The main reason behind it is that “PC security” is a broad term which home users and corporate customers understand quite differently. Basically every owner of a PC or laptop wants its data safe, and don’t want uncontrolled activity inside the box like adware pop-ups. But corporate networks care about intrusions and possible loss of data that cost millions of dollars, so they have too much put at stake. Scheduling and real-time scanning are the leather seats/steering wheel on this piece of software to prevent new infestations from re-clogging your computer network again and again.

Quick fix for ’some’ spyware problems - stop everyone using a computer from installing anything not approved by IT guys that know about the ever growing list of spyware. Remove all admin rights to install software today, some of these programs can even get the installer to load their spyware and then open up holes in your firewall or otherwise disable the protection setup on your computers. Stop others from installing bogus software today and you will thank yourself tomorrow. Data loggers, key loggers are just a few programs which harvest info from your computer. Winclear is the only program created specially to auto remove such spywares. Have you received any emails within the past few weeks which appeared to come from e-gold requesting that you log into your account? Did the email contain a link or an attachment? Did you attempt to open the attachment? Have you run a complete virus scan of all computers used to access your account with updated anti-virus software? You should also check your computer for Spyware and Trojan keyloggers. That is why every computer owner needs winclear.

Protect With Winclear :How To Delete History Internet
Although computer users are becoming much more adept at protecting themselves from online identity theft threats such as viruses, the public is only just now starting to take notice of the huge increase in crimes enabled by the use of spyware. Winclear is the only software which is capable of removing keylogger programs. Thus the users have to stay well informed of the present definitions of spyware adware firewall malware and other antivirus programs. Winclear has been the industry leader in fighting keyloggers for the last 8 years.

Winclear:
This is an adware and spyware removal utility that detects and cleans thousands of potential adware trojans keyloggers spyware and other malware that may be infecting and wrecking havoc on your PC. That is the reason why you need Winclear installed onto your computer. As the holidays approach there will be plenty of cyber criminals taking advantage of the card-sending season by using this or a similar exploit to steal information. Protect your computer security by using Winclear! More about Winclear here: Winclear Reviews.

Here’s a question: how can you make your website wildly popular
overnight? The answer to the question is ‘offer free downloads’.
Everyone loves to get something for nothing, and downloading is
as old as the Internet itself - but it never declines in
popularity.

Screensavers and Wallpapers

Wallpaper is an ideal thing to offer as a download: it’s
popular, replaced often, and doesn’t need you to host
prohibitively large files. Unfortunately, the most popular kinds
of wallpaper show characters and images that you’re unlikely to
be able to get a license to use, but, luckily, you can still
create good wallpaper using nothing but geometric shapes and
interesting colours.

Any artist worth their salt should be able to fire up Photoshop
and produce quite a few very appealing wallpaper-sized images
for very little money: it’s just not that difficult, if you know
what you’re doing. However, you do need to remember that you’ll
have to offer each wallpaper in different sizes for different
screen resolutions (so one for 800×600, one for 1024×768, and so
on), which can be troublesome. Wallpaper should generally be one
part of a site rather than the only thing the site does.

The same thing goes for screensavers. Screensavers are harder to
produce than wallpapers, but they have the advantage that the
user is likely to spend longer looking at them. If you get an
artist to create them using Flash, you should have a relatively
easy time. Don’t be tempted, though, to have screensavers made
that simply consist of the same animation looped over and over
again.

What makes a good screensaver, then? The answer is that it
should be either useful or interesting, and it must be one of
these things for longer than five minutes. An ideal screensaver
is one that provides useful information from your website that a
user is likely to need every day - but, if you’re just going for
interesting, you can do something as simple as using
randomisation and mathematical equations to produce different
patterns every time the screensaver is started. For some ideas,
take a look at the screensavers that come with Windows.

Demos and Trailers

Demos of software and games and trailers for films are very
popular items on the web, with literally millions of people
searching for the latest ones every day. Even better, because
they essentially serve as marketing for the companies that
produce them, they’re typically freely redistributable by anyone
who has the bandwidth and the inclination.

