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The Growing Trend Of Telephony

2008-02-20T17:55:00.001+08:00

Your local phone service provider is looking over their shoulder at what is coming up fast behind them. VoIP Voice Over Internet Telephony is gaining ground and is no longer considered a fad, but a strong and viable alternative to traditional phone service. By routing conversations over internet broadband lines, VoIP calls can be made quickly and cheaply thereby saving you, the consumer, plenty of money compared to traditional phone service. Recent improvements in VoIP technology have prompted more and more consumers to switch to VoIP, permanently altering the way many phone conversations are handled around the globe. Lets explore the growing trend of VoIP telephony and what this technology has to offer to you.

In its early days, VoIP telephony was considered by some to be a technologically unreliable fad, one that was shunned by mostly everyone who had long relied upon their traditional phone service company to provide them with dependable, if not costly, telephone service. Today, much has changed and VoIP telephony has not only vastly improved, but has attracted millions of new customers thanks to technological advancements and smart marketing.

Initially, voice quality with VoIP telephony was suspect, as conversations between users was often accompanied by crackling sounds and echoing. Indeed, drop offs due to connection problems was common, causing many to avoid making the switch. Still, as with virtually all emerging technologies, kinks have been worked out as newer, vastly improved versions are introduced. VoIP, for one, has undergone rapid transformation from fad to fixture in many homes and offices as quality levels have picked up while prices remain exceedingly low.

Indeed, price is a huge factor contributing to VoIPs rapid growth. Many VoIP telephony providers offer comprehensive unlimited local and long distance calling plans that start at less than $25 per month. Compare VoIP prices to those charged by most traditional phone service providers typically $70-80 per month and the potential annual savings is well over $500!

Yes, you have to shop around to find a high quality VoIP telephony provider, but all of the top companies offer similar deals with packages usually containing the following important features:

- Free local and long distance calls.

- Portable phone numbers, meaning you can take your existing phone number wherever you move; certain restrictions may apply.

- Special services offered at no extra charge including: caller ID, call forwarding, 3-way calling, call return, call transfer, voicemail, and more.

- Low, fixed monthly rates. No worrying about fluctuating phone bills!

In addition, most governments are taking a decidedly hands off approach to VoIP telephony and are not levying anywhere near the same high level of taxes on VoIP service as they have been on traditional phone service. Yes, take a close look at your current phone bill and you will see that double-digit fees really push up the monthly balance. Not so with VoIP telephony as it is treated in the same way as internet service.

There has been some concern about power outages and the loss of VoIP telephony service during these interruptions. Indeed, most people understand that if your home loses electrical power, then their traditional phone service would continue to work as phone lines are powered separately from electrical lines, while VoIP telephony phone service is stopped when the power goes out. To get around the problem, many VoIP telephony providers now give users a control panel where they can program their VoIP server to automatically reroute calls to their cell phone in the event of a power outage. So, there is no longer any excuse for you to not make the switch to VoIP telephony and begin realizing big savings today!

About The Author:
Click here to learn more about VoIP telephony: http://www.packet8.net Michael Brito is an internet marketing consultant for small business http://www.michaelbrito.com specializing in SEO and web strategy.

If You Want To Get More Customers, Heres 10 Powerful Stories To Improve Your Ads And Sales Letters

2008-02-16T06:50:00.002+08:00

Remember, as a child lying in bed and listening to stories. Remember how engaged you were. Remember how you never got bored of them and always wanted to learn more.

Well, there's a good reason why... and here's how what you learnt as a young child could help you attract, and keep more customers...

Metaphors and stories have proven to be a powerful way of influencing other people. They are also extremely interesting to your potential customer, and connect with a deeper part of the human psyche.

HERES 10 OF THE MOST POWERFUL TYPES OF SALES STORIES YOU CAN INCORPORATE INTO YOUR ADS AND SALES LETTERS

1. Stories to introduce yourself
These are stories about who you are, why youre writing to them, and how you have assisted other people and/or businesses.

This is a perfect way to connect with your target audience and generate rapport. Reveal something personal about yourself within the story and establish credibility and trust.

2. Stories to overcome fears
Everyone has fears of some type. Identify the greatest fears and concerns your customer has. And then show how other people just like them who had the same concerns overcame them, and discovered there was nothing to worry about.

If youre selling a health product, the client may be concerned it will not work for them. Tell the story of somebody else who felt the same and where they are now. Perhaps incorporate this structure within one of your testimonials.

This is a classic Feel Felt Found approach. I understand how you feel. My previous customer used to feel the same way. His experience now is

3. Stories to enhance the ego
This type of story shows how people respect and look up to people who use your services, or own your product.

For example, if you were selling a Mercedes Benz you could talk about a guy who bought one recently and how his colleagues, family and friends were so impressed.

4. Stories which grab your prospects attention
These are used to get people to focus on you, your products and how you can benefit them. They explain why your customer should sit up and listen to you right now.

Heres an example from a sales letter from a company called The Supper Club

How can I get in on this deal?
The question was posed by a Daily Reckoning reader who was referring to a deal I mentioned. Unfortunately, it wasnt a stock. It was a private deal. And it was too late to get in anyway.

But its why Im writing you today.

5. Stories with product information
Dont just list the features & benefits of your product or service. Tell a story which integrates this information.

6. Stories about improved productivity
Outline exactly how your services and/or products have assisted companies to increase their profits, become more efficient, increase output and reduce down time.

Tell a before and after story of one of your customers. Youll never guess how much (other customers) business has changed since they started working with us

7. Stories about family togetherness
This type of story demonstrates how your product or services has caused families to come together.

8. Stories about money
The idea here is to show people how your product or service will save or make money for your customers.

For example, if youre a mortgage broker, give a case study of a past customer and how much money they have saved through swapping over to you.

If youre a PR company, give an example of how you helped one company get out of a rut

If youre an accountant, reflect on how you helped a specific customer save thousands of dollars on tax last year because youre up to date on all the tax changes.

9. Stories which instill security
This is a prime example of how you would go about selling an insurance policy. Tell a story about how your products have allowed your customers to sleep safely, and with peace of mind.

This could be used in the insurance industry, alarms, people selling trusts, pest and termite controllers, safe cars like Volvos or any industry where people buy to feel more secure.

At the same time, it could be used for anybody who helps people to make more money or ensures reliability. For instance, a marketing company could explain how safe one of their clients feels about their business with all the extra income being generated.

10. Stories to close the sale
Stories can be used here to close the sale and sum up all the benefits you have to offer.

What stories could you use to promote your business?

Scott Bywater is a direct mail copywriter and the author of Cash-Flow Advertising. To get a complimentary copy of his special report '7 Ways To Increase Your Turnover... No Matter What The State Of The Economy' (valued at $29.95) and a free subscription to his "Copywriting Selling Secrets" ezine where you'll discover how to write ads and sales letters that make people line up and practically beg you to do business with them visit his web site at

http://www.copywritingthatsells.com.au/

About eBay

2008-02-14T18:10:00.002+08:00

As a eBay is currently the most popular and widely accessed online shopping destination for online shoppers around the world.

start up company founded in September 1995, eBay has started the trend of creating and organizing auctions for basically anything tradeable. The catch is, everything is done electronically or through the Internet.

To date eBay sells about 55 million hot items under up to 50,000 trade categories. This Internet-based marketplace is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, no holidays. A person can shop for desired items anywhere he or she may be.

According to the company and other experts projections, there are currently about 157 million unique users to eBays services around the globe.

With so many people online, large number of items for sale, eBay assures that each user or client is accorded the fair and friendly treatment a generous shopper deserves.

Background
eBay is a major company listed in the United States under the small-capital index Nasdaq Stock Market.

As a company, eBay adheres to its own mission-vision statement, that is, to provide a platform globally where online users can practically buy or sell anything, at any given price. Deals should be done or transacted online.

A few years ago, the company used to allow online sellers to post their contact numbers through eBays Web site, so potential buyers can directly haggle the pricing.

But due to reported anomalous transactions and fraudulent activities arising from such arrangements, eBay recently implemented its own ruling that buyers and sellers will have to course everything online.

Buyers and sellers on eBay not can not arrange personal meetings. This way, identities and interests of both parties are protected and upheld.

Local sites
Because demand for eBays service has grown so rapidly over the years and around the world, eBay decided to put up local sites.

As of today, eBay has local Web sites operating in huge and lucrative markets in Austria, Australia, Canada, China, Belgium, Germany, France, India, Ireland, Italy, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Poland, the Philippines, Singapore, New Zealand, South Korea, Switzerland, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Taiwan and of course, its base, the United States.

eBay also owns the Latin auctioneer site http://www.mercadolibre.com, which is specifically designed and operated for Latin American users.

Added offerings
Today, eBay not only offers its current services of online auctioneering. The site has evolved significantly to currently offer broader variety of added features, educational tools and services that empowers online users to transact through the Web site safely, conveniently and quickly.

Not only that, eBay has also evolved rapidly as an online community for responsible and good online users, which can be called eBay citizens in their own rights.

A strong spirit and essence of camaraderie is exhibited every time eBay users help each other through the site. eBay being an online small community is based on the concept and idealization that the site will provide encouragement to users for honest and open communication.

The concept of eBay community is an outline of the community values eBay advocates in. They are: that basically people are good-natured; all people can contribute something individually for the benefit of all; the best in people will be extracted through open and honest dealings; recognition and respect for everybody; and application of the golden rule: treat others the way you want others to treat you.

Khieng 'Ken' Chho is author and owner of Online eBay Resources. For related articles and other resources, visit Ken's website: http://www.ebay.onew3b.net

http://www.ebay.com/

10 Suggestions For Usability

2008-02-09T13:21:00.001+08:00

Ignoring key usability issues on blogs may make it difficult for readers to understand a site. Writer confidence can also be hard to attain as well. This would certainly not work well for the site since all sites strive to reach the widest audience possible. Here are some suggestions to ensure your blog usability:

1.Provide the Personality
Blogging has generally been associated with anonymous or geeky-nicknamed authors. This makes it almost impossible to establish trust with the readers since there is no specific person that can be identified with the articles. Whereas business blogs would usually require a full-fledged about us section, individual authors would need a simple and short about me page on a weblog. Information aside from the authors name is important as it helps to establish authority, experience and credibility with the chosen subject. The lack of formal credentials however, should not be a hindrance to writing but the fact should be stated followed by a short explanation for the authors enthusiasm regarding the topic. The blog can also benefit from having a human face to its voice by providing the authors photo.

2.Make Use of an Effective Posting Titles
The title is very important in getting the readers attention and convincing them to look at a particular blog. Authors should keep in mind the general guidelines in writing for the web regarding scannable contents when writing their headline. Headline writing is in itself a critical project in the same way that the body is. Search engines, news-feeds and other external environment can appreciate descriptive headlines. Searchers likewise, use the headline to determine whether it is worth checking at all or not. Titles should be able to provide the gist of the article through its few carefully chosen words. It would also be useful to choose large, clear and legible fonts to get the message across.

3.Establish Useful Links in Posts
One way to truly serve the readers is to make sure that they know where theyre going and what to expect at the other end of the link. Relevant information should be provided either at the anchor text itself or the words immediately surrounding it. Most readers do not appreciate clicking into the unknown. The authors invitation to the reader to visit should be clear as vague links usually do not attract trust.

4.Link to Previous Work in New Postings
Valuable information should not be buried in the archives. The archives are where post pieces go to and remain. These articles can only be found if the author consciously directs them to it. Not all readers have been customers since the beginning thus this can provide the background and context in case they would require further reading.

5.Organize Site Search and Archives
A professional blog should consider archiving by title and in date order so that it makes for easy skim reading for users and encourage site search. Several blog software plugins or modules are able to produce menus and lines such as the most read, recent comments/posts and self-tag great articles. When a blog had already over 100 entries, an archive list may turn out to be very chaotic especially if the author is still trying to promote each one. Archiving by week, month or year can work out fine for personal blogs but will not be user-friendly for a person looking for a particular product. Categorized posting can provide users the list of all postings on a certain topic, but tagging of postings should be selective so that they are placed where they belong.

6.Publish Regularly and Frequently
Web usability is essentially about establishing and meeting user expectations. Therefore, users should be able to anticipate when and how often updates will occur in a blog. Most blogs benefit from daily updates but there are topics that would sufficiently require weekly or monthly updates. Some publish three to four articles a day which is a pace that may be very hard to sustain. The author can determine for himself the best publication schedule depending on the topic. However, once a schedule is established, serious efforts should be directed at maintaining it with fresh content or there would be a big possibility of losing loyal and valuable readers.

7.Specialize Blogs
Handling a different topic on one blog is not as effective as specialized sites. Very few people have the time and patience to look for entries about a topic of particular interest to them in a site that offers the target topics sporadically among a wide range of postings on several other topics. A focused content reaches out to a specific group of readers and makes a site more influential and authoritative in a particular niche. If an author feels that he/she needs to speak out on an entirely different topic, then it would be much better to create a separate blog.

8.Simplify Blogs
Majority of blog readers are still actually mystified by the process and may not have a clear idea of what a blog is. Recognize the fact that not all are technically savvy and might be wary of active participation such as clicking on anything. This is especially true for new readers as clear information is capable of addressing feelings of discomfort regarding how he/she is expected to make his/her own posting or how personal information is handled. Some space in the biography or contact page can be allotted to explaining these issues by providing a need more help link so that regular readers need not see the explanation every time.

9.Authors Should be Sure of Their Posting
Anything posted on the Internet including blogs are archived, cached and indexed in many services that most are not aware of. As such, it is important that the author can stand up to what he/she says in the blog. This is especially true for hiring matters since more and more companies are taking the time to check out prospective employees including his on-line transactions. When in doubt, the author should avoid publishing articles that can be considered offensive by persons or entities that he/she have future interest in establishing a relationship with.

10.Make Readable Blogs
There are a lot of things that can make any blog unreadable. Buttons, glory badges, blogrolls and the like may be valuable tools but too much of anything can be counter productive. If it is necessary to have lots of buttons, it is recommended to have a separate page listing of all the desired buttons as well as explanations so as not to intimidate new readers. Readers may be interested to know a sites recommended links but if a list gets longer than ten, a random list of a few in the sidebar will suffice as long as they link to a separate page containing the rest. The design trend of more white space and large titles is like going back to the basics where what is essential is ably provided and delivered.

About The Author:
http://www.theinternetone.net/

Wireless Cameras

2008-02-03T12:29:00.001+08:00

Q: What are possible interferences that exist?

A: 2.4GHz cordless phones, and 2.4GHz wireless computer networks (Wi-Fi Router) are the top two products on the market today that seem to cause interference problems with wireless camera systems. Strong static interference, large horizontal lines rolling upward, an increased noise level, and an unsteady picture are all possible problems the can produce. Please refer to the other equipment manufacturers for exact frequency specifications. If the wireless camera is channel selectable (not all models), please try to change channels until an acceptable picture is displayed. When using multiple wireless camera systemwireless cameras, make certain they are using different channel numbers and set them apart at least 2 meters (6.5 ft) from each other.

Q: What are the frequencies that FCC allows to use in USA and Canada without license?

A: 900MHz, 2.4GHz, and 5.8GHz. Mini-Airwatch and OutdoorWatch wireless cameras utilize the 2.4GHz frequency.

Q: Can I connect wireless system onto a DVR and record?

A: Yes. There are 2 options.

1. One channel recording: connect one wireless receiver to one of the video inputs of the DVR. If there are four wireless cameras connected to the receiver (loop mode must be on) the DVR will record the four cameras in a one by one sequence. It is then possible to review the recorded files in sequence or expand the picture to full screen using the DVR buttons.

2. Multiple channel recording: example, connect four wireless receivers (each receiver having a different frequency camera) into the DVR’s four video inputs. All four cameras can then be recorded simultaneously and it is possible to review the files as a single camera display or as a quad display.

Q: What's the difference between a wired camera and a wireless camera?

A: A wired camera needs a cable that goes from the camera to a TV, VCR or DVR. The video signal is passed from the camera, through the cable, and to your TV, VCR or DVR which allows you to see the picture. All wired cameras must use RCA/BNC cable to connect the camera to the TV, VCR or DVR. For example, a clock radio hidden camera will plug into the wall just like a normal clock radio. The camera transmitter hidden inside the radio is powered by the clock radio's power supply, which requires plugging the AC cord. Another example, a smoke detector hidden camera will have to have an external power source, so the AC cord needs to be transferred through a wall or ceiling in order to power the smoke detector camera.
A wireless camera does not need an RCA/BNC cable connected from the camera to the TV, VCR or DVR. That is the main advantage, without spending for any extra expensive wiring. The video signal is transmitted through the air to the receiver directly. However, wireless cameras still require power. So, either a power adapter or batteries must be used.

Q: What exactly does wireless mean?

A: Wireless means there is no video cable running from the wireless camera to your TV, VCR, or DVR. For outside applications, wireless means no wires stretched across your home between the wireless hidden camera and the receiver. All wireless cameras still require a power source regardless of whether it is an indoor camera or an outdoor wireless camera. A wireless receiver must always accompany a wireless camera. Also, a receiver must connect to your TV, VCR or DVR with A/V cables and requires a power source too. Thus, a wireless camera only eliminates any wires stretched across a room or outdoor location to a house.

Q: Can I use a 1.2GHz wireless camera, instead of a 2.4GHz camera, to avoid interference with my home Wi-Fi network or 2.4GHz cordless phone?

A: Yes, you can use a 1.2GHz wireless camera in other countries, but not in the USA and Canada, as it is restricted by the FCC.

Q: Does a wireless camera still need a power adapter?

A: Yes it does. A camera wireless camera would not be operable without some source of power to it. This source of power can come from either the AC outlet (using the adapter) or from a 9 volt battery.

Q: Is there anyway to extend the distance of video transmission for the wireless camera?

A: No, due to FCC limitations on transmission power. It is possible to use a high powered booster (i.e. 1 watt, 5 watt, etc..) to extend the viewing range of the wireless camera system. Using a power booster for these purposes is illegal in the U.S.A. and restricted by the FCC.

From: http://www.the-wireless-security-cameras.blogspot.com/

Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam!

2008-01-31T21:32:00.001+08:00

If you are like most everyone else in the world with an email address, you cringe every time you look at your inbox and see that 90% of your emails are from someone trying to sell you something. It gets to be a hassle, trying to sort the real emails from the junk, and I have more than once deleted an actual email thinking that it was junk. Of course, all this junk email we get has a name. And its name is Spam.

The term Spam as it relates to junk email can trace its origins back to 1994 or 1978, depending on who you ask. The 1994 incident, where a husband and wife lawyer team from Arizona spammed around 6,000 newsgroups is generally accepted as the beginning, however. The fact that a lawyer started this whole mess makes me think that there might be a lawyer joke somewhere to be found here, but for fear of litigation I will not attempt to find it

What is Spam, really? Well, aside from the mystery meat concoction sold in a can, it is really any unwanted email. Almost always these emails will try to sell you something. Sometimes they are intended to get you to visit a particular website or to make you think you have won something. The famous Nigerian scam is one of the most popular forms of spam. This is where you get an email from the brother/son/sister/daughter/uncle/etc of some high-ranking official in the Nigerian government. They inform you that the official has in his possession some large amount of American money, almost always in the millions of dollars. They then ask for your discreet help in getting this money into an American bank. And of course, they will reward you with tons of cash for helping them. It is really just a ploy to get you to send them moneydont fall for it.

Very often folks wonder why people go through all the trouble to send these spam emails when almost no one ever buys anything from them. Well, the key to that is that almost no one buys anything. When you send out 6,000,000 emails trying to sell some junk, if only one-half of one percent of the recipients buy it youve sold 30,000 products. That is why spam is so popular, and so frustrating.

There have been anti-spamming laws passed in recent years, but they are quite difficult to enforce. Unfortunately, spam may be with us for some time to come.

Now for the Cool Site of the Week If you are interested in reading more about spam, visit the Federal Trade Commissions site at http://www.ftc.gov/spam. There you will find more interesting facts and you can also report spammers.

As always, if you have any comment or suggestions please email me at mike@mikebryant.com (no spam, please).

Mike Bryant has worked as a professional software developer for over ten years. A born entrepreneur, he currently owns Centrant, LLC, a software consulting firm specializing in custom software for small businesses. He currently resides in Jackson, Kentucky with his wife, two kids, and five computers. For more information, please visit http://www.mikebryant.com.

Nice Content Boxes

2008-01-30T21:38:00.001+08:00

1. Create a new canvas

Size: 160x160,
Background: white
Resolution: 72 pixels/inch

2. Set your foreground color to #F2F2F2. Radius: 15 px

Paths (see second image below)

Exclude to overlapping areas (see image below)

3. Now drag out a rounded rectangle that takes up most of the canvas, and it should look like mine to the left (if not, make sure you have the same settings as I used above).

4. Then, go to the paths tab (windows--paths if its not already viewable) and double click on the path, giving it a name as shown to the left.

5. You will now have something like the image shown to the left.

6. Now, select the new layer on the layers tab, and double click on it to bring up the layer styles box (or select the layer and go layer--layer styles).

Next, enter the settings I have above for outer glow.

7. Now you will have something like that shown to the left, and if you like you can keep it like this, and finish the tutorial here, however, I will now show how to add a nice highlight to it.

8. Create a new layer now, and then press ctrl and click on the layer with the box on it, as shown to the left.

Next, with the selection tool selected, nudge the selection up 5 pixels by pressing the up key on your keyboard 5 times.

9. Now hold alt, then ctrl + click on the color fill layer, and you should (hopefully) get the selection shown to the left.

Now, again with the selection tool selected, nudge the selection down 8 times, and fill it in white.

10. Next, feather the selection by 3 pixels (select--feather) and then inverse the selection (ctrl + i) and press delete, you should have something similar to that shown to the left.

11. This looks alright, but I don't think that highlight looks right, so lets make it a bit narrower.

Press ctrl + t and then, whilst holding alt move the left or right anchors a little toward the center, as shown.

Conclusion
Now it is finished! You should now have something along the lines of the image shown below. ( I blurred the highlight slightly as well - filter--blur--gaussian blue)Media 2004 (C)

From Tourbus?

