardware. It checks that your monitor monitors are running at optimal resolution and enables you to improve the clarity of on-screen text, making it appear more detailed and smooth.
Display Calibration Wizard – You can adjust your display to be as close as possible to the sRGB standard colour space. It guides you through a series of adjustments using your display’s front panel controls on screen controls, on screen controls and easy-to-use visual calibration targets.
Display – now its own dedicated Explorer shell instead of the dialog window ‘Display Settings’ from Vista’s Personalization, now makes it really easy to customize the visual experience in Windows. The size of text and other items can be changed choosing an available option. In addition to this, you can just as easily set your screen orientation (Tablet PC users), Connect to a projector, resolution and brightness conveniently.
Recovery
Troubleshooting
Workspaces Centre
Credentials Manager
Biometric Devices -
System Icons – dedicated applet for managing Notification Area icons and controlling the behaviour. Options include, turning off, removing and turning off the associated notification. It works almost like the Auto-Play applet in Windows Vista today.

The Windows Desktop is a lot more productive, some nice user experience features include additional options available on the right click Contextual menu. These include Gadgets, Display Settings along with a new Share with menu. Speaking of Gadgets, the Windows Sidebar is no more. Instead, Gadgets are free to roam the desktop which is actually more logical. Windows 7 makes gadgets easier to use, enabling you to position them anywhere on the desktop and make them smaller or larger. If you like to keep your gadgets at the edges of your screen, they’ll snap into place like magnets. In Vista this is what I did with my Gadgets since I wanted to have more than the selected few in view or I would just have to click through the Sidebar closet to see the additional ones. There is still no auto-hide option which I would like to see. Right now, there is nothing new to see, only what has been included in Vista, hopefully by BETA 1 or 2 there will be some new ones, like that Media Player Gadget I first saw at PDC 2005.

Windows Explorer which manages the contents of windows, has been refreshed and simplified with a more compelling look and feel, called Scenic. Areas such as Navigation Pane are much cleaner and more organized. Favourite’s links for instance now only list places you often visit instead of just a generic list of User folders such as Music, Pictures, Documents now in Vista. Microsoft has also made changes to the User Folder structure, Libraries now assumes the position of the User folder instead of the traditional account name. Icons associated with Documents, Music, Pictures and Downloads are simpler without the accompanying green folder. The addition of the Home Group link and traditional hierarchal tree are also available in the Navigation Pane when setup.

The Command Bar which was first introduced in Vista has been updated, but I honestly don’t know if it’s for the better. Instead of adding functionality, it now features text only buttons similar to those found in the Windows Live Wave beta 3 applications like Photo Gallery and Live Mail. The organizational tools are now placed over to the extreme right along with the View menu and a new button Layout once available under the Organize menu. There aren’t any major changes to the Bread Crumb area, but the Search field is now resizable and features the area location that is being searched, for instance Search Computer, Search Documents. The appearance itself is easier on the eyes but the icon less buttons are not something I think will have a lot of people jumping for joy.

Navigation has been greatly simplified, common task such as copying and moving files is more reliable, with lesser prompts, in addition to showing the name of the file you are actually copying. The Copy dialog in Vista is atrocious, you get confused sometimes wondering if you replacing the file with file you are trying to replace. While we are on the topic of appearances, Windows 7 has made some minor visual tweaks, for instance, the Taskbar features a more tinted look with less transparency compared to Vista’s, there is also a new Show Desktop button situated at the extreme right of the Notification Area. Microsoft has focused on making the Taskbar more customizable, each open window appears as a graphic thumbnail that expands to a full-screen preview when you hover over it with your mouse. Icons are bigger too making it easier to select them with a mouse or the new Touch features in Windows 7. Finally, finally, you can place each program exactly where you want it on the taskbar and pin frequently used applications for quick access, it’s so overwhelming when I think about it, I have been asking for this feature for so long, Microsoft has finally delivered. You can also see progress bars on a taskbar icon, so that you can stay aware of progress without keeping the window visible.

Maximized windows retain their Glass colour, but I actually find this distracting. In Vista, when a window is maximized, it darkens the title bar area; in 7 the colour is displayed. Microsoft described XP’s Luna theme as being too bold and distracting around the content area of the window. The Windows Team, now insist that the similarity featured in Vista is to drive consistency and keep the UI streamlined. But I can’t help but see my folders in the background of a title bar window on my desktop. The Start menu panel does not feature any significant changes, except for looking a whole lot shinier and thinner. Jump List which is situated on the Start menu and Taskbar makes it exceptionally easy to find what you want instead of having to open the application or hope it shows up in the Recent Items list. For example, the Jump list for a Microsoft Word shortcut will display your most recently opened documents, while a Windows Media Player Jump List shows options to Play All Music or resume your last playlist. Some suggestions I would make is to make the profile icon that is displayed every time the Start menu is clicked go away. Instead, Display, pictorial representations in front of the panel link name when hovered over. The Start menu has enough space for this any way. It’s hard to tell if Microsoft will be doing more towards changing the interface. Windows 7 even at this early stage of development looks baked; the branding is featured throughout the interface in many places such About Dialog.

The Personalization Explorer features improved customization and accessibility. For persons who like to make their Windows experience unique, Microsoft has reintroduced expanded theme capabilities. Windows XP and Vista offers the ability to customize the interface to a certain degree, such as changing the window and Start menu colour for instance. If you wanted additional options, you had to turn to third party solutions such as Star Dock. In 7, Microsoft provides in addition to window colour, the ability to choose pre-packaged themes that matches the bundled wallpapers. Glass colour options have increased from 8 in Vista to 16 now in 7. You can even create your own theme and save them. The themes explorer itself is more centralized with one stop approach to customizing your Desktop Background, Sounds and Screen Saver while you are at it. I say halleluiah. In Vista, the cumbersome separate dialog from XP’s Display settings was a confusing experience and multiple step approach to making Windows your own. I personally suggested collapsible panels in Windows Vista, but this new look and approach is even better! Microsoft still includes the venerable Windows Classic theme for those who just can’t escape the Windows 95 experience.

Windows AERO makes working with multiple Windows easier, you can hover your mouse over the far-right of the Windows Taskbar and all of your open windows become transparent, this makes ‘Show Desktop’ so 1998. This also makes my cussing over auto hide feature for Sidebar Gadgets very irrelevant, thanks Windows Team; you really know how to outdo a suggestion. You can maximize a window by dragging its border to the top of the screen to restore the window to its original state by dragging it from the top of the screen. For persons who often do data comparisons with content from two windows on screen, Windows 7 has made this a cinch by simply making it possible to drag the opposite sides of the screen; automatically the windows will fill its half of the screen.

Windows 7 focuses on getting the most out of the Desktop; one such way is through a new feature called Accelerators for Windows which first debuted in the Internet Explorer 8 BETA. A voice command supported utility that makes it easy for you to automate common task by asking your computer information about any text you have selected. Accelerator provides quite a number of commands that users are most likely to work with and features tight integration with Windows Live products and services. Located in Control Panel, I was able to enable commands for blogging with Live Space and email which I use very often. There are others related to Pictures, Calendar, Desktop Search, Online Search and even Instant Messaging from the Voice Search pop up list box. You can easily manage your voice shortcut with options to clear its default setting, disable, delete in addition to finding more online. A table list the type of Accelerators, and its shortcut command along with its status. For instance, I can have ‘Blog with Windows Live Spaces’ and with a quick voice shortcut set to ‘Blog’. Does it really work, you bet, but again, with proper training in Windows Speech Recognition the productivity of Accelerators will deliver better results. Once setup, Accelerators either by point and click or voice command can be accessed from the Taskbar. I see synergies here and the focus on integrating with both the desktop and online services gives more relevancy to the local desktop experience in this ever growing web 2.0 focused society.

The Start menu All Programs is a little meagre, with less built in productivity and multimedia applications compared to Vista. Microsoft has not stopped development of these applications, it’s just that they are now a part of the suite of Windows Live services called Windows Live Essentials, which means, the best way to enable them is to go download them. But why is Microsoft even doing this? I know a lot of persons like myself who don’t even want to go through the chore of having to install or go download additional applications after doing an installation of Windows. But Microsoft has given some understandable reasons for this.

Brian Hall (General Manager for Windows Live) notes that removing programs such as Photo Gallery, Mail and Movie Maker from the core operating system will give Microsoft more time to focus on the core operating system experience in addition to improving the efficiency of things like Service Packs which could ultimately be fewer and smaller. Mr. Hall also said that a cleaner operating system eliminates potential confusion for customers faced with two different programs that are similar in function-one already in Windows and the other from Windows Live. He also said that Microsoft is working with OEMs are around Windows 7 so that they can place shortcuts that will link to a download page where you can choose just the programs you.

It’s all about balance while delivering choice. Users have complained over the past couple years that Windows has become bloated. Personally, I don’t see it; a lot of the stuff that came with Windows are applications a lot users ended up needing and using anyway. Removing Movie Maker, Photo Gallery and Mail does not significantly reduce the OS’s disk foot print. A default install of Windows 7 uses about 8 GBs of Disk space, a good improvement over Vista’s 11 GB install.

The Ever Expanding OS

Windows 7 supports native Blu-Ray Read/write support. This is probably the final nail the coffin for HD-DVD which competed aggressively with Sony standard which support vast amounts of storage on innovative optical disk. Windows 7 adds support for Bluetooth 2.1, which improves the peering experience in addition to battery life.

Location Aware Printing

In Windows 7, you no longer need to select the printer to match your location. When you change network locations, such as taking your work laptop home for the evening, the default printer setting can change to reflect the best printer for that new location. When you print at work, Windows 7 will print to your work printer. When you print at home, Windows 7 will automatically select and use your home printer.

Ultra Wideband (UWB) and Wireless USB (WUSB).

UWB and WUSB are new technologies that provide wireless alternatives to USB cables. Support for UWB and WUSB in Windows 7 lets you take advantage of new wireless devices and wireless USB hubs.

ApplicationS

Over the years, Microsoft has done little to improve the traditional bundled applications in Windows such as Word Pad, Paint and Calculator. Windows 7 is a major exception.

Word Pad is now watered down Microsoft Word 2007, featuring the popular Office Fluent UI, word pad still is basic in its capabilities, and there is support for Word 2007 .Docx format. The interface has been arranged I would conclude for the purpose of consistency. Functionally, it looks like over kill since Word Pad was never straining under 1,500 commands and toolbars like Office Word. Improvements that users will most appreciate include highlighting, line breaks, additional text colours, bullets, indents and print preview enhancements in addition to picture insertion and zooming capabilities. Will users be pleased with it, I guess, but I don’t see as adding significant value to user experience.

Paint also inherits this look and feel, but also suffers from the fact that it was not a detrimental necessity. I will certainly admit the program looks darn gorgeous and was a needed update in terms of refreshing the UI a bit. Some new features include media paint brushes and the ability to easily pick colours and shapes. There are some additional options that make working with illustrations a little easier such as options for transparency and opaque. Measurement options have been improved with, the ability to zoom in and out, display a ruler, grid lines and full screen mode.

Calculator is drastically pleasant, richer options and modes are available for Standard, scientific, duration between two periods, add or subtract a period of time, gall mileage, lease estimation, mortgage estimation, unit conversion and many more. The interface itself looks a lot like a traditional calculator, with big bold bright buttons; this should be for those using the Touch capabilities on a Tablet PC. The new calculation options I mentioned, conveniently pop out from the left side when invoked.

A part from the three mentioned the rest you will find through Windows Live. Here is a small overview of them. Branded Windows Live Essentials, this suite of programs provides tools for sharing videos, photos and blogging; they include Windows Live Movie Maker, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows Live Mail with Calendar and Windows Live Writer.

Windows Live Mail replaces Outlook Express (again) and Windows Mail in Vista. Featuring tight integration across a wide range of Windows Live Services, the new Windows Live Mail includes integrated Calendaring and Contacts. This now replaces the built in Calendar that came with Windows Vista. You can access both Calendar and Contacts when you are off line. Support for POP and IMAP is also included for easy access to third party email services such as Yahoo!, Gmail and AOL. A built in feature called ‘photo mail’ lets you send high resolution photos to friends without clogging their inboxes. Instead, they will receive light embedded thumbnail images, along with links to easily download the full-resolution versions or to see the images played as a slide show. Windows Live Mail also supports multiple email accounts.

Home Networking in Windows has evolved over the years, from Windows 98’s Internet Connection Sharing to Windows XP’s Home and small office networking. I consider Vista’s networking capabilities to be quite overwhelming, don’t get me wrong, there are indeed major improvements, but the options are vast and not structured in a way that makes navigation more focused. The problem continues in Windows 7 and I would have hoped that some of the changes that have been made to areas like Personalization would also creep into this critical area of the OS. Microsoft still managed to make certain aspects of networking multiple PC’s in the home a seamless experience. One of this is through HomeGroup and Sharing. HomeGroup provides a centralized location to setup the sharing of personal data and resources such as Pictures, Music, Videos, Documents and Printers. Taking a cue from Windows Media Player 11’s media sharing capabilities, HomeGroup expands these capabilities with additional options for sharing pictures, music and videos in particular with devices. Users have the option setting up a HomeGroup password, leaving a HomeGroup with additional advanced settings.

PC’s connected to your HomeGroup automatically show up in the Navigation Pane in Windows Explorer. Some of the great things you can do include interacting with shared Libraries from other PC’s just like you would locally in addition to changing the views, search them, you can also be specific with your search criteria’s. If one of your computers is joined to a domain, you still have access to HomeGroup features such as your Home Printer and content shared within it, by default though, content cannot be shared by a PC that is joined to a Domain.

Media Streaming is also a part of the HomeGroup experience in Windows 7 with a very simplified experience. HomeGroup when setup, automatically enables media streaming from within Media Player 12, for pictures, music, and videos, they are instantly made available on other PCs and devices in your HomeGroup.

Connectivity

Windows 7 makes viewing and connecting to networks simpler and consistent. A one click access to Wi-Fi, Mobile Broadband, a Corporate VPN or even Dial-up based networks is so much easier. A wireless enabled PC can easily share its connection by turning it into an access point. You can connect wireless-enabled devices such as portable printers and digital cameras directly to your computer. If your PC is connected to the Internet, those devices can access the Internet through your PC. If your computer has a wireless data card, you can easily connect your computer to the Internet, regardless of the cellular provider. The process is done through View Available Networks feature. No need to install additional software (such as Motorola’s Mobile Phone Tools), just insert your wireless data card and your PC will connect to the Internet automatically. And if your PC has a built-in data card, you can be connected to the Internet whenever there’s a cellular service.

Networking in 7 is not about just connecting up a few PC’s, but into broader areas, such as location awareness. Location and Sensors allows detect things such as your current location or the orientation of your PC. There is deep integration with the Internet by providing supported applications the ability to offer additional functionality to users. Sensors based applications though may use information in a way that affects user privacy, but you can take comfort in the face that it’s optional. The right click contextual menu now features a Share with menu that allows you to share a specific file or folder with your Home Group with specific options such as Read/Write or People.

Direct Access, new feature in Windows 7 allows road warriors to have better access to applications and personal data. Remote users are able to access their corporate network anytime they have an Internet connection without the need for setting up a VPN connection. The benefits are definite simplicity and management of an IT infrastructure. Prior to this, one would have depend solely on technologies such as ‘NAT’ Network Address Translation to make data moving between the Company’s network and the Internet complex secure experience. Of course, for a Company and the end user to take advantage of this specific feature in 7, investment in the next version of Windows Server will have to be considered.

Performance and instantaneous access to information is now a dream come through, BranchCache as the name suggest caches content from remote file and web servers in branch locations so users can more quickly access this information. BranchCache support the same network protocols that are commonly used in enterprise establishments like HTTP and SMB so applications already compatible with these standard can automatically benefit right away, in addition to these network security protocols such as SSL and IPSec are also supported for superior authentication again, this technology call for the next version of Windows Server.

Windows Connect Now makes setting up a wireless router or access point a cinch this is because Windows 7 now supports the Wi-Fi Setup industry standard. You can connect computers, mobile devices, and other network-enabled wireless devices to that network. Windows 7 lets you discover and request access to your wireless network. To accept the request, you can simply press the WPS button on the wireless router or access point. Your computer will automatically get the network settings from the wireless router or access point and set up a wireless connection – you won’t have to remember or type in a password every time to connect.

Network aware devices such as wireless printers that are certified for Windows 7 are easy to setup. When the Add a device wizard is launched, all you have to enter is the PIN located on the device itself. Windows 7 will automatically configure the device and connect to your wireless network. Once connected, Windows 7 automatically downloads the necessary device driver for it.

Microsoft has definitely focused on the end to end experiences with Networking Windows 7. I still think there is more that could be done to consolidate certain aspects of the interface. For example, the Local Area Connection properties should be an Explorer instead of this same old dialog, I have been seeing since Windows 95. It’s just too much clicking, I had to open Network Center, then click Manage Network Connections, right click the connection, click Properties, and it’s a chore really.

Windows Internet Explorer

7 include the latest version of Microsoft’s web browser, Internet Explorer 8. There are no differences at all between IE 8 on Vista, 7 or XP except that Windows 7 itself now has built in support for Accelerators and I can safely predict Microsoft does not have any plans to back port the previous versions of the OS. It has been in development with the first beta released back in March of 2008. The fundamentals of this release revolve around Microsoft’s security initiatives. The new InPrivate mode allows users to clear any private information such as cookies, visited web pages and the entire session itself. There is also an improvement to Phishing Filter through Smart Screen which puts greater focus on web pages that try to collect personal information from users, it’s great for scamming sites that utilize know URLs such as PayPal or know banking merchants. The how it does this is through a black list of known or suspected phishing sites so it’s an ongoing game of cat and mouse, users should still be cautious about how they enter personal information on the web.

