Sunday, May 11, 2008

Shopping online for Jewellery and Watches check out Shopwiki

Shopwiki! is a retailers first choice when it comes to advertisement and it’s a shoppers first to find better deals on the net. ShopWiki uses a combination of a web crawler, sorting techniques and a data extraction algorithm to seek product information from online shopping websites.

Shoppers get unbiased results on numerous products as shopwiki crawls more than 180,000 online stores . all And that’s not when it comes to your shopping search you can do a simple product search or narrow down your search results using a number of available variables, including price, special features, brand and retailers too.

Lets check this out many of us mostly do an online search to look for Jewellery and watches this search can be very exhaustive. Take the case of Jewellery you would find jewellery in itself is divided into a number of categories :

· Engagement and Wedding Jewelry suitable for those memorable times.
· Womens Jewellery every womens personal delight space
· Mens Jewellery
Similar is the case of Watches too start shopping for a watch you will find that watches are not only the instruments of measuring but also play an important role in your wardrobe as an ornament and pricely possession. Watches can be segregated based on occasions , places , features the list is endless.
Thats why shopwiki brings you buying guides wether it is Jewellery , Watches or any other product which helps you to analyse all the aspects.Most important of them are Price, quality, Fashion , Function. Apart from these it shopwiki buying guides gets in to design and technical details of the products to help us select the best product for us.
So , friends whenever you would like to go for shopping don’t forget Shopwiki especially when you are hunting for jewellery and watches

Friday, November 23, 2007

Shopperbay winners for this week

Hi everyone shopperbay has announced this weeks winner

following are the three

Ms. Anne smith - Wins a fantastic iPod and a free subscription for life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ms. Anisha M - Gets a Nintendo Wii.............!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ms. Allison Donahue - Gets a rolling discount on every purchase!!!!!!!
Mr.
dan rehor - Gets a rolling discount on every purchase!!!!!!!


Hurry the carnival runs for next few weeks and there is lots of prizes to be won every week


visit buy and win.........................
http://www.shopperbay.net


Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Shopperbay Shopping carnival has started...........

Hey Guys Shopperbay has announced its Annual Shopping Carnival sale.They have almost slashed upto 85% !!!!!

The most recent attraction is there Nintendo Wii Friends Bundle - With 5 Great Sports Games and 4 Controllers in the popular games section....
Second attraction is their range of cameras Canon , Nikon , Sony etc check out their cameras section...


Come grab the offers and also enjoy their special new range of offers.....


they also provide Refunds and Returns..

Special gifts to be won:Every Customer who refers 5 new customer in a period of 20 days will Win a Ipod , XBOX , Playstation , Cameras , T shirts , Nintendo Wii consoles and 1000 of other gifts...Just mail the customer name you referred and the order number to info@shopperbay.net and get ready to win one of the gifts....Start refering and earn more prizes and win gifts.

so what are you waiting for grab before the offer closes...Log on today to http://www.shopperbay.net

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Checklist before you buy an 802.11n wireless

1 - MIMO

One of the big advantages of 802.11n is MIMO.MIMO is short for Multiple Input / Multiple Output. MIMO breaks the data transmission down to multiple parts that are sent separately to the client, where they are reassembled. One of the requirements for this then is multiple antennas to send and receive the data. This system has the advantage of extending the range of wireless, along with increasing the capacity that can be carried by the signal. MIMO is implemented in almost all Draft N and Pre N specs. The use of MIMO in these devices has, for the most part, greatly extended the range of these devices. Unfortunately, there are still debates ongoing about the finalization of MIMO itself, as the 802.11n spec is not ratified yet.

2 - Standard not fully ratified

IEEE has not fully ratified the standards for 802.11n. This means that the technical details of 802.11n have not been decided upon. The original draft for 802.11n was voted on earlier this year and soundly rejected, receiving only 46 percent of the needed 75 percent of votes to be accepted. Draft 2.0 of the spec is scheduled be debated and approved in March of 2007. Items adhering to this spec can be labeled as Phase 1 Draft N. These items will be compatible with each other (unlike many current pre-n and draft n components). The final ratified standard will probably be ratified in early 2008. Of course, if no Draft 2.0 can be agreed upon in March 2007, this will push the schedule for all of this back.

3 - Equipment cannot guarantee N compatibility

As the final spec of 802.11n is not fully ratified, it is impossible to guarantee that any equipment sold as Pre-N or Draft-N will be compatible with the final spec. Many manufactures on banking on the assumption that compatibility can be achieved by firmware updates to their equipment. Currently the only vendor offering a full replacement warranty should there equipment not be compatible with the final spec is Asus.

4 - Huge speed increases over 802.11g

The final 802.11n will undoubtedly boast a great speed increase over 802.11g. This boost will almost assuredly make wireless faster than 100mb Ethernet. Currently most Pre-N and Draft-N equipment are already showing great speed increases. The speed they operate though varies based on manufacturer and equipment. The advertised speeds vary from 100mb to 200mb. If you truly need greater speed, be very careful in your shopping to make sure you are getting the fastest speed possible.

