Keep Your Software Simple! A Review of EditPlus

I like my software simple. If it's too complex or difficult to figure out, I don't use it.

For example, I have tried a lot of different programs for creating my web pages. These include:

* Namo Webeditor
* Microsoft Frontpage
* Dreamweaver
* NetObjects Fusion
* Hotdog Pro
* CoffeeCup HTML Editor

and a variety of other commercial, shareware and freeware editors. Each time I tried one of these, I found it too complicated. What are all these "panels" for? How to I see the underlying HTML code for my page? What's a "web"? How do I begin to use this package? I just couldn't get answers to my questions easily.

Now my hard disk is bulging from the growing number of HTML editors I got from download.com and then abandoned.

A couple of years ago, I discovered EditPlus. It's a very simple and easy-to-use editor. Yet is also has plenty of sophistication if you need it.

You can use EditPlus both as a text editor and as an HTML editor. This nifty piece of software has an internal preview capability so that you you get a quick check on your HTML code. It also has a spelling checker, word wrap, and a word counter. It even includes FTP functions so that you can upload your web pages to your host provider.

I wrote this article, formatted it for publication, added HTML code and published it on my web page using EditPlus.

So far, I haven't read a manual for EditPlus and don't feel I need to because the program is so intuitively easy to use.

I admit that you need to learn some HTML if you want to create and edit your web pages with EditPlus. But I get nervous when I try to create a web page with one of those designer packages where the HTML code is hidden from view.

I keep going back to EditPlus after trying those other complicated web design programs.

If you want to test it, you can download a trial of EditPlus from http://www.editplus.com. The cost of the software is minimal (only about $30) and well worth it.

Why can't more software developers follow the KISS philosophy? Keep it Simple, Stupid! I'm convinced they would capture more of us simple-minded users if they followed this principle. Then it would be Keep It Simple, Smarty!

Is This A “DMOZ Killer” In The Making?

Is building a Human-Edited Fully “Democratic” Search Directory Possible?

The independent creators of the non-profit “BuildtheHive” (www.BuildtheHive.com) think so, and I think they’re on to something. Here’s why:

As a webmaster, I’ve long been frustrated by a certain human-edited directory (and you know who I mean) that has inexplicably refused entry of some of my clients, while accepting others without a second glance.

The problem (as I see it) is the same thing that makes these resource potentially great – human editors.

Let’s face it…for some people, the power of being an editor of their very own category in a major search directory is simply too much for their character. Many a webmaster (myself included) has complained of the abusiveness of some of the editors, both in the way they perform their duties, and (at times) how they interact with the public.

To be sure…being a volunteer editor can be a thankless job, with the number of “Spam” submissions (i.e. those outside the guidelines) far outweighing the legitimate ones.

What’s worse, and far more disturbing, are the “rogue” editors of certain categories that are abusing their “power” by adding their own commercial sites, and excluding their “competition”. Think that’s an isolated case? Think again. This writer found instances of this type of abuse in over 2 dozen different commercial categories. In fact, some editor’s were so blatant about it as to add dozens of “mirrors” of the same exact site, essentially “taking over” the category with their own content.

After essentially ignoring this abuse for years, the editors (in a nod to the fact that it DOES exist) independently setup an abuse reporting system for users. However, the fact that they need such a system (in my opinion) just exemplifies the weakness in the current system of human-edited directories. What about the abuse that goes un-reported? The fact that you even need a abuse-reporting system to me says that you’ve already lost the battle. To be truly fair, a volunteer directory editing system needs to be IMPOSSIBLE to abuse. Unfortunately, no such system currently exists.

But one IS being built, and it looks like it may just revolutionize the world of human-edited directories.

Using a proprietary "voting" system, BuildtheHive (www.BuildtheHive.com) will be (according to it’s creators) a “directory built the democratic way”. No one single editor can add, delete, or change a submitted website. All submissions & changes are voted on by multiple editors with the decision as to whether a site “makes it in” based on a simple premise of “majority rules”. This removes the ability of a single editor to deny ANY site, as it takes several editors to either approve or deny a site.

This democratic system has even been extended to the acceptance/denial of new editors. Anyone will be able to apply to become a BuildtheHive editor. Once submitted, an editor’s application is voted on, and acceptance/rejection is once again determined by majority rule.

The BuildtheHive creators have even solved the “expired domain” problem (i.e. sites that remain in a directory after being picked-up by domain speculators after their previous owners failed to renew the domain with their registrar) . Any site that gets accepted is automatically placed in a queue to be re-reviewed (and voted on again) after a specified period of time. This cool feature not only cures the expired domain problem, but it also eliminates the need for a category editor to manually monitor all the sites in their category (a HUGE plus for editor’s of very large categories).

At this point, if you’re like me, you’re saying to yourself “Why didn’t I think of that!”

The good news is, you can still be a part of it.

In an effort to remain completely independent, the creators of BuildtheHive have avoided seeking venture capital, and have been funding this project out of their own pockets. For a limited time, they will be accepting a very small number of editor’s who will not have to go through the “voting process” to be accepted, in return for a small donation of only $19.

For a chance to be part of what could conceivably become the “buzz word” in human-edited search, take it from me…it’s a bargain. If the creators of BuildtheHive only accomplish half of what they set out to do, it will turn the world of human-edited search on it’s ear!

Unlimited Wealth Creation through Reseller Hosting

Unlimited Wealth Creation through Reseller Hosting
by: Ninad Gupte


Web hosting can be an exciting business start up for aspiring entrepreneurs. All you have to do to set up your business is become a hosting reseller, i.e., provide hosting facilities to website owners. Here as a business owner, you are buying space from a big hosting company, and redistributing the hosting space to other website owners.

Resellers are nothing but entrepreneurs acting as middlemen, offering you hosting services by leasing time and space from another Web host's server rather than owning their own. Most of the times, the quality of services offered by resellers are so good that consumers do not even have the idea that they are dealing with resellers who do not have servers of their own. Resellers, since they can pick and choose their servers, are basically in a position to provide the customers with the best of services.

Reseller hosting business can be quite a profit making venture once you understand the figures and profit margins involved. Let us go through them. One can buy around 1000 MB space from a major web host at a cost of $25 per month. This 1000 MB space that you now own can in turn be redistributed to site owners who need space for uploading their site. Here you can give about 25 MB space for around $5 per month. Which means your monthly income comes to around $200 when you sell 40 hosting packages Want more… some hosts allow you to oversell the space and do not charge you extra unless the actual usage of your account exceeds 1000MB. It is seen that a typical user uses less than half of the allotted web space… which means you can double or even triple sell your quota and make unlimited wealth.

And mind well, this income is residual income. It will keep coming to you month after month, year after year. You do the work once… and get paid for it over and over. All you are doing is buying space from a major web hosting company and becoming a reseller host. Your efforts are focused towards selling hosting space and the rest is handled by your web host. Some of them even handle customer service to your customers for a nominal fee… which makes it even easier for you.