Ease of use is also a must; areas such as the Address Bar are now streamlined to make navigating the interface a sure pleasure for surfers. Auto Completion now suggest websites that you might want to go to, suggestions are based on your history of websites you like to visit, your personal web browsing history and Feeds that you have subscribed to. Typing in a URL offers some address bar tricks, if you click the arrow below the URL in the middle, it will reveal a number of commands:

Go to – Enter
Navigate to – Ctrl + Enter
Open in a new tab – Alt + Enter
Open in a background tab – Alt + Shift + Enter

Hands down, this beats Firefox in the Power User category, offering a faster, more intelligent browsing experience. It also lessens the repetitiveness of common takes that users often do in the browser. One thing would have make this feature even more friendly and powerful, an actual command key to reveal the commands, instead of shifting between the keyboard and mouse.

Changes such as a single Favourites button, chrome based skin with a flatter appearance and removal of the Tools and Feeds menu (but changes back to Feeds when browsing), now pushed under the chevron. Taking the spotlight are Web Slices, Read Mail and Safety.

The search fields features new convenience improvements to its search facilities, providing more detailed options when text is typed in. For instance, based on your search history, a list of Search option links are listed by the Search Engine of choice. Type in ‘Mariah Carey’ and you will see a number of query filters, which could range from lyrics, thriller, songs, soundboard, news, jokes or popular topics. Search suggestions can also be populated based on your history. I also love the new Search on the fly option which allows you to quickly change Search engines based on your query. I use Wikipedia a lot, it’s very cumbersome having to type in the query through Google, search for it then open Wikipedia. With this feature, you are take immediacy to the source, which is sure to be a hit with those who want a more detailed browsing experience with better results.

Integration with Windows Live would of course be a must. You can see of this already through the Search Field, but version 8 takes it a little further by integrating it deep into other parts of the browser, such as the Contextual menus, for instance, right clicking a link gives you a choice of options such as blogging with Windows Live Spaces, email with Live Mail or Translate through Windows Live. Highlighted text on a page adds additional options such as Searching through your Default search engine define with Encarta and even search through Live Maps. Users familiar with Smart Tags in Microsoft Office might also find the Accelerator menu share some distant similarities; it gives you additional options for finding and management of these extensions. It ultimately eliminates the mundane task of copying text back and forth between web pages. Another unique addition in IE 8 is Web Slices which allow for sections of a web page to be subscribed, stored and monitored from the Favourites Bar. The success of Web Slices will ultimately depend on how many web pages out there decide to support it. It’s a neat idea though that promises to make information obtained from the Internet more personalized.

Microsoft has not forgotten about improved performance and compatibility. The browser definitely feels snappier, using IE 8 on a mobile phone connection web pages load considerably faster, it seems like some significant changes have been made to the caching engine itself. The IE 8 Team have noted that considerable improvements have been made to the HTML parse, CSS engine, Jscript runtime and the associated garbage collector. ActiveX permissions are more independent allowing users to define how they run depending on the site.

Version 8 offers a compatibility layer, so that site designed for an older version of the browser will continue functioning as normal. Common problems you might see if a website is not updated to support the latest features in the browser include, out of place menus, images, or text. An integrated contextual button built into the address bar appears next to the Refresh and Stop button refreshes the website and presents it in its original state as if you were browsing in a supported version of the browser, nice! What I notice when you do enable Compatibility mode is, you lose access to some of the new features of the browser.

Internet Explorer 8 is looking like an excellent update, and you are not going to need Windows 7 to experience it, Microsoft has promised to release the browser for Windows XP and Vista users by November. The focus on improving the browsing experience, relevancy and productivity of the Windows Live services, developer flexibility and compatibility in addition to the features that focus on making the browsing experience more secure, personal and not intrusive will surely give users reason to stick with the platform and might even bring some users over from Firefox which I personally have had problems with in the memory resource department.

Multimedia

Libraries is a new experience in Vista that streamlines the process of managing the array of information users have scattered across their PC. Organization was a key focus of Vista, but regardless you tried your best to keep your files in their appropriate locations photos in the Pictures directory, videos in the Videos director, audio in Music directory, etc. You still ended up having a lot of files stored in folders you either create or parts of the system such as the desktop out of quick convenience. With Libraries, you don’t have to remember exactly where you stored a particular photo or search multiple places to find what you need. You don’t even have to keep multiple copies of the same file around.

With Libraries, you can not only organize, but view and manage files that that are stored in more than once place. This reduces the need to view files even when they are stored in different folders. Libraries are so powerful that they even span different disk drives, PCs on your home network. There are a range of options for organizing and browsing, by type, date taken or genre depending on the file type. The power of Libraries grows when combined with rich capabilities of Home Groups discussed earlier, meaning; families can get in on the fun by access a shared library by having the right permissions setup.

Searching is a key aspect of the information management experience in Windows 7, Windows Vista presented a great opportunity for users to make access their data easier by integrating Search heavily throughout the interface and giving users tools make results more accurate. In 7, Search is much smarter, by presenting input recommendations based on previous searches and dynamic filter suggestions, to help you narrow down results. Because of the tight integration with Libraries, you can search beyond the PC right at the Start menu which grouped for easier visualization. When Searching across multiple PC’s in a corporate setting, Administrators can fine tune how a search is executed, be defining up to five search destinations. All of the search processing is handled on a remote server and results presented you within your comfort zone. This sounds complex and it is, but Windows 7 is subtracting complexity of it all and presenting you only with ease of use part of the equation.

The Search engine in 7 uses an improved algorithm to determine relevance and rank results. Within those results, words from the search query you make are highlighted with parts of a file or even a path to it to give you a clearer idea of what’s happening and if its meeting your expectation. Search operates multiple ways by offering results based on multiple Libraries if you search through the Start menu if you search specifically from Windows Explorer; it stays within that particular library. For persons who have data stored on multiple devices, Windows 7 Search is a dream come through, a new feature called Search Federation allows you easily add a location; these include multiple PCs, external hard drives, servers and even websites. Users running Windows 7 in the Enterprise can also do searches on popular business applications such as SharePoint Server. Windows 7 uses public standard OpenSearch to make it possible to search for content on the Internet and remote servers.

Building on the rich functionality in Windows Vista, 7 is no exception and it promises to deliver a first class multimedia platform. Yes, Movie Maker is not in there, so how can you even call this a platform for multimedia? Remember, you are still getting Movie Maker, but as a part of the Windows Live platform which is an extension of the operating system and for free.

Windows Live Movie Maker features the new Scenic Ribbon UI, but it’s drastically limited compared to its predecessor in Vista. The interface seems like it’s designed for an on the go user who is uploading videos to YouTube or MSN Soap box and does not really fancy details too much. The Ribbon features the tabs Home, Visual Effects and Edit. It quite basic, features like Timeline are not even in there, I’m hoping that the label beta is the reason for this. You add photos and videos from the Home menu which are automatically populated within the window. Content by default is played in the view it’s laid out, but you can drag and drop to rearrange how you want scenes to play with the video. Live Movie Maker remains light on visual effects, even PowerPoint 2007 would do a better job (then again, PowerPoint 2007 cost $300). It’s quite obvious there is more to expect and hopefully in the near future we will see an update, the only options right now are Sepia Tone, black and white and one transition, cross fade. Live Movie Maker supports direct publishing to MSN Soap Box, but no YouTube yet. Microsoft, I realize Google is a competitor, but if you can support GMAIL access in Windows Live Mail, YouTube should be an out of box option, put competition aside for sake of offering your consumers choice and real value. Yes, there is an option to a plug in, but come one, which is more popular, YouTube or MSN Soapbox? The Good the bad and the ugly right now is the fact that its limited in what it can do, limited effects and transitions, no support for narration, no text over lays, you can’t edit footage, but most importantly of all, no Time line. I hope by the time Windows 7 hits beta 1; we will see an updated Windows Live Suite with comparable options to Windows Movie Maker or even better.

Windows Live Photo Gallery has been through a couple of iterations since its debut in Windows Vista. Microsoft released an updated version immediately after as part of the Windows Live family, re-titled Windows Live Photo Gallery. I was very impressed with some of these features such as the ability to publish photos to your Windows Live Space or third party services such as Yahoo!’s Flickr. The latest Wave 3 release of the product features a similar UI to Windows 7’s Explorer, with a text based tool bar. The toolbar features two new menus, Slide show and Extras, Extras provides options for opening in another viewer or graphics applications for advanced editing. The Gallery control padding at the bottom of the Live Photo Gallery screen has been reduced to a simplified status bar appearance with a just a as functional look.

This new version differentiates itself by incorporating a revolutionary face detection technology that works with you to help make people-tagging simple. The Photo-stitching feature lets you easily build panoramic views from a collection of photos. In addition to its strong support for photo-sharing services, you can order prints directly from over 70,000 worldwide printer services partners.

Windows 7 includes Windows Media Player 12; this new version features radical changes to its menu structure, with some menus positioned on the left and right sides of the interface. I don’t see the significance of this, but it does look stylish, and features two thick toolbars of controls, the second one focusing on traditional features such as Organization, Sharing, Playlist and Search. The interface is much warmer and attractive I must say player controls are not translucent anymore which give it a more conservative appearance. My friend looking at it right now says it a bit too bright and actually prefers WMP now, but it’s a work in progress I am trying to explain. The more I notice this update it seems to share a more iTunes like similarity. Media Player 12 supports a wide variety of media formats; this lessens the need for using multiple players to listen to your library of content. It also makes it easier to manage and synchronize your media across a broad range of devices. Common media formats supported include WMV, WMA, MPEG-4, AAC and AVC/H.264.

Users can also expect enhanced DVD Playback, when a DVD is inserted; it will start quickly and transition immediately into full screen mode, no need to even press play. Media Player 12 includes a Lightweight Playback Mode that is optimized for you content and tasks. When you’re watching a movie or listening to a song, you can quickly see its title by hovering over the Windows Media Player icon in the Taskbar. Featuring an improved Media Player toolbar you get instant access to playback controls, so you can quickly skip a song or pause playback. Jump list integration makes it easy to quickly access music, videos, and recorded TV.

Media Center in 7 supports browsing broadcast or broadband TV schedules to find show you to watch and record, watch recoded TV shows on your PC or a big-screen TV, and synchronize them to a laptop or portable device to enjoy on the go. With a streamlined user interface and support for new content types and digital TV. Some of the key improvements include:

Internet TV: You can choose from a variety of online TV shows and movies, all organized into a TV guide view. Search for shows across multiple networks and providers, and instantly watch them on your PC or save them for later. Windows 7 Media Center also makes it easy to discover and watch shows related to what you’re currently watching. When you watch a TV show you’ve recorded, you will see that program information includes thumbnails for other online episodes and links to related information, such as Internet movie trailers and related shows.

Broader Support for Global TV Standards: There is support for a wider range of TV standards to meet the needs of television viewers around the world. Digital TV in Windows 7 works in more than 20 global markets, with certified support for the United States ATSC and QAM cable standard, Japan’s ISDB standards (ISDB-T and ISDB-S) European DVB TV standards (DVB-T, DVB-S) and Pay TV standards.

Sharing TV Around the Home: If you have multiple PCs running Media Center in your HomeGroup, you can access TV libraries (in addition to your music, photos, and videos) on those different PCs. You can easily copy a TV show to your portable PC to enjoy on the go. Windows 7 Media Center ensures that all unprotected Windows TV (WTV) recordings can be discovered, played, and copied by any PC running Windows 7 in the HomeGroup; and that all “Copy Freely” and “Copy Once” protected WTV recordings can be discovered, played and copied using Media Center.

Enhanced UI: New features such as turbo scroll make finding the media you want faster, enabling you t quickly move through a large library or TV guide by pressing and holding the right cursor. You can quickly jump to what you want by clicking the seek bar when viewing a show.

Direct3D 11 extends the functionality of the Direct3D 10 pipeline and provides Windows 7 games and high-end 3D applications with efficient, robust, scalable access to the upcoming generation of GPUs and multi-core CPUs. In addition the functionality found in Direct3D 10, Direct3D 11 introduces several new features. Geometry and high-order surfaces can now be tessellated to support scalable, dynamic content in patch and subdivision surface representations.

To make good use of the parallel processing power available from multiple CPU cores, multithreading increases the number of potential rendering calls per frame by distributing the application, runtime and driver calls across multiple cores. In addition, resource creation and management has been optimized for multithreaded use, enabling more efficient dynamic texture management for streaming.

New general-purpose compute shaders have been created for Direct3D 11 Unlike existing shaders, these are extensions to the programmable pipeline that enable your application to do more work completely on the GPU, independent of the CPU. DrawAuto, which was introduced in Direct3D 10, has been extended to interact with a compute shader.

Advanced Features

Microsoft is always looking to new ways to advance and make the PC experience more natural through new input methods. Windows XP Tablet PC edition was a good example of this by allowing us to use inking capabilities with new form factor devices called Tablet PC’s. Microsoft tirelessly works to promote the platform and has gone beyond that in recent years, the latest endeavour being the Microsoft Surface Table. Although the Surface remains an expensive proposition (think US $13,000), the Windows Team realizes that to make the experience more ubiquitous, Windows would be a best place for this feature to gain wider availability not only just for persons in offices, but also the consumer. In Windows 7 controlling the computer by touching the screen is a core user experience, with visual feedback provided for tap and double-tap gestures.

The Start menu, Windows Taskbar and Windows Explorer are touch friendly, with larger icons that are easier to select with your finger, Browsing the web with Internet Explorer 8 is easier too – just use your finger to scroll down a web page or browse your favourite links. You can even use your finger to arrange the pictures in a photo album. Windows 7 also includes multi-touch technology, which lets you control what happens on the screen with more than one finger. You can zoom in on an image by moving two fingers close together, like you’re pinching something, or zoom out by moving two fingers apart. You can rotate n image on the screen by rotating one finger around another and can right click by holding one finger on your target and tapping the screen with a second finger. Touch Gestures provide direct visual feedback and interact with underlying content in a natural and intuitive way.

Tablet computing has been a 5 year investment for Microsoft and the company is not giving up on it anytime soon. First debuted in Windows XP Tablet PC Edition in late 2002, Microsoft focused on delivering a rich, natural experience through natural inking using a stylus. The device has been mostly targeted at vertical industries such as business and medical. Windows Vista made considerable improvements to its hand writing analysis while also making more available through multiple SKU’s in Vista’s product line up. Tablet PC in 7 features even greater accuracy and speed for hand writing recognition while delivering support for hand written math expressions, personalized custom dictionaries for handwriting recognition and stronger language support. The Math Input Panel is a new accessory that recognizes handwritten math expressions with strong correction results with the ability to insert math expressions into target programs. Math Input Control offers similar recognition and correction functionality, enabling developers to integrate math hand writing recognition into programs directly for a higher degree of control and customization.

Compatibility in Windows 7 is continued progress report. Applications that already work well on Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 will continue to work just as well on Windows 7. It’s not a guarantee coming from Windows XP that everything will be just as smooth, but if you have invested heavily in Windows Vista, it should be a rather smooth transition. The Compatibility process itself is handled through a number of avenues, which include the Windows Upgrade Advisor and Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) to help customers assess application compatibility. For untested or in-house developed applications, Windows 7 provides a number of in-box compatibility aids. For example, if an application fails to install because of a hard-coded version check, the Program Compatibility Trouble-shooter can automatically fix the problem (with the users consent) and rerun the installer. Windows 7 includes an expanded application shim infrastructure and Problem Steps Recorder that people can use to capture compatibility issues for evaluation by technical experts. Personally I would have like if Microsoft could bring their investments in the SoftGrid application virtualization solution to make compatibility a thing of the past. With SoftGrid, isolation enables each application to have its own virtual registry and run in its own virtual environment. Let’s hope by the time Windows 7 RTMs we will see a surprise.

RemoteApp and Desktop Connections

With concerns over security, continual cost pressures, and the need to support remote users, companies are looking for ways to host client applications centrally—on servers in their data centers. For many years, Microsoft Terminal Services technology has enabled IT professionals to do just that. However, in previous versions of Windows, the end user experience for Terminal Services-hosted applications was noticeably different than their experience for client-hosted applications. The user interface for those applications was not as rich, and users couldn’t launch them from the Start menu. Windows 7 provides a better user experience when connecting to Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008 R2.

Users can more easily connect to remote applications and remote desktop sessions from any Windows 7 PC, whether in the office or on the road. After a connection is established, users can access remote applications or desktops from the Start menu, just like they do for local applications. Applications launch, look, and feel just like they do when running locally. New applications that IT professionals make available automatically appear on the Start menu, so that users always have access to the latest programs.

Integrated VHD Support

The feature it guarantees is the ability to boot your installation of Windows 7 on any computer (possibly only Windows 7 PCs) I assume, but then again the ability to have access to your “computer”, all your files, all your applications and settings. By the time Windows 7 hits market most external drives will be 2 to 3 TBs standard. Complete PC Backup in Vista (Ultimate, Enterprise and Business) backup in .VHD format, the ability to mount that same VHD on any computer running Windows 7 would make me upgrade to this release on all my computers in a heart-beat.

VHD has become even more important now especially from a usability point of view. If you are running Vista Ultimate, Enterprise or Business and backup such installations with Complete PC Backup, then the format needs to be more flexible in how it can be used with Windows. The idea of building on what was done in Vista will really make the format a valuable tool for end users. The ability to simply carry my computer anywhere with me through an external drive, mount and use it like I would be sitting in front of my computer at home is just an awesome.

Security

If its one thing Windows Vista was known for it was security, some would say too much of it actually. Features like Kernel Patch Protection, Service Hardening, DEP, ASLR and the controversial UAC all made up a complete security experience in Windows Vista. Windows 7 is about improving the usability aspects of these fundamental features. Windows Defender is now integrated into to Action Center discussed earlier. This provides a consistent way of alerting users when action is needed. The overall scanning experience has been improved for spyware and checking for updates. Scrollbars were removed in the configuration settings screen and Software Explorer feature has also been removed because it’s not integral to spyware detection and removal. Real time protection in Windows 7 is improved to provide continuous monitoring while reducing the impact on overall system performance.

Third party products can selectively turn on or off parts of the Windows Firewall, giving you the choice to have a third party software firewall co-existing with the built in one in Windows 7. In addition to Parental Control facilities in Windows 7, Windows Live Family Safety extends its capabilities by filtering inappropriate web content and providing parents with a report on their kid’s activities on the PC. Parents can monitor the activities of their kids not just from a PC but any web enabled PC or mobile phone.