5 - Backward compatibility with previous wireless standards

While IEEE has announced that any final spec for 802.11n will include backward compatibility for 802.11b and 802.11g this specification is not finalized. With this being the case, there can be no guarantee of backward compatibility for current Pre-N and Draft-N gear. While most of the products currently on the market offer backward compatibility, how they implement it varies from vendor to vendor. Due to this, there can be (and have been reported) many instances where gear labeled as backward compatible, have not been fully backwardly compatible with equipment from other vendors.

6 - Draft-N and Pre-N gear may not be compatible with Draft-N and Pre-N gear from other vendors

Currently in the Draft 1.0 of the 802.11n spec, there is nothing to guarantee compatibility among equipment. If you choose to use Pre-N or Draft-N gear you will need to buy all of your equipment from a single vendor. While interoperability may be promised, there is no way to guarantee this. The Draft 2.0 spec of 802.11n will include interoperability standards for the release of Phase 1 Draft-N gear.

7 - Testing has shown MIMO systems not based on Draft-N standards can be significantly faster than systems based on Draft-N

Real world testing has shown that highest possible speeds using MIMO can be achieved by not sticking to the Draft-N specifications. What this means is that if you are truly searching for the fastest possible wireless connection, do not force your search to just N class products, but products that use MIMO.

8 - Draft-N gear is driven by marketing

It has been several years since any new development was made in consumer grade Wi-Fi. This has lead to a certain degree of stagnation within the market. The advent of Pre-N gear has given companies something to latch onto in an attempt to offer their customers something new. While there are undoubtedly benefits (in speed and range) to using this new gear, you are also putting yourself in line for potential problems. You really need to weigh your actual needs before jumping on the bandwagon of a "not ready for prime-time" technology.

9 - Potential to interfere with existing Wi-Fi

One of the issues with MIMO is that it uses a wide spectrum (40MHz) to send its data. Currently only three (1, 6, and 11) of the available channels in the current 2.4 GHz band are considered to be non-overlapping at this spectrum. However, under a powerful signal they can overlap. What this means to you is that if you have multiple wireless networks running, your Pre-N gear will need to be on one of these 3 channels, possibly necessitating a change in your current wireless networks. Also, you will want to plan for the overlap if possible, by moving your current networks to channels not sequential to 1, 6, and 11.

10 - Issues with media streaming devices

One issue that has been reported with Draft-N and Pre-N gear is that it appears it have some issues with various media streaming devices. This is an extremely perplexing issue, as of the goals of 802.11n was the ability to stream high definition media wirelessly. Whether this is due to issues in the Draft 1.0 specs, or if it's an issue with the current generation of media streaming devices remains to be seen, but at the moment a wired connection remains your best bet for streaming.

IPv6 the Protocol

As everyone of you knows, TCP/IP is the communication protocol of the Internet. To be precise, TCP/IP is a suite of protocols. The TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) provides a reliable bidirectional connection between two hosts, using the communication facilities provided by the IP (Internet Protocol). In fact, IP is a network layer protocol and its task is to deliver packets of data from a source host to a destination host.

IPv6 is the new version of the Internet Protocol, that is meant to replace IPv4 (which is the version currently in use) in a few years. IPv4 has been used since the Internet was born and has worked very well until now, but it has many serious limits that IPv6 has been designed to overcome. As you may guess, there have been many changes from the definition of the IPv4 protocol to the one of the IPv6 protocol.

First of all, IPv6 provides a larger address space than IPv4. As many of you know, IPv4 supports about 2.000.000.000 addresses. You may think that such a large number of addresses should be more than enough for the actual size of the Internet. This is partly true. In fact, until recent times, IPv4 addresses have only been allocated in blocks of 254, 65534 or 16777214. This has lead to an enormous waste of usable addresses, since many organizations have been forced to ask many more addresses than the ones they really needed. The waste of IPv4 addresses has been of such an order of magnitude that the whole address space will be soon completely exhausted. Now the IETF has developed a wiser address allocation policy: CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing). However, while CIDR has been designed to achieve the minimum waste of the remained IPv4 addresses and to minimize the growth of the routing tables (due to the non-hierarchical organization of the IPv4 address space), it does not solve the problem of the upcoming exhaustion of the IPv4 address space. Here comes IPv6: it provides more than a billion of billions addresses per square meter on the Earth! Besides, IPv6 uses a CIDR-style architecture for address allocation that prevents a big waste of addresses and an uncontrolled growth of the routing tables. So, while CIDR partly addresses the problem, IPv6 represents the long-term solution.

Furthermore, IPv6 has been designed to satisfy the growing need of security experienced by the Internet community. The authentication header mechanism allows the receiver to be reasonably sure about the origin of the data, and the IPSEC privacy facilities provide end-to-end encryption of data at the network layer. IP spoofing attacks and eavesdropping of data will be much more difficult in the Internet of the next millennium. However, as Wietse Venema points out, network-level encryption poses new security problems. In fact decryption puts a considerable overhead on the CPU and this may eventually leave the host more vulnerable to flooding-type DoS attacks. To reduce these risk, a careful implementation of the networking protocols is required.