In that case, why isn’t everyone offering demos and trailers to
their visitors? The answer is bandwidth costs. An average
trailer or demo can be anywhere from ten megabytes to about
fifty - multiply that by thousands of visitors per day, and then
see how many gigabytes of transfer you’d need per month. It adds
up fast.

How can you solve this problem? Well, you can try to pay for the
bandwidth using advertising, but you’re unlikely to make a
profit that way, unless you bombard the viewer with ads to the
point where they’ll just want to escape. Realistically, the only
way to make a profit on high-bandwidth items is to use the queue
ruse: that is, force people who want to download to wait in a
queue for a set length of time, and offer them a button that
lets them jump the queue for a relatively small amount of money.
You’d be surprised just how many people will click that button -
the cost of a gigabyte of bandwidth will easily repay itself
five times over. Many gaming sites sell monthly subscriptions
that get visitors nothing more than downloads of demos, and they
do well out of it.

The queue approach will, however, have the effect of reducing
your site’s popularity, as many people will just leave instead
of waiting or paying. This is the paradox of free downloads:
offering them out there completely for free will get you
thousands upon thousands of visitors, but you’ll be losing money
on it because of the bandwidth costs. I’ll leave this as a
problem for you to solve, but I would suggest that you could do
well out of it if you had a related business of your own to
advertise, instead of just taking a cut of external advertisers’
profits.

Most web site hosting plans includes at least one, if not more databases. Depending on the operating system of the server they could be MySQL, PostgreSQL or Microsoft Access. If you’re wondering what you can use them for or whether they’ll help your website, read on for more information.

To state the obvious, a database stores your data in a way that allows it to be easily accessed. The data could be product specifications, customer names and email addresses, sales history or even the content of your web pages.

Using a database to store and retrieve that information can make your website more effective for your customers by giving them a more interactive experience.

The Most Common Use for Databases on the Internet

The most commond way databases are used on the internet is to create “dynamic” web pages. These pages are built from information in the database, each time a visitor requests them.

On an ecommerce site for example, product information can be stored in a database. When a visitor clicks on the link to read more about a particular product, the page is built from information in the database.

This makes updating and maintaining the information much easier. Instead of having to edit each page that product appears on (which you would have to do with static pages) you can just edit the information in the database and whenever someone requests a page with that item, the updated information will automatically show up for them.

Dynamic web sites usually use a template for the layout of the pages. This template can include things such as headers, footers, navigation menus, etc. Basically, anything that remains constant from one page to another.

The information from the database gets inserted into this template by the web server, before it gets sent to the visitor requesting a page. They still get a standard HTML page that would appear to be static if you viewed the source code, but the web server put that page together dynamically before it was sent.

Templates can be laid out any way you like. You still have complete freedom in page layout and formatting, but when combined with a database server you can do much more, such as recommending similar products, upselling related add-ons, etc. - all based on the information in your database.

When someone visits your web site, do they think, “Wow, here’s
something to look at!” Or, “Oh, here we go again, same old
thing. Boring.” You need to know that a visitor extending their
visit or leaving may depend on the spice in your site.

I remember when I first developed my website, several years ago.
I had more animations than ornaments on a Christmas tree, lit in
December, on a Christmas morning. I thought I was cooking with
gas. But as the months passed, the products on my site were
going nowhere. My site just looked and sounded pretty. It had
music too.

To help this situation, I soon began to read various newsletters
to find out how to make sales with my site. One thing I
understood was that I had to get a merchant account to accept
credit cards. This led me on a search for a merchant account
that would fit my budget. I found one.

Then I asked some consultants on the web what was the problem?
Why was I not receiving any sales? One said I had to many
animations. Another stated that I needed to put as a caption
“How to dress as an islander?” He tried to tie this idea into my
Island theme. He gave me some other ideas for which I was
thankful, since I was a newbie on the net. Then someone told me
my site was too colorful. It needed to look like other sites on
the Internet. The look should be similar to the bigger companies
such as Amazon.com.