BitLocker To Go provides enhanced protection against data theft and exposure by extending BitLocker drive encryption support to removable storage devices, such as flash memory drives and portable hard drives, thereby helping you safeguard sensitive data on all of your USB removable storage devices.

Performance & Reliability

Windows 7 is changing the perception by improving the out of box experience. I have come across cases where a user buys a brand new laptop, and it’s slow for the first time boot time and it remains that way for the rest of its life. The key areas for most users are Start-up, shutdown and resume from Standby. Windows 7’s solution to this is to go under the hood by reducing background activities and add support for trigger-starting of system services, starting them only when they are needed instead of ahead of time. For example, the Bluetooth service is only started when a Bluetooth device is connected to the computer. There are also improvements to how the kernel enable applications and services scale efficiently on small to large systems.

Microsoft realized that insufficient RAM can dramatically affect performance, so to reduce memory consumption, the Desktop Windows Manager (DWM) and graphics stack were reduced to deliver a responsive user interface across a broader range of system configurations. Capabilities are also added to allow device manufacturers to improve the performance of their video drivers. The Windows Team have also looked at the engineering practices on within their Teams to ensure that Windows 7 delivers improved performance. Virtual teams consisting of feature developers, testers and UI designers. New tests implemented throughout the development process help ensure early detection and resolution of any performance-related issues.

Windows 7 features a fault tolerant heap, which is designed to resolve common memory mismanagement issues without requiring change to the offending application. Microsoft notes that as many as 15% of crashes today are due to heap corruption. Fault Tolerant heap mitigates the most common causes of heap corruption, which ultimately reduces the number of crashes you will experience. Process Reflection reduces the disruption caused by diagnostics. Using Process Reflection, Windows 7 can capture the memory content of a failed process on your PC while at the same time recovering that failed process through a ‘cloning’ capability. This makes application recovery possible while you continue work and Windows 7 diagnoses and analyzes the failure condition. The Driver sandboxing prevents drivers that are not written properly from affecting the stability of the system, so task like printing is more reliable and in the event of the a problem it does not affect other device drivers.

Diagnostics

An improved Reliability Monitor interface makes it easier to get more information while having control over what you submit to Microsoft for further analysis. Diagnostics of common printing problems is easier because the of the Driver sand boxing, so that removing a stuck print job is easier to diagnose and repair.

Battery Life and Power Management

It’s a fact that more people are using laptops, not mainly for mobility reasons, but for personality and style. They want to carry it with them wherever they go and be able to use it without having to be an expert in conservation. Windows 7 features exception Power Management enhancement to include increasing the idle time for the processor, automatically dimming the display, and more efficient playback of DVDs. There are also better information tools to keep you up to date about the state of your battery life when on the go. The Windows Team worked to increase the efficiency of battery life in laptops by reducing the amount of background activities and which supports the trigger-starting of services discussed earlier. Adaptive Display Brightness automatically reduces display brightness after a certain period of inactivity similar to cell phones. Less power is required to watch a DVD because Windows 7 requires less processing power which leads to a more efficient way to spinning the disk, this leads to benefits such as watching a full length movie on a single battery charge. In Vista, Wake on LAN could only be done over a wired network connection, in 7, you can now Wake on Wireless LAN which provides the same capabilities over a wireless network connection. For IT environments, this minimizes power costs for such systems for scenarios like maintenance and applying patches.

Today, mobile PCs send energy to parts of the computer when they are not being used, such as sending power to the network adapter when you don’t have an Ethernet cable plugged-in. Windows 7 automatically turns off power to the network adapter when the cable is disconnected and restores power when the cable is connected. Making users aware of the battery life status is key in Windows 7 for a better; the Battery Life Notification Area applet provides prominent, timely information to ensure that you can use your notebook in tight situations where there is no power. A new utility called Power Config detects problems across devices, policies, firmware, system settings, applications, and other common areas where settings can reduce power efficiency delivering that information to you in an easy to understand report.

Device Management

Control Panel features a new explorer for managing devices connected to your PC such MP3 players, Phones, keyboard and mice in addition to Printers. Called Devices and Printers explorer located under Hardware and Sound you can interact with all your devices, browse files or manage settings. You can easily connect devices to your PC using USB, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi and simple wizards walks you the through the setup process. After a device is connected you’ll see it in the Devices and Printers folder. The Devices and Printers folder itself is very centralized it gives you sanity to manage your peripherals in a more cohesive way. Again interaction is a major focus; you interact with Multifunction printers, stand alone printers, faxes and scanners so you don’t have to go ten different locations to manage the 10 devices you have connected to the PC. Multifunction devices in particular will appear just as they do on your desk, a single, unified device instead separate pieces scattered through various dialogs and applets.

Introducing Device Stage – the user experience you have with all those different devices can be very overwhelming at times. Management in particular from the Windows interface can be cumbersome, un-satisfactory and plain annoying. Device Stage makes this a very seamless process by making the unique experiences around devices such as your portable media player, phone, camera and even printers available in a customized explorer with unique information about the device. Information is provided by the device manufacturer which can be updated frequently with new content and extending the functionality with new Task and online services. Portable devices such as digital cameras and cell phone that are connect displays a photo-realistic image of the device on the Taskbar. From there, you can easily launch the Device for that deice or quickly access tasks for the device by right clicking on it.

Improved Support for External Displays. If you have a mobile PC, you may want to connect it to an external display—for example, to watch a movie at home or give a presentation at work. Windows 7 makes it easier to connect to external displays because all of the common display-related features are consolidated in one place, under Display in Control Panel. And with Windows 7, you can press the Windows key + P to toggle between your laptop screen and an external display.

Help & Support

Microsoft has made ongoing improvements to how you troubleshoot, maintain and protect your computer. Microsoft introduced System Restore in Windows ME which was unreliable but had good intentions; it has improved over the years. For backup in Windows 7, the restoration process is a little more palatable, you can now restore individual files, selected folders or all your personal files. You can even reimage or restore your entire PC from a recent backup in the event of a hard drive failure or presence of malicious software. System Restore in Windows 7 is even more reliable, predictable and effective. You can now see a list of programs that will be removed or added, providing you with more information on which restore point to choose. System restore points are also available in your backups, giving you a larger list of restore points to choose from and over a longer period of time.

Windows 7 includes a new trouble shooting utility called Windows Troubleshooting which diagnoses and resolves common operating system and hardware issues, providing built-in troubleshooters for several different types of problems. Whether its power management, performance, programs, networking or printers just to name a few. Some troubleshooters that come with Windows 7 automatically run in the background, on a scheduled basis. If they discover a problem they will let you know in the Action Center. Examples of such scheduled maintenance tasks include cleaning up temporary files, detecting hard disk errors, removing broken shortcuts, and ensuring the system time is correct.

Right now, one of my Vista systems is in limbo, I resized its partition from within Windows XP using Acronis Disk Director. When I booted into Windows Vista, Windows Explorer refuses to load with an error message popping up informing me that the file ‘rundll32’ is missing or the path to it cannot be found. I have been trying to repair this issue for the past week now without having to resort to reinstalling the OS. Windows Vista provides a Start-up Repair utility, but it’s of no use right now because I am able to start the OS and reach the desktop, just that Windows refuses to work but not loading Windows Explorer. To make matters worse, my optical drives are not working in the system and I can’t repair by launching setup from a Vista image since it would be choosing to reinstall instead of booting into the System Recovery environment, and I am unable to boot from the image itself.

Windows 7 automatically transforms current experiences like this in Vista by doing a number of things, automatically it installs Start-up Repair tool onto the operating system partition, so you’ll always have access to it, no more booting from a DVD. If the OS refuses to load properly, it will automatically load the Start-up Repair, which will scan your PC for issues (such as corrupt registry and system files or an invalid Boot Configuration Database).

Acessibility Support Tools

New improvements include full-screen mode to magnify the entire desktop and lens-mode to magnify only a portion of the screen. Magnifier works with DirectX content and supports the use of a pen, touch, and keyboard shortcuts in full-screen magnification.

Feature Breakdown

Installation/Interface	Compatibility/Updates	Connectivity
· Improved Install and Migration · Informative installation procedure · Improved device driver and application compatibility reporter · New look for desktop and menus · Improved Search Experience · Libraries · Windows Touch	· Vista 64 bit upgrade path · Action Center · Program Compatibility Troubleshooter · Windows Troubleshooter · Better device driver support and backward compatibility with Vista · Problem Steps Recorder	· HomeGroups · Windows Connect Now · Better Wireless device support · Improved wireless experience · Direct Access · VPN Reconnect
Internet	Entertainment	Power User
· Accelarators · Web slices · InPrivate Mode · Compatibility Mode · Improved Address Bar and Favorites Bar · Smartscreen Filter	· Media Player 12 · Windows Live Essentials · Improved Gaming experience · Better Media Center with world wide support and internet integration	· Remote App and Desktop Connections · BitLocker To Go · App Locker · BrancheCache · Powershell 2.0 · Starter Group Policy Objects

Final Comments

How It Grades

Installation: N/A
Manual: N/A
Features: N/A
Performance: N/A
Design: N/A
Price/Value: N/A
Overall: N/A

It’s safe to say I am overwhelmed, overjoyed and most of all excited about Windows 7. This is the release of Windows everybody has been waiting for, it’s what Vista was meant to be and beyond that. Windows 7 puts the user first; it’s about going back to the fundamentals of what an operating system must do. Managing and maintaining your PC is exceptionally seamless in Windows 7 and users will appreciate the tremendous improvements and advancements this update will offer on both existing and new hardware form factors in the future. Windows Vista set the foundation for a lot of what is happening in Windows 7 today. Windows 7 makes security Essential, but not aggressive like Windows Vista. The improved UAC will no doubt give consumers confidence in this feature, just the fact that you can tweak it to a certain degree is a welcome change. Businesses will appreciate the improvements to how the OS is managed and deployed while mobile users can get better experiences between their work and home environments. Home Networking has finally reached a level of ease of use that will make even the novice to make those PCs in the home talk to each other. There is still a lot of work to be done as this early glimpse shows. But Microsoft is on the right path with Windows 7, focusing on ease of use, compatibility, better ways of interacting with the PC and managing the personal data. This is an upgrade I am looking forward to and you should too.

Linux Terminal Control Sequences

2008-12-09T11:21:00.000-08:00

Linux terminals share alot in common with their primitive ancestors such as vt100 like consoles. These early devices is capable of sending sequences that signaled events outside of the normal flow of typed characters, such as escape, tab, linefeed...etc. Linux uses CTRL key to send out these out of band signals.

This article summarises many of the commonly used control sequences that are used in all Linux terminals.

CTRL-C
This is the most commonly used sequence. In the bash shell, CTRL-C will terminate any currently running process and return you to the bash prompt. For example, if you accidentally run a command that does not stop, use CTRL-C to cancel the command.

CTRL-D
Many Unix commands read their input directly from the keyboard. An example is the WC command. WC counts the number of lines, words and characters that a user types in from the keyboard. So if you tpye WC at the command prompt, the command will wait for your input till you use CTRL-D to signal the end of transmission.

CTRL-Z
CTRL-Z means to suspend a program. For example, you are working with a command and you want to stop it temporary as it is taking too long. To do that, you can use CTRL-Z. You can later restore back the command using the fg command.

CTRL-U
If you have messed up a certain command and you want to start all over, instead of using backspace, you can use CTRL-U. CTRL-U resets the current line.

CTRL-H
Instead of using the backspace key, you can use CTRL-H to function the same way. Unless the backspace key is malfunctioned or mapped wrongly, this sequence serves very little purpose.

CTRL-L
If your screen is too cluttered with unwanted information, you can clear the screen using CTRL-L.

CTRL-S
Freeze your screen. This is a good command to use if you decide to go for a coffee break and do not want any process to run till you are back.

CTRL-Q
This sequence is exactly the opposite to CTRL-S. If you have freezed the screen before, you use this command to unfreeze it.

CTRL-J
Functions the same way as the RETURN key.

CTRL-G
Makes a terminal beep sound for fun and entertainment.

Control Sequences are important to all Linux / Unix users. Some sequences are important while some are useless today. It is worth memorising the first few sequences as described in this article.

Installing Mozilla Firefox

2008-12-09T11:17:00.000-08:00

Web browsing is becoming a favourite past time of many households around the world. With the introduction of broadband internet over the last several years, access to the World Wide Web has never been easier. You are now just one step away from a library of information, but you need to be safe from unsavoury software like pop-ups and viruses;

So you need Mozilla Firefox…

What Mozilla say about Mozilla Firefox

"A Better Web Experience

Mozilla Firefox 1.5 has an intuitive interface and blocks viruses, spyware, and popup ads. It delivers Web pages faster than ever. And it's easy to install and import your favorites. Packed with useful features like tabbed browsing, Live Bookmarks, and an integrated Search bar, Mozilla Firefox will change the way you experience the Web, for the better."

Other features include:

• Faster Browsing
• Automatic Updates
• Tabbed Browsing
• Improved Pop-up Blocking
• Integrated Search
• Stronger Security
• Clear Private Data
• Live Bookmarks
• Accessibility
• Customise Mozilla Firefox
• Next Generation Web Support

Mozilla Firefox is undoubtedly a very good, safe and practical alternative to Internet Explorer and over the next few paragraphs I will explain how you can install Mozilla Firefox and describe how to set it as your default internet browser, replacing Internet Explorer in your Start Menu.

Ok lets get started; firstly you will need to download Mozilla Firefox if you haven't already. For those of you who have not yet downloaded Mozilla Firefox I have included a link in the authors box at the end of this article. Alternatively you could go to www.raidencomputers.co.uk/latest/installing_mozilla_firefox.html where you will be able to see the original copy of this article and the step by step image guide with the Mozilla Firefox link in the top right hand corner.

Step 1

Installing Mozilla Firefox

Double (left) click on the Mozilla Firefox Setup.exe (exe is short for executable). This will open the Welcome to Mozilla Firefox setup window. Click next in the set up window.

Step 2

Software License Agreement Window

You are now at the software license screen where you have to select I Accept the terms of the License Agreement. To do this place your cursor over the white radio button and left click. You should see a black dot in the area you clicked. Now you can continue with the Mozilla Firefox installation by clicking on the next button in the bottom right of the Software License Agreement Window.

Step 3

Setup Type Window

The setup type window allows you to select either a Standard installation or a Custom installation. In this instance we only require the standard Mozilla Firefox installation as this installs all of the necessary components that you will need to use Mozilla Firefox as your internet browser. Click next in the bottom right of the Setup Type window.

Step 4

You are now at the Summary window which details the location of the Mozilla Firefox internet browser on your computer hard drive. By clicking the next button in the bottom right of the Summary window you will begin the installation procedure. This may take a few minutes depending on the speed of your computer. Once the installation has been completed the Install Complete window is displayed.

Congratulations you have just installed Mozilla Firefox. Left clicking on the finish button in the bottom right of the screen will launch Mozilla Firefox for the first time.

Now that we have installed Mozilla Firefox lets make it your default internet browser.
Making Mozilla Firefox your default internet browser

Step 1

Properties Box

Right click on the windows start button in the bottom left of your screen. You will see that a box appears with a list of items. Don't worry if your listed items do not match mine, the Properties button is always displayed. Look down the list until you find the Properties button and left click on it.

Step 2

Taskbar and Start Menu Properties Window

The Taskbar and Start Menu Properties window is now displayed. You will see that the Start Menu is already highlighted. To the right of the Start menu is the Customize button. Left click on the customize button to open the Customize Start Menu.

Step 3

Customize Start Menu Window

As you can see the Customize Start Menu Window has a number of items displayed. We need to focus on the bottom section of the window in the box titled Show on Start Menu. You will see that the top drop down box has Internet Explorer highlighted. To change this to Mozilla Firefox left click on the down arrow to the right of Internet Explorer. A list of internet browsers will be displayed. Locate Mozilla Firefox and left click on it. Once you have done that click on the OK button in the bottom of the window.

Step 4

We are now back at the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties Window. In the bottom right of the screen you will notice that the Apply button is now highlighted, left click on the Apply button to confirm the change from Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox. Now click on the OK button and the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties Window will close.

Congratulations you have now replaced Internet Explorer with Mozilla Firefox as your default internet browser. Click on the Start button in the left hand corner of the screen. At the top of the Start Window you will see Mozilla Firefox. Well done.

Now that you have installed Mozilla Firefox why not give it a whirl, happy browsing.

Displaying An RSS Feed On Your Website Using PHP And MagpieRSS

2008-12-09T11:11:00.000-08:00

These days everybody wants to have fresh content on their web site. Search engines like to see dynamic web pages, where the content is updated on a regular basis. Static pages that have information that doesn't change are not only boring, but less likely to be visited by a search engine spider than a page that changes every time it is displayed.

By using RSS and the MagpieRSS toolkit, you can import data from another web site or news source and display that information on your own site.

First, download the MagpieRSS kit from http://magpierss.sourceforge.net.

Next, unpack the archive, into a directory off your root on your web site called "rss".

Then, create a directory off your root called "cache". CHMOD this directory to 777.

You'll need to know the URL for the feed that you want to display. You can find this by searching for "RSS feed" in Google, or by going to one of the many sites that allow you to search thrown various sources for feeds. Syndic8.com is one, for example.

To display data from a single source, you can use code similar to this:

require_once('rss/rss_fetch.inc');

$news_feed = ';

error_reporting(E_ERROR);

$rss = fetch_rss("http://www.url-of-the-rss-feed.com");
$items = array_slice($rss->items, 0);
foreach ($items as $item )
{
$news_feed .= ' . $item['title'] . ' . $item['summary'] . ';
}

echo $news_feed;

MagpieRSS not only decodes the data, but it will also cache the data so it will retrieve news articles only once per hour.

Utilizing RSS in this fashion will allow your web site to have fresh content displayed constantly, and will (hopefully!) keep the search engine spiders interested in your site. The more the spiders index your site, the more pages you will have listed in the search engines. And with more pages listed in the search engine indexes you have a much better chance of attracting people to your web site.

