by ·Comments Off on 101 Websites worth seeing before you die. Really? (part 1 of 4)
best websites

credit: Salvatore Vuono

The February 2011 issue of Maximum PC has an article touting 101 websites you need to see before you die.  In this article, I will post the 101 links along with my opinion about whether it is really worth seeing.  This will be part 1 of 4 parts since there are 101 sites after all.

  1. http://ww.wechoosethemoon.org – Yes.  Make sure to see this site before you die.  The Apollo 11 mission to the moon is probably one of “the” greatest human accomplishments of the 20th century.  This site shows you the various stages Apollo 11 had to go through to land on the moon and return to earth.  The combination of animation and real footage gives you a good feel for that event.
  2. http://personas.media.mit.edu/ – Maybe.  It scours the Internet for information about the name you enter at the site.  When done it comes up with a graphical representation of your known persona.  You might as well see what kind of legacy online you will leave behind when you die.
  3.  http://www.wefeelfine.org – No.  It is a very visually luring site.  I’m not sure how it figures out the various information it is showing, but I imagine it has done some web searches on the web and has consolidated that information for visual representation.  Its content is definitely visually entertaining.
  4. http://soytuaire.labuat.com – No.  This site shows another way at listening to music…by doodling on the screen as various visual effects overlay on our doodle.  Interesting but not enough to waste your time on.
  5. http://false.jp – No.  Good eye candy, but could be just a waste of time.
  6. http://www.shapethehive.com – No.  It is one way to leave your mark on line; but I wouldn’t say it is really something to see before you die.  It is one interesting asynchronous collaboration site with visual effects, but I don’t see the point.
  7. http://us.akinator.com – Yes.  This is an amazing site.  I imagine it uses the power of the Internet to figure out who you are thinking of.  When I started playing it, I thought it would not guess who I was thinking of.  To my surprise, it guessed it and it even showed a picture of the character!
  8. http://www.dionaea-house.com – No.  This site is like reading other people’s email.  As with anything, it is hard to get interested in the site since it doesn’t give you a clue about what it is about, nor does it try to tell you what story it is trying to convey.  It’s like watching a movie from somewhere in the middle.  You don’t have a point of reference and can’t really tell where the story may be going.  So, I would skip this site, for sure.
  9. http://www.linerider.com – Maybe…if you like drawing and animation.  This site provides you with interesting drawing tools to create a path for the line rider.  In some of the sample works, some users have gone through some length to create the most elaborate line path for the line rider.  Interesting, but can be a time sink if you start tinkering with it.
  10. http://prettyloaded.com – No, absolutely no–unless maybe you like watching grass grow.  This site provides you a collection of “Loading” animations.  “Loading” animations are typically shown to show that something is loading.  This is typically what you watch, when you are waiting for something to load.
  11. http://anasomnia.com – Maybe.  Interesting animation of someone’s dream representation.  Turn off the light and see what happens.  It seems to just keep going on; but if you press the arrow on the top left, you’ll wake up the girl who is supposedly dreaming.   The images are basically line drawn images of some very abstract shapes and figures.
  12. http://www.stateoftheunion.onetwothree.net – Yes.  This site gives you a different perspective of the various state of the union speeches given by all presidents.  It can give insight into what the focus was of that time.  It even rates the president’s grade level for the speech given.
  13. http://hubblesite.org – Yes.  This site shows you some of the most amazing pictures of heavenly bodies as seen through the eyes of the Hubble telescope.  The pictures here will make you realize how seemingly insignificant we are in the big scheme of things.
  14. http://www.eyezmaze.com – No.  There are better things to do on the web than play games.  These games are time sinks.
  15. http://www.mcdlr.com/bsod – Yes.  You need to use this site to at least play a joke on someone at work.  If they are a techie and they happen to be running Windows 7, they’ll probably scratch their head.  Windows 7 doesn’t do BSOD!  If you play this trick on a non-techie, they won’t know any better regardless of which operating system they are using.  They will know, however, that something might have gone wrong.
  16. http://atom.smasher.org/error – Yes, if you like playing practical jokes on tech support, this site would be a good one to visit.
  17. http://mrdoob.com/lab/javascript/effects/ie6 – No.  Nothing seems to show–just white space.  What a waste.
  18. http://www.lmgtfy.com – No.  This is just an extra shell that will record what you typed and then transfer it to google’s search.
  19. http://blublu.org – Maybe.  This is an interesting site.  Viewing the site is like viewing someone’s scrap book.  The presentation is pretty easy to follow.
  20. http://www.mrwong.de/myhouse – Yes.  It’s probably a good idea to check out the world’s tallest virtual building before you die.  The author was pretty creative in creating such a site.  The project has since been closed, but apparently the site is still getting lots of visits.
  21. http://www.360cities.net/london-photo-en.html – Yes.  If you’ve never been to London, you can see a lot with this very high resolution (80 gigapixel) image!
  22. http://blueballfixed.ytmnd.com – No.  It is however a very interesting work of animated art.
  23. http://milliondollarhomepage.com – Yes, absolutely.  This is an example of how anyone can make it big on the Internet.  Just the right idea, and” BAM!!!” money rolls in.  The originator of this site made a million dollars selling pixels from his pixelated homepage.
  24. http://www.archive.org/web/web.php – Yes.  If you have time, you can see how the Internet has evolved through the web pages that have been archived here.
  25. http://www.cleverbot.com – No.  This is a site that looks like a search engine, but it is really an example of an online artificial intelligence (AI).  This reminds me of an old AI-like program, the name which escapes me, that existed way back in the late 1970s.  You can ask it questions, it responds.  It asks you questions, and you respond.  The program looks intelligent, but after a couple of exchanges, it isn’t.
  26. http://rulesformyunbornson.tumblr.com – Yes.  This has some over 500 snippets of wisdom.