So, I decided after trying everything and the sales were not
rolling in, to make my web site look like the other companies on
the Web. I decided to do so for the new millennium - January 1,
2000. And I did, much against my better instincts. Well the
results winded up being a complete failure. First, every time I
checked my web site to make sure the links worked, I would feel
like someone had let me down. It just was not me.

Then, came in the negative reviews from various individuals who
revisited. They wanted to know where were all the moving stuff
and the music. They inquired, “What happened to your site? I
used to send people to your site, just to see what it looked
like. I thought it was a nice site.” That bit of feedback
re-assured me that I needed to go back and add some spice to my
site.

I began to add the spice, keeping the format. Bit by bit I added
back some of the animations. In particular, the swaying palm
trees and the lizard with the bouncing head. Those two
animations everyone likes. I also added the walking feet and a
fish swimming. These animations are tastefully placed through
out the site. In addition, I added some other interactive
components. The site is constantly being updated. It changes to
keep it freshly spiced for all visitors.

Now I’m not recommending that everyone should spice up their
website with swaying palm trees and lizards. However, I would
recommend that you add spice to your web site according to your
gut feelings. Also take into consideration you and your products
culture. The infusion of spice can make a big difference in
someone glancing at your site and leaving, or staying around to
see what other goodies or surprises you may have to lure them.
Yea, mon!

Between 50% and 60% of the people using the Internet today do not have high-speed broadband access. Yet many Web sites cater only to the 40% that do. Then they wonder why their sales figures are so poor. Although it’s tempting to add every whiz-bang feature into a Web site, if you do, you are undoubtedly sacrificing profitability for “techno-appeal.”

As the Internet has become more popular, more and more software applications have moved onto the Web. To give users an experience that rivals what they get from their PC software, browser vendors have had to give developers a way to program and extend the browser interface. A programming language called JavaScript is one popular tool for client-side (browser) scripting.

Unfortunately, every vendor implements the JavaScript language differently and defines the rules for manipulating the browser differently. This situation makes it extremely difficult to develop a rich user experience that works across browsers. As a result, you should be careful about adding features to your site that rely on JavaScript. For example, you should never use a script-based menu system as the only way for visitors to navigate your site. Search engine spiders cannot follow program code, so JavaScript menus essentially slam the door on the search engines.

If you think back on your own browsing experiences, can you remember a time when you got some kind of scripting error while navigating to a Web page? How did you feel about that site after you got the error? Would you want your visitors to have that feeling about your site?

The fact is a lot of scripting is totally unnecessary. Also, some browsers don’t support it, and many people intentionally turn it off for security reasons. If you do use scripting, use it sparingly and be sure to test it on all the browsers you can.

Plug-ins are just as bad. For one thing, they require your visitors to download a program that will run on their system, and some people find that idea just plain scary. Spyware and other nasties have made people skittish about downloads, and for good reason.

For example, Flash is a commonly employed plug-in that requires a sizable download. Realistically, Flash animations are cool the first time you see them, boring the second time, and annoying every other time beyond that. Never, ever use a Flash animation as the only way for people to enter your site. It is like locking the front door of your business and requiring customers to get a key from somewhere down the street.

Use animations only when they make sense as part of the content, like for demonstrating how something moves. Frivolous animations of any kind are annoying to most people. If you are trying to read the content of a page, the last thing you want is a distracting graphic flashing in the periphery.

Use sound as you would use an animation: only when it supports the content. For example, if you sell duck calls, you could include a sample of what each one sounds like. But that sample should only play when the customer clicks a link requesting it. Do not under any circumstances force people to listen to music while surfing your site. There’s a strong possibility most of them will hit the Back key and never return.

The bottom line is that you should think about your audience. Simplicity is not a bad thing. Some of the most popular sites on the Internet like CraigsList.com and Yahoo.com are simple and straightforward. Plus, they are usable by people surfing with any type of connection, even dial up. So the next time you ponder adding some “cool” new feature to your site, first ask yourself if it is going to add anything to the bottom line.