If this is not enough… you can earn additional residual incomes by adding recruiting more resellers through you. By doing this you will earn regular commissions on their monthly sales… isn’t this smart business.

The profit margins in the business of reseller hosting is quite good and you can start on this exciting business venture even if you do not have the required expertise and access to funds for setting up the required infrastructure. Strange as it might sound, there are also times where a reseller can also be more scalable than a typical hosting firm. A true Web host is limited by its hardware; if a client suddenly requires an upgrade the host is not prepared for, the only way the host will be able to satisfy the customer is by upgrading its hardware - expensive and time consuming for both sides. The reseller host, however, can simply choose to locate with a different Web host that will better suit the customer's needs.

Happy Wealth Creation !!!

Ninad Gupte,
Founder, CEO of www.linuxresellerhosting.com

About The Author

Ninad Gupteis the Founder, CEO of www.linuxresellerhosting.com
He has trained as an Electronics Engineer from Mumbai University, and has a Diploma in Advanced Computing from CDAC. He has served as the Director – Technologies in Webmoney India Pvt. Ltd. He has executed several turnkey B2B Web application projects like House layouts, Maharashtra State Electricity Board and portals & sites like McDonalds India, Air France and RPG Raychem. To take his dreams forward of forming a technology oriented diversified company, Interpole Solutions was formed in March 2001. The company was setup with a strong base of skills and a deep understanding of technologies mastered by Ninad. He can contacted at ninad@linuxresellerhosting.com or at 91-22-2522 2505 and at 91-22-2524 4874.

This article was posted on February 04, 2004

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Part Time Internet Marketing with A Full Time Approach

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Will VoIP be a Mass Market Product?

A common thinking among "Marketing people " is that for every product that enters the market there must be a path, a target, a need ( real or created) that decides how the product must enter the consumer's life, which part of the population is more likely to go for it, which niche it is going to fill and, most important "...certain things being stated, something other than what is stated follows of necessity from their being so." and that is the final issue: the price.

Depending on those anavoidable patterns a product is more or less ready for a certain market.

High technologically devices, the ones that offer perfect quality and cost a fortune will target the elitarian market, where the price has not big importance (on the contrary, if the price would be lower than what certain people can afford, the product wouldn't reach them) since it means luxury.

When a product ceases to be luxury and begins to be a need, then the mass market is ready. The product can enter 60% of consumers' lives, reach easily a good upgrade in the percentage and become " The New Product of the year 200....".

Let's consider the VoIP market.

Prior to recent theoretical work on social needs, the usual purpose of a product invoked individual (social) behaviors. We now know that these assumptions are not completely wrong.

Wrong would be NON considering them.

In systems where many people are free to choose between many options, a small subset of the whole offer will get a disproportionate amount of traffic (or attention, or income), even if no one of the system actively work towards such an outcome. This has nothing to do with moral weakness, selling out, or any other psychological explanation. The very act of choosing, spread widely enough and freely enough, creates a power law distribution.

Now, thanks to a series of breakthroughs in network theory by researchers we know that power law distributions tend to arise in social systems where many people express their preferences among many options. We also know that as the number of options rise, the curve becomes more extreme. This is a counter-intuitive finding - most of us would expect a rising number of choices to flatten the curve, but in fact, increasing the size of the system increases the gap between the #1 spot and the median spot.

In other words: give to the people the choice among desktop phones and mobile phones and the majority will choose what they think more convenient, in spite of the cost of the service.

In a way the cost of the service is the only left advantage in favour of the fixed telephony.

If the price was the same the desktop phones would disappear from the life of the average consumer (mass market consumer).

To see how freedom of choice could create such unequal distributions, consider a hypothetical population of a thousand people, each picking their favorite way of telecommunication. One way to model such a system is simply to assume that each person has an equal chance of liking each kind of telephony. This distribution would be basically flat - most kind of telephony will have the same number of people listing it as a favorite. A few will be more popular than average and a few less, of course, but that will be statistical noise. The bulk of the telephony will be of average popularity, and the highs and lows will not be too far different from this average. In this model, neither the quality of the voice, the availability, the design of the device nor other people's choices have any effect; there are no shared tastes, no preferred genres, no effects from marketing or recommendations from friends.

This is the mass market of VoIP as dreamed and forecasted by most hardware producers.

People would choose VoIP in spite of the fact that the systems are not intercommunicating, the available phones are just desktop phones, most of the population doesn't have a "Flat rate DSL" and some do not even have a decent connection, (just one " UP to...) and just because VoIP means cutting cost.

They have a few wrong assumptions:

1. Most of the people want to save calling internationally
2. Most of the people will use a cheap Flat rate connection
3. Most of the people know how to handle a computer or a network, and so solve all the eventual problems that could arise.

But they do not consider that:

1. Most people call locally and just a few once in a while internationally.
2. Most of the people do not have a cheap flat rate Internet
3. Most of the people are not IT experts.

Besides people's choices do affect one another. If we assume that any kind of telephony chosen by one user is more likely, by even a fractional amount, to be chosen by another user, the system changes dramatically.

If Robert (our average mass market consumer) likes to have a phone in his pocket, available mostly anywhere, it is very likely that Mary would like the same.

Is VoIp ready for the "Mass Market"?

The answer could be No and Yes.

What would VoIP offer more than the existing several choices?

1. Price. Telephone calls would be completely free of charge among two IP phones ( and that believe me is a GREEEEAT THING when you try it)
2. The never enough considered satisfaction to be able to ref..ck who f..cked us for many years...

What would VoIP telephony need to be #1 spot in the curve?

1. A reliable PORTABLE Phone that doesn't need millions of Hot Spot's to work.
2. A reliable, cheap flat rate internet connection anywhere for everybody.

If ONE could put these patterns together, THEN VoIP would really have the chance to be #1.

Razzle Dazzle Them

Razzle Dazzle Them
by: Nancy Huang


Once upon a time not so long ago, there was a little boy who went to the market to try to sell his wares. He wasn’t having any luck. “Who will buy my sweet red roses? Two blooms for a penny,” he sang out hauntingly.

A young man came along, full of soft-spoken enthusiasm. “I can give you a great tool that will help you sell your roses. I can design this fabulous new application to help you get your message across. I can give you templates, hundreds of pretty clipart. You can create your presentations in blazingly brilliant colours with glorious animation. I can…”

“But, sir (kind knighted sir), they’re only roses…”

“Ah, don’t you see. What you need are pretty pictures, snappy words. Then, you can sell anything.” The young man started singing, “If you give them a bit of the razzle dazzle. Razzle dazzle them. You’ve got to razzle dazzle them. Today the roses, tomorrow the world!”

And so marked the birth of slide show presentation software. (Sorry, guys. That was just a bit of unconfirmed rumour).

What is true, however, is how much slide show presentation software such as PowerPoint has revolutionised the business world. Company forecasts are now disseminated in presentations (complete with video clip, animation and sound). Staff meetings are run in slide shows. Project status meetings are driven by presentation slides. Even courtesy signs are printed using presentation software. You know the ones I mean: “Please Ensure You Have Flushed Before You Leave!” on the toilet doors and “Please clean up after yourself. Your mother does NOT work here!” over the kitchen sinks.