Notebook / Laptop Memory (RAM) Upgrade In 5 Minutes Or Less

2008-11-22T11:38:00.000-08:00

This article is set up in two parts, one part about RAM overview and a second part about RAM upgrade. If you are curious on how the RAM works, you will find a detail summary that should give you all the information that you need to know about RAM, organization and speed. If you just want to read the how to upgrade section, move on directly to part two Upgrade your laptop ram in 5 minutes or less.

1 – RAM Overview

There are two big categories of random access memories:

* Dynamic memories (DRAM, Dynamic Random Access Module), not very costly. They are in most cases used for the central memory of the computer

* Static memories (SRAM, Static Random Access Module), quick and expensive. SRAM is notably used for cache memories of the processor

Functioning of the random access memory

The random access memory is constituted of hundred of thousand small condensers storing charges. When it is loaded, the logical state of the condenser is equal to 1, otherwise it belongs to 0, what means that every condenser represents one bit of memory.

Given that condensers off-load, it is always necessary to recharge them in a space of regular time called cycle of refreshment. Memory DRAM requires cycles of refreshment for instance (Ns) is about 15 nanoseconds.

Every condenser is coupled with a transistor allowing to "recover « or to change the state of the condenser. These transistors are lined up in form of matrix, that is they achieve a hut memory (so called memory) by a line and a column.

So, for a memory of type DRAM, the time of access is of 60 nanoseconds (35ns of delay of cycle and 25 ns of time of latency). On a computer, the time of cycle corresponds contrary to the frequency of the clock, for instance for a computer pulsated in 200 MHz, the time of cycle is 5 ns (1 / (200*106)).

As a result a computer having a frequency well brought up and using memories the time of access of which is much longer than the time of cycle of the processor must perform cycles of wait to access to the memory. In the case of a computer pulsated in 200 MHz using memories of types DRAM (which the time of access is of 60ns), there are 11 cycles of wait as a cycle of transfer. The performances of the computer are of as much diminished as there are cycles

Formats of Random Access Memory (RAM)

There are numerous types of random access memories. These all come in the form of barrettes of memory attachable on the motherboard.

* SIMM (Single Inline Memory Module): it is about printed circuits among which one of the faces has fleas of memory. There are two types of barrettes SIMM, according to the number of connector cables (30 or 72)

* DIMM (Dual Inline Memory Modulates) are from memories 64 bits, what explains why it is not necessary to match them. Barrettes DIMM have fleas of memory on both sides of printed circuit and have also 84 connector cables on each side, what endows them with a total of 168 brooches. They have bigger dimensions than barrettes SIMM (130x25mm).

* RIMM (Rambus Inline Memory Module, conscripts also RD-RAM or DRD-RAM) are from memories 64 bits developed by the society Rambus. They have 184 brooches. These barrettes have two notches of location (détrompeurs), avoiding very risk of confusion with the previous modules. Considering their well brought up speed of transfer, barrettes RIMM have a thermal film made responsible for ameliorating the clearing up of warmth. As in the case of DIMM, there are modules of smaller size, called SO RIMM (Small Outline RIMM), intended for laptop computers. Barrettes SO RIMM include only 160 brooches.

* DRAM (Dynamic RAM, dynamic RAM) is the type of memo most spread at the beginning of the millennium. It is about a memory from which transistors are lined up in a matrix according to lines and of columns. A transistor, coupled with a condenser gives the information of a bit. 1 byte consisting of 8 bits, a barrette of memory 256 Mb DRAM will contain 256 therefore * 2^10 * 2^10 = 256 * on 1024 * on 1024 = 268 435 456 bytes = 268 435 456 * 8 = 2 147 483 648 bits = 2 147 483 648 transistors. A 256 Mb barrette has so in reality a capacity of 268 435 456 bytes, that is 268 Mb! These are memories from which the time of access is 60 ns. On the other hand, accesses memory are made in general on data lined up consecutively in memory. So the mode of access in gust (burst mode) allows to achieve the three successive data in the first one without time of additional latency.

* DRAM FPM to speed up accesses to DRAM, there is a technology, called pagination consisting in achieving data located on the same column by changing the address of the line only, what allows to avoid the repetition of the number of column between the reading of each of the lines. They speak then about DRAM FPM (Fast Page Mode). FPM allows to acquire time of access in the order of 70 - 80 nanoseconds for a frequency of functioning that can go from 25 to 33 Mhz.

* DRAM EDO (Extended Data Out, Goes out of data ameliorated sometimes also called "hyper-page") appears in 1995. The technology used with this type of memory consists in addressing the following column during the reading of the data of a column. It creates an overlapping of accesses allowing to save time on every cycle. The time of access to memory EDO is therefore about 50 - 60 nanoseconds for a frequency of functioning going 33 - 66 Mhz. So, RAM EDO, when it is used in mode gust allows to acquire cycles of form 5-2-2-2, that is a benefit of 4 cycles on the access to 4 data. As much as memory EDO did not accept the upper frequencies in 66 Mhz, it disappeared in aid of SDRAM.

* SDRAM (Synchronous DRAM, translate synchronous RAM), appeared in 1997, allows a reading of data synchronized with the bus of the card-mother, contrary to memories EDO and FPM (qualified as asynchronous) having their own clock. SDRAM allows therefore to free itself from time of wait owed to synchronization with the card-mother. This one allows to acquire a cycle in mode gust of form 5-1-1-1, that is to say benefit of 3 cycles in comparison with RAM EDO. In that way SDRAM is able of working with a cadenza going until 150 Mhz, allowing him to acquire from time of access about 10 ns.

* DR-SDRAM (Direct Rambus DRAM or else RDRAM) is a type of memory allowing to transfer data on a bus of 16 wide bits to a cadenza of 800Mhz, what confers on him a band passer-by of 1,6 Go / s. As SDRAM, this type of memory is synchronized with the clock of the bus to ameliorate exchanges of data.

* DDR-SDRAM (Double Dated Miss SDRAM) is a memory based on technology SDRAM, allowing to double the rate of transfer of SDRAM with equal frequency. Reading or writing of data in memory am accomplished on the basis of a clock. Standard memory DRAM uses a method conscript SDR (Single Data Fails) consisting in reading or writing data in every forehead going up. DDR allows to double the frequency of reading / writings, with a clock pulsated in the same frequency, by sending data in every forehead going up, as well as in every downward forehead. Memory DDR has in general a commercial appellation of type PCXXXX where "XXXX " represent the debit side in Mb / s.

* DDR2 (or DDR-II) allows to attain twice as well brought up debit sides as DDR with equal external frequency. They speak about QDR (Quadruple Dated Fail or quad-pumped) to indicate the method of reading and used writing. Memory DDR2 uses in effect two channels separated for reading and for writing, so it is able of sending or of accepting twice more data than DDR.

2 - Upgrading Your Laptop RAM

upgrading a notebook memory is a specific simple process pending that you have the right RAM and are somewhat delicate.

There are different types of RAM, and you must choose the one that is compatible with your notebook computer. Memory is also a fragile, so you need to be very cautious when installing it. You should ensure that the laptop is turned off and disconnected from any exterior power supply. No lights should be visible.

It is a lot easier to install RAM on a laptop versus a desktop PC. Access to the memory slots is via a panel generally located in the bottom of the laptop. Once you have opened this panel with a small screwdriver you can see the existing memory. you can check the exact type of memory that your Notebook currently uses, because it is usually shown on the front of the memory strips and will be evident when you open up the memory panel.

The memory strips are generally locked in with small clips on the ends of the strips. To take out existing memory, simply flip the clips and then remove the memory strips gently from their holding place. If you are simply adding memory, and there is space available, just add the new memory, gently pushing it in to ensure it is fully seated in the slots, and then push the clips to hold the new memory in place.

Once you have replaced or added your Notebook computer memory, replace the access panel, and then screw the panel back in place. Lastly, power up the notebook, When the PC starts up, it will count the memory and tell you how much RAM is loaded on your laptop.

As long as you have right memory, the whole operation should take less than 5 minutes, you can then enjoy your faster, less crash prone laptop.

About The Author
Christophe Catesson - Communication Manager for http://www.bestlaptopsreviews.com . Laptop and notebook reviews and ratings, most popular laptops, industry news, Forum, Q/A....

7 Winning Search Engine Optimization Tactics

2008-11-22T11:20:00.000-08:00

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.

5 Tips to Organize your Server Room in 2008

2008-11-18T12:20:00.000-08:00

If you are looking to get your server room organized in 2008, there are a few key steps to keep in mind while you are going through the process. Your server room houses valuable information for your business and the safety and security of your equipment should be of top concern. In addition, the equipment that you choose should be efficient and safe for long term use.

1. Choose the Appropriately Sized Rack

As you are looking to organize your server room, the most logical place to start is by choosing new server racks. Select server racks with sufficient internal space to house all of your current equipment and room to accommodate future expansion. Having extra space is a must in your server room for expansion as well as unplanned additional equipment purchases. Some obvious things to check as well include determining that you have enough space to move the new servers in and that you have the proper floor space to maneuver around the equipment and that there is enough space in between the equipment to allow for safety spacing. When you are installing the equipment, be sure to install it according to the included instructions so that you do not have any future problems.
2. Include your New Server Room in your Security Strategy

Security, especially with vital information, is always important for a business to consider. As you are organizing your server room, be sure that any changes or additions fit into your overall business security plan. You may want to consider purchasing server racks that have locking doors, minimizing personnel access to the room and using monitor devices within the room for added protection. In addition, newer technology allows you to monitor the environment of the server room at all times. Temperature changes, water leaks, electrical circuit issues and other issues can change unknowingly, causing potential damage to your server room. With the addition of this technology, you will be able to act quickly to resolve any issues in order to protect your valuable equipment.

3. Customize your Server Rack Design

Once you have decided on a manufacturer for your server racks, most will allow for customization. Consider the addition or modification of the shelving, top or side panels, mounting rails and the feet to create a server room that matches all of your business needs and the space that you are utilizing as your server room.

4. Evaluate your Power Technology

Power technology is constantly updated, providing you with various options for your power strip. You have several choices to consider including rack mount power strips, remote power products, Three-phase power technology and standard power strips. Consider your space, the number of outlets that you will need, each plug’s requirements and any redundancy requirements when you are choosing the power technology for your server room.

5. Ensure your Safety with a Cooling Strategy

The heat that each unit gives off varies, making the cooling needs within your server room vary as well. Evaluate all of your requirements and the available cooling strategies to ensure the overall safety of the equipment, environment and company when making your selections.

About The Author
Marcos Garza, owner of Global1Resources.com, is an expert on server rack cabinets. With years of industry experience, Marcos started his own website to offer high-quality, discounted server racks on a nationwide scale. Global1Resources.com specializes in providing server rack enclosures and dell server racks for small business, corporate or even personal server rack organization needs. For more visit http://www.global1resources.com and http://www.global1resources.com/Server_Rack_Enclosures_s/1.htm

5 Powerful And Free Methods That I Use To Speed Up My PC

2008-11-15T11:47:00.000-08:00

Many of my friends say that I am obsessed with techniques on how I can speed up my PC.

Whether I’m doing some work with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe InDesign all running at the same time, or whether I’m playing Gears of War while World of Warcraft in windowed mode is minimized, I always want my PC to perform as fast as possible. Yes, I am a speed junkie. I easily get frustrated with the slightest hint of a load time.

Hence, I am always on the lookout for ways to speed up my PC.

Here are 5 such methods that I use to speed up my PC and to ensure that it will always run at optimum performance with very minimal hiccups.

Speed Up My PC, Technique No. 1: Download The Latest Drivers

The physical components of your PC stay the same, unless you remove and replace them. But the software they run? They constantly change. The programs sold today will fall pale in comparison with the programs that will be made available next week. The websites we visit will evolve based on the internet technology that will be introduced.

And how are our systems supposed to cope up?

When I want to speed up my PC, the first thing I do is to download the latest drivers for the physical components of my rig. Graphic card, motherboard, modem… you name it, I download it! I make sure that nothing but the latest driver is installed in my system.

Speed Up My PC, Technique No. 2: Keep Your Registry Squeaky Clean

Does it take forever to boot up your system? Chances are, your registry is bogged down by useless leftover files from the programs you have installed, even if you have already uninstalled them.

Whenever I want to speed up my PC, I open my favorite registry cleaner to scan my system for some redundant, and sometimes harmful, leftover files. Then I let it do its thing, deleting the non-essential files whenever it could.

Reg cleaners really help speed up my PC, and there is no reason why they can’t help you speed up yours.

Speed Up My PC, Technique No. 3: Your System May Have Been Infected By Spyware And/Or Adware

Sometimes, slow boot up time and slow processing speed are caused by the infestation of spyware and/or adware in your system. Spyware and adware are forms of malware that surreptitiously find their way into your PC, often through the websites you visit or the email attachments you open.

If I am infected by spyware and/or adware and I want to speed up my PC, I simply open my most trusted spyware remover – Search & Destroy – a free utility that is powerful enough to wipe out all the known spyware and adware variations today.

Speed Up My PC, Technique No. 4: Scan For Viruses And Kill Them

Slow PCs may also be caused by viruses, the most popular of which are Trojans – wicked programs that keep hammering our systems their evil deeds.

There is only one way to determine the existence of a virus in your system, that is, by running a complete diagnostic scan using an anti-virus software. The best anti-virus software I can recommend is AVG, a free, open source program that is regularly updated with the latest virus descriptions which allows the program to run a really comprehensive examination of your system.

Thereafter, the anti-virus program will eliminate the threat and I’d be able to speed up my PC with no hassle at all.

Speed Up My PC, Technique No. 5: Defragment Regularly

One of the really under-appreciated features of a Windows-based PC is the Disk Defragmenter. Basically, the Disk Defragmenter will eliminate useless and redundant files in your entire system, not just your registry.

I swear to God, defragmenting your disk is THE best way to speed up my PC. Defragmenting may take a couple of hours or more, but the end result is very much worth it.

To access the Disk Defragmenter, go to START, then ALL PROGRAMS, then ACCESSORIES, then SYSTEM TOOLS, and voila! You’d be able to speed up your PC as efficiently as I can speed up my PC!

About The Author
Mehmet Onatli

You can download a free trial of a http://www.registryheal.com/ from Mehmet website. He shares some of his things he learned in 10 years experience.

Website Sales Purpose

2008-11-15T11:44:00.000-08:00

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.

Operating Systems: File Systems

2008-11-15T11:41:00.000-08:00

File systems are an integral part of any operating systems with the capacity for long term storage. There are two distinct parts of a file system, the mechanism for storing files and the directory structure into which they are organised. In mordern operating systems where it is possibe for several user to access the same files simultaneously it has also become necessary for such features as access control and different forms of file protection to be implemented.

A file is a collection of binary data. A file could represent a program, a document or in some cases part of the file system itself. In modern computing it is quite common for their to be several different storage devices attached to the same computer. A common data structure such as a file system allows the computer to access many different storage devices in the same way, for example, when you look at the contents of a hard drive or a cd you view it through the same interface even though they are completely different mediums with data mapped on them in completely different ways. Files can have very different data structures within them but can all be accessed by the same methods built into the file system. The arrangment of data within the file is then decided by the program creating it. The file systems also stores a number of attributes for the files within it.

All files have a name by which they can be accessed by the user. In most modern file systems the name consists of of three parts, its unique name, a period and an extension. For example the file 'bob.jpg' is uniquely identified by the first word 'bob', the extension jpg indicates that it is a jpeg image file. The file extension allows the operating system to decide what to do with the file if someone tries to open it. The operating system maintains a list of file extension associations. Should a user try to access 'bob.jpg' then it would most likely be opened in whatever the systems default image viewer is.

The system also stores the location of a file. In some file systems files can only be stored as one contigious block. This has simplifies storage and access to the file as the system then only needs to know where the file begins on the disk and how large it is. It does however lead to complications if the file is to be extended or removed as there may not be enough space available to fit the larger version of the file. Most modern file systems overcome this problem by using linked file allocation. This allows the file to be stored in any number of segments. The file system then has to store where every block of the file is and how large they are. This greatly simplifies file space allocation but is slower than contigious allocation as it is possible for the file to be spread out all over the disk. Modern oparating systems overome this flaw by providing a disk defragmenter. This is a utility that rearranges all the files on the disk so that thay are all in contigious blocks.

Information about the files protection is also integrated into the file system. Protection can range from the simple systems implemented in the FAT system of early windows where files could be marked as read-only or hidden to the more secure systems implemented in NTFS where the file system administrator can set up separate read and write access rights for different users or user groups. Although file protection adds a great deal of complexity and potential difficulties it is essential in an enviroment where many different computers or user can have access to the same drives via a network or time shared system such as raptor.

Some file systems also store data about which user created a file and at what time they created it. Although this is not essential to the running of the file system it is useful to the users of the system.

In order for a file system to function properly they need a number of defined operations for creating, opening and editing a file. Almost all file systems provide the same basic set of methods for manipulating files.

A file system must be able to create a file. To do this there must be enough space left on the drive to fit the file. There must also be no other file in the directory it is to be placed with the same name. Once the file is created the system will make a record of all the attributes noted above.

Once a file has been created we may need to edit it. This may be simply appending some data to the end of it or removing or replacing data already stored within it. When doing this the system keeps a write pointer marking where the next write oparation to the file should take place.

In order for a file to be useful it must of course be readable. To do this all you need to know the name and path of the file. From this the file system can ascertain where on the drive the file is stored. While reading a file the system keeps a read pointer. This stores which part of the drive is to be read next.

In some cases it is not possible to simply read all of the file into memory. File systems also allow you to reposition the read pointer within a file. To perform this operation the system needs to know how far into the file you want the read pointer to jump. An example of where this would be useful is a database system. When a query is made on the database it is obviously ineficient to read the whole file up to the point where the reuired data is, instead the application managing the database would determine where in the file the required bit of data is and jump to it. This operation is often known as a file seek.

File systems also allow you to delete files. To do this it needs to know the name and path of the file. To delete a file the systems simply removes its entry from the directory structure and adds all the space it previously occupied to the free space list (or whatever other free space management system it uses).

