Archive for the ‘news’ Category

A series of standard aspects come under discretion when deciding on whether a website is a trustworthy, reliable source of information. Review these points to consider for a website to determine confidence and web design authority quickly and easily.

First impressions are important, and you never get a second chance to make one. The home page should grab the visitor’s attention within the first few seconds and have a professional look.

Website pages should be clear, legible and organized with font sizes that are large enough and not cluttered.

Check the website for current information, easy to find contact details, and website visitor statistics. The traffic rank of the website can indicate a measure of website value.

Here are a few websites to check traffic rank:
Alexa.com
Compete.com
Quantcast.com

Another indication of a website’s value comes from other’s opinions. Asking friends and relatives if they use a site, or asking them to do so and give you an evaluation of what they think can give you a more objective perspective.

The age of a website is a huge factor to whether search engines give authority to certain websites. Older websites are potentially more respected, trusted and indexed by search engines simply because they have been around longer. Age equals online seniority. A legitimate website should be at least registered for a year or two.

Probably the best way to determine whether a website is reliable is with your own judgement. Check the information presented and decide if the website exhibits the characteristics of professional experts who know what they are talking about.

By evaluating websites for confidence and web design authority, you can be more comfortable online because you know who to trust.

Bookmark my blog and website for more tips, news and advice concerning web design, projects and other internet related topics. Have a peek at my Resources For Web Design section for free and safe things you can do online, or browse my Tutorial Videos for a great learning experience!

Review these tips and advice concerning making life with the computer a little easier. Computers are complicated enough, and being comfortable with a pretty useful tool could make work much simpler.

Always look ahead to where you’re going so you can decide how to get there. Dealing with the same programs on a regular basis makes them more familiar. Get comfortable with what you use and don’t be afraid to explore to discover new options.

Know how to use the tools you have available. The center button on your mouse actually clicks in and is a button in itself. Learn how to copy paste using CTRL C and V or explore your software’s help menu when you have a question or difficult situation. The resources are there to use if you know what you are looking for.

Make your own life easier by either bookmarking websites of interest or copying a shortcut to your desktop or into a folder of shortcuts. Clicking is always far easier than typing. Save yourself time by right clicking on a link then open it in a new tab. Then navigate between tabs instead of the back and forward buttons.

Keep organized. If you have many files with the same theme just put them together in a single folder. Be sure to name files what they are so finding them is always simple, even if you have to use the bottom left START button for a local search.

Prepare to adjust. No website stays the same forever, and when you get accustomed to a certain format it can be difficult to change. Expecting that websites will change makes it that much easier when it happens.

Know your resources. When there is something you don’t know the answer to, use Google to search for the answer, search engines are pretty hard to stump.

Have a browse at a former post that offers Computer Management Shortcut Tips for working with documents, photos or videos. Keep posted on my blog and website for more on news, tips and advice to make computers an easier tool to use.

Many people online find the anti-spam CAPTCHAs necessary to type in to determine if a visitor is human or not a chronic nuisance. Automated recognition software is developed to “beat” the CAPTCHA and decipher it without the need for a human to do so. The objective is to make the CAPTCHA complicated enough for a computer to decipher the code virtually impossible, and therefore defeating the automated CAPTCHA recognition software.

The term “CAPTCHA” stands for for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, was coined by Luis von Ahn and two other professors from Carnegie Mellon University in 2000. The concept was originally used by Yahoo email to stop spammers from utilizing automated programs to send unwanted spam emails in mass quantities.

CAPTCHAs usually come as one or two distorted words that the visitor has to type in to prove to be human. Website visitors could also listen to the code on computer speakers, but this opened another vulnerability. The Decaptcha program could decipher 200 CAPTCHAS by just “listening” to them for only 20 minutes.

Recently Yahoo has made their CAPTCHA codes longer, in order to thwart attempts of computers logging in, thus “patching” the problem, only to find out that programmers bypassed this new security measure practically instantaneously.

Information technology experts have developed software called Decaptcha, that deciphers CAPTCHAs on Yahoo 45% of the time, Microsoft 49% of the time and eBay a staggering 82% of attempts. A high degree of accuracy isn’t necessary when these programs are able to make hundreds of thousands, if not millions of attempts per day. Cyber criminals could use such a program to bypass security measures and scam the public on such websites as Yahoo and eBay.