Moreover, IPv6 has many improvements for mobile networking and real-time communication. In particular, unlike IPv4, IPv6 has robust autoconfiguration capabilities that simplify the system administration of mobile hosts and LANs.

Although IPv6 is superior to IPv4 in everything, it is a common opinion that the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 will be long (perhaps more than a decade) and difficult. In fact, many organizations have made an enourmous investment in IPv4 technology and are not ready nor willing to speed up the transition yet. IPv4 is a well-known, and thoroughly-tested technology; its reliability and its widespread use represent a major slowing-factor in the development of IPv6.

Today, there are only a few working IPv6 implementations. Hope that the porting process of old IPv4 software to IPv6 and the development of a fully IPv6-enabled Linux distribution would catch pace.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Get free software every day

Get free software every day at Connect.On the side bar you can find free licensed software under the heading of Giveaway of the Day.Giveaway of the Day gives you one free commercial software application every day. What's the catch? Each program is available for 24 hours only, and you must install it the day you download it.

To clarify, the software doesn't expire after 24 hours. Rather, you have a 24-hour window in which to nab it and load it. But once that's done, it's yours to keep. Sweet! So visit the Connect everyday to get Giveaway of the day. Connect and get it

Sunday, September 30, 2007

Wireless security an insight into WEP

Wired Equivalent Privacy, a security protocol for wireless local area networks (WLANs) defined in the 802.11b standard. WEP is designed to provide the same level of security as that of a wired LAN. LANs are inherently more secure than WLANs because LANs are somewhat protected by the physicalities of their structure, having some or all part of the network inside a building that can be protected from unauthorized access. WLANs, which are over radio waves, do not have the same physical structure and therefore are more vulnerable to tampering. WEP aims to provide security by encrypting data over radio waves so that it is protected as it is transmitted from one end point to another. However, it has been found that WEP is not as secure as once believed. WEP is used at the two lowest layers of the OSI model - the data link and physical layers; it therefore does not offer end-to-end security.

Authentication

Two methods of authentication can be used with WEP: Open System authentication and Shared Key authentication.

For the sake of clarity, we discuss WEP authentication in the Infrastructure mode (ie, between a WLAN client and an Access Point). But the discussion applies to the Ad-Hoc mode too.

In Open System authentication, the WLAN client need not provide its credentials to the Access Point during authentication. Thus, any client, regardless of its WEP keys, can authenticate itself with the Access Point and then attempt to associate. In effect, no authentication (in the true sense of the term) occurs. After the authentication and association, WEP can be used for encrypting the data frames. At this point, the client needs to have the right keys.

In Shared Key authentication, WEP is used for authentication. A four-way challenge-response handshake is used:

I) The client station sends an authentication request to the Access Point.

II) The Access Point sends back a clear-text challenge.

III) The client has to encrypt the challenge text using the configured WEP key, and send it back in another authentication request.

IV) The Access Point decrypts the material, and compares it with the clear-text it had sent. Depending on the success of this comparison, the Access Point sends back a positive or negative response. After the authentication and association, WEP can be used for encrypting the data frames.

At first glance, it might seem as though Shared Key authentication is more secure than Open System authentication, since the later offers no real authentication. However, it is quite the reverse. It is possible to derive the static WEP key by capturing the four handshake frames in Shared Key authentication. Hence is advisable to use Open System authentication for WEP authentication. (Note that both authentication mechanisms are weak).

IS it Good

We all know by now that 802.11's wired equivalent privacy (WEP) isn't good enough to protect our data. Thus equipped, a cracker only needs some patience to mount a successful invasion. Specifically, it usually takes only five to ten million packets to break WEP encryption. And, at fifteen million packets, it's almost dead certain that a dedicated attacker can pry the lid off your network traffic. Or, to put it another way, a small WLAN with four active users is almost certain to be cracked with two weeks of eavesdropping.

Making matters even worse, the cracking techniques most frequently used will work equally well no matter what WEP key length you're using. Thus, a 128-bit key is just as vulnerable as a 64-bit key. Indeed, even if a WEP key was 1,204 bits, it still as crackable by today's methods as one's that the minimal 64-bits.

How can that be? To understand how that works, you have to look closely at how WEP actually generates and manages, or more to the point doesn't, manage its encryption keys.

Every WEP packet is encrypted separately with an RC4 cipher stream generated by an encryption key. That key is made up of a 24-bit initialization vector (IV) and either a 40-bit or 104-bit WEP key that's usually set by your wireless device. Combined, they have a total length of 64 or 128-bits, hence the popular names of 64 and 128-bit WEP keys (some vendors use to call the 64-bit key a 40-bit key, but they simply weren't including the 24-bit IV -- so 64 and 40-bit WEP are the same thing). This transmitted packet is generated by a mathematical operation called 'bitwise exclusive OR' (XOR) using the packet sent to your network interface card (NIC) by your computer and the RC4 encryption key.