These are the most basic operations required by a file system to function properly. They are present in all modern computer file systems but the way they function may vary. For example, to perform the delete file operation in a modern file system like NTFS that has file protection built into it would be more complicated than the same operation in an older file system like FAT. Both systems would first check to see whether the file was in use before continuing, NTFS would then have to check whether the user currently deleting the file has permission to do so. Some file systems also allow multiple people to open the same file simultaneously and have to decide whether users have permission to write a file back to the disk if other users currently have it open. If two users have read and write permission to file should one be allowed to overwrite it while the other still has it open? Or if one user has read-write permission and another only has read permission on a file should the user with write permission be allowed to overwrite it if theres no chance of the other user also trying to do so?

Different file systems also support different access methods. The simplest method of accessing information in a file is sequential access. This is where the information in a file is accessed from the beginning one record at a time. To change the position in a file it can be rewound or forwarded a number of records or reset to the beginning of the file. This access method is based on file storage systems for tape drive but works as well on sequential access devices (like mordern DAT tape drives) as it does on random-access ones (like hard drives). Although this method is very simple in its operation and ideally suited for certain tasks such as playing media it is very inneficient for more complex tasks such as database management. A more modern approach that better facilitates reading tasks that arent likely to be sequential is direct access. direct access allows records to be read or written over in any order the application requires. This method of allowing any part of the file to be read in any order is better suited to modern hard drives as they too allow any part of the drive to be read in any order with little reduction in transfer rate. Direct access is better suited to to most applications than sequential access as it is designed around the most common storage medium in use today as opposed to one that isnt used very much anymore except for large offline back-ups. Given the way direct access works it is also possible to build other access methods on top of direct access such as sequential access or creating an index of all the records of the file speeding to speed up finding data in a file.

On top of storing and managing files on a drive the file system also maintains a system of directories in which the files are referenced. Modern hard drives store hundreds of gigabytes. The file system helps organise this data by dividing it up into directories. A directory can contain files or more directories. Like files there are several basic operation that a file system needs to a be able to perform on its directory structure to function properly.

It needs to be able to create a file. This is also covered by the overview of peration on a file but as well as creating the file it needs to be added to the directory structure.

When a file is deleted the space taken up by the file needs to be marked as free space. The file itself also needs to be removed from the directory structure.

Files may need to be renamed. This requires an alteration to the directory structure but the file itself remains un-changed.

List a directory. In order to use the disk properly the user will require to know whats in all the diretories stored on it. On top of this the user needs to be able to browse through the directories on the hard drive.

Since the first directory structures were designed they have gone through several large evolutions. Before directory structures were applied to file systems all files were stored on the same level. This is basically a system with one directory in which all the files are kept. The next advancement on this which would be considered the first directory structure is the two level directory. In this There is a singe list of directories which are all on the same level. The files are then stored in these directories. This allows different users and applications to store there files separately. After this came the first directory structures as we know them today, directory trees. Tree structure directories improves on two level directories by allowing directories as well as files to be stored in directories. All modern file systems use tree structore directories, but many have additional features such as security built on top of them.

Protection can be implemented in many ways. Some file systems allow you to have password protected directories. In this system. The file system wont allow you to access a directory before it is given a username and password for it. Others extend this system by given different users or groups access permissions. The operating system requires the user to log in before using the computer and then restrict their access to areas they dont have permission for. The system used by the computer science department for storage space and coursework submission on raptor is a good example of this. In a file system like NTFS all type of storage space, network access and use of device such as printers can be controlled in this way. Other types of access control can also be implemented outside of the file system. For example applications such as win zip allow you to password protect files.

There are many different file systems currently available to us on many different platforms and depending on the type of application and size of drive different situations suit different file system. If you were to design a file system for a tape backup system then a sequential access method would be better suited than a direct access method given the constraints of the hardware. Also if you had a small hard drive on a home computer then there would be no real advantage of using a more complex file system with features such as protection as it isn't likely to be needed. If i were to design a file system for a 10 gigabyte drive i would use linked allocation over contigious to make the most efficient use the drive space and limit the time needed to maintain the drive. I would also design a direct access method over a sequential access one to make the most use of the strengths of the hardware. The directory structure would be tree based to allow better organisation of information on the drive and would allow for acyclic directories to make it easier for several users to work on the same project. It would also have a file protection system that allowed for different access rights for different groups of users and password protection on directories and individual files.Several file systems that already implement the features ive decribed above as ideal for a 10gig hard drive are currently available, these include NTFS for the Windows NT and XP operating systems and ext2 which is used in linux.

About The Author
Sam Harnett MSc mBCS

Pixeko Studio – Web Developers in Kent

http://www.pixeko.com

Do You Have Access To Enough IT Staff?

2008-11-15T11:38:00.000-08:00

No matter how well a business is run and how efficient its computer system is, employees will always run into problems now and again. Whether it’s a simple computer glitch or a major error, it’s good to know you have the right staff on hand to solve the problem in the shortest amount of time possible.

The problem is that you need to know this ahead of time – not when your computers crash and you suddenly realise you don’t have the staff or the resources to cope with it and get things back up and running again.

Not only can this have a detrimental effect on your business, it can also mean that when problems do occur it takes longer for your business to recover. That’s why it pays to review your IT infrastructure and your current needs in order to make sure you are fully prepared and able to take the necessary actions if or when they are ever needed.

In small companies there is often no need to have a specific IT department to call on in the event of any problems. In this case it is often better to hire multi-skilled employees for certain roles, so you have people in place at all times that you can call on to rectify any problems or issues as they arise. Part of their job role in this situation may be to identify possible issues before they arise, and take the necessary steps to prevent them occurring in the first place.

Of course the size of a company can have a big effect at the other end of the scale as well. If a company grows quickly and experiences a sustained period of success, resulting in the need to take on more employees in a short period of time, the current IT department may no longer be able to meet the needs of the larger business.

In this case it’s essential to quickly identify how the department should be expanded, what its new brief should be and how many new staff members are required to meet the needs of the larger business.

The key point is to remember that what works now may not work in the future. Your IT staff members play a key role in ensuring the computer infrastructure is able to cope with the growing needs and demands of the company. If these two aspects don’t match up, the company could be heading for problems it won’t be able to cope with.

About The Author
Jane Smith shares practical business IT solutions for medium to large sized organisations. To activate your business with the power of IT, please visit http://www.bmc.com/en_IN/

Did I Choose The Most Cost Effective Porteble Computer ?

2008-11-15T11:35:00.001-08:00

Did I choose the best laptop ?

Keys to choosing the best laptop computer :

Who is theportable computer user? When choosing a laptop computer, it is important to understand who will be using it.., school student, college student, professional businessman ,office worker, etc.

Where will the laptop be used? For big mobile users such as college students and professionals, size, weight and battery life are very important.

So when looking over the reviews and relevant specs, keep those factors in mind. The average high school student uses a laptop from room to room in their house, and have loads of access to AC power most of the time. So for these users, the factors listed above may not be as critical.

How will the laptop be used? The more mobile the user, the more durability is needed. Heavy users ie sales reps spend a great deal of time start and shutting down their laptops every day. an average large user will open and shut their laptop computer 6 times a day. Although that may not seem alot of wear and tear, there is also the issue of general handling. Heavy users will be travelling from location to location, in and out of cars,on and off planes etc on a constant basis. This increases the likelihood of damage to the laptop computer, via dropping, bumping and banging, drink spills on the keyboard, etc....

Should I buy a service contract for my laptop? the answer is YES. When you think about carrying around a fragile piece of electronics costing $1000 or more, the price of a typical service contract is a bargain. for a relatively small price £50 per notebook computer, its worth it to for you peace of mind.

How much should I expect to pay for a laptop? It used to be hard to find a quality laptop under £600; however, this is no longer true. There are several companies with great offers, starting around £300. The options / upgrades you select have a large impact in what you can expect to pay. Having a list of what you want in a computer, such as memory, speed, hard drive size, burners, etc..will help when you go shopping. Although online notebook computer manufacturers allow a great deal of customization, the general public are easily serviced with a “off the shelf” standard notebook computer.

What Laptop Brand Should I Select? the worlds your oyster in this respect with the amount of notebook computer manufactures out there,with different colours and sizes its everyones personal choice , I myself find that toshiba have all the features which service my needs.

Laptop computer http://www.discount-notebooks.net

About The Author
David Burton is the developer of http://www.discount-notebooks.net which has all the latest laptops fo all your officeneeds.

How to clean your Mother Board

2008-11-15T11:23:00.000-08:00

If you have not done the inspection mentioned in the previous article - How to Clean your Case, now is the time to do so. Look at the blades of the fan in the back of the computer. Also look at any vents. Is there clusters of dust there? Is there grime caked on to it? If so, the inside needs to be cleaned. If the fan blades are clean but it has been several years since you have cleaned the motherboard or if the computer is around cigarette smoke, it probably should be cleaned anyway.

the air (like cigarette smoke) can build up on the circuitry of the motherboard and cause it to heat up and/or corrode.

The first thing that you need to do is unplug your computer. Then open up the case to get access to the motherboard. Cases open differently. If you don't know how to open your case, look on the back of your computer along the edge for some screws. These screws may hold on side panels or an upside down U shaped panel that covers the sides and top. Removing the screws will allow you to take off the cover. Other cases have the screws on the front of the computer. To get access to these screws, you must first remove the front panel by pressing a hidden latch. The cover is there to give easy access to the inside of your computer, so if you look hard enough, you should be able to figure out how to remove it.

Remember that if you touch anything on the motherboard, you should be grounded by either touching the metal frame of the computer with your other hand or by wearing a special grounding device.

The goal of cleaning the motherboard is to remove all dust and debris from the motherboard and all components inside of the case. This can be done using one of three methods.

The preferred method is to use a can of compressed air to blow it out. Always hold the can in an up-right position to prevent the propellent chemicals which can damage or corrode components from coming out. Dust and dirt should be blown away from the motherboard and out of the case.

Another way to remove dust is to use a vacuum. The common advice is to only use a battery operated vacuum because an AC powered vacuum causes static and static can ruin the motherboard. I have used an AC powered vacuum (before I knew that it was not recommended) to clean my motherboard many times and it has never caused any problems, but I may have just been lucky. When using the vacuum, keep the nozzle a couple of inches away from the motherboard or any other components so that it does not come in contact with them and so that any small parts are not sucked into the vacuum.

If you do not have a can of compressed air or a vacuum, you can use a dry cloth and brush to clean the motherboard. Be careful not to dislodge or break anything using this method.

While cleaning the motherboard, be careful not to unplug any cables or connections or to dislodge any loose components, such as, jumpers.

Methodically clean the whole inside of the case going over all of the motherboard from one end to the other and all other components. Don't forget to clean the fans and heat sinks. Do not open up the power supply box or stick anything in it beyond the fan. If you do, you could get a shocking surprise and ruin your computer.

If your computer does not work when you put it back together, something was obviously dislodged during the cleaning. Open the case back up and push all connections and cards into their slots. Look for anything that may have become disconnected.

Cleaning the motherboard is probably the most dangerous form of cleaning but it is necessary to prevent an early death of your computer.

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/

Google Web Search Basics

2008-11-12T17:21:00.000-08:00

Whenever you search for more than one keyword at a time, a search engine has a default strategy for handling and combining those keywords. Can those words appear individually anywhere in a page, or do they have to be right next to each other? Will the engine search for both keywords or for either keyword?

Phrase Searches
Google defaults to searching for occurrences of your specified keywords anywhere in the page, whether side by side or scattered throughout. To return the results of pages containing specifically ordered words, enclose them in quotes, turning your keyword search into a phrase search , to use Google's terminology.

On entering a search for the keywords:

to be or not to be

Google will find matches where the keywords appear anywhere on the page. If you want Google to find you matches where the keywords appear together as a phrase, surround them with quotes, like this:

"to be or not to be"

Google will return matches in which only those words appear together (not to mention explicitly including stop words such as "to" and "or"; see the section "Explicit Inclusion" a little later).

Phrase searches are also useful when you want to find a phrase but aren't quite sure of the exact wording. This is accomplished in combination with wildcards, explained later in the chapter in "Full-Word Wildcards."

Basic Boolean
Whether an engine searches for all keywords or any of them depends on what is called its Boolean default . Search engines can default to Boolean AND (searching for all keywords) or Boolean OR (searching for any keywords). Of course, even if a search engine defaults to searching for all keywords, you can usually give it a special command to instruct it to search for any keyword. Lacking specific instructions, the engine falls back on its default setting.

Google's Boolean default is AND, which means that if you enter query words without modifiers, Google will search for all your query words. For example, if you search for:

snowblower Honda "Green Bay"

Google will search for all the words. If you prefer to specify that any one word or phrase is acceptable, put an OR between each:

snowblower OR snowmobile OR "Green Bay"

(Make sure you capitalize OR; a lowercase or won't work correctly.)

If you want to search for a particular term along with two or more other terms, group the other terms within parentheses, like so:

snowblower (snowmobile OR "Green Bay")

This query searches for the word "snowmobile" or phrase "Green Bay" along with the word "snowblower." A stand-in for OR, borrowed from the computer-programming realm, is the | (pipe) character, as in:

snowblower (snowmobile | "Green Bay")

Negation

If you want to specify that a query item must not appear in your results, prepend a (minus sign or dash):

snowblower snowmobile -"Green Bay"

This will search for pages that contain both the words "snowblower" and "snowmobile," but not the phrase "Green Bay."

Note that the symbol must appear directly before the word or phrase that you don't want. If there's space between, as in the following query, it won't work as expected:

snowblower snowmobile - "Green Bay"
Be sure, however, to place a space before the - symbol.

Explicit Inclusion
On the whole, Google will search for all the keywords and phrases that you specify (with the exception of those you've specifically negated with , of course). However, there are certain words that Google will ignore because they are considered too common to be of any use in the search. These words"I," "a," "the," and "of," to name a feware called stop words .

You can force Google to take a stop word into account by prepending a + (plus) character, as in:

+the king

Stop words that appear inside of phrase searches are not ignored. Searching for:

"the move" glam

will result in a more accurate list of matches than:

the move glam

simply because Google takes the word "the" into account in the first example but ignores it in the second.

Synonyms
Every so often, you get the feeling that you're missing out on some useful results because the keyword or keywords you've chosen aren't the only way to express what you're looking for.

The Google synonym operator, the ~ (tilde) character, prepended to any number of keywords in your query, asks Google to include not only exact matches, but also what it thinks are synonyms for each of the keywords. Searching for:

~ape

turns up results for monkey, gorilla, chimpanzee, and others (both singular and plural forms) of the ape or related family, as if you'd searched for:

monkey gorilla chimpanzee

along with results for some words you'd never have thought to include in your query.

Google figures out synonyms algorithmically, so you may be surprised to find results that your garden-variety thesaurus would not have suggested. (Synonyms are bolded along with exact keyword matches on the results page, so they're easy to spot.)

Number Range
One of the more difficult things to convey in an Internet search query is a rangeof dates, currency, size, weight, height, or any two arbitrary values.

The number range operator, .. (two periods), looks for results that fall inside your specified numeric range.

Looking for that perfect pair of Prada pumps, size 5 or 6? Try this for size:

prada pumps size 5..6

Perhaps you're looking to spend $800 to $1,000 on a nice digital SLR camera; Google for:

slr digital camera 3..5 megapixel $800..1000

The one thing to remember is always to provide some clue as to the meaning of the range, e.g., $, size, megapixel, kg, and so forth.

You can also use the number range syntax with just one number, making it the minimum or maximum of your query. Do you want to find some land in Montana that's at least 500 acres? No problem:

acres Montana land 500..

On the other hand, you might want to make sure that raincoat you buy for your terrier doesn't cost more than $30. That's possible too:

raincoat dog ..$30

[Google normally does not recognize special characters such as $ in the search process. But because the $ sign was necessary for the number feature, you can use it in all sorts of searches. Try the search "yard sale" bargains 10 and then "yard sale" bargains $10. Notice how the second search gives you far fewer results? That's because Google is matching $10 exactly]

Simple Searching and Feeling Lucky
The I'm Feeling Lucky™ button is a thing of beauty. Rather than giving you a list of search results from which to choose, you're whisked away to what Google believes is the most relevant page given your search (i.e., the first result in the list). Entering washington post and clicking the I'm Feeling Lucky button takes you directly to http://www.washingtonpost.com. Trying president will land you at http://www.whitehouse.gov.

Case Sensitivity
Some search engines are case-sensitive; that is, they search for queries based on how the queries are capitalized. A search for "GEORGE WASHINGTON" on such a search engine would not find "George Washington," "george washington," or any other case combination.

Google is case-insensitive. If you search for Three, tHRee, THREE, or even THREE, you get the same results.

Steps to take for optimal Google indexing of your site.

2008-11-12T17:11:00.000-08:00

The cornerstone of any good search engine is highly relevant results. Google's unprecedented success has been due to its uncanny ability to match quality information with a user's search terms. The core of Google's search results is based on a patented algorithm called PageRank.

There is an entire industry focused on getting sites listed near the top of search engines. Google has proven to be the toughest search engine for a site to do well on. Even so, it isn't all that difficult to get a new web site listed and begin receiving traffic from Google.

Learning the ins and outs of getting your site listed by a search engine can be a daunting task. There is a vast array of information about search engines on the Web, and not all of it is useful or proper. This discussion of getting your site into the Google database focuses on long-term techniques for successfully promoting your site through Google, helping you avoid some of the common misconceptions and problems that a new site owner might face.

Search Engine Basics

When you type a term into a search site, the engine looks up potential matches in its database and presents the most relevant web page matches first. How those web pages get into the database and, consequently, how you can get yours in there as well, is a three-step process:

A search engine visits a site with an automated program called a spider (sometimes called a robot). A spider is a program similar to a web browser that downloads a site's pages. It doesn't actually display the page anywhere; it just downloads the page data.

After the spider has acquired the page, the search engine passes the page to a program called an indexer, which is another robotic program that extracts most of the visible portions of the page. The indexer also analyzes the page for keywords, the title, links, and other important information contained in the code.

The search engine adds your site to its database and makes it available to searchers. The greatest difference between search engines is in this final step where ranking or result position for a particular keyword is determined.