From a web design perspective, I tend to add anti spam CAPTCHAs on enabled comments for my blog and those I set up. This tends to filter a majority of spam comments, but there are always those that get through. Learn more about filtering blog spam comments on a previous blog post I wrote last year.

Also have a look at a previous post concerning Yahoo incorporating moving captchas with samples of what these new CAPTCHAS look like.

Bookmark my blog and website for news, tips and advice concerning web design and resources that are free and safe to use online. Browse my resources tab for some of the most popular websites and tools you can take advantage of today!

Sometimes potential customers do not have instant confidence in a new small business. Review these tips on what is important to offer your customers so they have the trust and confidence to do business with you.

Give examples of previous happy customers you’ve serviced in your profession. Put together a portfolio of those you’ve helped in the past and provide testimonials from those you’ve taken care of.

Talk to your customers with complete honesty and pay attention to your customer’s needs to the point they notice the gesture. When someone goes into a car lot, they can’t say, “How much for a car?” They have to be qualified first. Take the time to qualify your customer to find out what they really need.

Pay close attention to detail in what you do to build trust with those you deal with. A simple typo or inconsistency could be the factor to drive your potential customer to the competition.

Use social media to join the crowd. Networks such as Twitter, Facebook and even Flickr can provide the advertising to bring attention and traffic to your company. People feel more comfortable talking business with someone they actually know personally, or at least feel like they do.

Give people things for free online. Offer tutorials, free advice and tips on what you do. Give them a calendar, a PDF or a video for free on your website. People love when they get something for free, and information is something that costs you nothing but your time. The result is a happy customer who could potentially become a returning client.

A small business website is a great way to drive traffic to your business. Contact me today concerning setting up a website or for professional writing services on your existing blog. Keep posted on my blog and website for news, tips and advice in small business custom website design.

Welcome to my video tutorial button announcement! Recently I’ve added a tutorial button on all the templates for my website and blog. Located all the way to the top right of every webpage, the tutorial button allows my online visitors to go straight to my video tutorial page to view any of my video tutorials in a single place.

Notice the photo at the left shows the before and after with and without the new “Tutorials” button. With a simple addition of one line in all my website templates it was possible to add the new button for easy access to my tutorials, all on a single page!

If you have an existing website for your small business, I wouldn’t suggest making changes to your own code unless you’re absolutely sure you know what you’re doing. Making template adjustments is something that should be left to your web designer, who would know to backup your original before altering anything. One character change can throw your entire website’s appearance off kilter, so avoid making changes without expert help.

Don’t have a small business website? Your own website could attract traffic to your business and actually bring in customers. Contact me today by phone or email for details on how you can get started right away! Keep posted on my blog and website for more news, tips and advice concerning various topics online from custom website design to the latest trends happening in the internet world.

Readers love it when they get something for free from a blog or website. News, tips, advice and the latest updates on internet related topics are some of the things I’ve given away in the past that could help you along, and now I’ve added a new category of free things to give away.

Learning to do something that makes your life easier is a great advantage to surfing the web. By offering tutorials on my website, I now contribute to that sector of the internet community.

Visit my tutorials page to see all my tutorial videos on a single webpage, or go directly to the video that interests you below:
Windows Movie Maker Tutorial
Blacklisting an IP Address in WordPress
Tutorial on Making GIF Images
How to Convert YouTube Video to MP3
Getting a Free Kindle for Your PC
Clean Your PC With A Registry Cleaner
Clean Your PC With A Registry Cleaner

Also, notice the newly added “Tutorials” button at the top right for easy access.

Wishing you and your families the happiest of holidays, and warm wishes for the new year! Merry Christmas and thanks for reading!

Welcome to my quick tutorial video on creating your own video tutorials and slideshows with the Windows Movie Maker or similar programs.

First, do a quick search from your start button to locate and open the Windows Movie Maker, or a similar program on your computer. You could even just type “Windows” in the searchbox to find it just as well.

Next, you can import from a camera, your pictures folder, audio, video and music to your project.

Simply choose the media that you want to import and navigate to the desired files. Music to the background of a voiceover is also a good method to use.