I confess. I have cultivated a doomed PowerPoint dependency over time. I’ve spent countless hours tinkering with the graphics, experimenting with 100 shades of blue and resizing 500 different tiny icons until they were the identical size. More tragically, I’ve worked into the dead of the night typing, deleting and retyping to come up with just the right word – one that’s concise, punchy and easy on the eye. Commenced…no. On track…oooh. Ahead of schedule…hmm. Completed? YES! After all, “Preliminary high-level design specifications – Completed” is easier on the eye than “Design Specification – Commenced”.

One of my corporate-ignoramis friends was not so convinced. According to her, if presentation software really was the greatest thing since sliced bread, then one must be able to do a lot more with the application. It must become an indispensable part of modern civilisation. She set me a challenge, which I accepted (all too hastily). It meant that last weekend, armed with my laptop and my all-in-one scanner-printer-copier, I made the following five things for home:

1. I-made-it-myself I-love-you Valentines card
2. A well-done-for-coming-second-last certificate of achievement for niece
3. 20 copies of my-own-original-recipes booklet for Christmas presents
4. My whole-life mission statement
5. 10 inspirational posters to stick on the bathroom mirror, kitchen wall, toilet door…

The same day I presented my 9-year-old niece with her “certificate of achievement”, she thanked me with her own presentation for me (and a very pretty and professional looking one at that). The feature slide looked like this:

Why I deserve a NEW PC:

1. Everyone else has a newer PC
2. Kerry’s parents have just bought her a new PC
3. Even Kerry’s little brother has a better PC
4. I’ll do my homework on it
5. I’ll really use it…I’ll even make slide shows with it!!

It got me thinking. Somewhere along the line, we have turned everything into presentations and slides shows as though every piece of communication is a sales pitch. I suppose I’m not intrinsically against the presentation software. After all, it is just a tool – not the Devil incarnate. It is us, the intelligent users, who control the quality of our communication (with or without the aid of the presentation software). Quality comes from following the fundamentals like: keep the presentation points to the point, don’t bore the audience, don’t read from the slide, avoid excessive jargon, don’t dumb down the actual speech and, most of all, content matters.

The folly lies in the well-intentioned experimenters who insist on cramming the page with either whiz-bang animations or smearing the page with linguistic tripe. Whoosh, another bullet point shoots across the page. Whoosh, I’ve forgotten what the presenter just said.

So, let’s make a pact that we shall never bore each other with show-and-tell-a-thons. We shall never try to bamboozle each other with impressive looking slides. We shall never swamp presentations with meaningless graphics or management-speak jargons. We cannot let a piece of software get the better of us.

In the mean time, I can’t wait for the introduction of the ‘Resume Template’. Perhaps it will come in Productivity Service Pack 143.

About The Author

Nancy Huang works as a business consultant and project manager. She enjoys writing in her spare time and is keen to be write on demand and be more widely published.

This article was posted on February 02, 2004

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What SMS Users Are Telling Telcos

The recent rollout of 3G-ready mobile devices has caused a lot of excitement in the Telco industry, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. This article will highlight the message that current customers are sending through their SMS messaging habits. Many consumers have been used to sending SMS for at least 2 years. Even with its humble typing of tiny keypads and source of simple news channel, SMS is a global phenomenon. Telcos must take time to study what their customers are saying.

Here are some guideposts.

Equitable Pricing Plan:

Most customers fall under a mobile plan that guarantees a certain number of free SMS a month. This will imply that even with future sophisticated messaging systems, they are still more inclined to expect the same pricing plan. Thus it could be inappropriate to introduce a per-messaging pricing, no matter of sophisticated the delivery. Telcos must conduct extensive market research to find the correct pricing plan.

Customisation of Ads:

Customers are not only willing to receive high quality advertisements on their mobile devices, but also want these advertisements to be customized to their interests and preferences. This implies that customers are ready to share more personal details and the mobile devices can be viewed as a channel for dynamic and real-time feedback channel. This may spell the demise of the print newsletter and survey form as the penetration rate for mobile devices increase.

Unchanged Keypad:

Many critics of the SMS system had reservations that customers are not adept at typing messages through small mobile device’s keyboard. They had felt that the customer is too impatient and too many typing errors will be made. Well they were wrong! Telcos should collaborate with phone makers to keep the current mobile device’s keyboard unchanged and concentrate on keeping the screen larger and equipped with better resolution.

Integrating the experience:

Telcos must pay heed in collaborating with the various broadcasting corporations to create an integrated experience. Current mobile device users are very comfortable in voice and SMS communication. Take this as an example: A customer plays a LAN game on broadband in an Internet Café, decides to leave the play-station and continues the game on a mobile device. When he reaches home, he turns on his home entertainment system and continues the final stage of the game. This is possible with the GPRS system and 3G Technology synergising with the broadcasting corporation. But more importantly, a number of media and communication providers benefit from this integration. New revenue streams can be developed.

The overlooked education industry:

It is unfortunate that the education industry has not fully utilized SMS to complement the delivery of lecture notes and tests. The same grouses are the small mobile device screen and the lack of security features to determine the identity of the user. However, with 3G technology, educators should think out of the box and allow students to spend more time off campus to conduct their own research. Occasionally, they can arrange for the student to sit for a test that can be transmitted through their mobile devices.

Untapped Security Market:

The Mobile Device can be the next “in-thing” as a security device. The concept is relatively simple. The student’s location can be tracked by the GPRS system through the mobile device and the parent can have a face-to-face chat with the child. This concept can also be stretched to include these devices in various parts of a car – i.e. like a black box in a plane. If there are any major accidents, insurance companies can view these recordings and get a better picture of the accident.

Information/Human Age: Bringing Family and Friends Closer Together

Have you ever felt like the distances from your loved ones and cherished connections are just too big? You then stop communicating as much, and soon your relationships are no longer what they used to be. In this day and age it needn’t turn out this way. The Internet is a medium that can be used for love and friendship as well as business and information. It’s not expensive to set up email and websites which gives one the means to write letters that are received instantly, send photographs digitally, and now with web cams you can even see the person live in front of you when having a conversation with voice communication.

Overseas mail can take two weeks to get to your Mother in the homeland and then another two weeks for a reply that may not get written right away. This means months for a simple conversation to take place. The telephone is useful, but it is often very pricey when compared to email and even a website. With a website you can put whole ‘albums’ of pictures on the Internet that can be accessed any time, anywhere. This means Gramps can watch the children grow week by week and have visual confirmation of all the main events in their lives.

Email is like passing notes back and forth in class, except your classroom covers our whole world. Information, cool web sites, and other tidbits can be sent as attachments, making photocopying obsolete, which saves paper, money and the time it used to take to copy text, which is now done with a button.