2008-01-27T20:20:00.001+08:00

"Not sure how to say this -- but just for fun I clicked on a credit card application, and then cancelled IMMEDIATELY! Well, two months later my count as of this day: 2948 spams for credit cards, loans, easy credit, etc. About 370 spams a week, or about 53 A DAY! While I know money support is nice, and I don't subscribe to the paid edition of TourBus BUT if I did, would I get more moral staunchness on your part re: allowing spammers to use your site? SHAME ON YOU, BROTHER! -- PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH!!!!!"

I've Been Spammed! (And I'm Blaming You)
I get emails like this occasionally, from people who have visited the TOURBUS website, clicked on an advertisement and then were unhappy with the results. Some blame me for spam, others for customer service problems with the advertiser.

I can't understand why some people have the misconception that every advertiser on a reputable website is somehow vetted or vouched for by the website operator. To think so would be applying a much different standard to the online world than to print or broadcast media.

If you pick up a copy of the NY Times and browse through the classifieds, certainly you don't assume that everyone advertising there is completely honest, and that the Times is endorsing their product or service. And if you buy something from a TV infomercial, you don't blame the television station if the product doesn't meet your expectations.

Caveat Pre-Emptor?
So why are the concepts of "buyer beware" and "due diligence" conspicuously absent on the Internet?

Even for advertisers that appear in the TOURBUS newsletter, with whom I deal directly, there's no way I can check them all out to ensure that everyone will always have a perfect purchasing experience. I do, however, have a policy of "If you can't get satisfaction from the advertiser, I will personally make it right." And of course I'll no longer allow bad faith actors to advertise in the newsletter. But for the website ads, we don't even have the means to check out individual advertisers. Because web ads are served by third-party advertising networks, we don't even have control over which speficic ads appear on the site, except for the fact that they should be contextually relevant.

Protecting Your Privacy
Spam is the bane of the Internet, and we hate it as much as you do. In fact, the publishers of Tourbus have been quite active over the years in educating their readers about spam, where it comes from, and how to avoid it. Because we respect your privacy, we have always pledged that we will not rent, sell or otherwise reveal your e-mail address to any third party. And since we started in 1995, we never have!

Your email address is safe with us, but if you click away from the TOURBUS newsletter or website to a third party offering a product or service, you have to realize you're on your own, and use the same caution that you would when making any purchasing decision -- online of offline. That's not because we're mean or greedy, it's just common sense.

Online consumers should ALWAYS read the advertiser's privacy policy to see how their email and other personal information will be used. No privacy policy? Vague (or endless) privacy policy? No sale!

(Oh, and for the record, there is no paid version of TOURBUS.)
BOB RANKIN... is a tech writer and computer programmer who enjoys exploring the Internet and sharing the fruit of his experience with others. His work has appeared in ComputerWorld, NetGuide, and NY Newsday. Bob is publisher of the Internet TOURBUS newsletter, author of several computer books, and creator of the http://www.LowfatLinux.com website. Visit Bob Rankin's website for more helpful articles and free tech support.

How Grid Computing Can Improve Database Performance

2008-01-16T21:29:00.001+08:00

Nathan Segal interviews Benny Souder, Vice President of Distributed Database Development for Oracle, and Jeff Jones of IBM.

According to said Benny Souder, Vice President of Distributed Database Development for Oracle, Grid Computing is where you have a network of computers which tap into a main server. The concept comes from the electrical grid and would be arranged in a system that functions in a similar fashion. If you take an appliance and plug it into a wall outlet, then you become a client of the electrical grid. As a client, you don't know how the grid is implemented, whether the power station is in the next state or next door. All you want is power; you plug in and you get it. That's the highest logical level of Grid Computing."

N: How do you maximize the potential of Grid Computing?
S: "Through centralization. This includes consolidation, centralization, and cost savings. As the nodes or points in the grid get bigger and you have a small number of large nodes, you can do a more effective job of Grid Computing, just as a power company has a small number of large power generators, rather than a power generator per house. The power company works this way because they're trying to get real efficient utilization of their resources, because that keeps the rates down."

"If you have little islands of computation, you have to size them for peak, but most of the time they're pretty idle. A good way to get high utilization is to pool these islands into larger nodes. If you then have the right technology and software, you can dynamically allocate these computers to the priorities of your business."

N: Can you offer an example of Grid Computing in actual practice?
S: "Yes. Let's pretend that you're an Internet retailer selling books on the web and you've got two databases, one that powers your website and keeps track of all the books, and the database is a data warehouse of all the click stream data, etc. Right now, you need every computer you've got powering your web site, because if the website is slow, people are going to leave."

"In December, a mountain of data is collected about transactions on your website, but in January, you'll want to analyze that data and begin planning for next Christmas. If you use separate SMP (symmetric multiprocessor) machines for those two databases, it's very hard to put all your CPU's behind the website and then switch them 30 days later and have almost all your CPU's on the data warehouse."

"To get around the problem, you would use Oracle technology and some new hardware called Server Blades. You could do it with SMP, but you'd have to take the cabinet and machines apart. That's a big job and while you're doing it, the website's down for sure."

N: What is the advantage of using Server Blades?
S: "Server Blades are like a computer on a board, with a CPU, some memory, a local disk for caching stuff and a backplane plug. These blades, (about the size of a skinny pizza box) plug into a rack, which has a power supply, a cooling fan and a network connection. Typically, there are 10-30 blades in a rack. Since there are commodity CPU's on these boards and they share a common power supply, they're very economical to make, about 80-90 cheaper than SMP."

"With the blade technology, we can run our database as well as real applications. Other database vendors will tell you that these blades are great, but don't put the database on them. The reason is that their database on blades doesn't run real applications. Their cluster database runs benchmarks. There's no application vendor that's certified on their cluster database. Whereas on our database, what we call real application clusters, SAP is certified as well as Oracle applications and we have a hundred + production reference customers who are running their business on this cluster database."

N: What happens if you attempt to run applications that are not certified?
S: "They don't work. If you call up SAP, they will tell you that it's not supported. We can take a blade off or add a blade to our database while it's running. So if you're running your website and data warehouse on our blades, you can move the blades back and forth without any down time. That means it's really easy to allocate computing to what your business priority is. That's the first thing we've got for grid computing."

"The second thing is information sharing technology. For example, we have this stuff called Transportable Tablespaces. This lets you snap data off one database and snap it onto another. The file is on a disk, meaning that you don't have to load or unload the data. We also have Oracle Stream, which is a complete solution for information sharing asynchronous. It does messaging, replication, events, publishing, subscribing, and has a rules engine all in one integrated database.

"The third thing is that we're completely portable. So the application you've already written on your SMP machine ports right into this grid technology, you don't have to rewrite the application."

"The fourth thing we've got is Globus, a small organization that's trying to develop open source software for grid computing. They built this thing called the Globus Toolkit that we've integrated with the Oracle database. We have a free for download customized, integrated version of the Globus Toolkit with the Oracle database, so you don't have to figure out how to make these two things work together. We do that for you."

A different perspective was shared by Jeff Jones of IBM. He said: "Grid Computing is an effort to make computing resources appear to be utilities that you tap into as necessary. In DB2 (Version 8), several aspects have been enhanced, making it a good candidate for that type of processing. The first is scalability. A grid requires and expects an enormous amount of data to be supported and an enormous number of users to be coming after that data. So very large scale processing is the norm in a grid."

"Some of our experiences with Grid Computing are the Life Sciences based grid done by Oxford University in England with us to support Breast Cancer research. Another one exists at the University of Pennsylvania that's a Mammography sharing grid, all of which have been built on DB2."

N: How does DB2 work with Grid Computing?
J: "With DB2, we have a Share Nothing architecture. Here, any physical number of servers can be clustered together and you can run one instance of DB2 across all of it. One server takes the requests and breaks them up into pieces and farms the pieces out to all the other servers to work in parallel, then reassembles everything at the end and provides a complete answer back when questions are asked."

"Each server in the cluster receives an independent subset of the complete set of data and operates separately and independently on its subset of the problem to be solved. This form of independent cluster processing is extremely scalable with little loss of efficiency as you add more servers to the cluster."

N: How does this compare to Oracle?
J: "Their approach is to have a very large common memory. Each instance of the database shares a common memory and is being gone after by the same user population, so traffic management becomes the hard problem to be solved."

N: Oracle spoke about server blades. Would you have to shut your system down to add more servers?
J: "No. Server blades are new form factors for servers that can be rack mounted in very large numbers and can be pulled in and pulled out and plugged back in again. It's not a new paradigm; it's just a more efficient way of clustering hardware. Their approach and our approach both enable clusters to be grown or shrunk with not nearly as much agony as in the past."

"With DB2, our approach is to offer utilities. When we add a new server to a cluster, we apply a rebalancing utility that allows you to redistribute the data and populate the new server. This type of housecleaning has to be done on anybody's system. You shouldn't let any vendor convince you that it's painless, but today both vendors have made it much more bearable and much of the process can be done with nothing coming down."

"In a fault tolerance sense, this is good, because servers can be paired together and one can serve the idle standby for the other. This is something that both Oracle and IBM do in a similar fashion. You can have an eight server cluster where four of the servers are actually doing work, while the other four are twins of the first four; waiting to be failed over to if something goes wrong. This is very common high tolerance, high availability configuration for servers. And racks and blade servers simply make that more efficient."

Souder said that the goal of Grid Computing is where "you want information, answers, computation, and get it. That's the fundamental idea, the dream and the goal. We're a long way from being there, but that's the direction that we're moving in."

Delete Index.dat Files

2008-01-08T14:39:00.001+08:00

What are Index.dat files?
Index.dat files are used by Internet Explorer and Windows to store history, Internet cache, cookies, UserData records and other information about what you have done in Internet or in your PC. Although some of their functions are useful, they are dangerous privacy threat - any person with even little knowledge about index.dat files locations and structure can see history of almost all of your computer activities. Index.dat files are not the only privacy threat but they are the most obscure and dangerous one because they are hard to find and even harder to delete. In fact, in most cases it is impossible to delete Index.dat files manually because Internet Explorer and Windows use them all the time.

Where are located Index.dat files?
Location of index.dat files depends on the version of Windows and whether or not you are using user profiles. Regardless of Windows version in many cases you can't see or find index.dat file using Windows Explorer. There is a little file called desktop.ini in each directory where index.dat file is located. This desktop.ini file forces Windows Explorer to hide index.dat files and to show the contents of Internet cache or history instead. However you can use some other file utility and binary (hex) editor to find the files and read their content. If you have Windows Me, Windows 98, Windows NT or Windows 95 then index.dat files are in these locations:

C:WindowsCookiesindex.dat C:WindowsHistoryindex.dat C:WindowsHistoryMSHistXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXindex.dat (XXXX are some digits) C:WindowsHistoryHistory.IE5index.dat C:WindowsHistoryHistory.IE5MSHistXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXindex.dat C:WindowsTemporary Internet Filesindex.dat (only in Internet Explorer 4.x) C:WindowsTemporary Internet FilesContent.IE5index.dat C:WindowsUserDataindex.dat C:WindowsProfilesCookiesindex.dat C:WindowsProfilesHistoryindex.dat C:WindowsProfilesHistoryMSHistXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXindex.dat C:WindowsProfilesHistoryHistory.IE5index.dat C:WindowsProfilesHistoryHistory.IE5MSHistXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXindex.dat C:WindowsProfilesTemporary Internet Filesindex.dat (only in IE 4.x) C:WindowsProfilesTemporary Internet FilesContent.IE5index.dat C:WindowsProfilesUserDataindex.dat

How to erase or clean Index.dat files?
Erasing or cleaning of the index.dat files is not an easy task because they are opened by Internet Explorer and Windows all the time. If you are using Windows Me, Windows 98 or Windows 95 you can restart in DOS mode and then you can delete index.dat files one by one (look in the folders that are mentioned above). However if you are using Windows XP, Windows 2000 or Windows NT this won't work.

About Mil Incorporated
Mil Incorporated was founded with an ambitious objective to be a trusted software partner for individuals and enterprises around the world. Mil Incorporated provides software security and privacy solutions that incorporate state of the art technology, security expertise, and substantial resources.

With threats to computer systems coming from all directions and growing in number and sophistication, our customers know that ordinary security measures are not enough. Mil Incorporated supplies privacy and security solutions that are solid, affordable, easy to use and provide outstanding level of protection.

Finding The Best Search Engine

2007-12-31T17:26:00.001+08:00

With Billions of pages on the internet how do you find exactly what is that you are looking for? Chances are you have stumbled across different search engines, and maybe even used and tried out a few of them.

Aside from look and feel which search engine really is the best? It used to be that Google's search results were far superior to any other search engine on the internet. With an increase in technology by Google's closest competitor's Yahoo and Msn, it's getting harder and harder to really sort through and say which one is really better.

With that in mind I would recommend using all of the major search engines to see which one returns what you personally are looking for. I've found that a search engine that I use all of the time, and returns what I am looking for will be completely different for someone else searching for the exact same thing. Everyone has expectations for what they are looking for when they perform a web search. These expectations are different for everyone, and I believe that with a slight difference in the Algorithms of the major search engines, one of them will match what it is that you are looking for.

Features: Due to the fact that there isn't much that hasn't already been exploited with search engine technology, all of the major sites have been pushing new features, to attract users. Gmail, Google's free web mail is an example of this. Gmail provides over 2gb's of free storage, and is growing everyday. With the ability to pop email stored on the Gmail server it's hard to beat. Yahoo and Msn have offered web based email for a long time, and it's exciting to see Google jump in the Game. Gmail is still in a Beta stage, but already it's made a huge push in the market; Even convinced Hotmail to raise their storage limit by more than a factor of 10! This is only a small preview I think we will see in the next while, as the different providers fight for our patronage.

Other features which all companies offer are:
Local Search - Find things relative to a local area. For example: looking for pizza in Sacramento, California?

Image Search - Rather then browsing the web to find a picture of your favorite car or digital camera, you can easily search through millions of images using the image search provided.
Movie - This is one feature which I feel really sets Yahoo apart from the others. The ability to accurately search through thousands of videos all of the internet in only seconds!
Music - This is a feature offered only by Msn. Type in an artist or song name, and be taken to a page to view artist profile's and discography, as well as a place to purchase music online.
Take a look around and become familiar with all of the different services that Search Engines are offering now a days and make the most of your web experience, and find information as quickly as you need it! --

Feel free to reprint this article as long as you keep the following caption and author biography in tact with all hyperlinks.

Ryan Fyfe is the owner and operator of My Pixi Web Portal. Which is a great web directory and information center for Search Engines and related topics..

Author: Ryan Fyfe

Re-paint Your Picture

2007-12-30T16:30:00.001+08:00

Here I will show you how to repaint a car, but once you master the technique then you will be able to apply it to other objects or graphics with ease.

1. Open the picture that you want to apply this technique to.

Select the pen tool

2. With the pen tool, trace the car. Don't worry about any details. Get something like this:

Now that you have traced the car, create a new path, name it windows, and trace all windows of the car. Do the same thing for the mirror, lights and etc. You will end up with something similar to this:

3. First Ctrl + Click on the "Car" path.

Once the car is selected, Ctrl + Alt + Click on all other paths.

4a. Keep the selection, and create a new layer.

In the new layer, fill the selected area,with the color you want your car to be. (Select a stronger color than the one you want.)

Then, change the Blending Mode to color.

4b. If you aren't happy with the previous result, do everything except the 4a.

Then, go to Image -> Adjustments -> Color Balance or you can simply press Ctrl + B. And try to get the color you want.

Can You Convert Words Into Money?

2007-12-28T20:18:00.001+08:00

The only way to keep up with the latest about Adsense is to constantly stay on the lookout for new information. If you read everything you find about Adsense, it won't take long for you to become an influential authority.

Most of this information comes straight from the Adsense pros. Careful reading to the end virtually guarantees that you'll know what they know.

Google Adsense - The Easiest Money To Make Online?

For the last couple of months, Google Adsense has dominated forums, discussions and newsletters all over the Internet. Already, there are tales of fabulous riches to be made and millions made by those who are just working from home. It seems that Google Adsense have already dominated the internet marketing business and is now considered the easiest way to making money online.

The key to success with Adsense is the placing of ads on pages that are receiving high traffic for high demand keywords. The higher the cost-per-click to the advertiser, the more you will receive per click from your site. Obviously, it does not pay to target low cost-per-click keywords and place them on pages that do not receive hits.

With all the people getting online and clicking away everyday, it is no wonder why Google Adsense has become an instant hit.

For some who are just new to this market, it would be a blow to their pride knowing that their homepage is buried somewhere in the little ads promoting other peoples services. But then, when they get the idea that they are actually earning more money that way, all doubts and skepticism is laid to rest.

There are two major, and clever, factors that some successful webmaster and publishers are learning to blend together in order to make money easier using Adsense.

1. Targeting high traffic pages on your website. If you check on your logs, you will discover that many of your visitors are taking advantage of the free affiliate marketing resources and ebooks that you are offering on your site. In simple words, your ads are working effectively and are generating more clicks. It also means more money for you.

2. Placing Adsense links on pages that are producing little, or better yet, no profit. By placing Adsense on a free resources page, you will reduce the amount of potential customers being lost to other sites. Tricky, but effective nonetheless.

When learned to work effectively, these two factors are actually a good source of producing a minimal amount of revenue from a high traffic page. Many people are using this strategy to pick up some extra and cash with Adsense. This is also especially rewarding to informational sites that focus their efforts on delivering powerful affiliate link free content to their visitors. Now they can gain a monetary return on their services.

With the many techniques that people are now learning on how to make the easiest money by their Adsense, it is not surprising that Google is trying everything to update and polish their Adsense in order to maintain their good image.

The possibility of adding is 2nd tier in Adsense is not impossible. With all the people spending more time in their Adsense now and still more getting into this line of marketing, there is no doubt about the many new improvements yet to be made. Imagine the smiles on the faces of the webmasters and publishers all around the world if ever they sign up for sub-affiliates and double or even triple the amount that they are already earning.
The one particularly handy money-making feature that is available with Adsense now is the ability to filter out up to 200 urls. These gives webmasters the option to block out low value offers from their pages as well as competitors to their websites. Talk about taking only those that are advantageous and discarding the ones that seem useless.

With Google Adsense, the possibilities are limitless. Yet there is also the possibility of someone taking advantage of the easy money process that this internet marketing is doing. If you think more about it, these negative factors may force Google to break down and thrash Adsense in the process. If that happens, people would have to go back to the old ways of internet marketing that does not make money online as easy as Adsense.

For now, however, Google Adsense is here to stay. As long as there are people wanting to earn some easy cash online just using their talents, the future ahead is looking good. Besides with all the strict guidelines that Google is enforcing over Adsense, it will take awhile for the Adsense privileges to be spammed and even terminated.

There's a lot to understand about Adsense. We were able to provide you with some of the facts above, but there is still plenty more to write about in subsequent articles.
Sinta is a Full Time Adsense Publisher and She Makes her
living from Adsense. She is passionate about sharing her Adsense Knowledge. Further information may be obtained from:

http://www.mydomainname101.com/adsense_technique.htm
http://www.mydomainname101.com/Google-Adsense-Easy-Money.htm

In Defense

2007-12-28T16:14:00.001+08:00

Maybe Im a Heretic.

Im not really in favor of spam and I dont like it anymore than the rest of you and Im sure many of you will disagree with me.

However I look at it in the same way I look at TV commercials. If we didnt have them wed have television like they have in Europe, which is pretty sad.

I just dont want the government to get into the act. Let the market place take care of it. Eventually it will sort itself out. For one thing it doesnt work. There are ways to control it with software and by other means.

I had an email address that for some reason or other was prone to receiving massive amounts of exceedingly offensive porn. I just abandoned it.

Spam is relatively inexpensive or it wouldnt exist. Do you want to charge for the internet to cure it? I dont think so. But when you get to the bottom of it there is a cost to those who employ it and I think eventually theyll come to realize it and stop it.

I just received an email message from someone who wrote a blog objecting to Spam. In it he was touting some software to eliminate spam. Not only was he employing spam, but it was one of those long sales pitches that you have to scroll for five minuites to find out that this software marvel cost $200.00. I not only deleted it, I unsubscribed. Wasn't this Spam.

Here's one for the books. I received a solicitation to join a program that was supposed to let you use spam but not have it considered spam. You joined a group who ageed to receive email from you as long as you gave them permission to reciprocate.

It's a free program and they were honest enough to tell you up front that you could concievably receive 10,000 email messages at a time. I'll take my spam any day.

Meanwhile the best thing to do is make sure you have a good filter and ignore it.

Dont answer it or respond to it in any way. I used to report it but stopped even acknowledging that I ever saw it.

Do not buy from anyone who indulges in spam.

Hit them in the pocket book and eventually theyll go away.

Dont ask Big Brother to help because youll then suffer from unintended consequences. Use your freedom BOYCOTT them.

Written by: George W. Cannata Author and publisher of the web site: http://www.caveatemptorus.com You may copy or reprint this article so long as it is not altered in any way, that you retain the link and give full credit to the author.

Understanding Unicode

2007-12-26T11:27:00.001+08:00

The computers understand everything by numbers. Each character is represented as a number, which is finally drawn as a character in the screens.It has been a major problem for the legacy systems to write programs for languages other than English. The primary reason being the non-availability of enough characters in ASCII encoding. So obviously Internationalization of applications becomes a big issue.

ASCII and CodePage mechanism:
ASCII format had one byte or 8 bits for each character. This means that, it can have 2^8 or 256 different characters. So if a program is to be written in a different language, the entire character set is to be replaced with a different one. Windows initially had a scheme called CodePage. For each language, it had a different codepage. If it needs its version of Windows in chinese, then it will use the Chinese Code page. The problem here is that, at a time it can support only one language. So if a person in Europe connects to US server, he'll see only English characters and vice-versa.

Multi-Byte Character Set or Double-Byte Character Set:
One solution proposed for the above problem was to have a multiple byte character set. In this schema, a character might be represented as a single byte or a double byte. If it is a double byte schema, the lead byte will have the information about its double byte status. So the applications have to check the lead byte status always. The VC++ provides an API "isleadbyte(int c)" to check if a character is a lead byte.