Next browse the effects available and transition options you have to choose from. You can even choose a different transition between each photo. Use the scroll bar to explore what options you have for your video.

To the right you’ll see a video play button and a window where you can sample what each transition looks like. Use that to decide which transitions to use and where you want them.

Once you have your pictures and video assigned and the audio track aligned with your project, you may want to consider adding titles and credits for the opening and closing of your video. This is completely optional though.

And here we can see a sample video I put together, opening with the title, see the first photo, going into a dissolve transition, this next transition is called pixelated, here’s a shatter right transition, this next one is known as a whirlwind transition, and this is the shatter, up, left transition, and ending with a rough dissolve.

Finally add the video credits and the video is complete. Make your own slideshow today, perhaps with royalty-free music with a voiceover on a microphone, and remember the best projects happen when all your elements come together as one! Thanks for watching!

Yahoo has just started to incorporate moving captchas in some of their log in screens. This move from still captchas shows the need for an upgrade in security on websites that use log in and password information for their users. Computers have come to the point of being able to recognize characters that we once thought only humans could decipher. As more and more captchas are cracked and made readable by computer programs, we have to come up with more ways to differentiate between what a person and what a computer can read.

These new moving captchas that I’m featuring here have 7 characters bouncing in the background as other random characters float past them. The moving captcha at the top left is c67e4L5F, the one at the bottom right is MTVucee, and this one in the center is AbsJsMzu.

These moving captchas make it more difficult for computer programs or “robots” to translate what the captcha is saying because it uses reasoning that they haven’t been programmed with yet.
Someone can look at these captchas and translate what is trying to be conveyed with little difficulty. Simply focus on which characters are remaining in the screen and ignore the ones that float by. These floating captchas were deemed necessary to assure that only humans were typing them in.

Furthermore, this just goes to show that the more sophisticated that computers get with decoding captchas, the more complicated we as humans have to make them in order to maintain online security. I’m sure we can prepare for some of the next plateau of captcha creation to come shortly, perhaps with a pair of special glasses you’ll have to wear to read them. Regardless, I’m pretty sure that even high-tech security settings such as those won’t be uncrackable by computers.

Now you can search the internet in an entirely new way by starting your search with an image. This could revolutionize how we search online by not only using text, but now Google’s search engines can “see” a photo and index similar photos that match your search.

Go to the Google search engine, and at the top left are tabs for different types of Google searches. The one labeled ‘Images’ is the one you need to click on. (photo left, click to enlarge)

Once there, if you notice at the right of the search bar there is a camera icon that reads ‘search by image’ if you hover over it with your mouse cursor. You can either click that then paste the image url or upload from your computer. Even easier, you could just drop the image into the search box.

I just conducted a test by using a screen shot of a pool table from Yahoo Pool. I saved the photo to my desktop, and when I dropped the image into the search box, immediately images from Yahoo Pool were indexed with 129 similar image results. This tool could prove to be rather useful depending on your search needs, but now there is the option to search with a photo instead of having to type in phrases.

Once you conduct a search on an image, you can then refine your search by entering a descriptive word in the search box.

Keep posted on my blog and website for news, tips and advice on a regular basis, and contact me for ideas for your next small business website design.

Advertising with YouTube may be a good idea to promote your small business. Make your own YouTube video and post the link on your Facebook, or embed the video on your blog. Whatever you do, adding a YouTube video could be an easy way to get you more business with a personal touch.

Even someone with little computer knowledge can make a video. Producing a quick Video is really easy to do, and can be about whatever you want, of course never posting anything illegal on the website. Give an instruction tutorial on something you think there may be a need for, interest your readers with a video blog, or show the physical location of your business in action. Having a video with yourself in it creates a personal touch that your readers can relate to.

Uploading the video to YouTube is about as easy as uploading or saving it to your computer. Either create an account or log into an existing one then click the “upload” link at the top right of youtube.com. Once you have a video uploaded you can review any positive or negative feedback you may receive and adjust these factors for your next video. Remember you are making your video viewable to the world, and should consider being responsible for the video content and be careful with the amount of information you disclose.

Keep posted on my website for news, tips and advice concerning small business website design, and contact me today for options and ideas concerning a custom website design for your own business.