All this may sound a little technical but let me assure you if I can do it, anyone can. They don’t create this technology for superior, genius, elite humans, (Do they even exist?) but rather for the average person. It’s all structured very simply so it can become a mainstream part of our social system just as the mail service and telephone services have become in our present culture.

Specialists say the Information Age is bringing our world closer together as people share knowledge and wisdom universally like never before. But, don’t believe that this is the only positive attribute of this new era. Love and friendship are now much easier to sustain and obtain as communication links become stronger, faster, and more elaborate in their depth of connection.

As well as staying in touch with people you already know, the ability to meet new friends of like mind is increasing dramatically. Through web logs, chat rooms, web sites, and on-line clubs, the feeling of being alone in life can change easily as each of us can meet people from all over the globe from the sanctity of a bedroom.

My proposal is that we turn this technical, and somewhat inhuman sounding Information Age into what it truly is-an age of universal friendship and love brought about by advanced human thinking. As the Earth shrinks in size metaphorically as humans connect and communicate more than ever in history, let it be known that we’ve finally reached the Age of Human. This is a time for awareness, wisdom, compassion, and love, as our evolving consciousness has brought about a new medium of interaction. Let’s let the machines work for us, yet realize they are but a tool to bring our world further in human evolution.

Refurbished Computers on the Internet

What is a Refurbished Computer?

Refurbished Computers. Remanufactured Computers. Reconditioned Computers. Essentially, all of these terms refer to the same thing. But what does refurbished really mean? A refurbished computer is one that is sent back to the manufacturer for a variety of reasons, refitted with different parts as necessary, and then tested and approved for resale by the manufacturer. Yes, this could mean that a computer was returned because it didn’t work properly. But, this is not always the case. There is a excellent chance that the problem was nothing more than a cosmetic defect, such as a small ding on the monitor. Or it could be that a custumer recieved the wrong model, but had already opened the box.

Most importantly, refurbished doesn’t mean that you’re buying a computer with a defect or something else wrong with it. All computers go through the same testing and approval process refurbished and new alike.

Refurbished Computers are not Old Computers.

Buying refurbished doesn’t mean you’re stuck with an outdated machine. While computers are forever becoming faster and able to hold more data on larger hard drives, the basics of the computer are still the same. The technology used is typically less than a year old, so you can get processing power and memory specifications that are almost the equivalent of brand new models, but at a much cheaper cost. If you just want an inexpensive computer to do e-mail, surf the Internet, balance your checkbook, play a few games, and do some word processing, you might want to invest in a refurbished model. Most are still upgradeable in case you want to add more memory, a larger hard drive, or even a faster processor later on.

Who Should buy Refurbished Computers?

Many people new to technology are unsure what there needs are. It often makes sense for them to purchase a refurbished computer. I recently did this for my grandmother. She enjoys geneology and has many boxes and books full of information about our family. The internet is a great tool for researching your ancestory and sharing the fascinating stories that you find. My grandmother had very limited experince with computers, but I purchased a Compaq for her for Christmas. She loves it, and it has allowed her to store much of her information electronically and to share that information with family all over the United States.

Small home offices can also benifit from purchasing remanufactured computers. Many companies cannot afford a huge investement into hardware. By purchasing quality used equipment these businesses can take advantage of the benifits of technology without breaking the bank.

Spam: The Tasteless Internet Meat of Criminals

Spam. You’ve all heard of the crazy pink meat in a can, but what’s it got to do with the Internet? Well, it’s also the namesake for a major problem in the World Wide Web-unsolicited junk email. Problem! We’re talking serious pain in the butt both as a waster of time, space, and money. It is estimated that around half of all email received on the Internet is this sneaky illegal attempt at selling fake consumer goods, pornography, and a whole plethora of ‘helpful’ services. It’s taking up half of all email on the Earth, and it’s costing businesses’ billions in wasted time, as well as filling personal email accounts to the limit so important messages aren’t received. It seems everywhere there’s a leap in technology for humanity, there’s also a group of people who want to stretch the realm of criminal activity to another level.

The good news is that as it’s such a prominent problem, the ‘good guys’ have made it a main priority on their ‘To do’ lists. Software has been created to block Spam and is being updated constantly. Recently Bill Gates, richest human on Earth and self-made mogul of software masters’ Microsoft spoke of his aim to eliminate Spam by the year 2006. Obviously a lot of people would be quite appreciative if they could achieve this goal.

Supposedly most of the billions of junk emails originate from about 200 people who are intelligent enough to cover their tracks. They have multiple ways of finding out email addresses and then sending thousands upon thousands of unwanted messages to you and I. It usually costs them next to nil so if even one low-quality product sells they receive a profit. That’s why they do it; just another greed-induced means of getting rich quick without working for it like the rest of us.

Well, there’s a couple main ways of dealing with the Spam dilemma. The main one, and most easy, is to just delete the messages or empty your folder (after moving desired messages to another folder) straight off the server without downloading or ‘looking’ at the messages. This gives the ‘evil’ sender the knowledge that you’re not reading the mail and therefore the traffic you receive goes down dramatically.

Another way to block the Spam is to use software like Magic Mail Monitor (http://mmm3.sourceforge.net/) or Mailwasher (http://www.mailwasher.net/), which work well at destroying the unwanted, pink, tasteless, unworldly email meat by showing you the mail straight from the server without downloading it.

So, show the criminals you’re aware and not ignorant and take the first steps to bringing the Spam Empire down. Protect yourself and eventually the Spam will go where all filth is destined, into the trash.

Learn How To Diagnose Power Supply Problems

The Power Supply convert's your regular household current into low DC voltage used by the computer. When this component fails,there is simply no activity going on wih your computer.Remember to do the easy troubleshooting first.Inspect the Power Supply for any damage.Double-Check all connections.

Learning how to check your power supply and how to replace it when needed can be a life saver if you're a computer buff or in business with the trusted PC.Don't take for granted the simple pleasure of turning on your PC and everything works just fine.

We turned on one of our computers recently and in about one hour,it just re-booted itself.And it continued doing so about 10 times a day until we found out the power supply was the culprit.Things to look for when your power supply is going bad or just dies on you are the following.

NO POWER TO THE COMPUTER

Here you must first check the wall outlet for power by connecting another device such as a radio or lamp to be sure power is present.If the computer is connected through a surge protector,check it as well.

If the wall out has power,check the power cable going to the PC to see if AC voltage is making its way to the system unit.Do this with the use of a multimeter.

If there is power,you will have to open the PC and check for power from the power supply to the motherboard.

When using a multimeter to check voltage,be sure you have a good ground for the black lead of the multimeter.

RE-BOOTING PROBLEMS

One main problem you may face with an ailing Power Supply is that it may re-boot the computer without any warning.All information is lost and it seems as though this happens at the worst possible time.

Booting errors when the computer first start's up is another indicator of this component going on the blink.

POWER DISTRIBUTION PROBLEMS

When the power supply begins to fail,you may receive power at one device and not another.For example,the Hard Drive may receive power but the CDROM Drive has nothing at all.