Unicode:
Finally all big companies have joined together and decided to invent a new strategy for this issue. A new character encoding scheme was deduced with 16 bits. Now this 16 bit character set can support 2^16 or 65536 characters. This standards of Unicode are hosted at Unicode. Although original goal of this unicode consortium was to produce a 16 bit encoding standard, it produced 3 different standards.
UTF-8: This is a 8 bit encoding standard. The advantage in this schema is that the unicode characters in/transformed into UTF-8 are compatible with the existing softwares.
UTF-16: This is the original planned standard using 16-bit characters.
UTF-32: This is used where memory is not a constraint.

All 3 forms of data can be transformed into one another without any loss of data. All of them use a common repertoire of characters.
Note:
Windows NT/2000/XP use unicode as their character set. So even if a program uses data in ASCII, it internally gets converted to unicode, processed, reconverted to ASCII and returned.
Most of the times some programs will need conversions from MBCS/DBCS to unicode. If anybody needs to learn the conversion procedures, please follow the link at Microsoft MSDN. You can get all the information you need about this(ofcourse, if the page is not moved to a different location).

Infact a common goal expected to be achieved out of the whole effort is to gain internationalization. But having a common character set solves only a part of the whole issue. The other issues like Date, Time, Numbers, Currencies and conventions also among other things to be taken care of.

Invisible Girl

2007-12-26T11:25:00.001+08:00

Step One
In this tutorial, we will use the image below and make the girl invisible. I got this picture from here. You may download it from there if you must. (Thank you very much, PorcelainStock.)

Step Two
Take the Clone Stamp Tool (S). We will use only this tool to make the girl disappear! The Clone Stamp Tool usually takes a sample of the part of the image and apply it over on another part.

Step Three
Choose a brush size. I used 28px for this tutorial considering the image size was 533x773. But the size is totally up to you.

Step Four
In this step, you will make the girl's face disappear. To do so, Alt+Click on the red area spotted below. We clicked on that area because, we are going to overlay her face with that wooden black fence. So that it looks as if she is not there.

Step Five
Subsequently, drag your mouse over the part (the face) which you want make disappear and paint it. Repeat this process on any unwanted part of the image. Here's my final result.

Day 2 Night

2007-12-25T20:53:00.001+08:00

Just a way to turn your sunny day pictures, into a night time picture, complete with a moon.

1. Open your image, we used a landscape, where there are trees and houses.

2. Click Image > Adjust > Hue/Saturation - and give the following settings. (tick colourize box, hue 196, saturation 18, lightness -69)

3. Click Layer > new > Layer - and name it moon

4. Make a rather large selection, using the eliptical marquee tool, holding SHIFT after you started the selection to make it perfect

5. Press D to reset your colours

6. Now, Filter > Render > Clouds

7. Selection > deselect (CTRL + D) to deselect the selection

8. Now, Edit > Transform > free transform (CTRL +T) and make the moon smaller to your size you want.

9. Layer > Layer style > Blending options - and just below, right at the bottom... you will need to play with the bottom settings (underlaying layer) to seperate the triangle, hold ALT and drag them apart.

10. Next, Layer > New > Layer - and call it glow

11. Grab a brush.... around size 18, and with a light grey as your foreground colour, run your brush left to right a few times

12. Filter > Blur > guassian blur - to around... 14px

13. Now, lower the opacity on the layer to around 25-40%

The Future Value

2007-12-23T10:40:00.001+08:00

All the hype about the sale of Weblogs Inc. to America Online (AOL) has given rise to the now famous question How much is your blog worth? In acquiring Weblogs Inc., AOL has provided some concrete metrics to future valuation of blogs. How much will traditional media be willing to pay for a blog? Conversely, how much would you sell your blog for?

AOL-Weblogs Inc. Deal Benchmark for Future Blog Valuation

Weblogs Inc was established by Jason Calacanis and Brian Alvey in 2003. It is a network of blogs which includes under its wings successful blogs such as Engadget and Autoblog. Jason Calacanis pointed out that Weblogs Inc. earns in excess of $1 million yearly in Google Adsense revenues alone.

AOL purchased Weblogs Inc. for a confidential sum assessed at somewhere between $25 - $40 million. After said purchase, Tristan Louis came up with a blog valuation scheme based on the deal. He created a chart of blog value using the value of each inbound link to Weblogs Inc. as the basis. It is common knowledge that blog readers follow links. Search engines also act as users and primarily determine blog quality rankings based on linkage data thus direct and indirect value links are a great proxy for value measurement. In the blogosphere, conversations that nurture connectivity represented by links and indexes like Technorati give a vantage view of the value of a blog.

Tristan Louis itemized the publicly available data (list of blogs indexed) at Weblogs Inc. network including the number of inbound links (Technorati blog numbers) per blog divided by the purchase price to determine the value of an inbound link to a blog. At the rumored price of $25 million, the estimated value is $564 per link. At $30 million, it is $677,57 per link and $903,42 at an acquisition price of $40 million. Interestingly, the consumer segment chalks up the biggest percentage of linkage. Engadget represents over a third of the overall network traffic.

Applying Tristan Louiss Weblogs Inc, sale, Dave Winer has also sold http://www.weblogs.com to Verisign for a rumored price of around $2 million. Blog entrepreneur Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media has signed a deal with VNU Media to publish Gizmodo (gadget blog) across Europe in six languages. VNU Media is a leading worldwide information and media company which owns ACNielsen, Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, among others. With this deal, blog publishing has hit big time.

However, the value of a blog is not calculated based solely on links using AOLs purchase of Weblogs Inc. Jason Calacanis, the man behind Weblogs Inc., disputed using links alone as proxy for the value of the blog network. He reiterated that the acquisition price was based also on the ever reliable revenue, earnings, management and other metrics.

Tristan Louis based his valuation scheme on links to a blog but he also acknowledged the significance of technology, talented management team, financial performance and growth. There is direct correlation between links, traffic, revenue and earnings capacity of a blog or blog network but it takes sound management to maximize all these potentials.

Value of a Blog Some Metrics to Consider

How much is your blog worth? There is no one standard gauge yet. But one way to measure the value is to look at certain factors to gain a better perspective on how to measure the future value of a blog.

Aside from number of links as mentioned earlier, traffic level is a key factor in determining blog value. Highly trafficked blogs definitely have a bigger potential for earning compared with those blogs with few readership. A blogs success is highly dependent on visitors/readers. However, ascertaining the value of traffic is a thorny issue. Some bloggers value traffic anywhere from $3 to $10 per hit a day. From this data, a blog with 2000 unique visitors (page views) would be worth between $6000 to $20,000. The downside to this valuation approach is that some traffic is more valuable than others. A personal blog might have 1000 unique visitors but more difficult to convert to revenue than a blog with 1000 readers that blogs on the topic of digital cameras.

Aside from diverse traffic streams that come from bookmarks, direct links or RSS subscribers will make risk of losing traffic low. Social bookmarking sites are inching their way to becoming prime sources of traffic, with peer referral at times carrying more weight than search results. There are a number of well known bookmarking sites you should link to. Top bookmarking sites include Furl, http://www.del.icio.us, Diggs, to name a few. By leaving an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed, you can feed you readers desire for information. Visitors can get automatic updates whenever you provide new content. Having a fairly good base of bookmarkers and subscribers ensure a steady flow of fans and repeat readers the all-important traffic.

In the blogosphere as in any other field, revenue or earnings is a major focus. a logical approach to blog valuation would be to base its worth upon current and projected earnings, assuming that your blog is earning something to start with. Again, there are varying views on how to use current earnings to measure a blogs value.

Some bloggers opine you should expect six to eight months earnings as your blog value. A blog with a daily income of $150 would be worth between $27,000 - $36,000. Still, others determine a blogs value as being two years of current earnings. A blog earning $150 a day would be worth $108,000. Again, there is a huge disparity between these methods of assessing value. Having diverse streams in the form of multiple affiliate programs also increases blog revenue. An affiliate program is an advertising model in which a blog owner markets via his blog a given product, on behalf of another company. The blog owner is reimbursed a percentage of all sales sold thru his affiliate link. Reimbursement rates can vary from 1% and upwards. Google Adsense is a prime example.

Visitors access blogs throughout the Internet primarily through search engines. If your blog does not have a post appearing in the top ten search engine rankings, the chances of visitors reaching your blog is low. A blogs presence on relevant search engines is a significant medium for maintaining a blogs success. Search engine ranking and pages indexed in search engines is critical for generating traffic to a blog. Having your blog among the top results of a search or receiving a high Google PageRank (a system for ranking blog posts) would increase your blogs overall value.

High quality content will always be a key factor for determining a blogs value. As has been said time and time again Content is King. Moreover, search engines can only read a blog. What attracts a search engine are the words, the content of a blog that explains, informs, shares and educates readers. Good content increases blog value.

All these aforementioned objective metrics can be considered in assessing the value of a blog. Added to all these, a talented management team behind a blog, its underlying tools and blog technology in use can further help to estimate the future value of a blog.

About The Author:
http://www.theinternetone.net

Forms

2007-12-23T10:18:00.001+08:00

The PHP $_GET and $_POST variables are used to retrieve information from forms, like user input.

PHP Form Handling
The most important thing to notice when dealing with HTML forms and PHP is that any formelement in an HTML page will automatically be available to your PHP scripts.

Form Example:

<html>
<body>

<form action="welcome.php" method="post">
Name: <input type="text" name="name" />

Age: <input type="text" name="age" />
<input type="submit" />
</form>

</body>

</html>

The example HTML page above contains two input fields and a submit button.

When the user fills in this form and click on the submit button, the form data is sent to the "welcome.php" file.

The "welcome.php" file looks like this:

<html>
<body>

Welcome <?php echo $_POST["name"]; ?>.<br />
You are <?php echo $_POST["age"]; ?> years old.

</body>
</html>

A sample output of the above script may be:

Welcome John.
You are 28 years old.

The PHP $_GET and $_POST variables will be explained in the next chapters.

Form Validation

User input should be validated whenever possible. Client side validation is faster, and will reduce server load.

However, any site that gets enough traffic to worry about server resources, may also need to worry about site security. You should always use server side validation if the form accesses a database.

A good way to validate a form on the server is to post the form to itself, instead of jumping to a different page. The user will then get the error messages on the same page as the form. This makes it easier to discover the error.

Color Change

2007-12-22T12:29:00.001+08:00

1. Open Photoshop. Open the image to change the color.

2. Make a duplicate of the background layer and keep the duplicate layer selected. Change the top layer mode to "Overlay"

3. Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation (Hue: +29 Saturation: +28 Lightness: +26)

4. You can go back to step 2 before applying Hue/Saturation and apply Color Balance (Select Shadows Color Levels -100 0 +100)

5. Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast (Brightness: +100 Contrast: 0)

How to Blur

2007-12-21T12:14:00.001+08:00

This week let us learn a little technique I like to call the pixellated blur. I don't really call it that, but I had to call it something for the purposes of this tutorial. Really, I don't call it anything at all. Anyway, on with the tutorial.

I want to have an image that is focus on a single point, but blurry and pixellated throughout the rest of the image. I am using a photo of the famous bridge in the famous city that we all know. You can see it below.

I want to focus on the top of the farthest tower over there. So the first thing I do is to duplicate the layer with my bridge photo on it. I do this by dragging my layer to the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette. It looks like a folded piece of paper. Once this is done, you should have three layers total. A background, and two of the bridge layers.

After that is done, we are going to select the upper layer. Now go Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Give it a few pixels, until you are satisfied with the outcome. Look below for my version.

Now that looks like a blurry version of the first image right? Well, that's because it is.

So let's add some pixellation and really mess this perfectly good photo all up. Go Filter >Pointilize >Mosaic. Use the slider to give it some parameters on size. I used 4 here. I like the number 4. I also like most of the other numbers too. That's another story though. Play around with your own favorite numbers and come up with what you like.

Ok, so now we have an image that looks... well... like garbage. So what are we going to do with this thing? Well, the first thing we are going to do is to add a layer mask to the top layer. Do this by hitting the Add Layer Mask button at the bottom of the layers palette. When this is done, select the gradient tool in the toolbar. I used a radial gradient on mine, but you can experiment with any gradient, or you can use a soft paintbrush with black pixels over the spot you want to show focused. Or you can use any shade of grey, or gray as some folks say to give it any level of clarity. So I swipe a radial gradient on mine from black to white starting at the far tower. I can do this as many times as I want until I get it right. I am so good, that I got it right the first time. That is... the first time after I did it about a dozen practice rounds. I call them practice, you can call them screwups. Either way, I still get paid the same. That's what makes PS so cool, you can always revert back to before you screwed up the image. Try that with oil and canvas Degas!

So we learned a little sump'm sump'm today right? Repeat after me, " I am a Photoshop masterrrrr. I am a Photoshop masterrrr". Go meditate on this as your mantra. When you are done, you will be "one" with the pixel. Then try other combinations of this technique with other filters and get rich on you talents. Remember that the Zen is in living out your destiny. You ARE a Photoshop master! Talk at you in seven days.

Video in a Flash

2007-12-21T12:07:00.001+08:00

Web Hosting is going through a revolution. The ever lower cost of video streaming is morphing websites into less images, less text, more video. A recent look at Yahoo! shows a home page with video links front and center. One of the emerging technologies allowing low cost streaming is Flash FLV. It is a format that is designed for web playback, offering high rates of compression. Flash Player, the embedded plugin that is in 98% of all internet browsers, allows playback of Flash FLV using SWF files. It is a preferred method because there is no need for a 3rd party download. FLV is a "Flash Live Video" file.

Not many people know it, but Macromedia (Adobe) has developed a sophisticated media delivery platform, that is emerging as a sleeping giant. Flash is the world's most pervasive software platform, used by over 1 million programming professionals and reaching 98% of Internet-enabled desktops worldwide as well as a wide range of devices.. You might be shocked to hear that using Flash for your Video Media Delivery can save you a bundle of cash!

The Flash Player browser plugin can play an FLV, but that FLV, must be either embedded in or linked to a SWF. That is, you can't just put the actual FLV on an HTML page. You can however reference the FLV file using action script and SWF (the player controls), which now opens up the door to brand your player, add colors and logos, skins, and links to further information. Customization is now only limited to your imagination and Flash Skills. 4 hour movies can be streamed instantly with no buffer wait or download lag time.

Highlights of the Flash Communications Server include the ability to provide your end users with the best possible experience via a seamlessly integrated client that lets you brand your broadcast the way you want to, with any devices containing the Flash Player being capable of delivering movies when connected to the MX Communications server.

A Fantastic File Format
The file format used in this process is Flash FLV or Flash Live Video, and it plays in a Flash Player. While traditional methods of media delivery include some kind of download to the user's computer, either in a pre-loader or through temporary Internet files, Flash MX Communications server and a Flash FLV Player connect in a completely different manner. Simply put, it's a new connection to the file each time the user uses the controls in the player. This means that in the background it's a "start here" "stop here" "start again here" style of play, with no downloads or caching.

Here's The Top Ten Reasons to Stream Video Using Flash

1. FLV format file sizes after conversion are up to 60% smaller, saving server storage costs.
2. FLV's start - stop connection style saves on bandwidth perhaps as much as 60% less per month.
3. FLV format has no local player in operating systems, so file sharing is nullified.
4. FLV format plays directly in more browsers than Windows Media, Real Player or QuickTime.
5. FLV server can authenticate clients, and control users as you wish.
6. FLV players can be completely customized for logos, branding and embedded links.
7. FLV players can play files from a programmable database, and simple administration area.
8. FLV players can be programmed to integrate with databases for free previews, time, users.
9. FLV encoding can include user information for content tracking, misuse, or DRM.
10. Flash Communications servers are easier to maintain than others, and less prone to security hacks.

Who is using Flash Communication Servers? Google, MTV, Yahoo, IBM, Sony, Universal Studios, the list is growing. Flash is suitable for various applications, including live, on-demand, audio and video streaming, 24 x 7 live radio broadcasting, pay-per-view, with digital rights management, delivery to mobile devices, including phones, product demonstrations, commercials and movie trailers, employee and partner training, corporate communications the list goes on and on...

Interested publishers can see demonstrations of Flash Communication Server and get more information by visiting http://www.flvhosting.com. Our proprietary video delivery solutions work on 98% of all Internet enabled devices, and can save you big on your bandwidth bill with prices starting at only $19.95

Mike McGuinness is VP of Operations at http://www.flvhosting.com Call 1-888-409-3500 sales@flvhosting.com

Mike McGuinness is a Flasher and Tech support guru for Video Spark and http://www.flvHosting.com

Make Money

2007-12-21T12:04:00.001+08:00

As the advent of the domain names continue to affect a great number of people, many people today are then greatly pulled and encouraged to purchase domain names for a considered profits. In fact, many of them are now on the verge of purchasing domain names hoping for some possible returns. So if you are interested to know the facts on how you can purchase domain names for your profit, then you better read this article for this will give you some knowledge about this thing.

So how to purchase domain names for a profit?

It is indeed a fact that there is a lot of money to be made to purchase domain names and then selling those domain name registrations on the open market. Numerous research studies have considered that there a large number of people who paid an amount of $35 just to register a domain name and then sold the domain name in excess of $100,000. Maybe among the qualified examples for this matter are the current sold domain names that have prices ranging from $2,750,000 from the CreditCards. com to $300,000 from the http://www.viajes.com.

Given such fact, many of those who are planning to purchase domain names for profit often ask the real reason on how those companies did such things. Certain resources considered that there is an amount involved if you sell or purchase domain names even if the profit margin per name does not reach the amount of $100,000.

In relation to that, today there are a lot of domain names where those who are interested to purchase domain names are required to pay three to four times what the domain names cost to purchase domain names at a registration site like the http://www.domain.com.

And speaking of those who sell and purchase domain names, it is interesting to know that they are called as domain name speculators. It happened that such nick is formed for the reason that those who sell and purchase domain names simply come up with a bright concept and then pursue what they decide to register domain names. And generally, they take multiple factors into account when they are striving to identify and purchase domain names that they can sell for a profit. And to mention, some examples of these factors taken by the domain name speculators include the general nature of the domain name, avoidance of trademark matters, knowledge if the domain name get traffic, and the forward thinking.

Lastly, most of the experts have recommended that for you to get a profit, you should think of purchasing a domain name like buying a piece of real estate. If you can recognize and purchase domain names that are in an up and coming area, they will become more precious.

About The Author:
Discover What It Really Takes To Succeed And Profit From Your Online Business And Find Out The Little Discussed Facts That People Ignore - Or Choose To Ignore - That Makes You Either An Internet Entrepreneur Or Simply, Plain Broke! http://www.internetentrepreneurship.com You May Reproduce this article as long as an active hyperlink is accompanied.

3 Ways to Know If a Expert is the Real Deal Before Buying a Product or Service

2007-12-21T12:01:00.001+08:00

Many people call themselves podcasting experts and its no wonder since podcasting is still fairly new and everyone is trying to jump on the podcasting bandwagon to make tons of cash.

Sales letters are written, websites are launched and ebooks are thrown together by internet marketers who want to make a fast buck on a growing trend.

Not everyone who calls themselves an podcasting expert really is and you need to understand the ways to separate the real podcasting experts from those trying to make a fast buck.

Here are some ways to determine whether a podcasting expert is trustworthy and whether you should spend money on their podcasting product or service.

Ensure that podcasting expert isnt just podcasting for fun. A podcasting hobbyist is only producing his or her own podcast. A podcasting evangelist is producing podcasting solutions for herself, clients and other people. Look for testimonials, case studies or a list of clients that the podcasting expert has helped. Chances are if others are saying great things about this podcasting expert, you can feel confident spending money on his or her solutions.
Double check that the podcasting expert even has a podcast. A lot of people say they can teach you how to podcast, but dont even have a podcast of their own. How can you learn the ropes if that person hasnt done it themselves? A rule of thumb is to see if theyve produced at least 15 episodes of their own podcast or someone elses. If they have, then you can heed their advice since that person has probably been through a lot of equipment - and experiences - to advise you on the best course of action.
Understand what the podcasting expert has been doing in the podcasting industry. Aside from selling products or services on podcasting, people whose businesses rely solely on podcasting are speaking at conferences, doing interviews in the media, writing articles on the subject and developing ventures all related to podcasting. One podcasting expert has developed an online expo on podcasting. Another podcasting expert is writing a book filled with podcasting case studies. If over the last 6- to 12-months you find that 70% of the experts activities have been focused on podcasting, you can confidently buy their product or service knowing that they are true evangelists. Plug in the experts name into a search engine and see what pops up.

(c) 2006 Leesa Barnes. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
An Internet maverick with a solid technology background, Leesa Barnes helps businesses use podcasting to drive search engine traffic to their website and build profitable relationships with their customers. She is co-author of Jump Start Your Podcast and she comments on podcast optimization techniques in her blog called Podonomics. Visit http://www.leesabarnes.com and sign up to receive a free ecourse called 5 Ways a Podcast Can Boost Your Search Engine Ranking.

Pro Anyone?

2007-12-21T11:59:00.001+08:00

The task of marketing a website can sometimes be a very boring task. Yes, marketing is important and vital to the success of a business but it cannot be denied that the tedium could get to the most persistent internet marketer or business owner.

One way to combat the boredom is to use many different internet marketing tools as a way of diversifying the marketing choices that will be used for the website. But there is one new internet marketing tool that is not only very effective in promoting your website, it is also quite fun to do. This is making and posting blogs.

Blogging has been a popular internet pastime for quite some time now. Blogs are like online diaries where people can post their thoughts about a variety of subjects and issues or even report news in various points of interest. The readers of the blog are also encouraged to post their replies to the blog posts, thus forming an informal community that sends messages to each other. One of the most popular blogging services right now is Blogger now owned by Goggle. Bloggers easy to use blogging interface has proven to be a hit among bloggers of different persuasions. Google has even established a dedicated Blog Search in its search engine as a way of addressing the fast growing popularity of blogs.