Submitting Your Site to Google

The first step is to get your pages listed in the database, and there are two ways to go about this. The first is direct submission of your site's URL to Google via its "Add your URL to Google" page. To counter programmed robots, search engines routinely move submission pages around on their sites. You can find Google's submission page linked from its Help pages or Webmaster Info pages (http://www.google.com/addurl.html).

Visit Google's add URL page, enter the main index page for your site into the submission form, and press Submit. Google's spider (called GoogleBot) will visit your page, usually within four weeks. The spider will traverse all the pages on your site and add them to its index. Within eight weeks, you should be able to find your site listed in Google.

The second way to get your site listed is to let Google find you based on links that point to your site. Once GoogleBot finds a link to your site from a page that is already in its index, it will visit your site.

Google has been updating its database on a monthly basis for three years. It sends its spider out in crawler mode once a month, as well. Crawler mode is a special mode in which a spider traverses, or crawls, the entire Web. As it runs into page links, it indexes those pages in a never-ending attempt to download all the pages it can. Once your pages are listed in Google, they are revisited and updated on a monthly basis. If you frequently update your content, Google may index your search terms more often.

Once you are indexed and listed in Google, the next question for a site owner naturally is, "How can I rank better under my applicable search terms?"

The Search Engine Optimization Template

This is my general recipe for the ubiquitous Google. It is generic enough that it works well everywhere and is as close as I have come to a "one-size-fits-all" SEO (Search Engine Optimization) template.

Use your targeted keyword phrase:

In META keywords. It's not necessary for Google, but it is still a good habit. Keep your META keywords short (128 characters max, or 10 keywords).

In a META description. Keep your keywords near the left but as part of a full sentence.

In the title at the far left, but not as the first word.

In the top portion of the page in the first sentence of the first full paragraph (plain text: no bold, no italic, no style).

In an H3 or larger heading.

In bold (second paragraph if possible and anywhere except in the first usage on the page).

In italic (anywhere except in the first usage).

In a subscript/superscript.

In a URL (directory name, filename, or domain name). Do not duplicate the keyword in the URL.

In an image filename used on the page.

In the ALT tag of the image.

In the title attribute of the image.

In link text to another site.

In an internal link's text.

In the title attribute of all the targeted links in and out of the page.

In the filename of your external CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) or JavaScript file.

In an inbound link on the site (preferably from your home page).

In an inbound link from off the site (if possible).

In a link to a site that has a PageRank of 8 or better.

Other search engine optimization issues to consider include:

Use "last modified" headers if you can.

Validate the HTML. Some feel that Google's parser has become stricter at parsing instead of milder. It often misses an entire page because of a few simple errors; we have tested this thoroughly.

Use an HTML template throughout your site. Google can spot the template and parse it off. (Of course, this also means it is pretty good at spotting duplicate content.)

Keep the page as an .html or .htm extension. Any dynamic extension is a risk.

Keep the HTML below 20 KB; 5 to 15 KB is the ideal range.

Keep the ratio of text to HTML very high. Text should outweigh HTML by a significant amount.

Double-check your page in Netscape, Opera, and Internet Explorer. Use Lynx if you have it.

Use only raw hrEFs for links. Keep JavaScript far, far away from links. The simpler the link code, the better.

More traffic will come once you realize that 1 referral a day to 10 pages is better than 10 referrals a day to 1 page.

Don't assume that keywords in your site's navigation template are worth anything at all. Google looks for full sentences and paragraphs. Keywords just lying around orphaned on the page are not worth as much as when they are used in a sentence.

Brett Tabke

Symantec Norton Antibot The Latest In Norton Computer Protection Software

2008-11-11T13:38:00.000-08:00

Symantec Norton Antibot The Latest In Norton Computer Protection Software
It seems like every other month a new “program” comes along to make our lives that much easier. For example, first we could bookmark favorites, and then RSS feed them, and then came widgets and now “bots” which are robots that do a lot of our computer work for us in the background. Examples of friendly bots are weather bots, game playing bots, instant messaging and my favorites are those on AOL Instant Messenger which do all kinds of functions for me like shop, find movie times and even give updates on the Wall Street Journal.

Unfortunately not all bots were created “equal.” Some are friendly and some are not. The ones that are not friendly can be a form of malware that allows control of your computer to be released, providing hackers with the opportunity to access your information and spread harmful bots to others. This type of computer virus can then be used to spread spam and commit various types of identity theft and other online fraud.

So with new threats to our computers and information, new methods of protection are required. One of the oldest and most well known software protection designers has recently released a new protection program, Symantec Norton AntiBot. This is a software product designed to prevent the hijacking of one’s personal computer by bots and uses the bots on design programs against them, to located and destroy them.

Many people already employ some form of protection on their personal computer, such as increasing the protection level from internet information to “high.” But these cannot detect some of the most recent bot programs and may not be the most efficient means of information protection, especially with the Internet being used more and more frequently for online shopping, ticket purchases, travel and other “high risk” activities.

A more effective method of detecting and eliminating threats caused by bots is to install software designed specifically to detect, destroy and prevent bots from having access to your computer. With Symantec Norton AntiBot software, protection against bots is enhanced several times and the threat of bot attack is greatly diminished. It’s program protects against bots by blocking bots from entering your computer through downloads and e-mail attachments (two of the common ways bots enter a personal computer), checking for any unusual behavior on your personal computer and eliminating it, and detecting malicious bot software at all levels; keeping your personal, financial and credit card information safe and stopping identify theft before it can occur.

Because bots operate in the background and are not detectable by antivirus or antispyware programs, many computer users are completely unaware that their personal computer has become infected. Many problems caused by bots go undetected until it is too late. Warning signs that your computer may have been accessed include: slowness of computer speed and unusual or irrelevant error messages. However, many times com these symptoms are sporadic and computer users will take little notice. Many people will continue to use their personal computer, unaware that bots have hijacked their personal computer and are slowly at work; looking for credit card numbers, passwords, and logon information which can be used for identity theft and in committing other types of online crime. This program scans your personal computer on a continuous basis, closing the gaps that could allow bots to infect your personal computer and better ensuring that bots do not invade and gain control.

The use of Symantec Norton AntiBot to determine what a harmful or useful bot and allows you to continue using those bots you love and have come to depend on for information and services. It can be used in addition to several other antivirus and antispyware programs. Its compatibility is not limited to only Norton products.

The cost of this software is $29.95 for one year of service. It was awarded PC Magazine’s Editor’s Choice Award (2007) and underwent rigorous testing which included using AntiBot on computers with existing threats as well as allowing threats to try to access the computer after installation.

With the growing threat of identity theft and credit card fraud Symantec Norton AntiBot offers an additional level of protection needed to combat the threat of bots and prevent them from turning one’s personal computer into a robotic that turns into an instrument of destruction to both your personal and financial well-being.

About The Author
Lisa Carey is a contributing author for http://www.IdentityTheftSecrets.com. You can get tips on Identity theft protection, software, and monitoring your credit, as well as learn more about the secrets used by identity thieves at http://www.IdentityTheftSecrets.com

Web Development And The Big Time Out

2008-11-08T15:32:00.000-08:00

One of the great debilitators in online business is simply the perceived (or real) lack of time. Business owners are used to moving forward. An online web presence can make them feel tied to an office chair learning skills they aren’t sure they want to know.

It’s not uncommon for those who deal in full time web design to have individuals contact them for a site design, but have absolutely no idea what they want. Furthermore when the designer questions them the response might be, “I don’t know, just make it look nice.”

Let’s not forget the core values or mission of the business. Many business owners have no idea how to answer those kinds of questions. They may stare blankly for a moment or two and there’s no more time for further deep thought so they go back to action – without answers.

In many cases it is possible to answer some of the questions needed, but it may require taking time away from a familiar setting. It may also require more time than you think you want to give.

If you can get to a place of concentrated contemplation you are likely to find yourself stripping ideas to their core to find out what your business is trying to accomplish and what your ultimate goals might be.

As with almost any project you can turn frustration around if you will just take the time to come to terms with your vision.

Sometimes we spend so much time ‘doing’ we never stop to ask the question, “Why?”

This process can be a bit like taking a bus that drives around the park. You keep looking at the flowers and the park bench and long to sit in the quiet shade of a tree and just absorb the calming atmosphere. You know they will have a positive effect on you, but for some reason you just can’t seem to find the energy to get off the bus.

It seems to me there are some sites that are misguided or rarely guided that could benefit from the process of self-evaluation. These sites may look nice, but there is a sense of disconnection that may not be easy to identify, but it’s fairly obvious to visitors.

Creative energy is at a minimum while business owners simply tackle what seem to be the most urgent details.

As more people gravitate to online business there needs to be a shift in the thinking of how one goes about doing business online. In many ways it can’t be approached in the same way a traditional business is developed, yet that is typically the way many new web commerce ventures choose to tackle the subject.

You may discover your business will be more successful if you take some time for rigorous reflection. The time set aside can be a bit like an architect that takes the time to develop plans for a new building. You wouldn’t expect the architect to simply tell a construction crew to, “Go out there and build – something.”

Work at ‘building’ your online business in a comprehensive way. Your effort can develop a firm foundation for long-term success.

About The Author
Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. Make your own website in just 5 minutes with HighPowerSites at: http://www.highpowersites.com or Build A Website at: http://www.buildagreatsite.com. Start your own ebook business with BooksWealth at: http://www.bookswealth.com

How to Clean a Printer

2008-11-08T15:28:00.000-08:00

Does your printer have frequent paper jams? Does it put ink where ink shouldn't be? Is the outside of your printer dirty or covered with smudges? If so, it is time to clean your printer.

First, there are some general rules that apply to cleaning just about any electrical device. It is best to turn off the printer before cleaning it. Do not spray water or cleaner on or in the printer. Instead wet the rag with it and clean the printer with the rag.

Different types of printers require different cleaning methods. So if you can get your hands on cleaning instructions for your make and model of printer, do so and follow them. Unfortunately, many manufacturers only make that kind of information available to their licensed technicians. In that case, you are stuck with these instructions, so read on.

Open up your printer and take a look.

If you have an ink jet printer and there is an ink mess inside, clean it up with wet paper towels.

If you have a printer that uses toner either vacuum or blow it out. Some toner, especially color toner, can be harmful to you, so only use a vacuum with a micro-toner filter or blow and run. Figure out where the drum is (it is shiny and larger in diameter than the rollers) and do not touch or scratch it. If you do, the scratches will turn up as marks on every paper that you print and will require that you replace the drum (not a cheap option) to fix it.

Examine the path that the paper takes through the printer. Clean all of the rollers (but on a toner printer, not the drum or rollers near the drum and watch out for the rollers after the drum because they may be hot). It may take some disassembly and/or contorting of your arm to get to some of the rollers. Access is not always easy. The most important rollers to clean are the ones which pick up the paper from the paper bin and transfer it into the printer. If these rollers are dirty or bad, they will cause consistent paper jams.

The rollers are made of either hard plastic or rubber. All of the rollers can be cleaned with water or rubbing alcohol. If the rubber rollers have deposits that you can't get off, you can use harsher cleaners but be careful because those cleaners can damage the plastic rollers and parts.

To clean a roller, wipe across the roller with a wet rag, rotate the roller, and wipe again. Do this until you have worked your way all the way around the roller. Look at the rag. If it has been blackened by the roller, move to a clean part of the rag and clean the roller again.

Once everything is clean on the inside, close it up and clean the outside. Wipe off the case and each of the buttons or knobs. If there are staples or paper clips sitting on it or wedged in the cracks, remove them and throw them away.

Other areas of the printer can be cleaned but to do so, you will have to either get training and special tools or leave it to a trained professional.

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/

Web 2.0 And Why You Shouldn't Fake Reviews

2008-11-08T15:25:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,

A Restaurateur
Leapfrogg restaurant
Brighton
Tel: 01273 669 450"

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

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

About The Author
Simon Dance is the link and social media executive at Leapfrogg, a Brighton SEO and Search Marketing agency who specialise in best practise and ethical search marketing solutions. Website: http://www.leapfrogg.co.uk/Contact © 2008- This article is free for republishing - One link must be active.

Rapidshare files

2008-11-08T13:57:00.000-08:00

Rapidshare files
Rapidshare hasn’t lost its touch with the masses as their favored file hosting solution on the internet but most of the people are peeved over the fact that they have significantly minimized their download-quota. They are chiefly indignated over two points. Firstly, they feel that free Rapidshare download quota should not have been reduced for premium users. Secondly, they believe that free users should not have faced the hard-hitting speed decrease.

Users worldwide can find files hosted on Rapidshare in myriad ways. One of the techniques is to include the various parameters of Google search which will only look for Rapidshare files for the entire file and its subcategories being asked by a user.

There are many other brilliant options just as well. Another one deals in Rapidshare search engine. These engines have their own information base of files that is hosted at the file hoster. The databases are attached to the latest upgrade and links to Rapidshare files directly to feasibly reach out for files.

Sites which maintain their own databases are considered to be the most effective. Apart from this, there are other passable sites which offer Rapidshare file searches.

Google custom search engine only amalgamates the concept of Google search directives with a personalized search engine that generates moolah for the creator of the search engine. A search button can help with the identification. A search button presenting “Google search” is far from being a website worth its personal database. It is just a custom google search instrument.

As mentioned earlier, many Rapidshare files utilize their personal database. Few instances of such files are:

RS find

RS Rapidshare

Rapidshare Data

Rapid TVPHP

File tubes

Apart from this and few other names, most of the Rapidshare search engines are no different than Google search engines.

No one can be foolish enough to give Rapidshare premium accounts for free Rapidshare downloads. After all, it is the very best file sharing program doing the market rounds. For this purpose, we need software that makes us feel like Rapidshare members. Let’s find out a few free Rapidshare download tools.

Rapidshare Link Grabber

Rapidshare golden pack

Rapidshare Harvest

Many people provide with their own alternatives to Rapidshare. They promote their own file sharing space with unlimited download possibility and 150 MB space. They still fall miserably short. We hope that Rapidshare just finds some way to bring back the irritated customers back to their folds.

Find out more about rapidshare files at www.rapidsharese.com.

Directory Submission Strategies

2008-11-08T10:45:00.000-08:00

Directory Submission Strategies

1. Research each directory and categories that will fit your domain/sites. Another reason why manual directory submissions are far much better than automatic blasters or auto submissions is that you need to think through very carefully what categories fit your sites. Disregarding this important research about your site will not save you from millions of unrelated commercial messages (spam) done on your email.

Careful research of your site's category will prompt you to write a concise, accurate description that relates to the directory's description.

2. Determine the best description for your web site in each category. Since manual directory submission is one of the core promotions that you can do for your web site, it's better to hint the webmaster or owner of the directory that you mean serious business and that your keywords and descriptions are the fruits of your careful study of your web site.

If the directory doesn't have your desired specific category it's better to suggest it to the owner of the directory rather than be sorry.

3. Make sure your (USP) unique selling proposition is included in your site's description. Your description should be unique even though it resembles description style of other web sites in your targeted directory. So if you're company has specialties in 3 services, mention those 3 specific services in your description. If your site targets a specific audience, include that as well.

4. Write descriptions of varying lengths and keep it in a .txt file for cut-n-paste submissions. Directories are not similar in the number of characters it accepts so better be prepared submitting the ones they approve. Make sure there are no repeat keywords on the description and don't try to "stuff" it with too many unrelated keywords. Remember that your site is a work of "art" in the eyes of the "human" editors of these directories so appeal to them not to the software-backend of their directory.

5. Whenever budget allows, use the paid or premium listings of a directory. Most free listings are often listed very slow like in after 4 weeks and doesn't have any guarantees, remember since most of the search engines measure link popularity in the quickness your site appears in a given high - pr directory so better invest that kind of money long term on the directories rather than be sorry.

6. Verify your site manually by visiting the directory itself to see your listings. If your site is not yet listed in the given amount of time, it's healthy to resubmit it to the directory let's say an ample wait time of 4 weeks is acceptable and does not appear that you are actually "begging" the directory owner. Keep track of your dates of submissions, categories, descriptions, titles and so on. If your site is not yet listed after so much wait time on it, it's better to contact the directory owner to know and for you to act what stuff your site contains that prohibits them from listing it.

7. Always submit your domain name and not a page. This will limit the directory you can submit to, but it's better to have quality visitors rather than so many that will only consume your bandwidth.

About the author:
Human-edited general web directory of quality and spam-free web sites, offering free and paid submission into our directory. 100% SEO Friendly Web Directory.

So the next time you do your daily submissions, prioritise going to http://www.seoreign.com/

Website Sales Purpose

2008-11-07T12:36:00.000-08:00

Website Sales Purpose
by: Sharon Housley

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.

DVD Repair

2008-11-04T11:21:00.000-08:00

DVD Repair, Scratched DVDs and Unfinalized DVDs recovery tips and tricks.
by: Lance Carr

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

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

Scratched DVD Disks

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

DVD Data Repair/Recovery

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

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

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

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

Failing that:

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

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

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

a. Start Isobuster then load the disc.

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

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

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

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

Unfinalized discs.

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

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

This requires Nero 8 (Trial version).

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

Place the unfinalized disc into the computer DVD tray. Open Nero 8 StartSmart.
Click "create and edit" at the top of the screen.
Click "author, edit and capture video." NeroVision 5 will start.
Click on the disk tools drop down menu then click "finalize disk."
In the option box that appears choose "no menus" and let it run.

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

Hope this helps!

Lance Carr
http://www.myeasydata.com

Operating Systems: File Systems

2008-11-03T19:04:00.000-08:00

Operating Systems: File Systems
by: Sam Harnett

File systems are an integral part of any operating systems with the capacity for long term storage. There are two distinct parts of a file system, the mechanism for storing files and the directory structure into which they are organised. In mordern operating systems where it is possibe for several user to access the same files simultaneously it has also become necessary for such features as access control and different forms of file protection to be implemented.

A file is a collection of binary data. A file could represent a program, a document or in some cases part of the file system itself. In modern computing it is quite common for their to be several different storage devices attached to the same computer. A common data structure such as a file system allows the computer to access many different storage devices in the same way, for example, when you look at the contents of a hard drive or a cd you view it through the same interface even though they are completely different mediums with data mapped on them in completely different ways. Files can have very different data structures within them but can all be accessed by the same methods built into the file system. The arrangment of data within the file is then decided by the program creating it. The file systems also stores a number of attributes for the files within it.