Another headache with would cause re-booting is the intermittent power going to the drives or the motherboard itself.Follow the steps below to check your power supply should you experience some of the above problems.

CHECKING THE POWER SUPPLY

If the wall outlet,and the power cord are good,make sure the connection at the motherboard is secure.Then you may have to face the fact that the power supply itself is bad.If you have a Multimeter you can test the power supply output before purchasing a new one.Simply follow these steps.

Turn off the PC,but do not unplug it,open the system unit. Set the multimeter to read DC volts in the next range higher than 12 volts.Locate a power connector similair to the hard drive,or cdrom drive connector that is unused and turn on the PC.

You can also unplug a drive connector and use it as well.Turn on the PC and insert the BLACK probe into the power connector on one of the BLACK wires.Touch the RED probe to the YELLOW wire on the power connector.

The multimeter reading should be +12 volts Now touch the RED probe to the RED wire and the reading should be +5 volts.If no readings or different readings occured,you'll have to replace the power supply.If the readings were correct,you should check the P8 or P9 connectors at the motherboard. These connectors may also be named P4 and P5.To check these connectors,perform the following...

Insert the BLACK probe into P8 at one of the BLACK wires. Insert the RED probe into the P8 connector at the RED wire. The reading on the multimeter should be +5 volts

Check the power going to the Motherboard connections by inserting the RED probe into P8 at the YELLOW wire and you should get +12 volts.Leave the BLACK wire touching the black wire at the P8 connector.Check the BLUE wire and the reading should be a -12 volts.

Now move the BLACK probe to the BLACK wire on the P9 connector.Test the WHITE wire by inserting the RED probe and the reading should be -5 volts.Check the RED wires on the P9 connector and you should get +5 volts on each red wire.You won't get exactly 5 or 12 volts but the readings will be very close, such as 5.02 volts.

If the Power Supply is a couple of volts off,in either direction,such as when the RED wire should be reading -5 volts but it reads -8 volts,or if there are no readings,replace the power supply.

DO NOT remove the power supply from the system unit case when performing these tests.DO NOT perform these tests if you do not feel comfortable.Be sure to remove any and all electrical static build-up from your clothes and body BEFORE touching any parts inside the system unit.And NEVER open the power supply case for any reason,since high voltage may be present.

HTACCESS Wrappers with PHP

HTACCESS is a remarkable tool you can use for password protection, error handling (like custom 404 pages), or HTTP redirects. It can also be used to transform whole folders in seconds: adding headers to all your HTML documents, watermarking all your images, and more.

A wrapper is like a middleman. Using htaccess you can tell your web server to "forward" certain files to PHP scripts of yours. When a visitor tries to load an image in their browser, you could activate a script that adds a watermark to the image. When an HTML page is loaded you could query an IP-to-country database and have your HTML pages translated into the native language of your visitor's country-of-origin.

Every file in a folder, or all files of a certain type in a folder, can be instructed to go through a PHP script.

TORTILLA WRAP

Pretend you host several affiliate sites, or a full-blown hosting service like Geocities. Most sites running on free hosting services have some kind of advertisement the owners use to generate revenue. These aren't applied voluntarily by the users of these services. The ads don't even show up on their source files, just when displayed on the web.

It's possible to replicate this feature using less than 10 lines of PHP and htaccess code. To start off, make a folder on your web host called "header". Create a new text file and enter the following:

AddHandler headered .htm
AddHandler headered .html

Action headered /header/header.php

This designates files with the extension ".htm" and ".html" to a type called "headered". The name "headered" can really be anything, it's just a way of labeling a group of files. The last line there tells the web server that if any of the file types in the group called "headered" are called, we should instead execute the script "/header/header.php". This is the relative path, so if your URL is http://your.host, this will run http://your.host/header/header.php.

That's all you've got to do for the htaccess file. Save that as "htaccess.txt" -- we'll get back to it later.

For the actual wrapper, create a new text file with the standard tags, then assign your header and footer file names to variables called $header and $footer.

$header = "header.html";
$footer = "footer.html";

Redirecting a user to our script doesn't pass its contents to it, just the filename. If you call phpinfo() in your script and scroll to the bottom you can see all the server variables which give us the name. The element "REQUEST_URI" in $_SERVER gives us the relative path (/header/sample.html), but we want the full system path since we're going to be reading the actual file (/home/username/wwwroot/your.host/header/sample.html), which is "PATH_TRANSLATED".

$file = $_SERVER["PATH_TRANSLATED"];

The name of the file that just tried to be shown is now stored in the variable $file. Three simple things are left: output the header, output the actual file, then output the footer.

readfile($header);
readfile($file);
readfile($footer);

That's it. Here's the entire header.php file:

All that, in just nine lines of code. Download it here: http://www.jumpx.com/tutorials/wrapper/header.zip

That contains the htaccess file and PHP wrapper script, along with a sample header, footer, and a test page. Upload all five files to your web host, chmod htaccess.txt to 0755 then rename it to ".htaccess". It might disappear from your directory listing which is okay, it should still be there.

Load, in your browser, the copy of sample.html residing on your web server. The text "This is my header" should appear at the top while "This is my footer" should show on the bottom. If you open up the actual file called sample.html, you'll see that these actually aren't there. They've been added in by the script all HTML files in the folder "header" must now pass through.

This is how wrappers work. Certain things, like adding custom headers and footers are done "on the fly" without modifying your original file. You'll get the same effect if you create other HTML files and upload them to this folder.

Files without ".html" or ".htm" extensions, such as text files or images, won't show these headers or footers. This is a good thing because text files aren't part of the presentation on a web site and adding extra text to images will corrupt them. It affects all HTML files within your /headers folder, and none of the files outside of it.

If you wanted, you could add or remove any file extensions you want, just by adding or taking away those "AddHandler" lines.

To get everything back to normal, either delete your .htaccess file or upload a blank .htaccess file in that folder, and all will be well again.

SHRINK-WRAP

The same basic formula can be applied again for other uses -- HTTP compression, for example. This was an idea that used to be impractical because computers ran at slower speeds, and is now obsolete because of broadband technologies (DSL and cable).

It works like this: when an HTML page is loaded, the web server instead gives the visitor a zipped or compressed version of that page. The visitor downloads that file, which of course takes up less space than the real thing and downloads in less time, then unzips it and displays the original page.

In this age of lighting fast DSL lines, there's almost no noticeable difference. However, if you have a site that hosts large files whose audience is mostly dialup users, it might be something to look into.

Make a new folder called "compress". Create your htaccess file again, just as before, but set the extensions to include .htm, .html, and .txt. (The group name, folder name, and script name have nothing to do with one another, you can name any of these whatever you like -- I just like things to match.)