Susan Daffron is the President of Logical Expressions, Inc. (http://www.logicalexpressions.com) and is the author of more than 70 national magazine articles, 200 newspaper articles, two books, and online training courses. With hundreds of online articles to her credit, she regularly publishes ezines on computer tips (Logical Tips), pet care (Pet Tails), and other topics.

Artwork adds life to a piece. Whether it is a simple drawing, a
complex background, or anything in between, there’s no denying
that a website would be boring without a little color and art to
it. The problem comes when people get so greedy for images to
spruce up their items and sites that they end up stealing others
artwork. As an artist myself, I find this very insulting and I’m
completely against it.

Not everyone is an artist. Not everyone can use their own work.
This is understandable. It still is no excuse for people to
steal others, though. There is no excuse for that. It just shows
how lazy and inconsiderate some people can be. There are so many
artists and websites out there that are willing to lend their
work for free that one doesn’t have to steal from other places.

It’s all about having respect for not only the artist you are
stealing from, but the other artists out there too. People need
to have better respect for the craft. Just because they are not
an artist doesn’t mean they have to insult others by stealing
the work.

What makes it really rude is people use it for their own
benefit. There are plenty of different ways to use images, and a
rising online use is for signatures (images at the end of a
post) in forums, message boards and other community websites.
People even edit (or sometimes not at all) others’ images and
sell them to make a profit. Not only did they steal from another
person, but now they are using it to benefit themselves. That’s
like breaking into someone’s house, stealing the furniture, and
putting it upon EBay.

Though there are free websites where artists gladly share their
work, they should not be abused. Just because they are free and
willing to be nice doesn’t mean people should take advantage of
their generosity. I hope everyone will have the kindness to
thank the owners of such sites when they use the work. It is
always nice to be reminded that people appreciate the time and
effort an artist puts into the art.

Artists put time and effort into their work. Artists who say
otherwise obviously don’t really care enough about their work
and probably should look into other things to do. It’s not just
a canvas of paint, or a sketch of pencil, or a group of pixels
on the screen. It’s meaning, expression and purpose for us. I
appreciate it when people admire my work, compliment me on my
work, but not when they steal it for their own use.

I hope others, and not just artists, will stand up against
image piracy. It may not effect you personally, it may not be
your problem, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do something about
it. Even if it’s as little as telling friends you feel it is
wrong, and if they are doing it that they should stop it, that’s
more than enough to help out artists. To some it may not seem
important, obviously nothing life-threatening, but it’s all
about respect. I hope more people will realize that looks and
being cool on the internet are not worth hurting another
person’s feelings.

My own mistakes when using Macromedia Flash

I have used Macromedia Flash for all the wrong reasons in the
past and i would like to take some time to warn you, so you
don’t have to make the same mistakes i have. Quite some time ago
now i used to recommend using full Macromedia Flash websites to
my clients all the time, and what’s worst i did a good job in
talking them into it, autch….. Sorry for that if you were an
old client of mine i hope you can forgive me. But on the other
side at least i know better now, i learned from my mistakes and
i won’t ever make those mistakes again.

The main reason i thought that Flash was the best thing ever
had to do with with the fact i got involved in the online Flash
community. There i saw how you could gain great status by
knowing this program very well. Also being able to create those
interesting things you can with Flash just by using some
Actionscript was amazing to me. I wanted to become a part of the
web design world and entered it from a Flash angle. I was
learning Flash Actionscript all the time, day in day out, never
thinking any further like about the importance of things like
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and making actual money from a
website. Instead i dreamed of creating those full Flash sites
jammed with animations etc, thinking that would be the greatest
thing ever, the marketing side really didn’t even come to my
mind at that time. Flash Actionscript and the Flash community
was my world and you could say i was blinded by my love bigtime.
I think a lot of Actionscript users out there are still as i
was, blinded by that love.