With me so far? Now, the first thing that kills WEP's fundamental security is that every packet you send also includes the IV in plaintext. In short, any would-be snooper can immediately see part of the key.

Now, because the IV is only 24-bits long, you can only get 16,777,216 different RC4 encryption streams for every key, regardless of how long the rest of the key is. Sounds like a lot doesn't it? It's not even close to enough. The plaintext IV is constantly reused and it takes many packets to send even a quick "Hi, how are you?" instant message, so it doesn't take long for a snooper to gather up enough packets to start cracking your messages.

If that was WEP's only weakness, it would still be insecure but it would take a serious processing power and a lot more packets to break into a WLAN. Unfortunately, RC4 has another problem. Not all of those close to 17-million possible IV numbers work as well as others in RC4. When one of these approximately 9,000 'Weak IVs', are used to encrypt packets, a snooping program can recognize and collect them. These Weak IVs give additional clues on the full encryption key, no matter its length, and so they make breaking WEP that much easier.

There are other theoretical ways to take advantage of WEP, but the combination of these two ways of exploiting the IV have proven to be easy and effective enough that little effort is being spent on developing software to exploit these holes. Trust me, the existing way to pry open a WEP-protected network work more than well enough.

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Video Conferencing - a innovative technology

Video conferencing uses telecommunications of audio and video to bring people at different sites together for a meeting. This can be as simple as a conversation between two people in private offices (point-to-point) or involve several sites (multi-point) with more than one person in large rooms at different sites. Besides the audio and visual transmission of people, video conferencing can be used to share documents, computer-displayed information, and whiteboards.

Basic Video conferencing Technology

Compressed video systems allow a larger audience to experience the benefits of high-quality video conferencing at a reasonable cost. A video conferencing system requires the audiovisual equipment, which includes a monitor, camera, microphone, and speaker, and a means of transmission.

Rather than an Internet-based connection, such as that used by webcams, which have to share bandwidth with other Internet data, a compressed video system on a dedicated bandwidth provides smooth audio and video.

The compressed videoconferencing may be transmitted via an ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) line or over IP (Internet Protocol) lines. It is an economical solution for high-quality videoconferencing.

The most significant distinction among videoconferencing systems is the method of transmission. Transmission is important because two systems cannot connect if they are using different transmission methods. Videoconferences can be transmitted over two protocols, H.320 - ISDN (phone) or H.323 - IP (Internet) lines. In the past, most videoconferences used ISDN lines; however, many people are now using IP connections due to cost savings. In order to connect two units using different transmission methods, a bridge must be used that will handle these mixed protocols. In an ISDN call, bandwidth is dedicated to only one videoconference, while in an IP call, bandwidth may be used to transmit for multiple uses. However, ISDN calls can be very costly since you may be making the call over a distance, in which case, long distance phone line charges apply, and ISDN lines take up 6 phone lines. Connections around the world average 384 kbps.

Megameeting a company dealing with web conferencing has taken this technology to a step further with new, 100% desktop, browser based web conferencing services and webinar software that does not require any special installation on your computer.

Through its variety of services, MegaMeeting provides full-featured and flexible web conferencing software, video chat server and webinar software. Participants can communicate by voice, instant messaging chat and see each other by video/videoconference. This is made possible by the powerful video chat server. With Professional and Enterprise versions of its web conferencing software, MegaMeeting includes multipoint, desktop video conferencing software that allows up to 16 individuals to be seen at the same time, and an unlimited number of additional web conferencing attendees to see those 16. Participants can talk and hear one another by using standard microphones and headsets thanks to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). As an alternative, if you wish, you can choose to use free, integrated teleconferencing for the handling of audio in your webinars.

New standards and greater innovations are continuosly progressing in this field which has made video conferencing a cost effective means.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

How to make money from your Blog

Advertising Programs - Perhaps the most obvious changes in the past few months have been with the addition of a variety of viable advertising options for bloggers looking to make money from their blogs. The most common way bloggers seem to earn money online is via the contextual ad program from Google - Adsense. Another two popular ones with many is BlogAds. A more recent addition that many are using successfully are Chitika’s eMiniMalls and AuctionAds,CrispAds, Text Link Ads.

Adgenta, Azoogle Ads, Intelli Txt, Peak Click, DoubleClickTribal Fusion, Adbrite, Clicksor, Industry Brains, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, AVN, Pheedo, Adknowledge, YesAdvertising, RevenuePilotTextAds, SearchFeed, Target Point, Bidvertiser, Fastclick Value Click and OneMonkey (to name just some of the options - I’m sure I’ve forgotten some) and there is a smorgasbord of options. Of course there is more to come with MSN Adcenter and YPN both in beta testing and with a variety of other advertising system currently in development (so I hear).