All files have a name by which they can be accessed by the user. In most modern file systems the name consists of of three parts, its unique name, a period and an extension. For example the file 'bob.jpg' is uniquely identified by the first word 'bob', the extension jpg indicates that it is a jpeg image file. The file extension allows the operating system to decide what to do with the file if someone tries to open it. The operating system maintains a list of file extension associations. Should a user try to access 'bob.jpg' then it would most likely be opened in whatever the systems default image viewer is.

The system also stores the location of a file. In some file systems files can only be stored as one contigious block. This has simplifies storage and access to the file as the system then only needs to know where the file begins on the disk and how large it is. It does however lead to complications if the file is to be extended or removed as there may not be enough space available to fit the larger version of the file. Most modern file systems overcome this problem by using linked file allocation. This allows the file to be stored in any number of segments. The file system then has to store where every block of the file is and how large they are. This greatly simplifies file space allocation but is slower than contigious allocation as it is possible for the file to be spread out all over the disk. Modern oparating systems overome this flaw by providing a disk defragmenter. This is a utility that rearranges all the files on the disk so that thay are all in contigious blocks.

Information about the files protection is also integrated into the file system. Protection can range from the simple systems implemented in the FAT system of early windows where files could be marked as read-only or hidden to the more secure systems implemented in NTFS where the file system administrator can set up separate read and write access rights for different users or user groups. Although file protection adds a great deal of complexity and potential difficulties it is essential in an enviroment where many different computers or user can have access to the same drives via a network or time shared system such as raptor.

Some file systems also store data about which user created a file and at what time they created it. Although this is not essential to the running of the file system it is useful to the users of the system.

In order for a file system to function properly they need a number of defined operations for creating, opening and editing a file. Almost all file systems provide the same basic set of methods for manipulating files.

A file system must be able to create a file. To do this there must be enough space left on the drive to fit the file. There must also be no other file in the directory it is to be placed with the same name. Once the file is created the system will make a record of all the attributes noted above.

Once a file has been created we may need to edit it. This may be simply appending some data to the end of it or removing or replacing data already stored within it. When doing this the system keeps a write pointer marking where the next write oparation to the file should take place.

In order for a file to be useful it must of course be readable. To do this all you need to know the name and path of the file. From this the file system can ascertain where on the drive the file is stored. While reading a file the system keeps a read pointer. This stores which part of the drive is to be read next.

In some cases it is not possible to simply read all of the file into memory. File systems also allow you to reposition the read pointer within a file. To perform this operation the system needs to know how far into the file you want the read pointer to jump. An example of where this would be useful is a database system. When a query is made on the database it is obviously ineficient to read the whole file up to the point where the reuired data is, instead the application managing the database would determine where in the file the required bit of data is and jump to it. This operation is often known as a file seek.

File systems also allow you to delete files. To do this it needs to know the name and path of the file. To delete a file the systems simply removes its entry from the directory structure and adds all the space it previously occupied to the free space list (or whatever other free space management system it uses).

These are the most basic operations required by a file system to function properly. They are present in all modern computer file systems but the way they function may vary. For example, to perform the delete file operation in a modern file system like NTFS that has file protection built into it would be more complicated than the same operation in an older file system like FAT. Both systems would first check to see whether the file was in use before continuing, NTFS would then have to check whether the user currently deleting the file has permission to do so. Some file systems also allow multiple people to open the same file simultaneously and have to decide whether users have permission to write a file back to the disk if other users currently have it open. If two users have read and write permission to file should one be allowed to overwrite it while the other still has it open? Or if one user has read-write permission and another only has read permission on a file should the user with write permission be allowed to overwrite it if theres no chance of the other user also trying to do so?

Different file systems also support different access methods. The simplest method of accessing information in a file is sequential access. This is where the information in a file is accessed from the beginning one record at a time. To change the position in a file it can be rewound or forwarded a number of records or reset to the beginning of the file. This access method is based on file storage systems for tape drive but works as well on sequential access devices (like mordern DAT tape drives) as it does on random-access ones (like hard drives). Although this method is very simple in its operation and ideally suited for certain tasks such as playing media it is very inneficient for more complex tasks such as database management. A more modern approach that better facilitates reading tasks that arent likely to be sequential is direct access. direct access allows records to be read or written over in any order the application requires. This method of allowing any part of the file to be read in any order is better suited to modern hard drives as they too allow any part of the drive to be read in any order with little reduction in transfer rate. Direct access is better suited to to most applications than sequential access as it is designed around the most common storage medium in use today as opposed to one that isnt used very much anymore except for large offline back-ups. Given the way direct access works it is also possible to build other access methods on top of direct access such as sequential access or creating an index of all the records of the file speeding to speed up finding data in a file.

On top of storing and managing files on a drive the file system also maintains a system of directories in which the files are referenced. Modern hard drives store hundreds of gigabytes. The file system helps organise this data by dividing it up into directories. A directory can contain files or more directories. Like files there are several basic operation that a file system needs to a be able to perform on its directory structure to function properly.

It needs to be able to create a file. This is also covered by the overview of peration on a file but as well as creating the file it needs to be added to the directory structure.

When a file is deleted the space taken up by the file needs to be marked as free space. The file itself also needs to be removed from the directory structure.

Files may need to be renamed. This requires an alteration to the directory structure but the file itself remains un-changed.

List a directory. In order to use the disk properly the user will require to know whats in all the diretories stored on it. On top of this the user needs to be able to browse through the directories on the hard drive.

Since the first directory structures were designed they have gone through several large evolutions. Before directory structures were applied to file systems all files were stored on the same level. This is basically a system with one directory in which all the files are kept. The next advancement on this which would be considered the first directory structure is the two level directory. In this There is a singe list of directories which are all on the same level. The files are then stored in these directories. This allows different users and applications to store there files separately. After this came the first directory structures as we know them today, directory trees. Tree structure directories improves on two level directories by allowing directories as well as files to be stored in directories. All modern file systems use tree structore directories, but many have additional features such as security built on top of them.

Protection can be implemented in many ways. Some file systems allow you to have password protected directories. In this system. The file system wont allow you to access a directory before it is given a username and password for it. Others extend this system by given different users or groups access permissions. The operating system requires the user to log in before using the computer and then restrict their access to areas they dont have permission for. The system used by the computer science department for storage space and coursework submission on raptor is a good example of this. In a file system like NTFS all type of storage space, network access and use of device such as printers can be controlled in this way. Other types of access control can also be implemented outside of the file system. For example applications such as win zip allow you to password protect files.

There are many different file systems currently available to us on many different platforms and depending on the type of application and size of drive different situations suit different file system. If you were to design a file system for a tape backup system then a sequential access method would be better suited than a direct access method given the constraints of the hardware. Also if you had a small hard drive on a home computer then there would be no real advantage of using a more complex file system with features such as protection as it isn't likely to be needed. If i were to design a file system for a 10 gigabyte drive i would use linked allocation over contigious to make the most efficient use the drive space and limit the time needed to maintain the drive. I would also design a direct access method over a sequential access one to make the most use of the strengths of the hardware. The directory structure would be tree based to allow better organisation of information on the drive and would allow for acyclic directories to make it easier for several users to work on the same project. It would also have a file protection system that allowed for different access rights for different groups of users and password protection on directories and individual files.Several file systems that already implement the features ive decribed above as ideal for a 10gig hard drive are currently available, these include NTFS for the Windows NT and XP operating systems and ext2 which is used in linux.

SSH Tunneling In Your Application

2008-11-03T18:23:00.000-08:00

SSH Tunneling In Your Application
by: Tom Davidge

Introduction

This article is dedicated to the task of securing MySQL client-server connection using functionality provided by the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol. To be exact, the SSH tunneling concept is utilized. We will review the steps needed to build secure MySQL client applications and implement a sample one ourselves.

MySQL traffic is not the only kind of data that can be tunneled by the Secure Shell. SSH can be used to secure any application-layer TCP-based protocol, such as HTTP, SMTP and POP3. If your application needs to secure such a protocol by tunneling it through a protected SSH connection, this article will be useful to you.

Background

Let's imagine that we are developing an enterprise application that needs to send requests to a number of SQL servers all over the world and get responses from them (let's imagine that it's a super-powerful bank system that stores information about millions of accounts).

All the data between the application and SQL servers are transferred via the Internet "as is". As most protocols used by SQL servers do not provide data integrity and confidentiality (and those that do, do it in a quite nontransparent way), all the transferred requests and responses may (and be sure, they will!) become visible to a passive adversary. An active adversary can cause much more serious problems - he can alter the data and no one will detect it.

SSH (Secure Shell) is a protocol that may help in solving this problem. One of its outstanding features is its ability to tunnel different types of connections through a single, confident and integrity-protected connection.

Now you do not have to worry about securing the data transferred over the Internet - SSH will handle this for you. In particular, SSH will take care of the following security aspects:

Strong data encryption according to the latest industry-standard algorithms (AES, Twofish)
Authentication of both client and server computers
Data integrity protection
Stability with regard to different kinds of network attacks
Compression of the data being tunneled
Complete independence of the operating system and network specifics

Tunneling (or forwarding) works in the following way:

SSH client opens a listening port on some local network interface and tells the SSH server that he wishes to forward all connections accepted on this port to some remote host.

When another connection is accepted on the listening port, the SSH client informs the SSH server about this fact and they together establish a logical tunnel for it. At the same time, the SSH server establishes a new TCP connection to the remote host agreed upon in step 1.

The SSH client encrypts all the data it receives from the accepted connection and sends it to the SSH server. The SSH server decrypts the data received from the SSH client and sends it to the remote host.

Please note, that the SSH client acts as a TCP server for the connections it accepts, and the SSH server acts as a TCP client for the connections it establishes to the remote host.

A single SSH connection can tunnel as many application layer connections as needed. This means that you can defend your server by moving all the listening ports (e.g., database and application server ports) to a local network, leaving only the SSH port open. It is much easier to take care of a single port, rather than a dozen different listening ports.

Into the Fire
Let's develop a small application that illustrates the use of SSH forwarding capabilities. We will consider an important task of securing a connection between a MySQL client application and a MySQL server. Imagine that we need to get information from the database server, which is located a thousand miles away from us, in a secure way.

SecureMySQLClient is the application we are planning to implement. It includes the following modules:

SSH client-side module with forwarding capabilities
MySQL client-side module
User interface for configuring application settings and displaying query results.

The SSH server runs in a remote network and is visible from the Internet. The database (MySQL) server runs in the same network as the SSH server and may not be visible from the Internet.

The process of performing secure data exchange between SecureMySQLClient and the Database server goes as follows:

The SSH client module negotiates a secure connection to the SSH server and establishes forwarding from some local port to the remote MySQL server.
The MySQL client module connects to the listening port opened by the SSH client module.
The SSH client and server set up a logical tunnel for the accepted connection.
The MySQL client sends SELECT to the port opened by the SSH client module, which encrypts it and sends it to the SSH server. The SSH server decrypts the request and sends it to the MySQL server.
The SSH server receives a response from the MySQL server, encrypts it and sends it back to the SSH client, which decrypts it and passes it to the MySQL client module.

Looks too complex? Implementing this is easier than you think.So, let's go and do it.

We will need the following products installed on the computer before creating the application:

Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003, 2005 or 2008.
EldoS SecureBlackbox (.NET edition). Can be downloaded from
http://www.eldos.com/sbbdev/download.php.
MySQL .NET Connector. Can be downloaded from
http://www.mysql.com/products/connector/net/.

Let's now open Microsoft Visual Studio .NET (we will use the 2005 version) and try to build such an application from scratch.

After the GUI design has been finished, we can go on with the business logic code itself. First, adding references to the following assemblies to our project:

SecureBlackbox
SecureBlackbox.PKI (only in SecureBlackbox 5. SecureBlackbox 6 doesn't have this assembly)
SecureBlackbox.SSHClient
SecureBlackbox.SSHCommon
MySql.Data

SSHForwarding notifies us about certain situations via its events, so we need to create handlers for some of them:

OnAuthenticationSuccess - Is fired when the client authentication process has been completed.

OnAuthenticationFailed - Is fired if the client was unable to authenticate using particular authentication method. In general, this does not mean that the authentication process completely failed – the client may try several authentication methods consequently and one of them may succeed.

OnError - Is fired if some protocol error occurs during the session. Usually this leads to a connection closure. The exact error can be detected via the error code passed to it.

OnKeyValidate - Is used to pass the received server key to the application. Please note that incorrect handling of this event may result in a serious security breach. The handler of this event should verify that the passed key corresponds to the remote server (and warn the user if it does not). If the key is valid, the handler should set the Validate parameter to true. The sample does not perform key checkup for the sake of simplicity.

OnOpen - Is fired when the SSH connection is established and the component is ready to tunnel data. We will use the handler of this event to kick the MySQL client component.

OnClose - Is fired when the SSH connection is closed.

OnConnectionOpen - Is fired when a new tunnel is created. The corresponding tunneled connection object is passed as parameter.

OnConnectionClose - Is fired when an existing tunnel is closed.

Implementing two core methods, SetupSSHConnection() and RunQuery(). The first one initializes the SSHForwarding object and establishes an SSH session to the remote server by calling its Open() method, and the second one sends the query to the MySQL server.

The code of the SetupSSHConnection() method is pretty simple:

private void SetupSSHConnection()

{

// Specifying address and port of SSH server

Forwarding.Address = tbSSHAddress.Text;

Forwarding.Port = Convert.ToInt32(tbSSHPort.Text);

// Setting credentials for authentication on SSH server

Forwarding.Username = tbUsername.Text;

Forwarding.Password = tbPassword.Text;

// Specifying network interface and port number to be opened locally

Forwarding.ForwardedHost = "";

Forwarding.ForwardedPort = Convert.ToInt32(tbFwdPort.Text);

// Specifying destination host where the server should forward the data to.

// Please note, that the destination should be specified according to

// SSH servers point of view. E.g., 127.0.0.1 will stand for

// SSH servers localhost, not SSH clients one.

Forwarding.DestHost = tbDBAddress.Text;

Forwarding.DestPort = Convert.ToInt32(tbDBPort.Text);

// Opening SSH connection

Forwarding.Open();

}

A bit more complex is the code of the RunQuery() method (to be exact, the code of RunQueryThreadFunc() method, which is invoked in a separate thread by the RunQuery() method):

private void RunQueryThreadFunc()

{

MySqlConnection MySQLConnection = new MySqlConnection();

// forming connection string

string connString = "database=" + tbDBName.Text + ";Connect Timeout=30;user id=" + tbDBUsername.Text + "; pwd=" + tbDBPassword.Text + ";";

if (cbUseTunnelling.Checked)

{

// specifying local destination if forwarding is enabled

connString = connString + "server=127.0.0.1; port=" + tbFwdPort.Text;

}

else

{

// specifying real MySQL server location if forwarding is not used

connString = connString + "server=" + tbDBAddress.Text + "; port=" + tbDBPort.Text;

}

MySQLConnection.ConnectionString = connString;

try

{

// opening MySQL connection

MySqlCommand cmd = new MySqlCommand(tbQuery.Text, MySQLConnection);

Log("Connecting to MySQL server...");

MySQLConnection.Open();

Log("Connection to MySQL server established. Version: " + MySQLConnection.ServerVersion + ".");

// reading query results

MySqlDataReader reader = cmd.ExecuteReader();

try

{

for (int i = 0; i < reader.FieldCount; i++)

{

AddQueryColumn(reader.GetName(i));

}

while (reader.Read())

{

string[] values = new string[reader.FieldCount];

for (int i = 0; i < reader.FieldCount; i++)

{

values[i] = reader.GetString(i);

}

AddQueryValues(values);

}

}

finally

{

// closing both MySQL and SSH connections

Log("Closing MySQL connection");

reader.Close();

MySQLConnection.Close();

Forwarding.Close();

}

}

catch (Exception ex)

{

Log("MySQL connection failed (" + ex.Message + ")");

}

}

And, that's all But there is one more thing I need to draw your attention to. As both SSH and MySQL protocols run in separate threads and access GUI controls from those threads, we need to handle the GUI access in a special way to prevent a cross-thread problems. I will illustrate this with the example of the Log() method:

delegate void LogFunc(string S);

private void Log(string S)

{

if (lvLog.InvokeRequired)

{

LogFunc d = new LogFunc(Log);

Invoke(d, new object[] { S });

}

else

{

ListViewItem item = new ListViewItem();

item.Text = DateTime.Now.ToShortTimeString();

item.SubItems.Add(S);

lvLog.Items.Add(item);

}

}

Finally, the application is finished, and we may try it in work. So clicking F5 and specifying the following settings in the text fields of the application form:

SSH server location, username and password used to authenticate to it.
Database server address, port, username, password, database name and query. Remember that database server address should be specified as it is visible from the SSH server.
Turning on the "Use tunneling" checkbox.

Now click the Start button and wait for the query results. If all the parameters have been specified correctly, we should get something like this:

Features and requirements

SSH protocol provides (and SecureBlackbox implements) the following features:

Strong data encryption using AES, Twofish, Triple DES, Serpent and many other symmetric algorithms with key lengths up to 256 bits
Client authentication using one or multiple authentication types (password-based, public key-based, X.509 certificate-based, interactive challenge-response authentication)
Server authentication
Strong key exchange based on DH or RSA public key algorithms
Data integrity protection
Compression of tunneled data
Multiplexing several tunneled connections through a single SSH connection

SecureBlackbox provides the following functionality as well:

Comprehensive standards-compliant implementation of the SSH protocol (both client and server sides)
Support for cryptographic tokens as storage for keys and certificates
Windows system certificate stores support
Professional and fast customer support

SecureBlackbox is available in .NET, VCL and ActiveX editions. This means that you can use the components in projects implemented in C#, VB.NET, Object Pascal (Delphi and Kylix), FreePascal, VB6 and C++ languages.

SecureBlackbox (.NET edition) is available for Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1, 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5, and .NET Compact Framework.