So after having learned lots of actionscript to a level a was
sure about my skills i started to receive assignments to create
certain websites. In my blindness my answer to everything was
something like: ‘Use Macromedia Flash and you will get a
beautiful custom website with smooth transitions and effects
that will impress your audience so much they will keep on coming
back and you might win some awards with it.’ As you can see i
was far gone and on the border of insanity, i had my head way up
in the clouds and could only see it from my side ( the blind
love for Flash / Actionscript). I couldn’t see it from the
client side of things and that’s more related to marketing a
website and how to get relevant traffic to it to make some
actual money from it.

I am so glad those days are long gone and i have seen the light
regarding to when and how i should use Flash. Nowadays my
personal preference is how i setup free-webmaster-resource.com,
a CSS, PHP, MySql and Macromedia Flash combination (unless the
assignment is more of presentation like and need lots of
animation, sound and video). I used Flash a little bit in this
website, only in the header, and even then there isn’t anything
moving etc, just a rollover. It just does not add to the site if
i start to make all sorts of moving stuff in my header. With a
setup like this i can also apply SEO (search engine
optimization) techniques to reach a bigger and free search
engine audience which results in a higher advertisement income.
So my personal favorite is the cross-over website and not the
full Flash website when it some to your average website thats
not like a presentation.

So when shouldn’t i use Macromedia Flash?

1)You should not use Macromedia Flash in your web design
if it does not add something to your website! I mean if it does
not add something to the overall user experience then just don’t
add it to your site. To give an example, it does not matter to
an average user (that must provide your income!) how good you
can use Actionscript. So please don’t try to show off your
skills by coding that creepy mouse follower or those blinky
thingies all over your website. Things like that don’t add to a
website at all, they rather tear it down. A professional will
notice things like that immediately and recognize you as an
amateur (not that being an amateur is bad, not at all, but this
tutorial is for people aiming a bit higher and that seek to
become more then an amateur). Users are king and Queen and we as
web designers and developers should serve them well, this is
especially difficult if you see how much little animations one
could create with Actionscript, the possibilities are endless.
By not showing your visitors all those unnecessary effects you
show them that you are thinking about how they experience your
website. And secondly your content will be much more clearly
visible and thats what its all about. I know its tempting to
setup those little effects when you first start to use Flash and
especially Actionscript, but just don’t do it, you will loose
income and traffic from this 100% most definitely sure.

2)Another mistake in using Flash is if normal HTML could
easily do what you are trying to accomplish. I made those
mistakes often when starting out with Flash. An example is that
some people create a full Flash site with lets say, a title,
some text and a menu to a few static pages. When you click a
button in the menu you are taken to the other page without any
transitions, no cool flow, just bam and the next page is
visible. Its quite useless to use Flash in such a manner because
one would use Flash to create an interesting flow with some
great transitions, not for static things like that. In HTML
there are no things like transitions between pages, its purpose
is just to serve a user data without any motion and such stuff.
Making a page that acts like a HTML page does with Flash is not
good at all, it screams inexperience, and you might want to
avoid that.

3)When you have a website that contains a lot of data
don’t try to use a full Flash site unless you have enough money
to setup a pay per click campaign to attract visitors . A
website needs to generate income and that’s it. Using Full Flash
for big data sites will effectively hide all your hard earned
content from the search engine spiders, so you don’t get the
free highly targeted search engine traffic. If you decide to use
that full Flash site you just have no way to effectively apply
SEO (search engine optimization) and thus you are missing a very
big audience that uses the search engines. Only by setting up
PPC campaigns you can make up for that but it can cost a lot of
money. Another thing to consider is that using Flash itself
causes some extra overhead, this is because instead of getting
the data with PHP from a MySql database and displaying it, you
also need to send it to Flash in a correct way and handle it
from there. If you have loads of data this could give some extra
delay in the loading time of the website.

4)If you want to generate money from your website with
some banners or ads, don’t use a full Flash website. You won’t
be able to easily setup affiliate links, banners or other type
of ads like you would normally.

So when should i use Macromedia Flash?