Blogging has actually taken a life of its own and has transcended its initial life as an online diary. Corporations are now using blogs as a means to post corporate news and events that can be read by its workforce.

Recently, internet marketers saw the potential of blogs as a powerful internet marketing tactic. They realize that one of the biggest advantage of blogs is that it gets good search engine positioning because of its interlinking aspect as well as the regular fresh content. Search engines know that most blogs are updated regularly and this results in more favorable page rankings for the topic that it deals with.

Blogging has also given media relations a new effective tool because bloggers are often recognized as the opinion leaders in the field in which they blog. There are also topic-specific blogs that can be setup as a form of soapbox for the internet where people can freely voice their opinions regarding important issues of the day. Still another idea is to set up a blog that can be the source of news for topics that are not covered by the media in general.

When it comes to more in-depth marketing efforts, blogs can be used to promote a website directly or use the generated traffic to bring attention to an affiliate program like Google adwords to set up another income stream. Blogs can also be used for various promotions strategies. You can either launch your own blog to promote a service or, as previously mentioned, a website, or participate in ongoing blog discussions within relevant subjects or topics and then promote the service or website there by participating in the discussions.

About The Author:
To learn how to take your blog to the next level as a professional, please visit-: http://www.BloggyPro.com - giving daily tips and advice on all aspects of setting up and running a blog.

P2P Networking with Rendezvous and iChat

2007-12-21T11:53:00.001+08:00

By now you've probably figured out that you can't reenact the famous iTunes/Rendezvous demonstration until the next release of iTunes--there'll be no play-list sharing for a few months yet. So what the heck can you do with Rendezvous in the meantime?

Actually, thanks to the iChat client included in Jaguar, quite a bit, including setting up a powerful peer-to-peer network. Here's a quick overview of instant messaging and file sharing via Rendezvous (to help you pass the time until the next release of iTunes).

Why Use Rendezvous Instead of AIM?
You might be thinking, "I'm already using AIM, MSN, or Yahoo, why should I care about Rendezvous?"

Well, a couple of reasons come to mind. First of all, Rendezvous is pure peer-to-peer communication; AIM is not. You don't need that big AIM server off in the cloud somewhere to enable (or disable as so often happens) your communication. In the business environment, your system administrator should feel a lot better about you communicating with your co-workers on a local, secure network, as opposed to going outside the firewall then back in. Second, Rendezvous is fast. The lightning speed of the exchanges is a relief compared to the sluggish conversations we've all experienced with AIM.

You can use the iChat client for AIM exchanges too, but I'm not using it at this point. I like reserving iChat for pure P2P networking. If I do use AIM, then I launch Adium, which is a terrific AIM client for Mac OS X.

So, how do you set up iChat for peer-to-peer networking? Let's get to it.

iChat Over an Established Local Network
Communication over your corporate LAN isn't quite as exciting as the ad hoc network in the next section, but in the business environment it's probably more practical. You can also add AirPort to this setup for more flexibility, but remember to enable WEP or some other security.

First, make sure that you and your mates are tapping into the same local network. Then open Address Book and create an entry for yourself. (Take a walk on the wild side and add a picture to your record too.) iChat uses this information and image to identify you to others.

Make sure you have an entry for yourself in the Address Book application. iChat uses that information to identify you to others.

Launch iChat and open the Preferences panel. Click the "Accounts" icon at the top. Look for "Rendezvous Messaging" and click the box that reads "Enable local network messaging." Close Preferences, and you're set. All you need now is someone else to launch iChat, and your Mac will "discover" that person and display them in your Rendezvous buddy list. Start talking!

Remember to enable Rendezvous in your iChat preferences

iChat Over an Ad Hoc Peer-to-Peer Network
Logging on to an established network is fine, but what about those laptop situations where there isn't an established 802.11b or hard-wire network available? How are you going to gossip during a staff meeting? Fear not, Jaguar gives you all the tools you need to spread the dirt.

Basically, you set up a peer-to-peer network via 802.11b for Rendezvous to tap into (you'll need an AirPort card to do this). Open your Network Preference Panel and enable AirPort. Click on the AirPort tab and make sure you have the "Allow this computer to create networks" and "Show AirPort status in menu bar" boxes checked. Click "Apply Now" and close System Preferences.

Now enable your computer to create networks.

Now click on the AirPort icon on the Menu Bar to reveal the drop down options. Select "Create Network ..." and you get a Computer to Computer dialogue box. Give your network a name and choose a channel. You can password protect this network, but for iChat that sort of defeats the purpose. Click OK.

Notice that the Menu icon changes from the AirPort reception bars to a little computer. You're in P2P mode! Now, anyone within range can select your ad hoc network from their drop down AirPort menu and connect.

Launch iChat. If anyone else has their client open on the P2P network, then the two computers will discover each other and the names will be listed in the Rendezvous buddy list. Start chatting! That's all there is to it -- no servers, no Internet, no fuss.

Sending Files Via Rendezvous
You can exchange more than just witty dialogue with this P2P set up. You can also send files and pictures to one another.

In your iChat window, click on the paper clip icon, and you'll be presented with a dialog box that lets you navigate to files on your hard drive. Pick a file and click the "Open" button. The icon for the file will be placed in your iChat typing window. You can add text along side the icon, then hit return. Both your message and the file icon (with its name) will show up in your buddy's window. If he wants to download the file, all he has to do is click on its hypertext name and it will instantly download onto his desktop. And I mean instantly.

If he doesn't want to receive the file, then all he has to do is ignore the link and nothing is transferred. If he doesn't want to download the file right at the moment, he can go back and retrieve it later, as long as the network is still viable and both chat windows are open.

Final Thoughts
At first glance iChat seems like just another IM client. But below that cartoon-like surface is a powerful P2P networking engine. If you're not a big fan of the balloon captions and buddy icons, those can be turned off via the "View" dropdown menu.

I hope this will keep you busy until iTunes and other Rendezvous-enabled applications are available.

Derrick Story is the digital media evangelist for O'Reilly, as well as the author of Digital Photography Hacks and Digital Photography Pocket Guide. You can listen to his photo podcasts and read his tips at The Digital Story.

by Derrick Story
08/28/2002

The keystone of security

2007-12-21T11:52:00.002+08:00

Davide Wood - Symbian Thursday, 08 June 2006
In his ninth insight article Symbian's David Wood looks at mobile security, Symbian OS and argue that smartphones will increasingly become the keystone of enterprise security.

Do smartphones pose a danger to corporate security and well-being? To believe some recent analysts and commentators, smartphones carry an unseen threat of chaos, disruption, and financial loss into any company naive enough to tolerate their employees using them. Allegedly, smartphones can be the vehicle for viruses and other malware to penetrate corporate defences. Equally worrying (it is said), smartphones can be the vehicle for sensitive business information to leak out of the company into the prying eyes of competitors and ne’er-do-wells. Finally, the purported headaches of coping with multiple different kinds of smartphones, each with its own distinct protocols and complications, mean that any benefits from use of smartphones are outweighed by the greater cost of managing and supporting these disparate devices.

I understand the concerns that lie behind such beliefs. But I reject – strongly – the conclusions.

Yes, there are good reasons for the industry to be concerned with the issues of smartphone security. And yes, businesses need to think ahead when deploying enterprise applications onto the smartphones used by their employees. But provided people follow some basic rules, there’s no real threat from smartphones. Rather than smartphones being an Achilles heel of security, they will increasingly be its keystone.

The first point to appreciate is that smartphones are not all equal. To be specific, the operating systems underlying smartphones are not all equal. Just because operating system A has known security problems, it does not follow that operating system B has these same problems. Any such line of reasoning is an example of the (sadly widespread) relativistic fallacy that smartphone operating systems are a commodity, lacking any real distinctiveness from a technology or product point of view. On the contrary, security against malware is an example where one operating system – Symbian OS – has consistently adopted a very different approach from the pack.

As I’ll explain later in this article, there are some important developments, security-wise, in the latest major upgrade to Symbian OS, v9. But the underlying difference in approach to security dates back to the design of the earliest version of Symbian OS. To explain this point, I need to take a slight technical detour.

- When you look at the innards of a large software system, you’ll find many instances of pieces of software copying data from one memory location to another. For example, an application might copy a piece of text from the contacts database, reformat it, and then pass the new data to the graphics software to display on the screen. Or data could be copied from a plug-in networking component into the contacts database
- Now consider what happens when a piece of software receives more data than it expects. Imagine if software has set aside 256 bytes of memory (in a so-called “buffer”) to receive information from a networking component, but the networking component actually pumps in 300 bytes. What happens to the extra 44 bytes? By default, the extra bytes get placed into whatever memory location lies next to the original buffer, overwriting the previous contents. This kind of issue arises so often in software that it has its own name: “buffer overflow” (or “buffer overrun”)
- The outcome of a buffer overflow depends on the meaning given by the software to the data in the adjacent piece of memory. In essence, this data can sometimes be interpreted as a new set of software instructions to be executed. In this case, the buffer overflow can result in program control passing sooner or later to an alien piece of software. Usually, the alien software won’t make much sense, and the system will lock up fairly soon afterwards. In maliciously engineered cases, however, this alien software has been specially crafted by an ill-intentioned writer – and that’s how malware seizes control of the device, via a so-called “backdoor” or “side-window”.

This sets the scene for a short historical note. The 16-bit precursor to Symbian OS was a software system known as EPOC, used in a succession of popular 1990s handheld computing devices such as the Psion Series 3. The development of EPOC was often held up for days as my colleagues and I tried to diagnose various system lockups. Over the course of many all-night debugging sessions, we gained an intense appreciation of the significance of buffer overflows as the root causes of many of these tiresome bug hunts. Colly Myers, who would later become Symbian’s first CEO, made the bold determination that Symbian OS would not suffer from the same problem. As Colly defined the fundamental building blocks of Symbian OS (then known as “EPOC32”) during the fourth quarter of 1994, he gave special attention to the low-level software to be used for storing and copying text. He had two main objectives in mind:

- Efficient memory usage – in contrast to the alternative class libraries that Colly considered (which he found on the fledgling Internet) which frequently made profligate use of memory and/or CPU cycles when storing or manipulating text
- Robustness and security – to eliminate the insidious consequences of buffer overflows, by terminating application execution immediately if any software tried to copy data beyond the end of a buffer. So there’s no scope for alien software to take control of the phone – and debugging tools can identify the root causes of system lockups much more quickly

The outcome was what is called the Symbian “descriptor” class hierarchy. Generations of software engineers learning Symbian OS have suffered a culture shock when encountering descriptors for the first time: they’re very different from how text is handled in other operating systems or class libraries.

The designers of other smartphone operating systems have been aware of the drawbacks of buffer overflows, but they lacked the courage (or the ability) to impose a systematic low-level solution akin to Symbian’s descriptors. For these designers, it was a higher priority to provide a programming system that was similar to what people were already accustomed to using. In effect, they took the view that security problems could be patched individually, as and when they were discovered. However, given the millions of lines of code that exist in modern computing systems, this outcome is far from satisfactory.

Symbian’s adoption of descriptors is but one example of what is called a “defensive” approach to software: each software component has to be ready to deal with malformed data passed to it by other components. It cannot take it for granted that the data conforms to the expected structure. This attitude is reinforced by various development tools and the general development culture in the Symbian ecosystem. As a result, I’m pleased to report that there are (as yet) no known cases of “backdoor” or “side-window” security flaws in Symbian OS. Unlike with other operating systems, malware cannot exploit buffer overflows or similar programming bugs to install itself onto a Symbian smartphone and cause damage. Instead, the only known route for malware onto a Symbian smartphone is via the “front door” – the installation dialog which requires the user’s consent to add new software into the smartphone.

The key thing about the installation dialog is that the user is warned when an application comes from an untrusted source. Even if the application tells the user that it is (for example) a “software update from Symbian” or an “important piece of news from your company IT department”, the phone itself will know better, and will make this fact clear to the user. The common sense rule that people need to follow is: don’t install software that you don’t trust. Consider the following analogy. If a complete stranger comes up to you in a pub and asks you if he can borrow your phone to take it away for thirty minutes, to install some extra software on it, would you hand over your phone? Or how about handing over your wallet? Would you expect to see it back? In such a case, before handing anything over, you would need to be mighty sure that the stranger had proper ID, and that you could trust him. Well it’s the same with allowing unknown software onto your phone. Users have to learn only to install software from trusted sources.

Analysts and commentators sometimes get over-excited about so-called “Bluetooth viruses” or “MMS viruses”. Readers are left with the (false!) impression that, merely by having Bluetooth turned on in their smartphone, or merely by accepting an MMS message, they are vulnerable to their phones being hijacked. If there were side-window security problems with Symbian OS, there might be a reason to worry. However, any malware that arrives on your phone via Bluetooth or MMS – or indeed via any other route – remains impotent unless it manages to persuade the user to press ‘Yes’ in the front door dialog to install new software, and ‘Yes’ again in the dialog warning the user that the application is untrusted.

Here’s another source of confusion. Just because there are an increasing number of viruses that target Symbian OS, it does not mean that Symbian OS is intrinsically insecure. It just means that:

- Symbian OS is running on the majority of advanced, programmable mobile phones
- Symbian OS phones therefore present a numerically attractive target for people interested in mobile malware
- However, the same common-sense rule stops each and every one of these viruses – namely, users should avoid installing untrusted software

So here are the first three rules for companies wishing to take advantage of the potential for smartphones to boost the effectiveness of their staff:

- Ensure that the smartphones are running an operating system that puts a high priority on security
- Remind all users about the drawbacks of installing untrusted software
- For extra confidence, consider installing a virus scanner on the phone – or activating any that is built-in: this provides a second line of protection

Note that even if one employee misguidedly installs a malicious piece of software, there’s very little risk of this spreading throughout the company. Unlike the case with networked desktop computers, malware cannot leap across from one smartphone to another, without the active assistance of human users.

The fourth rule is that companies should pay at least as much attention to the “device management” aspects of smartphone deployment as they do to protection against malware. As described on the partnering pages of Symbian’s website, a range of third party companies already provide comprehensive advice and solutions. These solutions include:

- “Remote wipe” – whereby the data on a smartphone can be removed from it, using OTA (over-the-air) wireless instructions, in case the smartphone becomes lost or stolen
- “Remote maintenance” – whereby problems being experienced by smartphone users can be diagnosed OTA using remote viewers and, if necessary, solved using OTA software patches

The fifth and final rule arises from the observation that companies will have to invest considerable energy and resources to ensure that their adoption of smartphones goes well, and can deliver good results on a sustained basis. The good news is that the payback has the potential to become larger and larger, over time – provided the investment is done in a way that:

- Maximises the freedom of choice of devices, user interfaces, and applications
- Is ready to adapt to the inevitable surprise new trends in technology and business practice.

Symbian OS fares admirably on both these criteria – supporting a wide variety of different devices, all using the same software platform, and with a healthy and active roadmap of forthcoming new features.

In closing, this brings me back to the topic of the significant incremental improvements made to the security system in v9 of Symbian OS. These improvements – known as “Platform Security” – address the only residual point of vulnerability with pre-v9 phones, which is none other than the end user of the phone. As mentioned, users sometimes install software which ends up misbehaving on the phone. But from v9 onwards, all add-on software is checked at run-time before it is allowed to use any sensitive smartphone functionality. The application is allowed to use this functionality, only if it has been verified as trusted for that functionality. Here, “sensitive” functionality includes:

- Anything that will cause the user to incur a phone bill
- Access to contacts information, call log information, agenda information, or location information
- Access to any data files created by another application

It’s as if you let someone into your house, through the front door, having checked that he is a certified plumber. He would be allowed to access the waterworks of the house, but if he slyly tries to take a look in your jewellery box, or in your bedside diary, the operating system of the house would prevent it (unless he also happens, for example, to be an authorised jeweller). That’s how Platform Security protects mobile phones. And the real beauty is that users don’t need to understand any of the details of what’s happening: the security works despite what users do.

Note: for more details of Symbian OS Platform Security, please refer to the Symbian Press book with that title, authored by Craig Heath.

You can find more of David Wood's illuminating Insights on Symbian's Web site: http://www.symbian.com/symbianos/insight/

An Art With A New Life Form - With Digital Music And MP3s!

2007-12-21T11:50:00.002+08:00

Music that gentlier on the spirit lies than tired eyelids upon tired eyes

The act of finding a recluse with your inner-self listening away to the tunes of your favorite maestro has evolved from the archaic vinyl record album to the compact disc and finally the ubiquitous iPods and mp3 players of today. Music is the opium of the listeners state of mind, thus the same tune could possibly be felt in a million different awe-inspiring ways to represent minds momentary fusion of the ambience. With the advent of digital music and effervescent mode of internet distribution, the mp3 players and the iPods have given us this freedom of choice - free from the constraints of listening to what the music industry chooses to limit within the bounds of the magnetic/optico-magnetic media. Its been a fascinating metamorphosis.

The mechanism of how people listen to music has evolved over the generations with the prevailing discoveries in the technology. In 1978, Sony introduced the portable, easy-to-carry along reliable Walkman, making it a hot-favorite trendy gadget for the younger people. CDs and CD players became a reality in 1983, with the advent of the capability of reading small discs by laser beams. Never before had the music aficionado access to such clarity and distortion-free listening experience.

The rapid adoption rate of CDs caused the disappearance of LPs and vinyl single records from the industry. The introduction of iPod and similar mp3 players in November 2001 revolutionized the archetypal distribution of digital music for the millions of music lovers. With the new audio compression technology and widespread acceptance of the world-wide-web, mp3 or WMA files could be created and archived in the virtual world, without the fear of wearing out a cassette or scratching a CD.

As these hi-tech gadgets have evolved over the years, you could carry along 100s of CDs worth of music in a device slightly bigger than a deck of cards. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, CD sales fell 22.3 percent by January 2003, and internet music-downloading services such as Apples iTunes are expected to have 23 percent of the market by 2008. In October 2004, Apple announced that consumers had so far purchased 150 million songs from iTunes and the company sells about 4 million songs every week.

The advent of online music has been the music lovers boon, but has caused a serious disruption of art-form in the creation of cover art and liner notes for the music industry. The popular art-form of composing an album is probably losing ground as individuals may pick and choose the songs to download and play from the internet.

Another significant devious impact of online digital music has been the explosion of illegal distribution of music resulting in loss of royalties for the musicians. If we, the music lovers, can join hands to protect the interests of the artists, digital music has caused the first sprout of music in an organic life-form, freeing this wonderful work of art from the bounds of human control!

Abstract Shapes

2007-12-21T11:47:00.001+08:00

Abstract shapes can be used on wallpapers, logos, pretty much anything you'd like. Making abstract shapes aren't all that hard either. Here's a few methods for creating some quick and easy abstract shapes!

STEP ONE
Using the Rectangle Tool, draw out a rectangle, any size you'd like.

STEP TWO
Go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Pucker & Bloat. Make sure the Preview option is checked off so you can see what your settings will do. Drag the handle to change the percentage up or down. Notice that your shape begins to morph into something new! This is the result I got at 90 percent:

Here's what I got at 200 percent:

It's a very quick and easy way to make some pretty cool abstract shapes. You can make some nice logos using this method as well.

STEP THREE
Now let's take a step further. Click anywhere in the white space so that the shape is not selected. Using the Direct Selection Tool (the white arrow), click on one of the corners. For example, I clicked on the top right corner and then dragged outward. Here's what I got:

Here's another way of doing it. Go to Edit > Undo to go back to our previous step. Using the Selection Tool (the black arrow) click on the shape to select it. Now go to Object > Expand Appearance. You should see the following:

This provides you more options to manipulate the shape since there are more nodes available to use. So again using the Direct Selection Tool (the white arrow), grab some nodes and play around with the shape. The possibilities are endless with creating abstract shapes! Enjoy!

3D Spikes

2007-12-21T11:42:00.002+08:00

1. Begin with a new file, 300x300, and with a transparent background. Now set your foreground color to black, then take the Paint Bucket Tool and fill your canvas with your foreground color.

2. Then take the Elliptical Marquee Tool and create a white circle.

3. Now go to Filter>Stylize>Extrude, and make this settings.

4. Then press Ctrl+U, and make this settings.

And that's it you're done! This is what I came up with.

Functions

2007-12-20T16:03:00.001+08:00

The real power of PHP comes from its functions.
In PHP - there are more than 700 built-in functions available.

PHP Functions

In this tutorial we will show you how to create your own functions.
For a reference and examples of the built-in functions, please visit our
PHP Reference.

Create a PHP Function

A function is a block of code that can be executed whenever we need it.
Creating PHP functions:

All functions start with the word "function()"
Name the function - It should be possible to understand what the
function does by its name. The name can start with a letter or
underscore (not a number)
Add a "{" - The function code starts after the opening
curly brace
Insert the function code
Add a "}" - The function is finished by a closing curly brace

Example
A simple function that writes my name when it is called:

<html>
<body>

<?php
function writeMyName()
{
echo "Kai Jim Refsnes";
}

writeMyName();
?>

</body>
</html>

Use a PHP Function
Now we will use the function in a PHP script:

<html>
<body>

<?php
function writeMyName()
{
echo "Kai Jim Refsnes";
}

echo "Hello world!<br />";
echo "My name is ";
writeMyName();
echo ".<br />That's right, ";
writeMyName();
echo " is my name.";
?>

</body>
</html>

The output of the code above will be:

Hello world!
My name is Kai Jim Refsnes.
That's right, Kai Jim Refsnes is my name.

PHP Functions - Adding parameters

Our first function (writeMyName()) is a very simple function. It only writes a
static string.
To add more functionality to a function, we can add parameters. A parameter is just like a variable.
You may have noticed the parentheses after the function name,
like: writeMyName(). The parameters are specified inside the parentheses.

Example 1
The following example will write different first names, but the same last
name:

<html>
<body>

<?php
function writeMyName($fname)
{
echo $fname . " Refsnes.<br />";
}

echo "My name is ";
writeMyName("Kai Jim");

echo "My name is ";
writeMyName("Hege");

echo "My name is ";
writeMyName("Stale");
?>

</body>
</html>

The output of the code above will be:

My name is Kai Jim Refsnes.
My name is Hege Refsnes.
My name is Stale Refsnes.

