Welcome to Michael's Article Collection

Know Linux

LinuxLinux essentials: It’s free for download but you have to pay a tiny bit to mail order it or buy it from a company. If you’re getting Linux for more than 2-3 PCs, you can also get training and support at a small free, if you choose to have it. Else it’s the Linux community on the Net to your rescue. If you want to get comfortable with Linux, you don’t have to let go. . .

World On IP Community versus Telecoms' Monopoly

World on IP community versus the TELECOMS' monopoly or a dream of a visionaryWhy VOIP will grow over the usual telephonyWithout qualification, if one had to choose between usual telephone lines or IP telephony for carrying the voice, the first would be a better fit for the needs of voice communications. Also, IP telephony is generally subject to transmission delays. Voice communications is hi. . .

How To Host Several Websites Under One Account

If you operate several websites, each with its own domain name, signing up of separate hosting accounts can be an expensive proposition. Even if your hosting company offers the add-on domain feature (which will allow you to add different domains to the same hosting account) you will be charged a monthly fee for each domain you add, sometimes costing almost the same as your full hosting fee. The. . .

What is PTRE and Is It Worth Your Time?

PTRE stands for Paid To Read Email programs. Online companies that pay you to read email that they send to you. You get paid when you click a link in the email and visit the site that they’re advertising, usually for a set amount of time.Here are steps you should take before joining a PTRE program: Check the Programs Terms - Some PTRE programs don’t pay until you accumulate $200. It’s unlikely . . .

Convert Your Passions Into Dollars

On Cyberspace (Internet), there is a method from which you can make thousands of dollars per month without needing to have your own product or service. This method is highly flexible, and can be used in different forms to produce income by different people with different knowledge and skills. But one definite use of this method can make money for almost any human who is willing to just do it. T. . .

SOBIG.F Virus Promises "I'll Be Back"

On 21 August 2003 Symantec Security Response upgraded the W32.SOBIG.F threat to a category 4. It is the sixth version of this worm.SOBIG.F follows a computer worm known as "Blaster," or "MSBlaster," which infected at least 500,000 computers all over the world only a week ago. The “Nachi” worm which is designed to protect pcs from “Blaster” caused its own havoc including infiltrating unclassifie. . .

Nigerian Scam

Although this scam has its root from Nigeria dated a decade back, nowadays, you receive similar scam letters from many African countries, notably, Nigeria, Benin, Togo and even South Africa.The subject lines of these emails are pretty similar. Something like: Business relationship, Urgent Assistance needed, Soliciting for your assistance, A cry for help etc. Most of the emails from this scam be. . .

Free Software for Newbies and Web Developers

Here is some free software tools to help you build your own websites and create web products.Learning new skills is not difficult. It just takes a bit of willingness to give it a go. You will feel great satisfaction knowing that you can do this stuff.Zip UtilityHTML EditorFTP SoftwareScreen Shot SoftwareZip UtilityYou just gotta have a zip utility if you intend to spend time on the Internet. I . . .

Common Sense Approach to Search Engine Optimization

Most web surfers start their sessions at a search engine or a web directory. There are a number of different methods you can use to capture their traffic and drive it to your site: Stick to the big names: The two largest directories: Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com) and the Open Project Directory (http://www.dmoz.org), and the two largest search engines: Google (http://www.google.com) and Inkto. . .

A Closer Look at Cyber Crooks

I work from my home, the most peaceful workplace I can think of so far. As a Homemaker and part time Freelance Writer, I submit articles and subscribe to various respectable writing newsletters and do endless research online. But before signing up, I read privacy policies, some brief while others boringly lengthy.I am just one among millions of unknown but honest Internet users. Why, to my mi. . .

Tread Towards A Successful “Internet Research”

Internet is a terrific resource containing billions of web pages dedicated to thousands of topics. Since the amount of information available on the Internet is so vast and mind baffling you may feel lost.Your expectations from “The Information Superhighway” will crash if you proceed with the general view that exaggerates the ease of Internet usage. What is required is a moderate, balanced appro. . .

The 4 Ws of Junk E-mail

Junk e-mail or spam has become the scourge of the modern computer world. It eats bandwidth. Spam is like a disease. It doesn’t care about age, religion, wealth. It doesn’t discriminate. Junk e-mail affects us all.There are 4 keys to the junk mail question – Who, What, Where and Why.Who they areThe typical profile of a junk mail sender is as follows. Male, 18 – 30 years of age, single, technical. . .