RSS Advertising - The past 12 months have seen some advances in RSS Advertising also. I’m yet to hear of any bloggers making big money blogging through it to this point - but as improvements are made to the ad programs exploring this I’m sure we’ll start to see examples of it being profitable.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Importance of Insurance for Parents

Life Insurance ! in a simple defination it can be described in short as contract between the policy owner and the insurer, where the insurer agrees to pay a sum of money upon the occurrence of the policy owner's death. In return, the policy owner (or policy payer) agrees to pay a stipulated amount called a premium at regular intervals.


Though Life insurance itself is a broader spectrum we would try to limit the boundaries on the importance of life insurance on parents.


We must be a responsible person for our parent’s non-working life. In today’s technology driven world, the average life of a person is becoming greater each day. And more importantly, the medical field is getting expensive beyond control. Generally, your parents’ ability to take care of themselves go down as they move up in their lives. Inability can be physical as well as financial or in many cases both of the above given cases. And here is where you are responsible towards their care taking in financial terms and physical terms – to the extent possible. Insurance will help you take care of the future, in present, if planned well.

Getting Covered

Now that we know we need it, what are the life insurance options and how much should we buy?

Basically there are two types of life insurance policies available: term and cash-value.

Term – Term life insurance is the simplest type of life insurance. With term life insurance, you pay a premium (usually yearly or monthly) over a set period (for example, 10, 20 or 30 years). With some policies (“increasing term”), the premium goes up over the term of the policy; with others (“level term”), the premium remains the same over the term of the policy. In return, if you die before the term of the policy is up, the insurance company will pay your beneficiaries a set sum of money (the “face value” of the policy). When the time period (term) of the policy ends, your payments (as well as the coverage) ends, unless you choose to renew it.


Term policies can be further divided into two main types:

Level term life insurance, in which both the premium and the death benefit on the policy remains the same throughout the term of the policy.

Decreasing (or declining) term insurance, in which the premium remains the same, but the death benefit gradually declines over the life of the policy. Mortgage life insurance is usually a declining term policy. And, because the death benefit declines and the death benefits often must be used for a specific purpose – that is, to pay off a remaining balance on a mortgage or other loan – declining term life insurance is virtually never a good buy.

Cash-Value – Cash-value life insurance policies combine life insurance with a savings or investment element. As with term insurance, you pay regular premiums on the policy, and, if you die while the policy is in effect, the insurance company will pay your beneficiaries a set sum of money. Unlike term insurance, cash-value policies remain in effect for most or all of your life, and, in some cases, after a period of years, you can stop paying premiums on the policy (even though the policy remains in effect). Generally, there are three types of cash-value policies:

• Whole life insurance, in which premiums generally remain the same over the term of the policy. A portion of the premium pays for your insurance, while a portion is put into a “savings account” (the “cash value” of the policy). How much interest that is paid on this cash value does not have to be disclosed by the insurance company. Moreover, the only way to access this cash value is to borrow against it or cancel the policy.

• Universal life insurance, which is very similar to whole life insurance. However, with universal life policies, the amount of your premium going toward savings, and how much interest is being paid on those savings, is disclosed to a larger (but not complete) degree. In addition, because of the numerous fees and expenses that are charged on universal and whole life policies, the actual cash value of the policy (as well as its rate of growth) is often much less than it seems.

• Variable life insurance is virtually the same as universal life policies, with one major exception. With universal, the insurance company chooses where to invest the “cash value” of policyholders’ accounts; with variable life, you get to choose from a number of investment vehicles (usually a mixture of mutual funds, bonds, stocks and money market funds) and, therefore, the degree of risk that the investment (or savings) portion of your policy takes.


I hope these discussions should have started a stream of questions in you , so what are you waiting for lets get started by buying life insurance for parents.

Friday, September 21, 2007

New concept in the world Automotive insurance

Insurance! The very word itself brings in our mind streaks of images and contents regarding quotes , finance , security , credit , maturity , claim and the list goes on. Insurance has become one of the integral parts of our life. Insurance is actually a very broad vertical covering personal , accident , healthcare , automotive etc…

In this blog we will discuss about one such player Advantage Auto Quotes, who are revolutionizing the concept of Automotive insurance by their customized service.

Advantage Auto Quotes guides you throughout the process of Auto Insurance, by helping you to select the type of coverage needed for your vehicle and putting you in touch with car insurance companies that will give you better car insurance rates available. Whether you are looking for insurance coverage for cars, truck, SUV, or business vehicle, gap coverage for new vehicle , leased vehicle gap insurance policies , whether you are insuring a teen or senior driver, and whether you have an excellent driving history and qualify for the lowest lowest auto liability quote or poor driving record, they can save you money on your auto insurance with their online insurance quoting services.

They provide the best competitive affordable auto rates for your car, suv or commercial van across the united states from all major agencies. This actually helps to lower Your Car/SUV Insurance and get the cheapest automobile insurance policies available anywhere. So you get the best coverage for sports car, truck , SUV insurance policies , business insurance no matter what your driving record looks like. They offer the best rates and the cheapest most affordable auto insurance plans available.They have plans that are customized for all types of drivers including hard to place teenage drivers (teen driver auto policy), and of course if you have a excellent driving record with no accidents or points, you will qualify for the lowest and most affordable plans.