Example 2
The following function has two parameters:

<html>
<body>

<?php
function writeMyName($fname,$punctuation)
{
echo $fname . " Refsnes" . $punctuation . "<br />";
}

echo "My name is ";
writeMyName("Kai Jim",".");

echo "My name is ";
writeMyName("Hege","!");

echo "My name is ";
writeMyName("Ståle","...");
?>

</body>

</html>

The output of the code above will be:

My name is Kai Jim Refsnes.
My name is Hege Refsnes!
My name is Ståle Refsnes...

PHP Functions - Return values
Functions can also be used to return values.

Example

<html>
<body>

<?php
function add($x,$y)
{
$total = $x + $y;
return $total;
}

echo "1 + 16 = " . add(1,16);
?>

</body>
</html>

The output of the code above will be:

1 + 16 = 17

Zoom Effect

2007-12-19T14:07:00.001+08:00

Step 1
Open up a new document, I used 400 by 400, but a good background is between 800x600 and 1024x768. It's up to you.

Step 2
Make sure your colors are reset by pressing D on your keyboard. Go to Filter>Render>Clouds. Now go to Filter>Render>Difference Clouds. You should have an image now that looks similar to this:

Step 3
Now we're going to create some lines to morph into the zoom effect. Go to Filter>Pixelate>Mezzotint, click on the drop down box and select Short Lines. Your image should now look similar to the following:

Step 4
Now we're going to actually make the nice looking zoom effect. Go to Filter>Blur>Radial Blur. Use these settings:

Amount: 100
Blur Method: Zoom
Quality: Best

Now hit Ctrl+F on your keyboard to repeat this step to smooth it out. Your image will now look like:

Step 5
Now we're going to make some twirls to make it look more complicated. Duplicate your layer and go to Filter>Distort>Twirl. Use 200 as the amount. Next, duplicate the bottom layer and use Filter>Distort>Twirl again but using -200 as the amount. Set both of these layer modes to Lighten:

Step 6
It looks quite boring, so we're going to add some color. On your top layer hit Ctrl+U on your keyboard to bring up the colorize box. Hit the checkmark next to Colorize and mess around with the settings.

Step 7
Repeat step 6 on your other two layers using different shades of the same color with a little variation. You can mess around with different colors and see what you like best. You now have a nice zoom effect for a background.

Step 8
This step is optional, go to Filter>Render>Lens Flare and add a 35mm Prime lens flare in the middle of your image. Add some text if you’d like and you’re done. Here’s my final image:

Snake Skin

2007-12-19T14:05:00.001+08:00

Create a new document with black background. Go to Filter > Render> Lens Flare.

Then Filter > Distort > Glass

Now to Filter > Distort > Polar coordinates (polar to rectangular).

Copy layer (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V) and transform it Edit > Transform > Flip vertical. Change layers Blending Mode to difference.

You can colorize layers (Ctrl+U) for more interesting result.

Tornado Orb

2007-12-19T14:04:00.001+08:00

This tutorial will teach you how to create a tornado orb effect using a few simple filters and some brushing.

1. Open a new canvas. I used 300 x 300 pixels.

2. Click Filter > Render > Clouds.

3. Then click Filter > Artistic > Plastic wrap and use any settings you want. Just experiment and see what looks best.

4. Then click Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates and change the setting to 33%.

5. You will now have that unusual orb. There will be a big line down the middle. To remove it, just use the smudge tool.

6. I changed the hue / saturation to a blue colour (Image > Adjustments > Hue/saturation).

This is your final result.

STL Overview

2007-12-19T14:00:00.001+08:00

Any programmer developing a moderately complicated system soon realizes that efficient coding requires the use of fundamental data structures like lists, queues and stacks as well as algorithms to process the data stored in these data structures.

Most Java programmers would be familiar with various implementations of these data structures in the util package. Until 1994, C++ did not have, as a part of its standard library, support for such data structures. This implied that any programmer developing software that required the use of such structures either had to build such a library or purchase one being offered commercially.

The former option had risks of increased development time and costs associated with it. Reducing such risks meant customizing the library to the application for which it was being developed, resulting in its incompatibility with other application that will be developed in the future.

The latter option although reduced the risks associated with the first option but introduced following further risks,

Issues related to potential incompatibility with platforms, development environments and other libraries to which the software has to be linked,
Future costs of upgrades. All programmers are well aware of incremental costs of software upgrades that offer more and/or improved features,
Potential performance and extensibility issues related to the characteristics of implementation. For example, the use of virtual functions in internal objects can not only reduce the performance of the library but also make it difficult to use in a shared memory system. Algorithms in such libraries are usually implemented as class members thereby restricting change.

To overcome these issues, the ANSI (American National Standards Institute) decided to select STL as a standard set of collection classes and algorithms. STL is based on the successful research and development at Hewlett Packard Laboratories in the area of generic programming.

Typical features of STL are as follows,

Efficiency. STL does not use inheritance or virtual functions.
Type safety. The extensive use of C++ templates makes STL type safe.
Consistency. STL container classes use iterators that are generalized pointers to the data contained within the containers. Iterators allow access of data within the containers in a manner similar to C arrays.
Extensibility.
1. STL algorithms are stand-alone functions that do not access STL containers directly. Rather they operate over the data via the iterators.
2. STL allows the use of function objects. These are functions that can be encapsulated and associated with data. These can be created, stored and destroyed like objects.
3. STL memory management does not explicitly use new and delete operators. STL containers use special allocator objects to allocate and deallocate storage. If an application requires different memory allocation and deallocation policies, these can be implemented using specialised allocator objects. These allocators can then replace the standard allocators in the containers to provide custom memory management. This article will, however, only consider the use of standard allocators.

STL Containers

STL containers are classes whose objects can be used to build collections of data of same type. For example, objects of vector and list classes are used to build a one dimensional collection of data (although two dimensional collections are possible as lists of lists), maps are used to build lookup tables and sets provide a unique collection of data (i.e., each data element exists only once).

STL containers can be divided into the following three categories,

Sequential containers. These containers arrange the data they contain in a linear manner.
Associative containers. These containers maintain data in structures suitable for fast associative look-up.
Adapters. These provide different but more appropriate interfaces to containers belonging to the above-mentioned categories.

Specific containers belonging to each category are listed in the following table.

Category	Containers	Characteristics
Sequential	vector	Provides a linear and contiguous storage (similar to an array) that allows fast inserts at the end only.
	list	It is an implementation of a doubly linked list that allows fast inserts anywhere.
	deque	Provides a linear but non-contiguous storage that allows fast inserts at extremities.
Associative	multiset	It is an implementation of set where duplicates are allowed and provides fast associative lookup.
	set	It is an implementation of set where no duplicates are allowed and provides fast associative lookup.
	multimap	It is an implementation of a key to value mapping structure where a single key can be mapped to many values (1 to many mappings).
	map	It is an implementation of a key to value mapping structure where a single key can only be mapped to one value (1 to 1 mapping).
Adapter	stack	It is an implementation of a first in last out data structure.
	queue	It is an implementation of a first in first out data structure.
	priority_queue	A queue that maintains items in a sorted order

The coming sections will discuss using vectors, lists, sets, maps, stacks and queues in programs. The remaining containers have APIs similar to other containers in their categories.

STL Vector

2007-12-19T13:56:00.001+08:00

Vectors are sequential containers that are considered growable arrays, i.e., arrays that are flexible and grow as more data is inserted in them.

Vectors usually store elements in a contiguous linear memory space so that index-based access is performed efficiently.

When a vector's originally allocated memory space is exceeded, a larger memory space is allocated and the existing data are copied into the new space before new elements are inserted. Memory allocated originally for the vector is then deallocated. Memory is usually allocated as multiples of machine's page size to optimize performance, however, it may result in wasted space. Furthermore, frequent allocation, copying and deallocation can reduce the performance of a system using vectors. Vectors are, therefore, most suitable for data that requires fast (possibly index-based) access and relatively infrequent insertions.

Good points of discussion while attending an interview for a C++ Job, heh!

Anyways, following is a list of most frequently used methods and operators of the vector class,

Method	Description
vector()	Constructor, creates an empty vector.
vector(size_type n)	Constructor, creates a vector of n elements initialised to their default values.
T& back()	Returns a reference to the last element in the vector.
T& front()	Returns a reference to the first element in the vector.
void push_back(T& data)	Inserts a data value to the end of the vector.
void pop_back()	Erases the data value at the end of the vector.
size_type size()	Returns the number of elements contained in the vector.
T& operator[](int index)	Returns the reference to the index th element in the vector.

A few other methods related to iterators are discussed on the next section. The following example illustrates the use of a vector containing integers.

#include 


#include 





using namespace std;





void populateVector(vector& data, int* array, int arrayLen)


{


int i;


for (i=0;i& data)


{


float sum = 0.0;


int i;


float average;


for (i=0;i data;


float average;





cout << average =" getAverage(data);" average =" " average =" 5.4

Flyer Design

2007-12-19T13:54:00.001+08:00

Let's talk about Flyer design. Flyers are fun and exciting. They are a sub-genre in a culture of its own. Flyers are an industry staple to the Party (and club) scenes worldwide. So, as a designer you'll probably either love them or hate them. But they do offer many exciting areas to explore which will make you a more well-rounded designer. By studying and producing flyers you can become a much more versatile graphic designer and Photoshop user yourself.

Learn from Photoshop Design and you can build your own reputation and if you have a network with promoters or dj's it should be fairly easy to establish yourself (as long as you are good). As a Photoshop Designer you want to be building your portfolio. This is what you can show to other people, potential clients and to yourself.

Flyer design can be very exciting and when you consider that they are printed and distributed to 100's or 1000's of people per print, just think about how many people are seeing your design and are being influenced by it to attend an event. I recommend getting The First Edition so you can get into understanding the elements involved so you can start producing them on your own.

Flyers come in many different sizes. If you are working with a client make sure that you know what they have in mind and you can work with them on it. You will send them some comps and wait to get some feedback. If you're working independently, make sure you have a good idea of what they want but limit your time by only including 2 or 3 revisions at the most.

You will most likely want to work in CMYK because it is the industry standard print/press format. Also use 300 dpi or higher to ensure that you have clear enough resolution. Make sure you check with whoever you're printing through to follow their production standards.

Flyers will often use great photography. Although a lot of the time club photography is used, sometimes you will see (and can use) very off the wall visuals. You could use close-ups of some interesting lines, architecture, traffic. Trance flyers will often have a scene of nature, just a simple photograph. But the key thing here is...

Most flyers are text and vector based. It is the balance of vectors & text (often with bitmap) that produces a great flyer. Many flyers must squeeze as much info as they possibly can into the space available so that promoters can get the most advertisement in. You will often see the super tiny text in many designs. In flyers, this usually serves a practical purpose, so get used to using really small font sizes.

If you want to become a great flyer designer you should get a hold of the First Edition because I go through many great tutorials but also just start collecting flyers (in the U.S. this works really well in larger cities) and study them. You will see many of the elements that are being talked about come to life. You will also start to appreciate the balance between text, vector and bitmap (ie.foto).

Sometimes all it takes is a good font and symbol library as well as some quality photos to choose from. Design is both deliberate and accidental. As a designer you have an idea of what you want to produce and you will understand the elements involved and start using them together and sometimes you will be surprised as things turned out better than you expected. However this isn't always the case and this is where practice comes in but the more you understand the fundamental elements (of flyers in this case) the more you can start synergizing them together for a great design.

You will use text and vectors (ie. shapes, symbols) a lot. One of the most popular techniques is using the Text Stroke (usually red or blue) of 1-3pt. Get used to using the text stroke (under the layer effects menu) and get to know your fonts. I also show you how to distort vectors to make them look 3-D. The iPSD Flyer Designer Collection(http://www.photoshopdesigner.com) is perfect for truly understanding flyer design because you have the entire finished and interactive product in front of you in Photoshop so you can see all of the elements and how they work together! iPSD Flyer .psd's even come with annotations to further clue you in to how the flyer was made in Photoshop.

Often flyers will have random circles, lines, screened shape layers (lowered opacity to use as an underlay for text), independent layer selections (ie. people), pixel stretch, zoom filter & basic color fills. I go through them in detail in the First Edition and will be teaching some of these techniques throughout the PSDer Ezine. You're guaranteed to learn a lot with the iPSD Flyer .psd files; it will just fast-forward your working knowledge of Photoshop for graphic design.

Making flyers in Photoshop can be a very rewarding and lucrative

FireWire Real Application Cluster

2007-12-19T13:50:00.001+08:00

Combine RAC, Linux and FireWire disk for low-cost development environment.

Toolbox: Oracle 9i (9.0.1.4.0) Database Server with RAC option; Red Hat Linux 7.1. Topics include Oracle database installation, Linux kernel versions, and kernel settings. You should have a good knowledge of Oracle database administration and Linux (or UNIX) operating system management, but whether you're an established DBA and UNIX administrator or merely a DBA and Linux "newbie," the basic advice and techniques here will save you lots of time and aggravation.

With the demands of a 24/7 marketplace, a highly available and scalable database is getting increasingly more important. In the past, you had to choose from one of two options in a cluster. High availability clusters were used to protect your database from hardware failure. Load balanced clusters with many nodes were used to support a much larger volume of traffic than single multi-processor implementations. Redundant components such as additional nodes, multiple interconnects, and arrays of disks helped provide high availability. Such redundant hardware architectures avoid single points-of-failure and provide exceptional fault resilience. RAC takes the cluster architecture even further, providing improved fault resilience and incremental system growth by offering connection failover and load balancing in the same cluster. In the event of a system failure, RAC ensures your database will still be available. In the event of a large spike in traffic, RAC can distribute the load over many nodes. Not only does RAC make good sense from a data availability and performance point of view, but with large SMP servers going for a premium price a pair of 2 processor servers can be half the cost of a single 4 processor server. RAC gives you the availability and scalability that enterprises demand.

RAC provides the following key benefits to e-business application deployments:

Flexible and effortless scalability, so that adding nodes to the database is easy and manual intervention is not required to re-partition data when processor nodes are added.

A high availability solution that masks node and component failures from end-users.

A single management interface for DBAs to perform installation, configuration, backup, upgrade, and monitoring functions once. Oracle automatically distributes the management functions to the appropriate nodes. This means the DBA manages one virtual server.

An alternative to using a Storage Area Network (SAN) or Network Attached Storage (NAS) is an external FireWire hard drive enclosure. This allows a low cost solution for testing your systems in a RAC environment prior to roll-out on your production RAC. With the use of commodity hardware you can build your development environment for a fraction of the cost.

This article looks at the process and some helpful tips to help you configure RAC for your development environment using a low cost alternative to a SAN, etc. After reading this article you should be able to setup your RAC environment more quickly and with fewer headaches.

Background / Overview

Our environment was set up to provide us with a low cost development environment to see how RAC fit into our application environment. We had two Compaq 700 MHz Pentium3 desktops, each with 512MB RAM and 10GB internal drives. We also had a spare switch to use for the interconnect. The only hardware we needed to purchase was an external FireWire enclosure, an IDE hard drive and two FireWire adapters. These additional hardware components came up to less than $400.

The focus of this article is using a FireWire drive with RAC on Linux. Therefore we will not rehash the installation of RAC on Linux since this is well documented in Note Id 184821.1 available on Metalink. You should also read the Oracle RAC installation documentation. We will focus on configuring Linux for FireWire support and how to test your RAC configuration for failover. By the end of this article you will understand the steps necessary to setup your own RAC environment for testing clustered applications. For those familiar with Linux and Oracle we estimate approximately 1-2 days worth of work to setup your development RAC environment.

1: Ensure your configuration is certified.

The setup we used was Red Hat 7.1 with RAC 9.0.1. If you're interested in using another distribution of Linux or 9iR2 be sure to check the certified configurations.

Connect and login to http://www.metalink.oracle.com

Click on the "Certify and Availability" button on the menu frame

Click on View Certifications by Product hyperlink

Choose "Real Application Clusters"

Choose the correct platform.

2: Obtain proper FireWire chipset and adapters.

Some FireWire chipsets are better than others at handling multiple logins. In order for RAC to work properly both nodes need to be logged in to the external FireWire hard drive simultaneously. We used an external hard drive enclosure that contained an Oxford Semiconductor OXFW911 sbp2 chipset, which supports up to four concurrent logins. The hardware savings is quite noticeable here, as two FireWire adapters and a shared disk can be bought for less than a single fiber channel controller (let alone the cost of a full SAN implementation).

3: Kernel configuration

In order for FireWire to be recognized by Linux it is recommended that you use a 2.4.19 updated kernel. We downloaded and unpacked the updated kernel from http://www.linux1394.otncast.otnxchange.oracle.com/

4: Driver modification

As specified in the sbp2.c file of the new kernel source, you'll want to change this file to allow support of multiple logins. To do this change the line

static int sbp2_exclusive_login=1

to:

static int sbp2_exclusive_login=0

This modification is well documented in the file and will allow both nodes to have access to the external FireWire hard drive simultaneously. You will want to read through the rest of the source code in this file as there are several tuning parameters which can be set here.

The Dangers

2007-12-19T13:46:00.001+08:00

I have heard many a blogger say that blogging fills a need. While blogging provides a humanizing effect on news and journaling, it also opens a window into personal lives. The details shared in blogs were once only available to a select group of friends, and while blogging has become common place, it has risks that should not be ignored.

Cyberstalking is a new phenomenon that allows anonymous online stalkers to prowl for victims. Online bloggers traditionally provide personal details about their lives. As a result, many women that blog are becoming victims. Most people are concerned about children on the Internet and set up rigorous posting guidelines for children, adolescents, and teenagers, but few adults heed the warnings and often do not consider that they too can be targeted.

Females, in particular, should be cautious when circumnavigating the blogosphere. If you are a blogger or contemplating an online journal, consider these tips to protecting your identity:

Do not have an online profile.

Most blogging services allow bloggers to create an online profile. While it might be fun to post information about likes and dislikes, it is best to refrain from posting any personal details. Often, personal details inadvertently provide insight into physical location or habits. The aggregate information in a personal profile can also assist someone interested in pursuing an individual.

Post anonymously.

Manage your blog anonymously or adopt an alias for all online posting. This will help protect you in the event that you draw unwanted attention.

Avoid personal or identifying details.

Avoid any personal or identifying details when posting in your blog. Do not post in advance about locations that you will be or about areas that you live near.

No photos.

Refrain from posting a picture. Photos can invite trouble or unwanted attention.

Avoid inappropriate dialogue.

Be careful not to engage in dialogue that could be interpreted in a way that it was not intended. Sometimes humorous threads can get out of hand. If the dialogue degrades to an area that makes you uncomfortable, disengage from the dialogue and refrain from further posting. Also when making decisions about individuals online, consider their past posting behavior and attempt to consider their true intentions.

Lurkers.

Always remember that just because you do not have a dialogue with someone does not mean that they are not reading everything that you write. Many people merely lurk on line and don't engage in comment posting, but do read what is written. Your audience could be much larger than you realize.

Timeless.

Internet content is timeless, and keep in mind that even if you remove content, it might be archived or syndicated. If you do not want something read, do not post it to the Internet. High Schools, Colleges and Employers all search the Internet to discern an individuals history. Sordid details about a late night will not help land a coveted job.

The internet is a haven for all types of predators. Always remember that just because someone says something is true, does not mean that it is. Predators adopt personas of who they think you want them to be. Just as we provide guidelines to young children, adults should be wary and take precautions when posting online as well.

While blogging can be a great outlet and channel, and in someway immortalizing thoughts, it is important that safety is considered and that good blogging practices are followed at all times.

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 NotePage http://www.notepage.net a wireless text messaging software company.

How to Create an Feed for Your Web Site

2007-12-19T10:34:00.001+08:00

Are you always looking for new and better ways to market your web site? Search engines are always on the look out for fresh content. When doing a search you don't want old content popping up, you want to have the most up to date information. Search engines will generally reward those sites which provide new content on a regular basis ie daily or even bi-weekly.

On of the best ways to provide fresh content is to create an RSS Feed.

What is an RSS Feed?
RSS stands for "really simple syndication". For example I write articles every 2 weeks and place them on my web site. I then link to that article from my home page and from my article headlines page. I make that article available to others as an item in my RSS file. People who use RSS readers or news aggregators can read then link to your article from their web site.

To explain further about RSS readers visit:
http://www.isitebuild.com/rss/what-are-rss-feeds.htm

You have now syndicated your content for others to view. This is a great way to improve or maintain your search engine rankings by naturally getting incoming links. Every time you write a new article it will be instantly available to 1000s of web site owners.

How to create an RSS File
RSS files use the XML language. This is similar to html except you must be careful to use closing tags and be sure to validate it before you use it. An XML file contains the information (Title, Description and Link URL) that your audience will receive through a RSS reader.

Here is all you need to create an RSS file:
-Title
-Description
-Link

1. Open notepad on your computer, then copy and paste the information below replacing it with your own title, description and link information.

The first part contains information about your web site. The second part contains information for one of your articles. You can also include optional information in your headlines such as language, copyright info, contact email addresses, or an image.

Try to limit the number of articles you wish to include in your RSS file to 5 or less. Enclose your RSS information with the xml and rss versions you are using followed by the channel and item tags. Finish off with the RSS closing tag.

Here's the example:

<.?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>

<.rss version="0.91">

<.channel>

<.title>Web Site Design | Hosting | Marketing

<.link>http://www.isitebuild.com

<.description>Affordable Web Design in Maryland

<.language>en-us

<.item>

<.title>How to Add a Search Engine to Your Site

<.link>http://www.isitebuild.com/add-search-engine.htm

<.description>

When visitors arrive at your web site you want them to find the information quickly otherwise they will lose patience and move on. A great way achieve this is to add a search engine or search box to your web site.

<./description>

<./item>

<./channel>

<./rss>

Please remove the period after the <>

You have now created your first RSS file that is almost ready for syndicating.