How to watch TV on Mac

2008-11-03T18:20:00.000-08:00

How to watch TV on Mac
by: Jerry Bridgestone

Mac or Macintosh is a brand name for different kinds of computer produced by Apple, Inc. Production of Mac includes all aspects of hardware and own operating system already installed. The Mac is a computer that can run all the major operating systems, including Mac OS X, Windows XP, and Vista.

TV on a PC is in nowadays. How about TV on a Mac?

Widgets are mini-applications that are downloaded and installed to a dashboard for a new function. There are amazing widgets for Mac that will allow us to play TV right on our Mac. There is this viewmy.tv widget that provides access to free Internet television. Besides viewmy.tv, there is also the Ustream.tv for viewing our favorite live stream channels. Before we can download these features, we should first check the system requirements. If we have what are needed to make this application works, we can enjoy watching our favorite shows directly on our Mac.

As we all know, we can’t depend on our Internet connection all the time. Heavy traffic is frequently experienced so we can’t enjoy our favorite show that much. It’s different when we don’t need to download and consume time to have our full view of the channels. But we can have our Macs installed with TV. Aside from widgets, we can enjoy the entertainment of watching TV on our Mac with the help of USB-based tuners like Elgato EyeTV Hybrid that allows us to watch analog and digital TV. Like other common pc, Mac also has its way to have TV on it.

If external devices (USB like EyeTV) do not satisfy us, we can use the PCTV cards like Miglia AlchemyTV Card that is a good choice for computer TV viewing and VHS-to-DVD transferring. It’s a PCI card that requires no additional power supply. We can check miglia.com to check if we have the latest version. After that, set up the PCI card in our Mac, and then install the software using the cd included. To access the newly installed program, we need to restart our Macs and go to the AlchemyTV dialog.

Miglia also offers a TV Micro unit that comes with the unit itself, a cable as connection, an external USB 2.0 extender, a remote control and an Elgato EyeTV 2.

Slingbox is also a good choice. It works not only for common PC but for Macs as well. It has ports for TV input and for Ethernet. Another one is the iTele, which is a Mac application that allows us to watch TV and record a channel we want.

When we are familiar of iTunes, we’ll know Mac. We can go to the iTunes Store to browse different shows and channels. We can have our favorite shows in advance. We can watch an episode before it will be aired or have a copy of the one we missed. We can watch all of this in Mac.These are only some of the ways on how we can have TV on our Macs. More are coming our way, thanks to the advanced technology.

How to Clean the Registry

2008-11-02T00:38:00.001-07:00

How to Clean the Registry
by: Ray Geide

In the beginning Windows' registry consisted of two files totalling around 5mb in size. Today it consists of at least 12 files with the Software file itself being 30mb or bigger in size. As the size of the registry has exploded, so has the trash and clutter in it. It may seem like a daunting task, but cleaning the registry properly can fix system problems, speed your computer up, and make it run more efficiently.

I have spent many years developing and refining thousands of procedures to do just that. I could share these methods of hunting down the trash with you and let you find them and delete them by hand, but if you were to sit down at your computer right now and work nonstop, you would still be busy with them a week from now when the next issue of Ray's Computer Tips arrives. By then your registry would have new clutter and you would have to start all over again.

To make registry cleaning easier on everyone, I wrote a program called RegVac Registry Cleaner (http://regvac.com/regvac.htm) to perform those procedures. It has been so successful that several companies have asked me to model their registry cleaners after RegVac and even more have copied processes that first debutted in RegVac.

The first place RegVac cleans is the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT section (the Classes Vac in RegVac does this). This section contains settings for the classes of Windows. Think of a huge box full of snakes and you will get an idea of how complicated and interwoven it is. It is so complicated that many registry cleaners bypass it or simply perform surface scans of it. RegVac uses over a hundred processes to follow each tentacle of each class deep into this area and make sure that they abide by the rules.

Next RegVac validates the entries in 22 lists with 7 different methods (the FilesList Vac does this). This is a minor part of RegVac but the bulk of most other registry cleaners even though they usually do not clean all 22 lists.

Another part of RegVac, the Software Vac, which is unique to RegVac, finds old software sections in the registry and provides a way to remove that software's entire branch. Other registry cleaners only remove a few entries in this area often leaving huge portions of the registry that do nothing but take up space and get in the way.

Even more trash can be discovered in hundreds of stashes used to store data you will never use. Most registry cleaners do not even touch these. The Stash Vac lists these stashes and lets you go through and select which ones to empty out. Please use caution when using the Stash Vac because some of the items listed there may be important. For example, one folder in the Stash Vac lists places where data for international keyboards are stored. You probably will never use the data for Bulgarian keyboards, so you can remove it, but if you live in the US you may experience problems after removing the United States 101 keyboard. The items that you can safely remove are usually obvious.

Last but not least, when cleaning the registry, you should look for broken links to files on the computer (this is what the Bad Link Vac does). If a file is referenced in the registry but it does not exist on your hard drive, that is a good indicator that something is wrong. Many programmers start out writing a registry cleaner thinking all it has to do is check for these broken links and remove them. In fact, that is all many registry cleaners do.

Even though that is all they do, they often don't do it correctly. If you check the results of such scans, you will find out that many of the broken links are really good links. I spent several months refining this part of RegVac so that as far as I know it is 100% accurate. Despite this, please realize that some software enter broken links in the registry and require them to be there in order for them to run. RegVac skips the ones it knows about, but you still need to be careful with this part of RegVac.

RegVac has six more tools that clean even more areas: the Add/Remove Editor, the System Config Utility, the OpenWith Editor, the AutoComplete Editor, the Junk Keys Editor, and Registry Backup, Pack, and Restore.

Many of you already use RegVac but if you don't, you can downloaded a free 30 day trial of RegVac at http://regvac.com/regvacz.exe. For more information about RegVac Registry Cleaner go to http://regvac.com/regvac.htm. If you like RegVac, you can purchase it for only $29.95. All future updates are free.

Keep the Windows registry clean and running smoothly with RegVac Registry Cleaner.

How to Clean the Registry

2008-11-02T00:38:00.000-07:00

Pinging Tricks

2008-11-02T00:33:00.000-07:00

Pinging Tricks
by: Len Hutton

You’re a blogger and are constantly hearing about pinging. The thing is, you don't know what it is and what it can do for your blog. Well that's fine because a lot of bloggers don't quite understand pinging. In this newsletter, we will explain what pinging is, how it helps your blog, and what the best pinging services are. After you've read this newsletter, you'll know exactly how to use pinging to make your blog popular.

What is pinging?

When a blog is pinged, it essentially tells a web blog tracking system that the blog has been updated. Thus, pinging is the process of telling tracking services that a site has been updated.

So how does pinging work? Well, a ping service scans regularly blogs for updates. Whenever there is a new update for a particular blog, that is reported back to the pinging service’s site. You can almost think of ping services being just like search engine spiders—both scan sites looking for information, and both report that information back to their specific site. The difference is, a ping service only reports back new blog posts.

Why is pinging useful for my blog?

Pinging, in effect, tells people that there is a new blog posting available. Those who are loyal followers of your blog will see the ping and want to visit your blog. Those who haven’t read your blog before will see the ping and perhaps think “hey, there’s a new blog I haven’t been to before, I think I’ll check it out”. Pinging helps to increase your traffic because it tells people when your blog is updated. Those who visit sites with pinging services will see this information in the form of a scroll on the left or right side, or top of the page. The scroll is usually in XML format and typically includes the title and URL of your blog, as well as the date and time of the update.

OK, so now I know what pinging is. Who offers pinging?

The answer is, there are several pinging services available which you can use to have your blog pinged. We’ll go over some of them right now.

Weblogs.com

Weblogs.com is probably the most well-known pinging service. Weblogs.com monitors sites for updates and then pings whenever there is an update to report. Virtually every blog software is available to use Weblogs.

Yahoo’s Blo.gs

Another popular pinging service. This one is offered by Yahoo and has a built-in integration with movable type and other tools. One cool thing about this service is that it offers the ability to give out updates via Instant Messenging services like AOL and ICQ. It is a direct pinging service, so those who sign up for subscriptions to your blog will be sent an email anytime your blog is updated.

Blogrolling.com

Blogrolling allows its bloggers to manage their blogrolls (updates) through a web-based interface. Recently updated blogs are also highlighted on Blogrolling’s web site. Data is automatically retrieved from other sites like blogger.com and weblogs.com every 5 minutes. Often times your blog is already being pinged by Blogrolling, so you might not have to sign up for it. Search on the site first for your URL before signing it up.

Technorati

Available at http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping, Technorati is another service that pings blogs. It gets its data from a variety of places and is definitely a site you should go to for blog pinging.

These are just 4 of the many different blog pinging services available. A quick search on Yahoo or Google will reveal many other possible blog pinging services to use for your blog. It is best to sign up for as many as you possibly can to ensure that your blog is well-pinged. A well-pinged blog will definitely help your blog attract more visitors. So sign up for as many as possible and watch your blog traffic increase.

Pinging tells people when your blog is updated. It is an incredibly useful, and easy to sign up for service, so be sure to sign your blog up for pinging

Remote Blog or Self Hosted Blog?

2008-10-31T19:38:00.000-07:00

Remote Blog or Self Hosted Blog?
by: Len Hutton

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

Who offers free blog hosting?

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

What software can I use to host my own blog?

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

WordPress(the most popular software)
Apache Roller
Blosxom
Geeklog
Textpattern
LifeType

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

Community Server
Movable Type
Radio UserLand

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

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

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

The Pros

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

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

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

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

The Cons

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

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

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

Why should I self-host my blog?

The Pros

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

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

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

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

The Cons

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

• Updates aren’t as easy to post.

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

• You have to pay for your own hosting and domain

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

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

A Guide on RSS Tool

2008-10-31T19:32:00.000-07:00

A Guide on RSS Tool
by: Terry Leslie

RSS is an abbreviation that has evolved into the following, depending on their versions:

• RDF Site Summary (also known as RSS 0.9; the first version of RSS)
• Rich Site Summary (also known as RSS 0.91; a prototype)
• Really Simple Syndication (also known as RSS 2.0)

Today, RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication', and it has the following 7 existing formats or versions:

• 0.90
• 0.91
• 0.92
• 0.93
• 0.94
• 1.0
• 2.0

RSS tools refer to a group of file formats that are designed to share headlines and other web content (this may be a summary or simply 1 to 2 lines of the article), links to the full versions of the content (the full article or post), and even file attachments such as multimedia files. All of these data is delivered in the form of an XML file (XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language), which has the following common names:

• RSS feed
• Webfeed
• RSS stream
• RSS channel

They are typically shown on web pages as an orange rectangle that usually has the letters XML or RSS in it.

RSS feeds can be used to deliver any kind of information. Some of these 'feeds' include:

• Blogs feed - each blog entry is summarized as a feed item. This makes blog posts easier to scan, enabling 'visitors' to zoom in on their items of interest.

• Article feed - this alerts readers whenever there are new articles and web contents available.

• Forum feed - this allows users to receive forum posts and latest discussion topics.

• Schedule feed - this allows users (such as schools, clubs, and other organizations) to broadcast events and announce schedule changes or meeting agendas.

• Discounts or Special feed - this is used to enable users (such as retail and online stores) to 'deliver' latest specials and discounted offers.

• Ego or News Monitoring - this enables users to receive 'filtered' headlines or news that are based on a specific phrase or keyword.

• Industry-specific feed - used by technical professionals in order to market, promote, or communicate with current (and prospective) customers and clients within their specific industries.

RSS feeds enable people to track numerous blogs and news sources at the same time. To produce an RSS feed, all you need is the content or the article that you want to publicize and a validated RSS text file. Once your text file is registered at various aggregators (or 'news readers'), any external site can then capture and display your RSS feed, automatically updating them whenever you update your RSS file.

RSS tools are useful for sites that add or modify their contents on a regular basis. They are especially used for 'web syndication' or activities that involve regular updates and/or publications, such as the following:

• News websites - as used by major news organizations such as Reuters, CNN, and the BBC.
• Marketing
• Bug reports
• Personal weblogs

There are many benefits to using RSS feeds. Aside from being a great supplemental communication method that streamlines the communication needs of various sectors, RSS tools and feeds can also have tremendous benefits in your business, particularly in the field of internet marketing.

RSS tools and feeds provide Internet users with a free (or cheap) and easy advertising or online marketing opportunity for their businesses. Below are some of the RSS features that can help make your internet marketing strategies more effective.

1. Ease in content distribution services. With RSS, your business can be captured and displayed by virtually any external site, giving you an easy way to 'spread out' and advertise them.

2. Ease in regular content updates. With RSS, web contents concerning your business can now be automatically updated on a daily (and even hourly) basis. Internet users will be able to experience 'real time' updates as information in your own file (such as new products and other business-related releases) is changed and modified simultaneously with that of the RSS feeds that people are subscribed to.

3. Custom-made content services. With RSS, visitors can have personalized content services, allowing them total control of the flow and type of information that they receive. Depending on their interests and needs, visitors can subscribe to only those contents that they are looking for (such as real estate or job listings).

4. Increase in (and targeted) traffic. With RSS, traffic will be directed to your site as readers of your content summary (or 1 to 2 lines of your article) who find them interesting are 'forced' to click on a link back to your site.

These are just several of the many things that you can do with RSS. The possibilities are endless, and they are all aimed at providing you with an effective internet marketing strategy for your business.

In the mean time, Good Luck on your journey to success…

OR if you would like to succeed immediately to create financial freedom working only 4 hours a week, check out www.secrets2internetfortunes.com.

AND for a Limited Time, you will also receive a FREE copy of a limited number of the amazing 60 page eBook “52 Highly Profitable Instant Online Business Ideas That You Can Steal As Your Own And Start Today On A Very Tight Budget!”, which is jam packed with so many ideas you can use to instantly create an automated income for life! That’s my GIFT to You as a way of saying thank you for reading my articles.

How to Clean your Mouse

2008-10-30T14:20:00.000-07:00

How to Clean your Mouse
by: Ray Geide

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wipe the ball off with a wet rag.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Search Engine optimization

2008-10-30T14:17:00.000-07:00

Search Engine optimization - 10 steps to follow

The art to successfully increase the rank of your website is a true science with no overnight solution. Some people believe you have to pay to be listed in the top of the search results. This is not true for the majority of search engines. The websites listed on the top are listed there because they are ranked higher and more relevant to a particular keyword search, by that search engine, than the websites listed below.

There are however separate areas for advertisers such as Google AdWords and Yahoo Sponsorship Ads that you can pay for, but the main search area is normally free to be listed and one can increase their page rank by effectively performing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for their website.

One thing you must understand is that it takes time to find what works for your site. If you make a change, you'll have to wait until it has been indexed in each search engine in order for you to effectively assess if the change has positively or negatively affected your page rank.

Below are ten steps to follow in order to increase your page rank in the major search engines. If these are followed, you will be sure to increase your rank. For help or more information on increasing your page rank, contact Hudson Horizons today.

Be Legitimate – Most search engines analyze your website to determine if you are trying to manipulate their engine in any way. Do not do this. I repeat, do not do this. Be legitimate about your search engine optimization otherwise you will be penalized and your page rank will decrease, no doubt about it. The following Search Engine Optimization tactics should be avoided at all costs.
Do NOT do the following:

Keyword Stuffing
Hidden Text
Cloaking
Doorway Pages
Redirects
Duplicate Sites
Interlinking

Manage Page Titles - A page title is the heading of the page that will be listed in the search results when your site is located. It is also the title that will be displayed on the top of the browser window. It is important that each page contains its own unique title that is relevant to the content of that page. Having the same title on every page will not do you any good. The search engines might not properly index each page if they see your pages all have the same title. But on the other hand, if the engines see that each page has its own unique title, then it will realize each page is different and will index them accordingly. Also, make sure that the title is relevant to the content within that page.

Manage Meta Tags – Meta Tags are information placed in the HTML header of a web page, providing information to a search engine that is not visible to a user. The two most common Meta Tags, relevant to search engines, are the keyword and description tags. It is very important that each page contains separate keywords and descriptions that are relevant to the content of that page.

Google and Yahoo Sitemap Submission - Google and Yahoo Sitemaps offers a way for you to submit all your site's URLs to their search index to improve the visibility of your pages. With Google and Yahoo Sitemaps submission you can keep them informed of all the pages in your website and if done on a regular basis, provides fresher search results and a smarter crawl of your website.

Content Development – Content is the key to success with SEO! With good-quality content, that's relevant to your products and services, you will be liked by the search engines. When a search engine crawls your website, it analyzes the content on each page and saves a copy to their index. When a search is performed it will lookup your site and determine if its relevant to the keywords being searched for. With short, poorly written content it will be difficult to be listed on the top few pages of a search engine.

Write Articles – Writing articles and adding them to your website is a great means to providing more relevant content on your website. This will help your customers by providing them will relevant information in your industry while helping to index your pages. Be creative with you articles and be sure to list keywords and key phrases together that you feel prospective customers might search for.

Good Internal Linking – It is vital that the internal links of your website are search engine friendly. Search engines easily pick up basic HTML links unlike links generated by fancy scripting, commonly used in drop-down menu navigation. Also, to help a search engine crawl every page, all sites should include a sitemap page, which categorically lists your page names and an HTML link to each page within the site, providing the search engines with a page to easily get to and crawl every page in your site. If you have over 150 pages, you should create separate categorized sitemap pages for each set of 150 page links.

Reciprocal Linking - Exchanging links with other websites is an ok way to help increase your rank. It's not the best way but it may count. It's important to try and exchange links with more popular websites. A search engine will analyze the links on other websites that point to yours and determine the ranking of their website. If a poorly ranked site has a link to yours, it will not affect your ranking. But if you have a link on the homepage of a popular site like Yahoo pointing to your site, then it will definitely have a positive impact on your page rank.

Patience – Patience is very important. It takes time for a change that you've recently made to be indexed in the search engines. You must be patient to see how your recent change or addition has positively or negatively affected your page rank. Submitting a sitemap of your URLs to Google and Yahoo will greatly increase the rate at which your changes get indexed.

Do Not Overdue It – Sometimes it's better to do less than more and in some cases more will harm your page rank because search engines may see you as trying to manipulate their search engine and penalize your site. Follow all of these Search Engine Optimization tactics but start small and do not overdue it.