Our wrapper script for this should be called "compress.php". That's what I'm naming mine. This means the htaccess file you have should look as follows:

AddHandler compress .html
AddHandler compress .htm
AddHandler compress .txt

Action compress /compress/compress.php

If our wrapper were simply going to pass through the file (in other words, just read its contents into a variable and display it), our handler script would look like this:

"GIFT WRAPPING" YOUR OUTPUT

To make the HTTP compression work, we use two functions: ob_start() and ob_gzhandler(). Output buffering functions are strange. Any time you try to display something, you can have PHP save up everything you're trying to output. At the very end it's all dumped into a function of your choosing where the text can be changed or transformed before it's output.

There is a built-in PHP function called ob_gzhandler() which takes one parameter (a string of text), compresses the data according to the gzip standard and does all the header trickery that's needed to tell the user's browser that we are transmitting data that needs to be decompressed once it's downloaded. When this line is used:

ob_start("ob_gzhandler");

It tells PHP: everything displayed afterwards has to go through the function ob_gzhandler() first. Put that at the top of our script and here's what we've got:

Save that as compress.php. Upload both files, chmod htaccess.txt to 0755 and rename to .htaccess and you're done. That's all you need for it to work, and you can just as easily apply HTTP compression to any script by just adding that line.

To try this puppy out, I got on a dialup connection and put a copy of "The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire Volume 1" on my web host, a 900 page book, about 1.6 megabytes in size. Without HTTP compression it took 5 and a half minutes to download. With the compression, only 2 minutes. Internet Explorer told me the download was going at 20 KB per second, impossible with a dialup connection... but since the file was zipped, I really was downloading 20 KB a second (once the data was decompressed on my end) over a 5 KB per second connection.

Though HTTP compression will work on sounds, video, and images, the space you save is negligible, usually only a few bytes. These sorts of media are already heavily compressed so zipping makes almost no difference. This is why we've told htaccess to only use compression on text and HTML, because it's with human languages like English where a lot of repetition occurs, which means more information can be compressed.

Not all browsers support HTTP compression, but ob_gzhandler() figures out if a browser can support HTTP compression. If the browser doesn't, the original file is displayed, no harm done.

You can get a copy of this sample script at: http://www.jumpx.com/tutorials/wrapper/compress.zip

Both of these scripts I've created for you will work only on static files, files that actually exist such as images or HTML files. If you tried to apply these wrappers as-is to PHP scripts, Perl scripts or even HTML pages that use SSI. If your whole site is run by a single script it's a better idea to hard-code these things right in, anyway.

THE BEST THING SINCE BUBBLE WRAP

This last demonstration of an htaccess wrapper is something that I think most people with content sites have a use for. On the Internet, people steal stuff. Theft of HTML source code is a nuisance, sure, but the lifting of images is more common. Someone likes a logo on your page, or an e-book cover, or a picture of a physical product you're selling, and it becomes theirs to use.

A practical way to keep this from happening is to add a watermark to all your images, which is your logo or name on a corner somewhere, forcing anyone who takes your graphic to either unwillingly give you credit, or chop off a part of that picture.

Lucky for us, PHP has a set of functions to handle images, and in version 4.3 and above, it's included by default. Wrappers come in handy here because you might have an entire site full of images and would rather not spend three weeks watermarking tons of images by hand. Maybe you just don't want to have to juggle two sets of images, one watermarked and one normal.

Download this script from: http://www.jumpx.com/tutorials/wrapper/watermark.zip

The only files you need to worry about in that zip are htaccess.txt and wrapper.php. Upload them to a folder called "watermark", chmod htaccess.txt to 0755 and rename to ".htaccess".

The file wrapper.php remain as is. I've put comments in the file regarding most of what it does, so if you're curious go ahead and take a peek.

What the script does is this: It figures out the original image that was supposed to be called. Then it loads the watermark, which I've set in wrapper.php to be "watermark.png" which is just a PNG image containing the text "THIS IS WATER MARKED". The watermark is placed on top of the original, in the lower right corner, and output in the same format (i.e., JPEG) as the original.

You can tell the difference by looking at these two images:

http://www.jumpx.com/tutorials/wrapper/thomas.jpg

http://www.jumpx.com/tutorials/wrapper/thomas-watermarked.jpg

I've included several types of images (GIFs, JPGs, and PNGs) in the zip file for you to test out. Once you've got everything setup, upload those images and see how they look with the watermark.

This script will work with GIFs, JPEGs, and PNGs. Due to a patent issue (which expires worldwide in July 2004) GIFs can only be read, and not output. To make up for this, any of your GIFs will be output as PNGs, which should still work.

THE WRAP-UP

If you think about it, a watermark script like this could also be used for a number of things. For example, if you decide to run an image hosting service like AuctionWatch does for eBay users, you could watermark your site's URL to the bottom. Your users get a free service and everyone else sees a possible place to get free image hosting, there's some nice viral promotion right there.

You could also adapt the script to check the HTTP referer (in the variable $_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"]) to see if the image was called offsite. If it was, the script would put the watermark on there but if you called it from a page on your own site, the image would be shown without one.

Even I have put wrappers to good use. Last year I wrote a product for Teresa King called Codewarden, which uses htaccess wrappers to display all the files of a directory in an encoded JavaScript string in an effort to hide HTML source.

Hard Drive Selection

Perhaps the biggest mistake people make when building their computer(s) is to underestimate the importance of the hard disk drive (HDD). In our modern society, bigger is synonymous with better, so when you go to buy a hard drive you look at how "big" it is, its data capacity. But is that all you should be considering when buying your hard drive?

Like every other component of your computer, the HDD is far too complex a system to describe in any sort of detail here, but hopefully by the end of this article you will know what to look for when you go to buy your new hard drive.

There are 4 primary aspects to look at in a hard drive (in order of importance):

1. Rotational frequency and average seek time
2. Buffer size
3. Internal/external transfer rates
4. Capacity

Rotational frequency has become a large selling point (5400/7200/10000/15000RPM) recently, so you shouldn't have too much difficulty finding out what the rotational frequency of your HDD is when you go to buy it. Now of course the faster it spins, the faster it can read from the disk (there are other advantages also), but be aware that the faster it spins, the more wear is put on the drive, and the more likely it is to encounter errors and malfunctions later in life. Hard drives are pretty much the only systems within your computer that have moving parts (CD-ROM, floppy disk drives, and fans also have moving parts, but they're all cheap and if they break you won't lose all the data you've accumulated over the course of owning your computer, be sure to back up your data regularly!). If you know anything about physics or engineering, then you know that moving parts produce friction and wear, and a faster spinning platter (the part that holds the data and spins) means more friction, and therefore more wear on your drive. Of course the faster it spins the faster it can read data from the platter. So what can you do? well again you backup your data as much as possible and you get the fastest spinning drive money can buy (which is 7200RPM for ATA devices (the sort you are buying) and 15000RPM for SCSI and some Serial ATA devices (you might get Serial ATA, that depends on your motherboard)). So look for a "7200RPM" label on the drive you're thinking of getting, it's important!