Read Part 4 of this article:

How to Syndicate Your RSS Feed
http://www.isitebuild.com/rss/what-are-rss-feeds.htm

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com
Affordable Web Site Design and Web Hosting.
Subscribe to his Marketing Tips newsletter for more original in-depth articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com/articles

Looping

2007-12-19T10:19:00.001+08:00

Very often when you write code, you want the same block of code to run a
number of times. You can use looping statements in your code to perform this.

In PHP we have the following looping statements:

while - loops through a block of code if and as long as a specified condition is true
do...while - loops through a block of code once, and then repeats the loop
as long as a special condition is true
for - loops through a block of code a specified number of times
foreach - loops through a block of code for each element in an
array

The while Statement
The while statement will execute a block of code if and as long as a condition is true.

Syntax

while (condition)
code to be executed;

Example
The following example demonstrates a loop that will continue to run as long as the variable i is less than, or equal to 5. i will increase by 1 each time the loop runs:

<html>
<body>

<?php
$i=1;
while($i<=5)
{
echo "The number is " . $i . "<br />";
$i++;
}
?>

</body>
</html>

The do...while Statement
The do...while statement will execute a block of code at least once - it then will repeat the loop as long as a condition is true.

Syntax

do
{
code to be executed;
}
while (condition);

Example
The following example will increment the value of i at least once, and it will continue incrementing the variable i as long as it has a value of less than 5:

<html>
<body>

<?php
$i=0;
do
{
$i++;
echo "The number is " . $i . "<br />";
}
while ($i<5);
?>

</body>
</html>

The for Statement
The for statement is used when you know how many times you want to execute a statement or a list of statements.

Syntax

for (initialization; condition; increment)
{
code to be executed;

}

Note: The for statement has three parameters. The first parameter initializes variables,

the second parameter holds the condition, and the third parameter contains the increments
required to implement the loop. If more than one variable is included in
the initialization or the increment parameter, they should be
separated by commas. The condition must evaluate to true or false.

Example
The following example prints the text "Hello World!" five times:

<html>
<body>

<?php
for ($i=1; $i<=5; $i++)
{
echo "Hello World!<br />";
}
?>

</body>
</html>

The foreach Statement
The foreach statement is used to loop through arrays.

For every loop, the value of the current array element is assigned to $value (and the array pointer is moved by one) - so on the next loop, you'll be looking at the next element.

Syntax

foreach (array as value)
{
  code to be executed;

}

Example
The following example demonstrates a loop that will print the values of the given array:

<html>

<body>

<?php
$arr=array("one", "two", "three");

foreach ($arr as $value)
{
echo "Value: " . $value . "<br />";
}
?>

</body>
</html>

Cartoon clouds

2007-12-19T10:13:00.001+08:00

Light and fluffy clouds are easy to create in Illustrator and I'll show you one way to create them. This tutorial introduces you to a few of the Pathfinder filters and will familiarize you with the Drop Shadow stylize effect in Illustrator 9+.

1. Create the sky background
Create the "sky" that the clouds will drift through by drawing a sky blue rectangle with the Rectangle Tool. My preference is to cover the entire artboard and resize it later, if necessary. When done, lock this layer and name it "Sky"; it will serve only as a background, nothing more.

2. Draw the basics
Create a new layer above the sky layer and name it "Cloud". On this layer, use the Ellipse Tool and draw some flat ellipses (as shown) and combine them in a manner resembling the shape below.

3. Unite the objects and Fill
With the Selection Tool, select all of the objects, then click the Unite command in the Pathfinder palette. This combines all of the objects into one.

Before moving on, toggle the cloud outline to a fill and color it white.

4. Offset the objects
Paste the copy in front of the original (EDIT > PASTE IN FRONT). Simply pasting the object will likely put it out of alignment with the original so use PASTE IN FRONT. Fill the copied object with a grey color then choose PASTE IN FRONT again to place another cloud on top of the grey cloud (this new copy will be white); offset the white object above the grey object as shown.

5. Apply Minus Front command
Select both objects and click the Minus Front filter from the Pathfinder palette. This, in essence, uses the white object to cut into the grey object leaving only the grey portion. If you have some unwanted pieces of grey (as shown here), select the grey object and ungroup (OBJECT > UNGROUP) then delete the offending remnant.

6. Apply drop shadow
Unlock the original cloud object (OBJECT > UNLOCK ALL) and select it and the grey object and group them (OBJECT > GROUP). From the Effect menu, add a drop shadow (EFFECT > STYLIZE > DROP SHADOW). The settings used here, are shown below.

What Is Linux

2007-12-19T10:08:00.001+08:00

Linux is a freely available, open source, Unix-like operating system. Written originally for the PC by Linus Torvalds, with the help of many other developers across the internet, Linux now runs on multiple hardware platforms, from the smallest to the largest, and serves a wide variety of needs from servers to movie-making to running businesses to user desktops.

Linux has been popular for years with system administrators who are responsible for running large networks and servers because of its robustness, scalability, and flexibility. For a long time, it was seen as a geek's system--too complicated for ordinary folks. But Linux has matured, and with today's desktop environments like KDE and GNOME, and new user-friendly installations, Linux is finally coming into its own as a desktop system as well.

Linus Torvalds was a college student in Finland in 1991 when he began work on Linux as a hobby, intending to build a Unix-compatible system for his PC. By making the source code freely available, while retaining ultimate control, he opened development to other programmers. Today's Linux kernel is the result of a joint effort by thousands of programmers from around the world, working together over the internet.

What Linux Is

The name Linux is used in three different ways. First, Linux is the kernel, the heart of the operating system. Strictly speaking, this is the true meaning of Linux. The kernel sits at the lowest level and manages the hardware. If a running program wants to interact with the hardware, for example to print a document, it doesn't communicate directly with the printer, but with the kernel, which then manages the printer. In addition to managing peripheral devices like the printer, keyboard, and mouse, the kernel controls the hard drive, memory usage, concurrent program execution, networking, and system security.

Linux also refers to the operating system. The kernel alone isn't enough to provide a functional computer system; it provides the foundation, and the operating system adds the tools to make the system usable. As an operating system, Linux consists of the kernel, plus an extensive set of libraries, compilers and debuggers, system utilities and programs, as well as one or more command shells. In other words, the operating system provides the tools for programming and for managing the system. Most of the tools were developed by the GNU project of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), and they provide enhanced versions of the traditional Unix equivalents. Some others came from BSD Unix, developed originally at the University of California at Berkeley.

Because so many of the Linux programs and commands come from the FSF's GNU project, some people--most notably the FSF itself--believe that Linux should be called GNU/Linux. For the most part, people still call it Linux, but the GNU/Linux name is used for the Debian distribution, developed by the FSF and called Debian GNU/Linux.

Finally, the term Linux is used for a Linux distribution. We'll talk more about distributions later, but for now, a distribution is a combination of the kernel, the operating system utilities, and a very large set of application programs. A distribution generally includes tools for installing Linux, graphical desktop environments like GNOME or KDE, office suites, web browsers, configuration tools, and much more.

This multiple meaning of Linux can be confusing. Technically, Linux is the kernel. However, in common usage, it most often refers to a distribution. If someone says she is installing Linux, she is most likely talking about installing one of the available distributions. On the other hand, the Linux that Linus manages and controls development of is the Linux kernel. For more information on the kernel, see the Linux Kernel Archives web page.

Linux Is Not Unix

Linux is frequently referred to as a Unix-like system. We cannot call Linux a Unix system because it has not passed the tests and certifications required by The Open Group to be officially called Unix. Practically speaking, however, Linux is functionally similar to Unix; it was designed to work like Unix and for most purposes it has accomplished that goal. If you know Unix, you'll be comfortable working with Linux; if you want to learn Unix, a good way to do that is to install and work with Linux. If you come from the Windows or Macintosh worlds and don't know either Linux or Unix, the Linux desktop environments KDE and GNOME provide a familiar interface for learning, while making it easy to become productive quickly.

Features

Linux is described variously as free and as open source. The two terms have much the same meaning. As it is used to describe Linux, the term free does not mean that there is no cost to purchase the software (although it is true that many versions are available for a free, no-strings-attached download from the internet). Free is used here in the FSF sense of software freedom. From the FSF website: "The Free Software Foundation . . . is dedicated to promoting computer users' rights to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs."

The term open source has much the same meaning. It was established to provide a term that was more neutral and didn't have the wild-eyed radical overtones that many businesses in particular read into the FSF concept of software freedom.

For the FSF definion of free software, see the GNU website. For the Open Source Initiative (OSI) definion of open source, see http://www.opensource.org.

Whichever term you use, the major feature of open source software, including Linux, is that the source code is freely available to read or to modify. It can be redistributed with or without modifications; if you do make changes and redistribute the code, you have to make the source code for your modifications available, and you can't add restrictions on anyone else's right to freely update or redistribute the code. The licensing terms that stipulate these requirements are part of the GNU General Public License (GPL), under which Linux is distributed. An additional requirement of the GPL is that any modifications or works derived from GPL'd software must also be licensed under the GPL.

Not only does Linux successfully recreate a fully functional Unix system, but it does it in a way that is of high quality, robust, stable, and secure. As contrasted to closed source systems, Linux has had the advantage of its openness. Being worked on by thousands of programmers could be a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth, but in the case of Linux (and other open source projects), it's more a case of lots of cooks creating a wonderful meal. If there is a problem, there are plenty of developers interested in solving it; new features don't have to be added to a long queue and wait their turn to be implemented--anyone who wants it badly enough can go ahead and develop it (or find someone else who will). If a security hole is found, it gets fixed quickly.

Linux is stable. If you leave your system running, it might be months before you have to reboot. While problems might bring down an individual program, they'll rarely crash the entire system.

Distributions

Most people get their Linux system in the form of a distribution developed by a commercial company or a non-commercial organization. A distribution is a collection of software including the Linux kernel, the operating system tools and utilities, plus many hundreds (or even thousands) of application software packages. In addition, the creator of the distribution usually includes an installation program, tools for updating or downloading new applications, and initial setup and configuration files. Some of the best-known distributions include Red Hat, Debian, SUSE, Mandriva, and Ubuntu. For Red Hat, the commercial version is known as Red Hat Enterprise Edition, and the freely downloadable version is Fedora Core. Many other distributions have separate commercial and free versions, but without changing the name.

There are more than 300 distributions of Linux, possibly more than 400; one list of distributions is maintained at LWN.net. With so many to choose from, there is bound to be something to meet every need. One major criterion for picking a distribution is to find one that runs on your hardware. Beyond that, there are distributions that are localized for different countries, embedded distributions, stripped-down distributions to run on older or slower hardware, distributions with especially strong security such as SELinux, distributions that run from a CD and don't need to be installed on your computer, and more. Some distributions are designed to be user-friendly, others are for the more technically oriented.

Linux as a Desktop System

For many years, Linux has had a reputation for being a difficult system, suitable only for the technically inclined. Its capabilities and robustness made it a favorite of system administrators and it has become a major player in the server market, as well as being popular with programmers and enthusiasts who want to get inside the system. But it was perceived as too technical for the general user, too difficult to install and manage, with not enough concern given to adding user-friendly features.

That situation is changing rapidly. The GNOME and KDE desktops have provided not just a familiar user environment, but also their own graphical replacements for many of the traditional tools, making them easier to use. Configuring a network or a printer, for example, can now be done with a graphical application instead of having to update a configuration file directly. Point-and-click and drag-and-drop have both come to the Linux desktop, along with toolbars and icons. Web browsers are readily available; GNOME and KDE each have a browser, plus Mozilla, Firefox, and Opera all run on Linux. Office suites such as OpenOffice.org are available, as well as financial applications, and graphics applications such as the GIMP. These applications, like Linux, are generally open source; there are also some proprietary commercial applications available, and as Linux becomes more entrenched on the desktop, there will be more and more of both types of application.

It's also possible to run proprietary Windows software on Linux. A project called Wine provides a compatibility layer above Linux that recreates the Windows API (application programming interface) so you can run Windows applications. Wine is another open source project; two commercial programs that also allow you to run Windows applications on Linux are Crossover Office and Win4Lin.

Getting and Installing Linux

The most common ways of getting Linux are to download a distribution from the internet or to buy a commercial version. Other possibilities are to borrow or copy disks from someone else who downloaded them or to do an installation over the internet. Most of the general-purpose Linux distributions are quite large, so even with a high-speed connection, you might prefer to buy CDs; if you are on a dial-up connection, it's almost imperative that you get CDs.

Determining which distribution to get often comes down to personal preference. The distribution list on LWN.net has a brief description of each distribution, or you might go to some of the vendor websites and see what they say about their systems. If you have the luxury of time and the curiosity, you can try several and see what you like.

When you are ready to install your system, you will probably have a set of CDs containing the distribution you selected; assuming your system can boot from CD, the included installation program will take over and prompt you through the process.

You don't have to dedicate your computer solely to running Linux. It's very common to install Linux so it coexists with your Windows or Macintosh system; that is known as dual-booting. With dual-booting, a program known as a boot loader lets you select at boot time which system you want to run.

It's possible, but not necessarily easy, to build your own Linux distribution from scratch. If you are interested in doing that, the Linux From Scratch project provides instructions for building a customized Linux system starting from the source code of each component.

What if you aren't sure you want to commit to Linux, but you'd like to at least try it out? There are distributions like Knoppix or Ubuntu Live that let you run Linux directly from a CD; no installation onto your hard disk is required. As long as you can boot from your CD drive, you can download the distribution and burn it to CD, then reboot your computer, and a Linux desktop will appear and you can begin to work in Linux.

Finding Support

If you buy a commercial Linux distribution, you are generally entitled to free support for some period, after which you can buy additional support. And in fact, the availability of support is for some people (some businesses in particular) the primary reason for buying Linux instead of downloading it.

If you have downloaded Linux, you don't get the same vendor support, but there is still plenty of support available. Many vendors have support websites, with documentation, knowledge bases, and sometimes their own newsgroups. There are many Linux Usenet newsgroups available online. You can read the newsgroups directly, or if you have a particular problem, you can enter a brief description or the text of an error message into Google (or another search engine) and look for solutions; I've solved many problems by doing that. Linux user groups (LUGs) have sprung up in many locations around the world for local users to exchange ideas and information; some also have special "installfests" where you can bring a computer and get help doing an installation. You can find a list of Linux user groups at the Linux Online website.

Finally, if you don't mind paying for it, you can also get third-party commercial support.

Ellen Siever is a writer and editor specializing in Linux and other open source topics. In addition to Linux in a Nutshell, she coauthored Perl in a Nutshell.

by Ellen Siever, coauthor of Linux in a Nutshell, 5th Edition
10/06/2005

Adding Texture

2007-12-19T10:02:00.001+08:00

1. Open Corel DRAW. Select text tool and type the text preferably using thick font. We have used Impact.

Note: It is expected that you have finished with the beginners projects when you start with intermediate, as we do not repeat the small instructions.

2. Select Interactive Extrude Tool from the flyout menu from the tool box. Its 10th from the top.

3. Create the 3D effect using Interactive Extrude Tool. Keep the text selected.

4. From the Property Bar at the top select Lighting.

5. Try out different options for lighting and create following effect.

6. From the Fountain Fill flyout menu select the Texture Fill Dialog.

7. Apply the desired texture to the text.

6 Easy Steps

2007-12-18T23:53:00.001+08:00

Getting started with podcasting is easy. All you need is a computer with an Internet link and a portable media player. I'm going to provide you with 6 easy steps to help you create your very own podcast. If you still have questions, there are other articles to help you at http://www.findpodcasts.com. So here you go:

1. Create Your Content
This is really the most fun part of podcasting. You can create a podcast for just about anything you can dream up. You can talk about religious, politics, entertainment or even your kids. Really, the content can be anything. There's no formula for what makes great podcast content.

It also doesn't matter what platform or application you use to record the audio, or whether you're using a PC or a Mac. Don't worry about the quality of the microphone or the recording. Especially when you're just starting out, it's more important to actually finish making your podcast than anything else. One option to consider is Audacity, a free open source application that let's you mix together multiple audio files. On the Mac, GarageBand is a popular choice, because it is free and also powerful.

2. Save! Save! Save!
Once you've created the content, make sure to save your finished audio show at maximum quality in the native format of your audio application. That way you can go back and edit or reuse it and you'll have a good version.

3. Convert
Now that you've saved the audio file you have to save it to MP3 format. MP3 is the defacto standard format for podcasts since it's the most universal. Stick with MP3 unless you've got a very good reason for using another format. Using anything else will mean that some users may not be able to listen to your podcast.

Use the minimum bit rate that provide good results. Here are some suggested settings:

* 48 - 56k Mono - sermons, audio books, talk radio
* 64k+ Stereo - music, music & talk combinations
* 128k Stereo - good quality music

4. Publish
Save your MP3 files to your web server, and test them with any MP3 player. The files can go anywhere on your site, but you may want to put all of them into one directory, so they are easy to find and manage.

5. Create A Newsfeed
Podcast feeds are RSS files that describe your podcast, along with information for each show. An RSS file is bascially just a text file linking to your MP3 file. RSS newsfeeds normally feature news Items that contain a title, link and description. Each item in a news feed provides meta-information about a URL on the web. In the case of a podcast newsfeed, each item describes the content of an audio file referenced by the enclosure URL. Save your RSS file with a .rss or .xml extension.

Normally, you'll want to have one news feed that contains all of your recent podcasts, ordered from newest to oldest.

6. Publish Your Newsfeed
Transfer your podcast RSS file to your webserver, like you would any other content. Validate it using an online RSS validator. If the podcast news feed is valid, it's ready to be published to the web.

That's it! Check your podcast and publicize it. Several designers have come up with some great podcasting logos, so make sure you make it easy to find your podcast.

About the Author

Steve Wright is the webmaster for the podcasting community at http://www.findpodcasts.com Go there to find helpful tools, ask questions, read articles, and increase your podcasting knowledge.

Arrays

2007-12-17T21:12:00.001+08:00

An array can store one or more values in a single variable name.

What is an array?

When working with PHP, sooner or later, you might want to create many similar variables.

Instead of having many similar variables, you can store the data as elements in an array.

Each element in the array has its own ID so that it can be easily accessed.

There are three different kind of arrays:

Numeric array - An array with a numeric ID key
Associative array - An array where each ID key is associated with a value
Multidimensional array - An array containing one or more arrays

Numeric Arrays

A numeric array stores each element with a numeric ID key.

There are different ways to create a numeric array.

Example 1

In this example the ID key is automatically assigned:

$names = array("Peter","Quagmire","Joe");

Example 2

In this example we assign the ID key manually:

$names[0] = "Peter";
$names[1] = "Quagmire";
$names[2] = "Joe";

The ID keys can be used in a script:

The code above will output:

Quagmire and Joe are Peter's neighbors

Associative Arrays

An associative array, each ID key is associated with a value.

When storing data about specific named values, a numerical array is not always the best way to do it.

With associative arrays we can use the values as keys and assign values to them.

Example 1

In this example we use an array to assign ages to the different persons:

$ages = array("Peter"=>32, "Quagmire"=>30, "Joe"=>34);

Example 2

This example is the same as example 1, but shows a different way of creating the array:

$ages['Peter'] = "32";
$ages['Quagmire'] = "30";
$ages['Joe'] = "34";

The ID keys can be used in a script:

The code above will output:

Peter is 32 years old.

Multidimensional Arrays

In a multidimensional array, each element in the main array can also be an array. And each element in the sub-array can be an array, and so on.

Example

In this example we create a multidimensional array, with automatically assigned ID keys:

$families = array
(
"Griffin"=>array
(
"Peter",
"Lois",
"Megan"
),
"Quagmire"=>array
(
"Glenn"
),
"Brown"=>array
(
"Cleveland",
"Loretta",
"Junior"
)
);

The array above would look like this if written to the output:

Array
(
[Griffin] => Array
(
[0] => Peter
[1] => Lois
[2] => Megan
)
[Quagmire] => Array
(
[0] => Glenn
)
[Brown] => Array
(
[0] => Cleveland
[1] => Loretta
[2] => Junior
)
)

Example 2

Lets try displaying a single value from the array above:

echo "Is " . $families['Griffin'][2] .
" a part of the Griffin family?";

The code above will output:

Is Megan a part of the Griffin family?

Wireframe Cube

2007-12-17T21:08:00.001+08:00

1. Here's a few simple steps to create a Wireframe Cube effect. The main trick here is to achieve the effect without having Photoshop close multiple Paths during the Stroke process. Follow along to see how.

2. First and foremost lets select the 'Brush Tool (B)' on the Toolbar and set the Diameter size to 2 (in the Brush Preset Picker) and hit the D key to set the foreground paint color to Black, if it isn't already.

Start this process with the 'Pen Tool (P)' from the Toolbar selected and 'Paths' active up on the 'Options Bar' .

Then click to create four anchor points connected to create closed cube path, as I have captured below.

Note: Follow in the pattern as indicated by the arrow direction, and after you have made the fourth anchor point, continue back to Anchor Point 1 and click to complete or close the Path.

Alternatively: to create a simple rectangular path without using the Pen Tool is to select the 'Rectangle Tool (U)' on the Toolbar, with Options Bar 'Paths' icon active, then just click and drag to create it.

3. Next, Ctrl + T (Mac: Command + T) to Transform and distort the Path as I have captured below. (Ultimately, you can use your own distorted cube shape)

4. With the Path Selected, hold the Alt key (Mac: Option key) and drag to duplicate the original Path. (As I have captured below)

5. Duplicate the Original Path so that, there is a total of four.

And line them up Anchor for Anchor so that you achieve a simple wireframe effect as I have captured below.

6. The next simple step is to apply a 'Path Stroke', which is easy enough, But what would be ideal is to apply the Options Bar 'Combine Paths' feature without producing the below result.

7. A simple work around would be to select all of the four Paths (usually indicated by solid black Anchor Points, like in Step 5) and then on the 'Options Bar' select the last feature ' Exclude Overlapping Shape Areas' icon .

Optional: Then hit the Combine button to merge all four paths into one, without Photoshop closing any of them.

Note: Combine cannot be undone, and doing so you will not be able to perform the below clarification.