So login today at Advantage Auto Quotes to meet your Automotive insurance requirements and get the best policies for yourself and your favourite car.

Saturday, September 1, 2007

Generate Traffic to your Blog

1. Syndication.
Convert your blog posts into articles and submit them to article directories.

2. PR.
Write press releases and distribute them.

3. StumbleUpon.
Add a “stumbleupon” button
to all your blog posts. When your readers click on the buttons, more people will start visiting your website through stumbleupon.com toolbars.

4. Hug another blogger.
Send them thank you notes. Comment on their blogs.

5. Co-Exchange Posts.
Contact a blogger and ask him to write a guest post for your blog and you can write a guest post for his.

How to Make Money Online by Blogs

Internet marketing revolves around content. With the lack of one-to-one approach in the virtual marketing arena, internet solely depends on creating magic through words that attract people. The need for articles is enormous. Websites are filled with content.

If you wonder why articles are so important. Articles are one way of ensuring your website climbs up the search engines. The reason is because people search for information on search engines. The websites that have more useful content are the ones that are at the top of the search engines like Google. The reason why search engines concentrate and appreciate good content is because they want to provide what people are looking for.

Where do articles come from?
Articles don’t just appear by themselves out of nowhere. The websites looking for articles have to either write the articles themselves or they will have to buy them. The problem is that most website owners may not have the skill to write articles in a way that attracts the reader or even if they have the skill, may not find the time. That’s when they look at freelance writers for articles.

That is precisely the reason why article writing for pay is a great way of making money online. Having said that, it would help to know how one could go about doing that. There are several paths you can choose from. The first one and the easiest is to write articles for the article submission sites.

Article submission sites
There are several article submission sites, which accept articles and pay for them. One is Associated Content, that pays your for the articles they buy from you. Then there is Constant Content that pays you when your articles are sold. The amount that one gets paid varies anywhere between $3 to $200 per article. It is pretty obvious that the articles that pay higher amount are more in depth, informative, and longer.

Contacting top websites
The second way is a little more time consuming when compared to the first. You will need to contact the website owners directly and offer to write unique content specifically for them. Many website owners would love to hire a freelance writer for their articles, even if it costs more, because they want unique content. You can concentrate on the gurus on the internet and if you land yourself one contract and do a good job, then the word of mouth is enough to land you lots of projects.

Own Freelance website

There is another way of selling your articles and making money. This one certainly consumes a lot more time but is the most lucrative. Setting up your own website and advertising your freelance services. This way, you will not have to look for work; people will be coming to you for articles. Of course, you will need to promote your website. But that is a small price to pay, for what you are going to gain.

Get your own domain and set up a website. You need to keep some samples of your work on the website. People want articles of various lengths. You can have about 2 or 3 articles of different lengths, may be 150 words, 350 words, and 500 words. Next thing that needs to be done is the sales letter, selling yourself. Yes, not your website, but you. You need to let people know through your sales letter that they are hiring a writer; it’s almost like having a writer on staff.

Now, with that done, where do you find clients and where do you promote your website?

There are numerous places to find clients for this sort of work. Some of the better places are warriorforum.com, forums.digitalpoint.com/, sitepoint.com/marketplace/. Here you can sell your article writing services to the highest bidder. You can also have your website link in your signature.

Monthly membership site
This is an innovative idea to sell your services. PLR monthly membership sites are well-known, but here instead of PLR content, you are going to be selling your services and you are not going around looking for clients. Suppose you are into writing ebooks, you can have a membership site, where you give away 2 ebooks a month to each member for their exclusive use. You can have just a few people as members and charge around $200 or $300 per month. Many people wouldn’t mind paying this kind of money if they are going to get their money’s worth. You will just have to see how many you can write in a month and have members accordingly.

Content website
Find a great topic or niche, write about 10 articles, get a domain name that is related to the topic, get hosting, get some free website template. Sell these sites in a matter of hours and you can earn quite a bit from them.

Clickbank products
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Friday, August 31, 2007

Blog -Its evolution

Before blogging became popular, digital communities took many forms, including Usenet, commercial online services such as GEnie, BiX and the early CompuServe, e-mail lists and bulletin board systems (BBS). In the 1990s, Internet forum software, such as WebEx, created running conversations with "threads". Threads are topical connections between messages on a metaphorical "corkboard". Some have likened blogging to the Mass-Observation project of the mid-20th century.

1983–1990

Usenet was the primary serial medium included in the original definition of the World Wide Web.It featured the Moderated Newsgroup which allowed all posting in a newsgroup to be under the control of an individual or small group. Most such newsgroups were simply moderated discussion forums, however, in 1983-84, one exception, named mod.ber, was created, named after and managed by an individual: Brian E. Redman. Regularly, Redman and a few associates posted summaries of interesting postings and threads taking place elsewhere on the net. With its serial journal publishing style, presence on the pre-HTTP web and strong similarity to the common blog form which features links to interesting and cool places on the net chosen by the blogger, mod.ber had many of the characteristics commonly associated with the term Blog . It ceased operation after approximately 8 months. Brad Templeton calls the newsgroup rec.humor.funny (which he founded) the world's oldest still existing blog.