The "buffer" I'm referring to is the transfer buffer that temporarily stores data to read from or write to the hard drive. The reason for this is that the bus (data channel between the hard drive and the motherboard) can only handle so much information at a time, and it takes a long time for the data to be found and retrieved from a platter (random seek time), so it takes a big chunk of the requested data and stores it in a very fast data buffer to be sent at the bus's convenience. So with a larger buffer you can queue more data for transfer over the bus without having to keep sending requests to slowly find more data from the platters. Some newer drives come with as much as 8MB of buffer capacity, but it is more common to see 2 or 4MB. Usually a drive with a large amount will use that as a selling point and print it on the box/website, otherwise you can assume it has a 2/4MB buffer. My advice is to find one with as much as you can afford.

Now for the transfer rates you're going to need to do some searching, the best way to find these numbers is to go to the manufacturer's website and look at specification sheet for the model you're looking to buy (actually this is the best way to get all the information I've talked about so far). One thing to look out for is that you may read something that says 133MB/s or ATA/133 or SATA150 or 150MB/s, and these are not the numbers you are looking for, those numbers describe the bus connecting the hard drive to the motherboard, and are theoretical peak numbers, which tell us virtually nothing. Also, if you are buying a Maxtor, don't bother looking up actual transfer rates, as Maxtor is apparently afraid to release such information. Not to say Maxtor's are bad drives, actually Maxtor has risen to the top in terms of technical support and they are much more willing to replace broken drives than some other companies, which is important since some ridiculously large amount (something like 10 or 15%) of hard drives are either dead on arrival or die within the first few weeks of use. As with the last two points, when looking at transfer speeds (if you can find them) always try to pick the one with the highest numbers you can afford.

Notice that the first three of the 4 major aspects were all speed related? That was done intentionally to give you a sense of the importance of speed in the hard drive, because they are very very slow creatures, and for your gaming experience you don't need an enormous hard drive so much as a fast one. To increase speed substantially more you can set up a RAID, which is a network of hard drives which (in RAID0 mode) share portions of the same data, such that accessing data takes 1/n time (n = number of hard drives attached) compared to 1 hard drive. To do this you really need a hardware RAID chipset, which are commonly included on higher-end mainboards.

Finally, capacity is an unnecessary nicety. The smallest hard drives you can buy today that are still within those higher speed classes are all about 30GB, which is more than enough for your games. But since games are not everything, and if you happen to be an iTunes member or like to download anime then you will really want some extra space. So I would recommend getting something between 60 and 120GB, any more and you're going to be paying through your teeth, any less and you might be looking to buy a supplementary hard drive in a couple years. And, oh yeah, 300GB hard drives from Maxtor are out, but they are comparatively slow, so I wouldn't recommend getting one for gaming, I like to stick to single platter drives (40-100GB usually), as they produce less heat and are less likely to break down on me.

That is really all you need to know in order to make a good choice when upgrading your hard drive or buying one for a new computer. Of course there are many other resources on the web if you would like more detail on the inner working of hard drives.For further information please visit http://www.computer-gaming-system.com

What To Do When Windows Won't Boot

When Windows fails to boot it is normally caused by you installing a program or device and it has caused a conflict with one or more other programs.

This will no doubt give you plenty of heartaches if you're not certain which program caused Windows to not boot up.

If you recently installed a program or application and know where it was installed,you may be in much better shape as for as correcting the error.

Here are common ways to correct the problem of your computer not completely booting up or not booting up at all.

If your computer will not boot-up at all,hopefully you have made a good emergency boot disk. You can always make a windows startup disk by creating one from another computer running Windows 98 or Me.Perform the following if your computer won't Boot-Up At All.

FIRST......Put your boot floppy disk in the floppy drive and turn on the PC.On some computers, you may have to access the bios and select the Boot priority to your A: drive.

Save any changes and select "Start Computer without CDROM support" and press Enter.Once you are at the A prompt,type dir c: and press enter.

If your programs and other files are present,try restoring your system Registry by following the steps below.This may repair Windows,the Config. Sys and autoexec.bat files to where the PC may boot up normally.When the files are present,its a good indication of a good hard drive.

SECOND......To correct the problem of your computer not booting up,type in "fdisk /mbr" and press Enter to restore your master boot record.Type "Scandisk C:" to check the hard drive for errors that have occurred. You can also type "Sys C:" to hopefully restore files needed to boot up your computer.

THIRD......If the above procedures fail to repair your computer,you can repeat the first part of step one above and select "Start Computer With CDROM Support" re-install Windows.

Making A Windows XP Bootable Floppy

Windows XP users should create a boot disk now by placing a formatted blank diskette in the A: drive, open Windows Explorer to the C:,select Tools,Folder Options ,show Hidden files and and folders,then View Tab.

Now you uncheck "Hide Protected Operating System Files (recommended).You will see a warning and click Yes and click OK.Copy the files ntldr,ntdetect.com and boot.ini onto the disk.Remove the disk and label it the Windows XP Boot Disk.

After making your boot disk,recheck "Hide protected operating system files and folders (recommended)" in the Folder Options dialog box.

To use the disk when Windows XP won't boot,place the disk in the drive,and then re-boot,the computer, Windows simply bypass the basic boot files on the hard drive and continue to boot up.

If The PC Won't Boot Pass Windows

FIRST......If your Operating System is Windows Millennium,turn on the computer and immediately press and hold down the CTRL key.Once the startup options appear,release the CTRL key. Select Safe Mode and press Enter.You are now in Windows limited version.If you know what caused your computer not to boot,you can now either change or delete that program.

SECOND....Repair your Registry by selecting Start,Run and typing "scanregw /fix" and press enter.This will fix any damage done to the Registry. You can also restore your registry which replaces your current registry with an earlier copy that was backed up by your computer.Click on Start,Run and type "scanregw /restore and press Enter.

To repair your Windows 98 Registry,hold down the CTRL key as you start the PC and select "Command Prompt Only".Type "scanreg /fix" and press Enter and "scanreg/restore" to restore a previousely saved copy of the Registry.

If you have Windows XP,press F8 after rebooting the PC should Windows freeze while booting up. You can select "Last Known Good Configuration" after rebooting to allow the computer to boot the last backed up files.And you can choose "Safe Mode" to remove any files you know caused the operating system to hang up.

Be prepared when your operating system fail. It would be a great idea to go over this article a few times and print it.Make yourself s notebook and place this and all related articles there.

If your computer fails to boot or begins to become unstable,you can refer to these articles to make corrections that are needed.Learn these steps from your television set with the PC Super Pack at http://www.ultimatepcrepair.com

Be sure to note any changes you make to your Registry and if you're not sure,its best to find a friend that's pc savvy first.Above all,be certain you back up your registry before making any changes and know how to restore as well.

Create Your Own Business Cards, Part 2

This is the second part of creating your own business card. If you missed the first one, let me know: mailto:webmistress@janes-place.com

Click in the box, where you want your text to appear.Type in your text. Make sure the text is where you want it. For example, in my card the bottom text wasn't under my logo. To put it under the logo, I highlighted the text I wanted under the logo and clicked on the left button on the tool bar.