Then right click (Mac: Control click) to reveal the context menu items and from the list choose 'Stroke Path'. (I used a brush setting of diameter: 2 / color :black)

Clarification:

Your probably wondering whats the big deal here! To clarify, in the below screen shot without using the Combine option and adjusting any of the sides (as I did to the foreground path).

Again perform the same 'Stroke Path' procedure as in the above Step 7 and you will see that Photoshop did not close the path. Lot's of room here for flexibility.

Here's a variation, with additional single path line. (Paths on right / Stroked Path on Left)

Here's a variation combining Custom Shape Paths (Paths on right / Stroked Path on Left)

Tips to Selecting an News Aggregator

2007-12-17T20:50:00.001+08:00

Reading RSS Feeds

While many have resisted the urge to decipher the meaning behind the acronym RSS, the vast majority of technically knowledgeable online surfers have begun incorporating RSS into their daily routines. Why go through the hassle of understanding something new, the novice might want to know? Because it saves time, and time is a precious commodity these days.

The contents of an RSS feed can be read any number of ways. A variety of tools, both fee based and free, to read RSS feeds are available on the Internet.

When determining what RSS feed reader to download, thought should be given to security. More an more publishers are using RSS feeds as a way to deliver podcasts or media rich-content. Users of desktop software will want to find an RSS reader that allows for rich media to be delivered safely and securely.

Web surfers might want to give thought to another consideration of cross compatibility and synchronization. With the advances in RSS readers, many subscribers use multiple platforms to read their feeds. While this is convenient, if the the web surfer is not using a synchronized solution, they find themselves marking the same feed items read multiple times.

These days, aggregators are available in all shapes and sizes. Determine what type of RSS reader you would like to use to aggregate and manage your RSS feeds.

1. Desktop RSS Reader Software

A number of desktop RSS readers are available for download from the Internet. Many desktop readers allow subscribers to categorize and group their RSS feeds. Many users find it helpful to segregate personal and business feeds.

Examples include:
FeedDemon http://www.feeddemon.com
Active Web Reader - http://www.deskshare.com/awr.aspx

2. Web Based RSS Aggregator

Web based RSS news aggregators are accessible via any computer that has Internet access using a login and password. Web based readers are particularly useful to individuals who travel frequently.

Examples include:
MyYahoo - http://my.yahoo.com
BlogLines - http://www.bloglines.com
NewsGator - http://www.newsgator.com

3. Browser Plug In

RSS readers are now being incorporated into newer versions of web browsers. In addition many popular browsers have third party tools that expand their functionality to incorporate RSS feeds.

Examples include:
Firefox Sage - http://sage.mozdev.org/
Internet Explorer FeedScout - http://www.bytescout.com/feedscout.html

4. Email RSS Reader

A handful of popular email clients have add on modules that allow users to manage their RSS feeds in their existing email client.

Examples include:
Newsgator Inbox - http://www.newsgator.com

5. Mobile RSS Readers

As the world becomes remote, mobile RSS readers are becoming increasingly popular. Surfers on the run appreciate receiving content updates remotely.

Example include:
Mobile RSS Reader - http://www.dace.fi/
FreeRange - http://www.freerangeinc.com/products/

Once you have a news reader setup, you will need to populate it with RSS feeds. Website visitors, subscribe to RSS feeds by adding the URL of the feed to their RSS reader or aggregator. Many publishers use orange boxes or buttons marked RSS or XML to signify that an RSS feed exists for a website. In order to discover the URL of the RSS feed simply click the icon. Do not panic if as a result of your click, you see a page that contains code that makes little sense. Simply add the URL to the RSS reader. The RSS reader will decipher the code and display the feed's content in a format that is easily readable.

Some websites have added chicklets or icons for popular news readers to make subscriptions very easy. In those cases, you will see a subscription button for specific RSS readers, simply click the icon that corresponds with your RSS reader and the feed will appear in your RSS reader. Some desktop aggregators and integrated readers will automatically detect that an RSS feed is available on a website. The RSS reader will pop up and ask if you wish to subscribe to the RSS feed.

While it does require initial effort to setup a solution for aggregating and reading RSS feeds, users find that it saves a lot of time in the long run. Determine what solution best meets your RSS needs and begin aggregating information.

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 NotePage http://www.notepage.net a wireless text messaging software company.

Switch Statement

2007-12-17T20:40:00.001+08:00

The Switch statement in PHP is used to perform one of several different actions based on one of several different conditions.

The Switch Statement

If you want to select one of many blocks of code to be executed, use the Switch statement.

The switch statement is used to avoid long blocks of if..elseif..else code.

Syntax

switch (expression)
{
case label1:
code to be executed if expression = label1;
break;
case label2:
code to be executed if expression = label2;
break;
default:
code to be executed
if expression is different
from both label1 and label2;
}

Example

This is how it works:

A single expression (most often a variable) is evaluated once
The value of the expression is compared with the values for each case in the structure
If there is a match, the code associated with that case is executed
After a code is executed, break is used to stop the code from running into the next case
The default statement is used if none of the cases are true

STL Map

2007-12-17T20:38:00.001+08:00

A map is a sorted unique associative container that maintains a collection of key value pairs.

These collections are sorted by the key. These collections are unique as only one value is allowed in the collection for the key.

Fundamentally, the most frequently used member of the STL's map API is the [] operator. This operator allows convenient access and modification of a key's associated value. If no value for the key specified exists, the key is associated with a default constructor and returns a reference to the new value. If a value is associated to the key specified, a reference to that value is returned. Maps are, therefore, useful for implementing collections of one-to-one mappings.

In the following STL example using STL Map, the Person class has a default c++ constructor that initializes an object of this class to a default null value, which has a blank name, a negative age value and a blank National Insurance Number. The program allows the user to enter some values of Person class into a map that associated the value of the name member to the objects . Then the program allows the user to enter some key values and returns the references to the associated objects.

#include 


#include 


#include 





using namespace std;





class Person


{


private:


string name;


int    age;


string nINumber;





public:


Person(void)


{


name = "";


age = -1;


nINumber = "";


}





Person(string inName, int inAge, string inNINumber)


{


name = inName;


age = inAge;


nINumber = inNINumber;


}





string& getName(void)


{


return name;


}





int getAge(void)


{


return age;


}





string& getNINumber(void)


{


return nINumber;


}





bool operator == (const Person& p)


{


return (name == p.name);


}





bool operator < (const Person& p)   {   return (age < name ="=" age ="=" ninumber ="=" person="">& peopleMap)


{


char continueFlag = 'y';


string name;


int age;


string nINumber;


while (continueFlag == 'y')


{


cout << "Enter name ";   cin >> name;


cout << "Enter age ";   cin >> age;


cout << "Enter National Insurance number ";   cin >> nINumber;





Person p(name, age, nINumber);


peopleMap[name] = p;





cout << "Enter y to add another, any other key to exit:";   cin.get();   continueFlag = cin.get();   cin.get();   }   }      void interrogateMap(map& peopleMap)


{


char continueFlag = 'y';


string name;


while (continueFlag == 'y')


{


cout << "Enter name to search ";   cin >> name;


Person p = peopleMap[name];


if (p.isNULL())


{


cout << "No entry found for " << continueflag =" cin.get();" person=""> peopleMap;


populatePeople(peopleMap);


interrogateMap(peopleMap);


return(0);


}

An interaction with this program is listed below,

Enter name Omar


Enter age 38


Enter National Insurance number 3157


Enter y to add another, any other key to exit:y


Enter name Amna


Enter age 33


Enter National Insurance number 7531


Enter y to add another, any other key to exit:y


Enter name Inde


Enter age 30


Enter National Insurance number 1982


Enter y to add another, any other key to exit:n


Enter name to search Inde


Inde:30:1982


Enter y to find another, any other key to exit:y


Enter name to search Sajid


No entry found for Sajid


Enter y to find another, any other key to exit:y


Enter name to search Amna


Amna:33:7531


Enter y to find another, any other key to exit:

STL Set

2007-12-17T20:35:00.001+08:00

A set is a simple unique sorted associative container.

It is a simple associative container as the key and the value are the same entities. It is a unique associative container as the values contained in a set are unique. During insertion, if a matching entry is found in the set, the insertion fails. The candidate is matched with the entries using the == operator. Sets are useful for implementing collections that allow fast associative lookup and reject duplicate candidate elements. Sets do not support index-based access of the elements.

Typical methods of STL's set class are listed below. As with the containers discussed above, methods related to iterators are discussed in the next section.

Method	Description
set()	Constructs an empty set.
pair insert(const Key& key)	If the key does not match any of the elements in the collection, the key is inserted otherwise it is rejected. This method returns a pair object the first element of which contains an iterator positioned at the new element and the second element is true in case of a successful insertion.
size_type size(void)	Returns the number of elements contained in the collection.
size_type erase(const Key& key)	Erases the element that matches key and returns the number of elements erased (1 in case of set).

The following example shows insertion and deletion of elements from a set. As access to set elements is only possible via iterators, it will be explained in the next section.

#include 


#include 


#include 





using namespace std;








void populatePeople(set& peopleSet)


{


char continueFlag = 'y';


string name;


while (continueFlag == 'y')


{


cout << "Enter name ";   cin >> name;





if (peopleSet.insert(name).second)


{


cout << continueflag =" cin.get();">& peopleSet)


{


char continueFlag = 'y';


string name;


while (continueFlag == 'y')


{


cout << "Enter name to search ";   cin >> name;


if (peopleSet.erase(name) > 0)


{


cout << continueflag =" cin.get();"> peopleSet;


populatePeople(peopleSet);


deleteElements(peopleSet);


return(0);


}


An interaction with this program is shown below,

Enter name Amna


Amna added successfully


1 elements in the set


Enter y to add another, any other key to exit:y


Enter name Omar


Omar added successfully


2 elements in the set


Enter y to add another, any other key to exit:y


Enter name Amna


Amna rejected


2 elements in the set


Enter y to add another, any other key to exit:y


Enter name Saif


Saif added successfully


3 elements in the set


Enter y to add another, any other key to exit:y


Enter name Sameer


Sameer added successfully


4 elements in the set


Enter y to add another, any other key to exit:n


Enter name to search Nadeem


Nadeem not found


Enter y to find another, any other key to exit:y


Enter name to search Sameer


Sameer deleted


3 elements in the set


Enter y to find another, any other key to exit:y


Enter name to search Omar


Omar deleted


2 elements in the set


Enter y to find another, any other key to exit:

5 Secrets of the Most Successful

2007-12-17T20:32:00.001+08:00

Blogs are becoming more and more popular. If you dont already have a weblog of your own, youve at least posted a comment to one, read one, or heard the term used in everyday conversation.

You may also have noticed that only a small number of blogs are truly known in each industry. As is true with most major media, the cream rises to the top. The best weblogs have a large following and are valuable sources of information for thousands of readers. There are five primary reasons why some blogs become popular and others dont:

1. Focusing on a Popular Content Area. One of the most important characteristics of a successful blog is appropriate content. In order to gain a large following your blog must cover a topical area that is broad enough to be of interest to a large number of individuals but specific enough to have meaning.

Weblogs that provide information on obscure topics can never have a sizeable audience because the topic is of limited interest. So, if youre going to start a blog of your own, make sure that your content area is broad enough to appeal to a large audience.

2. Content thats timely. The best way to keep your blog readers interested is with timely content. Your blog should cover current events, opinions, and topics. Popular weblogs often comment on current events tied to their particular subject area or industry. Not only is the content meaningful to blog readers, but it encourages them to interact with your blog posts by placing comments.

Timely content is anything that is of current interest. Your best sources for timely content include daily newspapers, magazines, Internet news sites, and industry journals. Be sure to choose timely content that can be discussed and debated. This improves the overall effectiveness of your blog posts.

3. Updated Daily. The blogs that attract the most readers are those addressing popular content areas, covering timely topics, and refreshed on a daily basis. If your weblog adds a new post everyday, then readers have a reason to return. Providing daily updates on a consistent basis helps users to develop the habit of visiting daily. Updated content builds a loyal following while encouraging word-of-mouth referrals about your posts.

4. Comments from Industry Experts. Nothing speaks with more authority than an interview with an expert. The most popular blogs integrate interviews, commentary, podcasts, and other posts that include an expert who offers their thoughts and opinions on a given topic or current event. This is an essential reason why so many people return to the most popular blogs over and over again.

If youre wondering how to recruit experts for your blog, than look to current best practices for blogging and Internet marketing simply ask. Industry experts are always looking to share their ideas. If you cant arrange for an in-person or phone interview, email the expert a list of questions and ask for their responses.

5. Use Interactive Media and Visuals. Its difficult for blog readers to read flat, boring text day in and day out regardless of how stimulating a topic may be. The most popular bloggers know this and have enhanced their blogs with audio, video, external links, screenshots, and more.

The best way to improve the overall popularity of your blog is to present blog content in a variety of formats. Visit other blogs and determine what type of interactivity would work best for your blog. You dont need to go overboard, just add interactive content where it makes sense to do so.

By following the lead of todays most popular blogs, your blog can thrive. Follow the blog secrets listed above for enhancing your blog and improving readership. The key is to plan your blogging activities carefully and encourage interaction with your readers. This enhances the overall effectiveness of your blog and makes for a truly great blogging experience for everyone. Happy Blogging!

*Michael Fleischner is a marketing expert and the president of MarketingScoop.com. He has more than 12 years of marketing experience and has appeared on The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media. Visit his marketing blog directory for further details.

How To Build A Mortgage Calculator For Free

2007-12-17T20:29:00.001+08:00

One of the really cool parts aspects of Microsoft Excel is the functions Microsoft has created for you to use. This means that rather than have to develop a function from scratch you can use pre-built ones to do a plethora of tasks like Building your own Mortgage Calculator. The Mortgage Calculator or PMT function is just one of many Financial Functions available.

Okay, so how to build a mortgage calculator

The first thing we have to do is to start by setting up a few basic headings. So lets begin by starting a new workbook and clicking in the first cell A1. Enter into cell address A1 the heading - Monthly Loan Repayments. Next off, enter into cell address A2 - Amount of Loan, cell address A3 - Interest Rate, cell address A4 - Length of Loan and then in A6 - Monthly Repayment.

In example mortgage calculator, we will take the Loan Amount, Interest Rate and Length of Loan and calculate your Monthly Repayment. Okay so in the corresponding field B1 enter the value of $200,000 and make sure you format the field as a currency. In cell B2 enter a value of 9.25% and format the field as a percentage and then finally enter in a value for the Length of the Loan as 25. The value you enter into the Length of the Loan field is in years.

Now its time to create the formula that will do your calculation for the Monthly Repayment. The function we will use for this calculation is called the PMT function. The PMT function always returns a negative number so one of the things we will need to do is to convert it into a positive number, but a little on that later.

There are three arguments we will use for this formula and they are -

= PMT(Monthly Interest Rate, Number of Payments, Amount Borrowed)

So to work out the Monthly Interest Rate we simply take the value in B3 and divide it by 12 - B3/12. The PMT function works on the basic of the number of payments you are going to make, so if we are going to make monthly payments on our mortgage we simply take the number of years in cell B4 and multiply it by 12 - B4 *12.

This means that to calculate the Monthly Repayment for our mortgage we need to enter the following formula -

= PMT(B3/12, B4*12, B2)

Now as I said before, the PMT function always returns a negative value, so to turn this into a positive value we simply type the PMT function with the Absolute Function encapsulating it as shown below -

= ABS(PMT(B3/12,B4*12,B2))

Simply type the formula above into the cell B6 and press the enter key. You must now format the cell address B6 as a currency and you can do that by simply pressing the Dollar Symbol on the Formatting Toolbar. As soon as you enter the formula and press enter you should get a result of $1712.76. If you do not get this answer, simply go back and make sure that you have entered the formula correctly.

The cool part about this Mortgage Calculator is that you can go back and change any one of the values in B2, B3 and B4 which are the Loan Amount, Interest Rate and Length of Loan to work out what your monthly mortgage repayments will be.

The cool part about this simple tool is that it tells you really quickly whether borrowing massive amounts from the bank is worth it and whether you can really afford that mortgage. Why not check out what your repayments will be if your interest rate went up by 2 or 3%, it can be really interesting to see the impact on your budget.

Simple tools like this can save you thousands of dollars and can also help you see what changes interest rates will have on your own budget. It is certainly worthwhile building yourself a Budgeting Spreadsheet and the mortgage calculator to work out just what you really can afford especially in these uncertain times.

Chris Le Roy has available Microsoft Excel Shortcuts to help you with Microsoft Excel. To learn more about the mortgage calculator simply check our Chris's correspondence course where you can earn yourself Microsoft Excel Certificates issued by his company without even leaving home - Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet Training

Tips on Microsoft Excel are also Available.

If...Else Statements

2007-12-17T20:14:00.001+08:00

The if, elseif and else statements in PHP are used to perform different actions based on different conditions.

Conditional Statements

Very often when you write code, you want to perform different actions for different decisions.

You can use conditional statements in your code to do this.

if...else statement - use this statement if you want to execute a set of code when a condition is true and another if the condition is not true
elseif statement - is used with the if...else statement to execute a set of code if one of several condition are true

The If...Else Statement

If you want to execute some code if a condition is true and another code if a condition is false, use the if....else statement.

Syntax

if (condition)
code to be executed if condition is true;
else
code to be executed if condition is false;

Example

The following example will output "Have a nice weekend!" if the current day is Friday, otherwise it will output "Have a nice day!":

If more than one line should be executed if a condition is true/false, the lines should be enclosed within curly braces:

The ElseIf Statement

If you want to execute some code if one of several conditions are true use the elseif statement

Syntax

if (condition)
code to be executed if condition is true;
elseif (condition)
code to be executed if condition is true;
else
code to be executed if condition is false;

Example

The following example will output "Have a nice weekend!" if the current day is Friday, and "Have a nice Sunday!" if the current day is Sunday. Otherwise it will output "Have a nice day!":

Matrix Effect

2007-12-17T20:02:00.001+08:00

Step 1
Start off with a new document (I used 400 by 400) with a white background.

Step 2
Now go to Filter>Texture>Grain. Use the following settings:

Step 3
Repeat step 2 by pressing Ctrl+F on your keyboard.

Step 4
Now that you have your basic structure for the matrix system, go to Filter>Artistic>Neon Glow and use the following settings:

Step 5
Almost done. Now go to Filter>Stylize>Glowing Edges and use the following settings:

Step 6
Now hit Ctrl+U on your keyboard to colorize, and use these settings:

Step 7
Add some text and you're done! Here is my final product:

Try it.

Show Administrator on Welcome Screen

2007-12-17T19:55:00.001+08:00

Go to: Start > Run = " control userpasswords2 " select administrator account, click reset password (input new pass) / Click Ok

Open Registry editor and create this key:

Code:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList

Create "DWORD (32bit) Value"
Value Name: Administrator
Value Data: 1

or

-Right Click Computer Icon Select Manage
-Expand The Local User And Groups
-Rename the administartor account to match the name in the reg file, you can also just leave the
name the same for the admin, but the name must match the reg file.
This is a easier a way, change the "PLACE_NEW_NAME_OR_ADMINISTARTOR_NAME_HERE" to the name you want.

Save As AddAdmin.Reg
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

Code:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList]
"HelpAssistant"=dword:00000000
"TsInternetUser"=dword:00000000
"SQLAgentCmdExec"=dword:00000000
"NetShowServices"=dword:00000000
"IWAM_"=dword:00010000
"IUSR_"=dword:00010000
"VUSR_"=dword:00010000
"PLACE_NEW_NAME_OR_ADMINISTARTOR_NAME_HERE"=dword:00000001

How to improve performance

2007-12-17T13:08:00.001+08:00

1) The Kernel

First, what is the kernel? Well kernel is a piece of code that is considered the "heart" of the operating systems. It's responsible for managing system resources and the basic communication between hardware and software. It translates any functions between the applications and the CPU, main memory and other devices.

Accessing the kernel from the hard disk is usually the default on any operating system. You can set it to automatically load in the system's RAM at the boot and get better performances.

First open the Regedit tool (Start Menu - Run - regedit.exe). By using the icons in the left panel, navigate to HKEY LOCAL MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management (by clicking the + sign near each and expanding it).
In the right panel you can see the values assigned. Double click the DisablePagingExecutive to edit that field and change it to 1. Be sure to make the change in decimal.

This will make all drivers and kernel to run from system's memory.

You can also edit LargeSystemCache value and change it to 1 in decimal. This will improve kernel access time.

Then you can edit IOPageLockLimit field. Change it according to these rules:

- 4000 if you have 128 RAM or less
- 10000 if you have 256 RAM installed
- 40000 for more

This will change the number of bytes for input-output operations and will increase system performance.

2) Boot

To improve boot times edit the following value:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\MemoryManagement\PrefetchParameters

Change this value from 3 to 5 in decimal. This will improove boot time with 5 to 20 seconds depending on your system's speed.

3) Shutdown

There are some tweaks that help your computer to shutdown faster.

automatically end any task running Caution: this will disable any confirmations like "Do you want to save document X before closing?"

Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop using Regedit and edit the AutoEndTask key. Set it to 1 in decimal.

make the open applications close faster at shutdown

Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop and set the WaitToKillAppTimeout and HungAppTimeout keys to 1000. Make these two changes in the HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop too.

make any service close faster

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control and set the WaiToKillServiceTimeout to 1000.

Web 2 0 ribbons

2007-12-17T10:13:00.001+08:00

Finally, once again I made a video tutorial, A Photoshop tutorial where you will see how to make a ribbon graphic, and just gave it a small reflection to give it a stylish web 2.0 look, I hope you like it.

Christmas 2007 Collection

2007-12-17T09:47:00.001+08:00

Christmas Penguins	Frame of Ornaments
Santa's Sleigh	Christmas Tree in Snow
Red and Gold	Christmas Star
Cute Snowman	Happy Santa

Making a PayPal Form

2007-12-17T09:20:00.001+08:00

Some time ago I put up a post here on the ‘Switch about Taking Payment with PayPal, Escrow and other Online Options in which I mentioned that it was relatively easy to create a form on your regular website that allows you to accept credit card payments. Here is an example that Cyan and I used to use on our portfolio/agency site.