Intranet

Introduction to IntranetsWhat exactly is an intranet? It's one of those terms that's more thrown around than understood, and has become more of a buzzword than a commonly understood idea. Simply put, an intranet is a private network with Internet technology used as the underlying architecture. An intranet is built using the Internet's TCP/IP protocols for communications. TCP/IP protocols can be. . .

Professional Web Surfer Offers Tricks Of The Trade

Library assistant turned Yahoo! Canada surfer, Kate McCabe shares search tips.(NC)—After working as an educational administrator, a library assistant, and a movie reviewer, Kate McCabe admits that her career path took an unexpected turn when she became a professional Web surfer."I was looking for a career change when one of my colleagues suggested that I apply for a job at Yahoo!," said McCabe.. . .

Internet in Russia and Ukraine - Part 1. General Informat...

User BaseThe non-US and non-English Web segments have been boosted by a growing trend towards PC penetration and cheaper Internet access in the last couple of years. The US share of the global population online, once above ninety percent, is now under a quarter, while the number of Internet users who do not speak English at all continues to grow.The Asia-Pacific region remains a key contributor. . .

Web-Safe Fonts for Your Site

Choosing the right typeface for your website copy is important, since it will affect the way your readers perceive your page (serious and formal, or friendly and casual). Aside from this, there are also important usability concerns. For example, some font types are more easily readable than others, and some are more widely available. You want to choose font types that: fit the character of you. . .

A Brief History of the Book

"The free communication of thought and opinion is one of the most precious rights of man; every citizen may therefore speak, write and print freely." (French National Assembly, 1789) I. What is a Book? UNESCO's arbitrary and ungrounded definition of "book" is: ""Non-periodical printed publication of at least 49 pages excluding covers". But a book, above all else, is a medium. It encapsulate. . .

The Territorial Web

The Net was supposed to dissolve anachronistic national borders and cultural boundaries. It was expected to vitiate distance - both physical and mental. It was hailed as the invention that will unify Mankind and harmonize (though not homogenize) civilizations, east and west. Yet, this was not to be. As dot.coms bombed, their more veteran and more experienced brick and mortar rivals took over t. . .

The Affair of the Vanishing Content

http://www.archive.org/"Digitized information, especially on the Internet, has such rapid turnover these days that total loss is the norm. Civilization is developing severe amnesia as a result; indeed it may have become too amnesiac already to notice the problem properly." (Stewart Brand, President, The Long Now Foundation ) Thousands of articles and essays posted by hundreds of authors were l. . .

The Internet And The Library

"In this digital age, the custodians of published works are at the center of a global copyright controversy that casts them as villains simply for doing their job: letting people borrow books for free." (ZDNet quoted by "Publisher's Lunch on July 13, 2001) It is amazing that the traditional archivists of human knowledge - the libraries - failed so spectacularly to ride the tiger of the Internet. . .

Revolt of the Scholars

http://www.realsci.com/Scindex's Instant Publishing Service is about empowerment. The price of scholarly, peer-reviewed journals has skyrocketed in the last few years, often way out of the limited means of libraries, universities, individual scientists and scholars. A "scholarly divide" has opened between the haves (academic institutions with rich endowments and well-heeled corporations) and th. . .

The Medium and the Message

A debate is raging in e-publishing circles: should content be encrypted and protected (the Barnes and Noble or Digital goods model) - or should it be distributed freely and thus serve as a form of viral marketing (Seth Godin's "ideavirus")? Publishers fear that freely distributed and cost-free "cracked" e-books will cannibalize print books to oblivion. The more paranoid point at the music indu. . .

The Miraculous Conversion

http://www.ideavirus.com The recent bloodbath among online content peddlers and digital media proselytisers can be traced to two deadly sins. The first was to assume that traffic equals sales. In other words, that a miraculous conversion will spontaneously occur among the hordes of visitors to a web site. It was taken as an article of faith that a certain percentage of this mass will inevitabl. . .

Will Content Ever be Profitable?

THE CURRENT WORRIES 1. Content Suppliers The Ethos of Free Content Content Suppliers is the underprivileged sector of the Internet. They all lose money (even sites which offer basic, standardized goods - books, CDs), with the exception of sites profering sex or tourism. No user seems to be grateful for the effort and resources invested in creating and distributing content. The recent breakdo. . .