You can change the font, by going to the 'Format Menu' and choosing 'Font'. Choose your Font size and the type of Font you want. Click 'ok'. NOTE: Be sure you choose a Font that is easily read. If you don't, you may as well not have a business card.

NOTE: If you create your card and don't like the way it looks, you can undo the changes, by going to the 'Edit Menu' and choose 'Undo'. You can also highlight the area you want to do over and undo it the same way.

If you create your Business Card with a URL or Email, be sure to turn off the hyperlink like we did for our Letterhead.

You can print the Business Cards your self or have them printed professionally. For best results, they should be printed on 250 gsm or thicker paper. Most printers can only handle 160 gsm, therefore you might want to go the professional printer route. If you are operating on a small budget, like most small businesses, print them yourself. That way the cost will just be for the ink and paper.

If you choose to have them printed professionally, you will need to copy it to a floppy disk. To do this, go to 'start' -- 'programs' --'Windows Explorer' . Click on the + next to 'My Documents'. Choose the folder your Business card is in and double-click on it. On the right side of the screen, you will see the file, 'Business Card'. Right-click on it and choose 'Send To' -- 3 1/2 Floppy A'. It will then be copied to your Floppy Disk. Take this disk to the professional printing place and they will do the rest.

If you choose to print them yourself, you will need to create more than one card and buy the paper to print them on [at least 160 gsm].

To create more than one card, we will copy and paste the original card. Click inside the card area. Go to the 'Table Menu' -- 'Select' -- 'Table'. Go to the 'Edit Menu' and choose 'Copy'. Go to the space directly under the first card and hit enter. Go to the 'Edit Menu' and choose 'Paste Cells'. A copy of your business card will appear. Continue this process until you finish the first row. Word will automatically move to the second row. Continue this process until the page is full. Go to the 'File Menu', choose 'Print'. Under 'Page Range', be sure that 'all' is selected. Choose the number of copies you want and click 'ok'.

Create Your Own Business Cards, Part 1

In this lesson, we will create a business card, using Microsoft Word. I created a new template for my business card. It can be viewed at: http://janes-place.com/bus_card.htm

Choose the information you want to place on your card before beginning.

Here's how I did it:

Go to 'start' --'Microsoft Word' -- 'file menu' -- 'page setup'. Choose the 'Margins Tab'. Type in 1.25 for the Left and Right margins. That way, two cards will fit on a 8 1/2 x 11in. sheet, side by side. Click 'ok'.

In the 'Format Menu' choose 'Columns'. Where it asks for the number of columns, use the arrows to go down until the number 'two' is in the box. Go down to 'Width' and type in 2.75in. The 'Spacing' will adjust automatically. Be sure the 'Equal Column Width' and the 'Line Between' boxes are checked. Click 'ok'.

Let's save it, at this point. Go to the 'File Menu' and choose 'Save As'. You can save it in the same folder we saved the Letterhead, if you choose. I saved mine with my letterhead in 'Business Stationery'. Give the file a name. I named mine -- 'My Business Card'. Click 'Save'.

Go to the 'Table Menu' and choose 'Insert Table'. Set the number of 'Columns' and 'Rows' to 'one'. Click 'ok'.

A long, thin box will appear. Move your mouse cursor to the bottom line, until it turns into a double-headed arrow. Click on the double-headed arrow and drag it down to the 2in. mark on the left hand side ruler. If the ruler isn't visible in your document, go to the 'View Menu' and click on 'ruler'.

Click inside the box and add your picture. You have two options here:

1) You can use 'ClipArt', by going to the 'Insert menu' -- 'Picture' -- 'ClipArt. Choose your category and find the graphic suitable for your business, click 'ok'. The image will appear in your document.

2) You can use your company logo, if you have one, or another picture on your hard drive, by going to the 'Insert Menu' -- 'Picture' -- 'From File'. The pictures on your hard drive (saved in 'My Documents' -- 'My Pictures' will appear). Scroll down the list until you find the one you want to insert. Click on the picture you have chosen, to highlight it. Then click on the 'Insert' button. The picture will appear in your document.

To move the picture around inside your table, click on the picture. You will see a four arrow symbol. This allows you to move the picture up, down, right or left, by dragging it to the position you want. I wanted my picture to appear in the left, top position, so I moved it to that position. If you want your picture centered, click on it and click the 'center' button on the tool bar. [The center tool will be lines of text centered. It is the second picture of text shown.]

To change the size of your picture, click on it, then on one of the corners and drag it to the desired size.

Submitting Your Website With Web Promotion Services

Once you have built and uploaded your home business website the next step is to start promoting it both offline and online. Offline methods include putting your web address on your business cards, stationary, brochures, flyers, pamplets, home sign, automobile or whatever literature you can. Online methods generally start with submitting your home business website to search engines and directories.

For those of you who either have a website now or are planning to have one in the future, you will obviously want your website to be found in these search engines and directories.

You will therefore have to at some point decide whether you want to submit your site to each individual engine and directory manually, pay a submission service to do it for you, buy site submission software, or use one of the free submission services on the internet.

Submitting to each individual search engine and directory manually is quite easy to do but can be somewhat time consuming. To do this, you simply visit each site individually and look for the "Add URL" or "add a website" link which is usually located at the very top or bottom of each site. Then just click the button and add your URL. In some cases you will have to add a title, description and possibly other information. For the directories such as Yahoo and Open Directory Project, also known as DMOZ, you will be required to visit the relevant category first. Be careful to choose the right category. If you pay a submission service to do this for you they can save you a lot of time and will usually do a slightly better job with the keywords and descriptions based on their know-how. If you choose to do it yourself, a good place to start is directoryguide dot com and searchenginecolossus dot com.

Another method is to buy software such as Submit Wolf. If you are only promoting a single site, I do not recommend purchasing this software because it is rather expensive and time consuming for a novice to learn. If you have an older computer this software will chew up a lot of resources while it is running and slow down your computer performance. On the plus side it does submit to a rather large number of sites. This can boost your page rank or popularity. That leaves us with the freebie submission services that exist around the net. There are number of them available, and they vary in quality. The way it works is you fill out one form and the service submits that information to all the engines on it's list. I do not recommend using them if your whole business is built around your site, but for many sites they are adequate. The problem is that some search engines block these automated submissions automatically(they want you to personally visit their site), and they are ineffective for most directories which require that you navigate to the pertinent category first. Also, each engine allows a differing amount of keywords and requires different types of information. Some of the more popular services include submitexpress.com, which will submit your site to 40 search engines for free, addme.com which will submit your site to Google, Subjex, Alexa, Scrub The Web, FAST Search AllTheWeb, LookSeek, ExactSeek, Jayde, and a few others for free, addpro.com submits to 20+ top search engines using an automatic service that is easy to use, and quickregister.net which will submit your site to the major engines and directories if you put a small text link on your site. If you go to ez2www.com there is a freebie site submission service there if you click "add url" at the bottom of the page. There are other free submission sites out there. Just go to your favorite search engine and type in "free search engine submission" and you will be presented with a list of such freebies.