This is a pretty neat thing to do because it’s both very simple and it’s kinda nice to be able to say “Oh yes you can pay by credit card on our website” which to most offline people sounds rather like “I am an uber-freelancer and I should be charging you six squillion dollars an hour, but you’re getting me for a steal”. In actual fact when Cyan and I had the form on our site, we only actually took payment through it maybe a dozen times, but just having it on the site made us look that much more professional.

How it Works

PayPal makes doing this very easy by providing those “Buy-It-Now” buttons you’ve probably seen around the place. Basically when you see one of those buttons, it is really the submit button on an HTML form with all the form fields set to hidden. This is fine for when you have a set price and set item, but in our situation we want the client to be able to fill out what it is they are paying for (e.g. an invoice number) and also to set how much they are paying.

This is easily done by changing the fields from hidden to text and stripping away the defaults so that the user can fill them in. So let’s get started.

Step 1 - Make a Payment Confirmation Page

First of all you should make a page to send the user to after payment has been processed. For the example form that I am making - one for FreelanceSwitch - I created this page http://freelanceswitch.com/payment-complete/. On this page you should be placing a simple confirmation message so that your client doesn’t feel like they just sent money off into the ether. Next upload the confirmation page so it’s accessible over the web and you have a URL for it.

Step 2 - Create the Form

Next we create the form. When I first made this form I used the Buy-It-Now button form generator on PayPal and then modified accordingly, but you can just use the code below and make the changes I’ve described further on:

Example Script:

Item Details:




Amount:

See,
The parts that need modification are as follows:

Item Number
The item number field is this one:

The value you place in this field appears when the user goes to PayPal and clicks the down arrow for more details on their purchase (you can see it by entering some information in the test form below). I’ve used the value “01 - General Payment to FreelanceSwitch.com” and theoretically if I had some other forms for say donation I might write “02 - Donation” and so on.

Business
The business field is this one:

This is the most important field to modify as it is the one that determines where your customer is paying to. You need to substitute in your PayPal email address. So for FreelanceSwitch, our PayPal address is accounts [@] freelanceswitch.com, but obviously you’ll want to change that (though please feel free to send payment our way if you want to!)

Currency Code
The currency code value in my example form is set to USD, you could change this to your own currency (Cyan and I used to use AUD for Australian Dollars). If you want a list of the different currencies available through PayPal you should log in to your account, click on Merchant Tools then click on Buy Now Buttons and in the form there is a drop down box which lists them.

Return URL
The return URL (or payment confirmation page) is set by this field:

Simply swap in the URL you created in Step 1.

Item Name

The item_name field is the one where your user describes what they are paying for. When billing clients I set up my form to have “Invoice Number” and in the invoices we sent out under “How to Pay” it explained that you had to get the invoice number from the top right of the bill and type it into the form. In my example form below, I’ve written simply Item Details, so theoretically you could write anything in there - e.g. “Payment for Providing Amazing Freelancing Website, Thanks” and that will appear in PayPal when you go to purchase.

Note that if this were a Buy-Now button form, then the item_name would be a Hidden field with a default value, but we’ve changed it to a text field so the user can decide what they are paying for.

Amount
The amount field is pretty self explanatory. The only thing to note is that if the user types anything other than a number in here PayPal will return an error, so you might want to use some Javascript to do validation on this field and ensure it’s a number - though that’s not necessary. The main problem is your users might be tempted to write in a dollar sign - e.g. “$450″ which results in an error. Another solution would be to write a $ sign before the form field.

Step 3 - Test!

OK and that’s it really! Here is the example form that i just made, you can write in some values and test out how it appears in PayPal, heck you can even donate some money if you like

Web Star

2007-12-17T09:18:00.001+08:00

In this tutorial you will learn how to draw a star for rating systems or other web-related elements. This Photoshop tutorial is one of my favorites because it has a really grate outcome, and I can say that I am quite proud of it! But enough talking, let’s start Photoshopping.

Let’s get started!

Step 1.

Create a new Photoshop document of 900x400 pixels(File->New), then create a new layer(Layer->New Layer) and name it “star”. Grab the Custom Shape Tool (U) and select the star shape. If you don’t see the star shape, follow the instructions from the picture below.

Draw a star; make it big so that it will take up almost all the height. Make sure that the path option is selected in the Custom Shape Control Bar.

Grab the Pen Tool and fill the path with black (#000000). The fill should go on the “star” layer not on the background.

Apply the following effect s(Layer->Layer Style):

My result:

The “empty” state of the star is done. If you want you can save this as a different document and then save another document with the “filled” state of the star.

Step 2.

Create a new layer(Layer->New Layer). Name it “fill”. Select the internal part of the star with the wand tool (W).

On the “fill” layer, fill(Edit->Fill) the selection with gray (#a9a9a9) and move “fill” under “star”.

Apply the following effects (Layer>Layer Style):

And optionally:

My result:

Step 3.

Get it ready to use by merging the 2 layers (“Fill” and “Star”) and resizing (Ctrl/Command T) the result. To maintain the proportions of the star, hold alt+shift while resizing.

For the empty star (without the “fill” layer) do the same merging but with the Fill layer set to 0% opacity or invisible.

Support this blog by subscribing to RSS feed.

Some of my results:

The PSD Files can be found here:
Photoshop Tutorial psd 1.
Photoshop Tutorial psd 2.

Coffee Coup

2007-12-17T09:12:00.001+08:00

Hi! In this tutorial, we will learn how to create a coffee coup using Photoshop. Some basic Pen Tool and Vector Graphics knowledge is required because we will make it scalable and compatible. I used this graphic as a logo for a contest, and from 25 designs, it was in top 8 so I think it’s something worth writing about.

We will start with a new blank document of 500x500 pixels and since the color theme of this design is brown, we will fill our new document with “#b0835d” (Edit->Fill).

Step 1. The front layer.

Using the Pen Tool, we start creating the first shape of our design. I assume that you know how to make shapes using Pen Tool. Set your Foreground Color to “#b0835d”.

Now on the Front Shape Layer we will add some layer effects to make it stand out. Go to Layer->Layer Style and apply the following styles:

This should make it look smooth and a bit textured. Feel free to try to change the gradient values since that sometimes tends to get out of control on some computers.

Step 2. The Back Layer.

Let us move on to the next shape. This time we work on the “back” of the coup, the inside part. Again, with the Pen Tool selected but this time with “#e1c180” on foreground, draw a shape similar to this one.

Right now, the layer order is wrong. We have to change that by moving the “back” layer under the “front” layer.

We will add some similar effects just like in step 1 using layer styles (Layer->Layer Style):

Step 3. The Fluid Layer.

In this step we make some coffee ;)). To save some time, we will duplicate the “back” layer and resize it a bit, then move it down and make it look like a fluid inside the coffee coup.
Well then, let’s duplicate the “back” layer by selecting it, then pressing CTRL or COMMAND and J. This shape layer is the “fluid” layer, so name it this way so you don’t get confused.
Now we must resize our “fluid” layer. Hold shift+alt while resizeing to keep the same pixel aspect ratio.

Obviously, this is not the way coffee looks, so the next thing we want to do is change that! Guess how? ! Using Layer Styles (Layer->Layer Style).
Before we do that, set the color of the shape fill to “#772400” by double-clicking the layer icon. This will show us the color picker.

In addition, we should clear the layer styles from our new layer because they were “inherited” from the “back” layer and we don’t need them anymore on this layer. Now we can continue with adding our layer styles:

Step 4. The Last Shape.

I think you already know what the last part that we will draw is. Use black when drawing this. It is a tricky one! You must make it stick to the “front” layer shape.

We add the layer styles as usual (Layer->Layer Style):

We should move the last shape under the “front” layer.

Right now we finished with the basic shapes. From this point on we will add some extras.

Step 5. Extras on the “Front” Layer.

Let’s make sure we have the same layer order shall we:

We will create a new layer on top of the “Front” layer. We want to add a bit more darkness on the front part, so we have to make a selection which cover all the content of the front layer. We can do that by Command or CTRL clicking the vector mask icon of our layer.

After making the selection, crate a new layer (Layer->New Layer), and name it Effect1 to stay organized, on top of the front layer and fill it with a gradient using the default colors.

Set the opacity of the new effect layer to 25-35% and the Blending Mode to Linear Burn(Layer->Layer Style->Blending Options). I used 30% opacity.

It’s time to move to the next effect.

Step 6. The Second Effect.

Let’s create a new layer on top of all the other layers and name it Effect2. We will add some lines that warp around the coup, making it stand out a bit more.
To draw rounded lines, we will use the Pen Tool set on Path Mode. To set the Pen Tool to Path Mode (it is initially set to Shape Mode) you must click this button.

Now we can draw a line similar to this one.

Using “#e2a03f” and a smooth brush from the default Photoshop Brushes with 5 px right click the path with the pen tool and chose Stroke with Brush. Here is the dialog box that you should encounter:

The same thing we will do for the next line.

The last thing we will do for this effect is to add a cool outer glow effect (Layer->Layer Style->Outer Glow):

One last ting and we are done. :D

Step 7. The last thing.

Coffee is hot most of the time, right? How do we know when coffee is hot? Exactly! :)
Again, using the Pen Tool draw a few lines like this one:

We have to create a new layer, name Effect3. On it, we stroke the path with the same procedure used in step 6. After that we have duplicate a few times Effect3 and move it around until you get something similar to this:

We will merge al the Effect3 Duplicates with Effect3 itself because we will use a blur effect the resulting layer after that. So select all the layers that ‘came’ from Effect3 and press CTRL or COMMAND + E.

With the merged layer selected, we will apply the Garrison Blur of 5 pixels (Filter->Blur->Garrison Blur).

Now to make this effect spread we will duplicate and move the Effect3 Layer. I duplicated mine 4 times and moved the duplicates around a bit, and here’s what I’ve got.

And now, the final thing to do is to merge again the duplicates and use the same Garrison Blur Effect again (CTRL or COMMAND + F).

Thatam! It’s done! I hope you enjoyed reading and applying this as much as I did when writing this tutorial.

Planning a Web Project

2007-12-17T09:09:00.001+08:00

As with any project, planning and gaining support are crucial to your success. Web site projects are sometimes deceptive. They look as if you can just toss one together without too much fuss, but do not be fooled by that, you can not skimp on the planning process. You need assistance regardless of the size of the project, so make sure you have got everyone you need on board - including, for example, department managers or IT personnel. Although the players might be different when looking at fully inhouse productions as opposed to a collaboration between inhouse and hired teams, the need to research and plan still exists. It is easy to get excited when you start a Web project, but do not let that get you into trouble later.

Something to keep in mind as you work is that Web projects are iterative. By that, we mean that a Web project requires many cycles of review and revision as you move along. You must develop a flow to move through the project, and you need a clear vision of the project, too - but do not get hung up on working out every single detail beforehand. Being flexible to adjustments while not deviating from the plan is a difficult but important balancing act. In this tutorial, we lay out the information that will help you stay balanced.

How to use Overflow

2007-12-17T08:39:00.001+08:00

It’s been a while since I wrote a tutorial, but in my spare hour, I’ll write one about an element in CSS. The element is a tricky one, which I had got some problems with in the past. Do you want to expand your DIV’s? Or when they get to a specific height, let some scrollbars appear? Read this tutorial and learn!
What’s Overflow?

You can use 4 variables in the element overflow, namely auto, hidden, scroll and visible. Auto will automatically add a scrollbar when needed. Hidden will not show a scrollbar, but ‘hide’ the content that usually expand the box. Scroll will always add a scrollbar. The value visible will not expand the div, but will just display all the content without changing the div’s height.

We’ll test every variable in a example.html file I prepared for this tutorial. The HTML used in this example:

<div>
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nullam egestas, risus id aliquet dapibus, eros tellus vulputate nunc, ut vehicula magna augue vel quam. Phasellus enim massa, consequat in, posuere nec, commodo at, mauris. Nam congue dolor eu mi. Pellentesque libero lacus, condimentum vel, vestibulum et, <strong>tristique vel, nisl. Vestibulum malesuada.</strong> Suspendisse consequat consequat tortor. Pellentesque ultricies urna nec augue. Suspendisse eget sapien nec nunc fringilla tempor. Fusce consequat risus tempor nibh. Quisque venenatis nisi sed ipsum.
</div>

I’ll give you the CSS codes later on, because they are a little different every time.

Example: Auto

You should use this value when you want to let the browser decide what’s right. Scroll down? Scroll right? No scrolling at all? The browser makes this decision. This value usually is the best choice.

CSS

div {
background:#ccc;
height:100px;
width:100px;
overflow:visible;
}

For an example, please click this link. Example: Auto.

Example: Hidden

This value will not add any scrollbars or will not display more text then needed. When the content crosses the ‘height’ given to the container, it simply don’t display that content. Handy when you post large images, which shouldn’t screw your layout. Simply give their overflow this value, and they won’t be rendered where the content area stops!

CSS

div {
background:#ccc;
height:100px;
width:100px;
overflow:hidden;
}

For an example, please click this link. Example: Hidden.

Example: Visible

Visible is the standard value. No scrollbars will be added, and your content will just flow. The div the content is placed inside won’t expand when more content is added.

CSS

div {
background:#ccc;
height:100px;
width:100px;
overflow:visible;
}

For an example, please click this link. Example: Visible.

Example: Scroll

When more content is added, the container won’t stretch, there are scrollbars to navigate the content that isn’t visible. Make sure there is always enough content in this box, because otherwise there are ugly scrollbars for nothing!

CSS

div {
background:#ccc;
height:100px;
width:100px;
overflow:scroll;
}

For an example, please click this link. Example: Scroll.

A small tip from me!

I always had problems with my content. I never touched ‘overflow’, but when I finally got to it, it didn’t work out for me as well. My content never expanded the way I wanted it to, it always stuck on the height defined in the same ‘container’. When you don’t want to add scrollbars, but just want to expand your box as long as your text is, change you height property like this.

div {
height:100px;
overflow:visible;
}

To this:

div {
height:auto;
overflow:visible;
}

This very small thing, took me hours of investigation to find out. Your box will now expand all the way down your content. Don’t laugh at me, this is that very irritating part of coding, where you can’t seem to find the fault!

Edit: I’ve received a smart tip. Internet Explorer, always displays scrollbars, even when the page doesn’t need them. To hide the scrollbars on a small page, the use of overflow is needed as well. Add the following line to your body selector in CSS.

body {
overflow:auto;
}

Thanks for reading!

Hide table row

2007-12-17T08:28:00.001+08:00

Step 1 - Introduction

Javascript hide table row

Time to time it can happen that you want to make your html table more attractive and more interactive. Let's suppose you want to allow your visitors to hide and show some special rows in your table. Of course you are here because you want to do it without reloading the page. It is possible with javascript to hide table rows and show it again later if you want.

First of all lets create a basic and simple html 3x3 table where the first row contains the column captions. With the following html code:

you will get a table like this:

TH-1	TH-2	TH-3
cell-11	cell-12	cell-13
cell-21	cell-22	cell-23

Ok, that is our starting point. What we want is to add a button to the page to hide table rows. In this case we will hide the caption row.

To do this we will create a Javascript function which will be responsible for hiding and showing the row. Besides this we add a button to the page and it's onClick event will trigger the Javascript function.

Now it's time to make some real coding :)

How to draw a banner (scroll)

2007-12-17T08:24:00.001+08:00

Wrapping scrolls around illustrations or images are quite popular designers little trick these days. I'll show you how to draw a scroll "easy way".

Step 1
Assuming that you know how the scroll (banner) looks like, draw just one half of it (start left or right from the center). I am using the Wacom tablet and usually I use the "Pen tool", but I think that drawing with the "Path tool" is easier for those of you who use a mouse.

Step 2
You can modify the shape as you wish, just keep in mind that you have to draw a folded part on the side.

Step 3

Now draw the folded part, which will "fly on the wind".

Step 4
The folded part of the banner must be placed just bellow the main part, now you have to follow the path between the main part and the folded part and draw another folded part between them.

Step 5
That connection should look like this:

Step 6

Now copy+paste these three parts, and mirror them horizontally. Join middle anchors and the banner is finished. Color them as you wish. Add some cracks and you'll get the "old-world" style.

I'm using banners (scrolls) in my "emblem" designs

Operators

2007-12-17T08:22:00.001+08:00

Operators are used to operate on values.

PHP Operators

This section lists the different operators used in PHP.

Arithmetic Operators

Operator	Description	Example	Result
+	Addition	x=2 x+2	4
-	Subtraction	x=2 5-x	3
*	Multiplication	x=4 x*5	20
/	Division	15/5 5/2	3 2.5
%	Modulus (division remainder)	5%2 10%8 10%2	1 2 0
++	Increment	x=5 x++	x=6
--	Decrement	x=5 x--	x=4

Assignment Operators

Operator	Example	Is The Same As
=	x=y	x=y
+=	x+=y	x=x+y
-=	x-=y	x=x-y
*=	x*=y	x=x*y
/=	x/=y	x=x/y
.=	x.=y	x=x.y
%=	x%=y	x=x%y

Comparison Operators

Operator	Description	Example
==	is equal to	5==8 returns false
!=	is not equal	5!=8 returns true
>	is greater than	5>8 returns false
<	is less than	5<8>
>=	is greater than or equal to	5>=8 returns false
<=	is less than or equal to	5<=8 returns true

Logical Operators

Operator	Description	Example
&&	and	x=6 y=3 (x <> 1) returns true
\|\|	or	x=6 y=3 (x==5 \|\| y==5) returns false
!	not	x=6 y=3 !(x==y) returns true

String

2007-12-17T08:21:00.001+08:00

A string variable is used to store and manipulate a piece of text.

Strings in PHP

String variables are used for values that contains character strings.

In this tutorial we are going to look at some of the most common functions and operators used to manipulate strings in PHP.

After we create a string we can manipulate it. A string can be used directly in a function or it can be stored in a variable.

Below, the PHP script assigns the string "Hello World" to a string variable called $txt:

The output of the code above will be:

Hello World

Now, lets try to use some different functions and operators to manipulate our string.

The Concatenation Operator

There is only one string operator in PHP.

The concatenation operator (.) is used to put two string values together.

To concatenate two variables together, use the dot (.) operator:

The output of the code above will be:

Hello World 1234

If we look at the code above you see that we used the concatenation operator two times. This is because we had to insert a third string.

Between the two string variables we added a string with a single character, an empty space, to separate the two variables.

Using the strlen() function

The strlen() function is used to find the length of a string.

Let's find the length of our string "Hello world!":

The output of the code above will be:

The length of a string is often used in loops or other functions, when it is important to know when the string ends. (i.e. in a loop, we would want to stop the loop after the last character in the string)

Using the strpos() function

The strpos() function is used to search for a string or character within a string.

If a match is found in the string, this function will return the position of the first match. If no match is found, it will return FALSE.

Let's see if we can find the string "world" in our string:

The output of the code above will be:

As you see the position of the string "world" in our string is position 6. The reason that it is 6, and not 7, is that the first position in the string is 0, and not 1.

Complete PHP String Reference

For a complete reference of all string functions, go to our complete PHP String Reference.

The reference contains a brief description and examples of use for each function!

Variables

2007-12-17T08:20:00.001+08:00

Variables are used for storing values, such as numbers, strings or function results, so that they can be used many times in a script.

Variables in PHP

Variables are used for storing a values, like text strings, numbers or arrays.

When a variable is set it can be used over and over again in your script

All variables in PHP start with a $ sign symbol.

The correct way of setting a variable in PHP:

$var_name = value;

New PHP programmers often forget the $ sign at the beginning of the variable. In that case it will not work.

Let's try creating a variable with a string, and a variable with a number:

PHP is a Loosely Typed Language

In PHP a variable does not need to be declared before being set.

In the example above, you see that you do not have to tell PHP which data type the variable is.

PHP automatically converts the variable to the correct data type, depending on how they are set.

In a strongly typed programming language, you have to declare (define) the type and name of the variable before using it.

In PHP the variable is declared automatically when you use it.

Variable Naming Rules

A variable name must start with a letter or an underscore "_"
A variable name can only contain alpha-numeric characters and underscores (a-Z, 0-9, and _ )
A variable name should not contain spaces. If a variable name is more than one word, it should be separated with underscore ($my_string), or with capitalization ($myString)

Tutorial Here! - We Found The Missing Tutorials

The Growing Trend Of Telephony

If You Want To Get More Customers, Heres 10 Powerful Stories To Improve Your Ads And Sales Letters

About eBay

10 Suggestions For Usability

Wireless Cameras

Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam!

Nice Content Boxes

From Tourbus?

How Grid Computing Can Improve Database Performance

Delete Index.dat Files

Finding The Best Search Engine

Re-paint Your Picture

Can You Convert Words Into Money?

In Defense

Understanding Unicode

Invisible Girl

Day 2 Night

The Future Value

Forms

Color Change

How to Blur

Video in a Flash

Make Money

3 Ways to Know If a Expert is the Real Deal Before Buying a Product or Service

Pro Anyone?

P2P Networking with Rendezvous and iChat

The keystone of security

An Art With A New Life Form - With Digital Music And MP3s!

Abstract Shapes

3D Spikes

Functions

Zoom Effect

Snake Skin

Tornado Orb

STL Overview

STL Containers

STL Vector

Flyer Design

FireWire Real Application Cluster

Background / Overview

1: Ensure your configuration is certified.

2: Obtain proper FireWire chipset and adapters.

3: Kernel configuration

4: Driver modification

The Dangers

How to Create an Feed for Your Web Site

Looping

Syntax

Cartoon clouds

What Is Linux

In This Article:

What Linux Is

Linux Is Not Unix

Features

Distributions

Linux as a Desktop System

Getting and Installing Linux

Finding Support

Adding Texture

6 Easy Steps

Arrays

What is an array?

Numeric Arrays

Example 1

In this example the ID key is automatically assigned:

Example 1

Example

Wireframe Cube

Tips to Selecting an News Aggregator

Switch Statement

The Switch Statement

Syntax

STL Map

STL Set

5 Secrets of the Most Successful

How To Build A Mortgage Calculator For Free

If...Else Statements

Conditional Statements

The If...Else Statement