1994–2001

The modern blog evolved from the online diary, where people would keep a running account of their personal lives. Most such writers called themselves diarists, journalists, or journalers. A few called themselves "escribitionists". The Open Pages webring included members of the online-journal community. Justin Hall, who began eleven years of personal blogging in 1994 while a student at Swarthmore College, is generally recognized as one of the earliest bloggers, as is Jerry Pournelle.

Other forms of journals kept online also existed. A notable example was game programmer John Carmack's widely read journal, published via the finger protocol. Some of the very earliest bloggers, like Steve Gibson of sCary's Quakeholio (now Shacknews) and Stephen Heaslip of Blue's News (still running since 1995 with online archives back to July 1996), evolved from the Quake scene and Carmack's .plan updates. Steve Gibson was hired to blog full-time by Ritual Entertainment on February 8th, 1997, possibly making him the first hired blogger.

Websites, including both corporate sites and personal homepages, had and still often have "What's New" or "News" sections, often on the index page and sorted by date. One example of a news based "weblog" is the Drudge Report founded by the self-styled maverick reporter Matt Drudge, though apparently Drudge dislikes this classification. Another is the Institute for Public Accuracy which began posting news releases featuring several news-pegged one-paragraph quotes several times a week beginning in 1998. One noteworthy early precursor to a blog was the tongue-in-cheek personal website that was frequently updated by Usenet legend Kibo.

Early weblogs were simply manually updated components of common websites. However, the evolution of tools to facilitate the production and maintenance of web articles posted in reverse chronological order made the publishing process feasible to a much larger, less technical, population. Ultimately, this resulted in the distinct class of online publishing that produces blogs we recognize today. For instance, the use of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of "blogging". Blogs can be hosted by dedicated blog hosting services, or they can be run using blog software, such as WordPress, Movable Type, blogger or LiveJournal, or on regular web hosting services, such as DreamHost.

The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May of 1999.This was quickly adopted as both a noun and verb ("to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog").

After a slow start, blogging rapidly gained in popularity. Blog usage spread during 1999 and the years following, being further popularized by the near-simultaneous arrival of the first hosted blog tools:

  • Open Diary launched in October 1998, soon growing to thousands of online diaries. Open Diary innovated the reader comment, becoming the first blog community where readers could add comments to other writers' blog entries.
  • Brad Fitzpatrick, a well known blogger started LiveJournal in March 1999.
  • Andrew Smales created Pitas.com in July 1999 as an easier alternative to maintaining a "news page" on a website, followed by Diaryland in September 1999, focusing more on a personal diary community.
  • Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan (Pyra Labs) launched blogger.com in August 1999 (purchased by Google in February 2003)

Blogging combined the personal web page with tools to make linking to other pages easier — specifically permalinks, blogrolls and TrackBacks. This, together with weblog search engines enabled bloggers to track the threads that connected them to others with similar interests.

2001–2004

Several broadly popular American blogs emerged in 2001: Andrew Sullivan's AndrewSullivan.com, Ron Gunzburger's Politics1.com, Taegan Goddard's Political Wire, Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit, Charles Johnson's Little Green Footballs, and Jerome Armstrong's MyDD — all blogging primarily on politics (two earlier popular American political blogs were Bob Somerby's Daily Howler launched in 1998 and Mickey Kaus' Kausfiles launched in 1999).

By 2001, blogging was enough of a phenomenon that how-to manuals began to appear, primarily focusing on technique. The importance of the blogging community (and its relationship to larger society) increased rapidly. Established schools of journalism began researching blogging and noting the differences between journalism and blogging.

In 2002, Jerome Armstrong's friend and sometime business partner Markos Moulitsas ZĂșniga began DailyKos. With up to a million visits a day during peak events, it has now become one of the Internet's most popular blogs.

Also in 2002, many blogs focused on comments by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. Senator Lott, at a party honoring U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond, praised Senator Thurmond by suggesting that the United States would have been better off had Thurmond been elected president. Lott's critics saw these comments as a tacit approval of racial segregation, a policy advocated by Thurmond's 1948 presidential campaign. This view was reinforced by documents and recorded interviews dug up by bloggers. (See Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo.) Though Lott's comments were made at a public event attended by the media, no major media organizations reported on his controversial comments until after blogs broke the story. Blogging helped to create a political crisis that forced Lott to step down as majority leader.

The impact of this story gave greater credibility to blogs as a medium of news dissemination. Though often seen as partisan gossips, bloggers sometimes lead the way in bringing key information to public light, with mainstream media having to follow their lead. More often, however, news blogs tend to react to material already published by the mainstream media.

Since 2002, blogs have gained increasing notice and coverage for their role in breaking, shaping, and spinning news stories. The Iraq war saw bloggers taking measured and passionate points of view that go beyond the traditional left-right divide of the political spectrum.