The In-credible Web

http://www.webcredibility.org/ People are conditioned to trust written words, not to mention images. "I read it in the paper" or "As seen on TV" are worn out but still effective clichés. The Internet combines both the written and the seen. It is both a textual and a visual (and audio) medium. Do people trust Internet content? Is the incredible Internet - credible? In the "brick and mortar" wor. . .

The Future of Electronic Publishing

UNESCO's somewhat arbitrary definition of "book" is: ""Non-periodical printed publication of at least 49 pages excluding covers". The emergence of electronic publishing was supposed to change all that. Yet a bloodbath of unusual proportions has taken place in the last few months. Time Warner's iPublish and MightyWords (partly owned by Barnes and Noble) were the last in a string of resounding . . .

E(merging) Books

A novel re-definition through experimentation of the classical format of the book is emerging. Consider the now defunct BookTailor. It used to sell its book customization software mainly to travel agents - but this technology is likely to conquer other niches (such as the legal and medical professions). It allows users to select bits and pieces from a library of e-books, combine them into a tot. . .

The Idea of Reference

http://www.britannica.comThere is no source of reference remotely as authoritative as the Encyclopaedia Britannica. There is no brand as venerable and as veteran as this mammoth labour of knowledge and ideas established in 1768. There is no better value for money. And, after a few sputters and bugs, it now comes in all shapes and sizes, including two CD-ROM versions (standard and deluxe) and an. . .

Deja Googled

http://groups.google.com/http://groups.google.com/googlegroups/archive_announce.htmlThe Internet may have started as the fervent brainchild of DARPA, the US defence agency - but it quickly evolved into a network of computers at the service of a community. Academics around the world used it to communicate, compare results, compute, interact and flame each other. The ethos of the community as con. . .

Invasion of the Amazons

The last few months have witnessed a bloodbath in tech stocks coupled with a frantic re-definition of the web and of every player in it (as far as content is concerned). This effort is three pronged: Some companies are gambling on content distribution and the possession of the attendant digital infrastructure. MightyWords, for example, stealthily transformed itself from a "free-for-all-everyo. . .

The Disintermediation of Content

Are content brokers - publishers, distributors, and record companies - a thing of the past? In one word: disintermediation. The gradual removal of layers of content brokering and intermediation - mainly in manufacturing marketing - is the continuation of a long term trend. Consider music for instance. Streaming audio on the internet ("soft radio"), or downloadable MP3 files may render the CD . . .

An Embarrassment of Riches - Part II

http://www.doi.org/ The DOI Foundation has unveiled the DOI-EB (EB stands for e-books) Initiative in the Book Expo America Show 2001, to, in their words: "Determine requirements with respect to the application of unique identifiers to eBooks Develop proofs-of-concept for the use of DOIs with eBooks Develop technical demonstrations, possibly including a prototype eBook Registration Agency." I. . .

The Fall and Fall of the p-Zine

http://home.wuliweb.com/index.shtmlhttp://www.pshares.org/The circulation of print magazines has declined precipitously in the last 24 months. This dissolution of subscriber bases has accelerated dramatically as economic recession set in. But a diminishing wealth effect is only partly to blame. The managements of printed periodicals - from dailies to quarterlies - failed miserably to grasp the . . .

An Embarrassment of Riches - Part I

http://www.doi.org/The Internet is too rich. Even powerful and sophisticated search engines, such as Google, return a lot of trash, dead ends, and Error 404's in response to the most well-defined query, Boolean operators and all. Directories created by human editors - such as Yahoo! or the Open Directory Project - are often overwhelmed by the amount of material out there. Like the legendary blo. . .

Maps of Cyberspace

"Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts...A graphical representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkablecomplexity. Lines of light ranged in the non-space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, recedi. . .

Jamaican OverDrive - LCD's in LDC's

OverDrive - an e-commerce, software conversion and e-publishing applications leader - has just expanded an e-book technology centre by adding 200 e-book editors. This happened in Montego Bay, Jamaica - one of the less privileged spots on earth. The centre now provides a vertical e-publishing service - from manuscript editing to conversion to Quark (for POD), Adobe, and MS Reader ebook formats. . . .

Bright Planet, Deep Web

www.allwatchers.com and www.allreaders.com are web sites in the sense that a file is downloaded to the user's browser when he or she surfs to these addresses. But that's where the similarity ends. These web pages are front-ends, gates to underlying databases. The databases contain records regarding the plots, themes, characters and other features of, respectively, movies and books. Every user-q. . .