When you need to use video, audio or animation like e.g. in a
presentation or cd-rom, then Flash is the best tool out there.
Especially Macromedia Flash 8 has some awesome options regarding
to video. Or if you want to create powerful applications driven
by a database like MySql and a server side language like PHP ,
then Flash is your ultimate tool. Because with those types of
creations (applications, presentations and cdroms) don’t require
you to get targeted audience from search engines. So the whole
search engine trouble with Flash doesn’t count. Also if you want
to have a small effect like in my own header here
http://www.free-webmaster-resource.com Flash can provide that
easily!

Conclusion?

Macromedia Flash is an ultimate tool to use but you should not
fall too deep in love with it. Take a step back and think about
the things like: do i need lots of visitors from the search
engines for free or do i have enough money for a pay per click
campaign, do i want to setup affiliate links or other types of
banners to generate an income, do i really need animation or can
i leave it out and just serve my user what he/she came for
etc… I hope you won’t make the same mistake of wanting to use
Flash for everything like i did and that you will explore the
possibilities of creating websites that search engines like and
your users like too. (For example a CSS, PHP, MySql and perhaps
some Flash). Ofcourse this only applies if you don’t need to
have things like video, audio and animations to create that
ultimate user experience. Just remember one thing and that is:
you don’t have to showoff your skills with all sorts of effects
nobody needs/wants to see!

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http://www.free-webmaster-resource.com and
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The Internet is the vogue of the day and the wave of the future. So much has been seen and heard about the Internet. It has revolutionized almost every part of our existence, from the way we think to how we buy and sell things. But even with all the technology that has gone into the making of the Internet, there seems to be more to be expected than has been seen.

The Internet is like a cyber library. It is a huge international network of computers with tons and tons of information. The means of accessing the information contained in the Internet varies. The earliest Internet access was the Dial up method.

The Dial-up Internet connection involves an Internet access over a public switch telephone network. With the dial-up connection, users in a neighborhood share the available bandwidth provided by single cable line. The connection speed usually varies depending on how many people are using the service at any particular time.

More advancement in technology gave birth to the Broadband Internet connection option. Broadband is a high-speed transmission. It is used to refer to Internet access, which uses cable modems or DSL (Digital Subscriber Line). Broadband DSL connections are faster and more effective compared to dial-up connections.

The Broadband technology can support a wide range of frequencies. Broadband in general refers to data transmission where multiple pieces of data are sent simultaneously to increase the effective rate of transmission.

The medium through which the broadband technology is based has the ability to transmit multiple pieces of data simultaneously and to carry signals from different network carriers. This is done through fiber-optic cables. The fiber-optic cables are made of thin glass strands and have the capacity of transmitting trillions of bits per second.

The broadband, therefore makes access to the internet faster and more efficient. Because of the high-speed transmission, retrieving information from the internet has become really fast and efficient.

The speed of data transmission over the DSL is measured in Megabytes per second (Mbps). With broadband connection, the threshold frequency varies from one provider to the other. It ranges from 1.5Mbps or as high as 45Mbps with some providers. Although the broadband Internet access option costs more than the conventional Dial-up connection, you will enjoy what you are paying for. The speed and efficiency of connection is something you won’t want to miss. Besides this, most cable companies operating broadband connections would normally allow you the luxury of being online 24/7 and on the phone for a flat monthly rate. You can always plan your budget to accommodate the few extra bucks for this luxury.

The other part of the story is how do you choose a reputable operator out of the multitude out there. When it comes to this, there are several things to consider and compare before making your choice. Of course, you will need to compare prices, that comes up first, but do not forget other factors like, speed of connection, abilities and credibility of the operator, additional features that comes with your purchase and the ease of use of their service. There are Internet companies that will offer additional features like Spam blockers, virus scan and even firewalls. All these should be considered before you make a purchase. Whatever you choice remember that you are spending your hard earned bucks, you deserve the best service, take your time to get the best and enjoy the new era of internet connection via the broadband technology.

Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Broadband