Blogging by established politicians and political candidates, to express opinions on war and other issues, cemented blogs' role as a news source. (See Howard Dean and Wesley Clark.) Meanwhile, an increasing number of experts blogged, making blogs a source of in-depth analysis. (See Daniel Drezner and J. Bradford DeLong.)

The second Iraq war was the first "blog war" in another way: Iraqi bloggers gained wide readership, and one, Salam Pax, published a book of his blog. Blogs were also created by soldiers serving in the Iraq war. Such "warblogs" gave readers new perspectives on the realities of war, as well as often offering different viewpoints from those of official news sources.

Blogging was used to draw attention to obscure news sources. For example, bloggers posted links to traffic cameras in Madrid as a huge anti-terrorism demonstration filled the streets in the wake of the March 11 attacks.

Bloggers began to provide nearly-instant commentary on televised events, creating a secondary meaning of the word "blogging": to simultaneously transcribe and editorialize speeches and events shown on television. (For example, "I am blogging Rice's testimony" means "I am posting my reactions to Condoleezza Rice's testimony into my blog as I watch her on television.") Real-time commentary is sometimes referred to as "liveblogging."

2004–present

In 2004, the role of blogs became increasingly mainstream, as political consultants, news services and candidates began using them as tools for outreach and opinion forming. Even politicians not actively campaigning, such as the UK's Labour Party's MP Tom Watson, began to blog to bond with constituents.

Minnesota Public Radio broadcast a program by Christopher Lydon and Matt Stoller called "The blogging of the President," which covered a transformation in politics that blogging seemed to presage. The Columbia Journalism Review began regular coverage of blogs and blogging. Anthologies of blog pieces reached print, and blogging personalities began appearing on radio and television. In the summer of 2004, both United States Democratic and Republican Parties' conventions credentialed bloggers, and blogs became a standard part of the publicity arsenal. Mainstream television programs, such as Chris Matthews' Hardball, formed their own blogs. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary declared "blog" as the word of the year in 2004.[11]

In 2004, Global Voices Online, a site which "aggregates, curates, and amplifies the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore" surfaced, bringing to light bloggers from around the world. Today, the site has a relationship with Reuters and is responsible for breaking many global news stories.

Blogs were among the driving forces behind the "Rathergate" scandal, to wit: (television journalist) Dan Rather presented documents (on the CBS show 60 Minutes) that conflicted with accepted accounts of President Bush's military service record. Bloggers declared the documents to be forgeries and presented evidence and arguments in support of that view, and CBS apologized for what it said were inadequate reporting techniques (see Little Green Footballs). Many bloggers view this scandal as the advent of blogs' acceptance by the mass media, both as a news source and opinion and as means of applying political pressure.

Some bloggers have moved over to other media. The following bloggers (and others) have appeared on radio and television: Duncan Black (known widely by his pseudonym, Atrios), Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit), Markos Moulitsas ZĂșniga (Daily Kos), Alex Steffen (Worldchanging) and Ana Marie Cox (Wonkette). In counter-point, Hugh Hewitt exemplifies a mass media personality who has moved in the other direction, adding to his reach in "old media" by being an influential blogger.

Some blogs were an important news source during the December 2004 Tsunami such as Medecins Sans Frontieres, which used SMS text messaging to report from affected areas in Sri Lanka and Southern India. Similarly, during Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 and the aftermath a few blogs which were located in New Orleans, including the Interdictor and Gulfsails were able to maintain power and an Internet connection and disseminate information that was not covered by the Main Stream Media.

In the United Kingdom, The Guardian newspaper launched a redesign in September 2005, which included a daily digest of blogs on page 2. Also in June 2006, BBC News launched a weblog for its editors, following other news companies.

In January 2005, Fortune magazine listed eight bloggers that business people "could not ignore": Peter Rojas, Xeni Jardin, Ben Trott, Mena Trott, Jonathan Schwartz, Jason Goldman, Robert Scoble, and Jason Calacanis.

In 2007, Tim O'Reilly proposed a Blogger's Code of Conduct.

The Blogger's Code of Conduct is a proposal by Tim O'Reilly for bloggers to enforce civility on their bloggers by being civil themselves and moderating comments on their blog. The code was proposed due to threats made to blogger Kathy Sierra. The idea of the code was first reported by BBC News, who quoted O'Reilly saying, "I do think we need some code of conduct around what is acceptable behaviour, I would hope that it doesn't come through any kind of regulation it would come through self-regulation.

O'Reilly and others came up with a list of seven proposed ideas:

  1. Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog.
  2. Label your tolerance level for abusive comments.
  3. Consider eliminating anonymous comments.
  4. Ignore the trolls.
  5. Take the conversation offline, and talk directly, or find an intermediary who can do so.
  6. If you know someone who is behaving badly, tell them so.
  7. Don't say anything online that you wouldn't say in person.

In later comments, O'Reilly gave a tacit endorsement of Jon Garfunkel's Comment Management Proposal : "Jon, your post at Comment Management Responsibility: A Proposal is very detailed and thought provoking, as well as way more comprehensive than anything I'd thought so far."