The Meta Search Engines: A Web Searcher's Best Friends

I know what you're thinking: Google gives you such accurate results that you don't need any other search tool. Well, let's see about that. You might - or might not - know that no major search engine indexes ALL the existing Web pages. OpenFind states that it indexes 3.5 billion Web pages, Google claims 2.4 billion, AlltheWeb - 2.1 billion, Inktomi - a little more than 2 billion, WiseNut - 1.5 b. . .

Is Your On-Line Business Customer Friendly?

Customer service is increasingly seen as one of the most valuable uses for a commercial World Wide Web site. Your Web site is available on a 24 hour, seven days a week basis. So it is well worth exploring ways in which your customers can virtually “serve themselves," without the need for overtime staff, or lengthy voice mail procedures.James Feldman is President of JFA, Inc., an online busine. . .

Focus! Focus! Focus!

The success of your online business relies on you making sales, actually selling your product or service to paying customers. The more the better. To get those sales you need to communicate well with your potential customers and make a good sales pitch. What you say and how you say it are therefore very important and can make the difference between your business succeeding or failing. When you . . .

Top Things You Must Realize When Searching

For the uninitiated, searching for web pages can seem a slow, obscure process. Unless you have a high-speed Internet connection, web pages may seem to take days to load. And the searching itself – you have to admit it looks weird typing in bunches of plus signs, asterisks, parenthesis, and other funny symbols and operators to find what you want.To help you in this process and show that you are . . .

Writing Effective Emails

Sometimes email messages can get quite long, especially when you quote much of the material that has been sent in previous emails. Also, emails often get long if you have a lot to say or you need to give a comprehensive overview of a particular business situation. Most people tend to find that the letters and emails they receive that are short are the ones they responded to most positively and . . .

Home Office Tip Part 2...Computer Health Hazards.

Home office stress related injuries are escalating. Along with carpal tunnel syndrome, eye strains, neck strains, back related problems. Let's face it, if you are behind the keys more than a few hours a week you will suffer one or more of the above problems.Neck Strains.Have you noticed that your neck is stiff after a long day at the computer? Well, the trouble might be your monitor height. Y. . .

Selling Bookmarks for Profit

Everyone has passions and interests that they can cash in on, even if they don't have the time to write an ebook. Where is this gold mine hiding? In your bookmarks, in your favorites file. Whetever you call it, there is money hiding there, just waiting for you to cash in on it. No matter how strange and unusual your interests are, there are others out there that share the same passions that you. . .

Alternative E-Commerce Solutions

Over the past several years, the Internet has emerged as a breakthrough technology that has and will continue to transform the way we live and communicate, and especially the way we do business. No matter if you are selling a product or a service, the Internet is a means of reaching markets that had otherwise been unreachable in the past. And, it also provides ease of purchasing and selling alm. . .

Ezines, Ezines Everywhere!

There are literally thousands of ezines being published online these days. Sometimes it is hard to know which ones are best for advertising in, reading, subscribing to and so on.How do we know which ones are good and which ones aren't? Which ones should we advertise in and what type of advertising is best? How do we know we can trust the publisher?Answering these questions is not always easy. . .

Freezing - Time To Warm Up Your PC

Freezing is also known as crashing or hanging. It's frustrating. The computer locks up and the mouse and keyboard do not respond. You may lose data and you certainly lose time and patience. Typically, you need to press Ctrl+Alt+Del to see the programs that are running and to try to close the program that is not responding, or you need to force a restart. So why does your computer freeze up?Comm. . .

Internet : A Medium or a Message

The State of the Net An Interim Report about the Future of the Internet Who are the participants who constitute the Internet? Users - connected to the net and interacting with it The communications lines and the communications equipment The intermediaries (e.g. the suppliers of on-line information or access providers). Hardware manufacturers Software authors and manufacturers (browsers, si. . .

The Metaphors of the Net

Four metaphors come to mind when we consider the Internet "philosophically": A Genetic Blueprint A Chaotic Library A Collective Nervous System An Unknown Continent (Terra Internetica) 1. The Genetic Blueprint A decade after the invention of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee is promoting the "Semantic Web". The Internet hitherto is a repository of digital content. It has a rudimentary invent. . .

The Ghost in the Net

However far modern science and technology have fallen short of their inherent possibilities, they have taught mankind at least one lesson: Nothing is impossible. Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet. By his very success in inventing laboursaving devices, modern man has manufactured an abyss of bored. . .