Look for the next 25 on my next posting.

by ·Comments Off on Internet in my Daily Life

created by jscreationzs

created by jscreationzs

Since the emergence of the Internet in the 1990s, it has evolved from being a simple means to communicate via e-mail, chat (IRC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRC), and retrieve information.  It has since evolved into something that is now part of almost everybody’s lives.  Having lived through that evolution, how I use the Internet has evolved as well.  I went from simply using it as a tool for downloading device drivers (via FTP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ftp) to using it for my day to day activities!  Here’s a breakdown of how I use the Internet today:

  1. E-mail–for keeping in touch with people and receiving various notifications
  2. News–why subscribe when you can get them free on the Internet
  3. Social networking–I keep in touch with friends and family this way
  4. Watch TV shows–goodbye to cable TV
  5. Watch movies–goodbye to cable TV
  6. Pay bills–I save a lot of first class mail postage by paying online
  7. Download software–I try before I buy
  8. Banking–no more lines or waiting in lines, I bank online
  9. Investing–I buy and sell stocks and maintain my 401K this way
  10. Real Estate–look for and research properties at the comfort of your home office
  11. Dictionary–no more hard copy dictionaries, I just look up word meanings online
  12. People finder–find long lost friends or high school buddies
  13. Video/slideshow creation–create videos and slides shows with ease
  14. Picture/video storage–save and access pictures and videos
  15. Shopping–shop, compare, and buy stuff online
  16. Earn passive income–many ways and many places online to do this
  17. Personal blog–I express my opinion and interests through my personal blog
  18. Photo development–everything is digital, including the process of getting photos developed
  19. Business presence–people look to the Internet to find out about businesses
  20. Maintain professional connections–professionally network online
  21. Job search–I found my last job through an online search!
  22. Maps/directions–no need to buy maps; I get directions and maps online
  23. Navigation–the Internet, in conjunction with GPS technology gets me turn by turn directions
  24. Listen to music
  25. Online phonebook–who needs a paper phonebook any more; save trees.

In the second half of the 1990s, I was working for a high tech company called Network General Corporation (http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/14/14226.html).  I didn’t start using the Internet there until around 1996, the year its commercialization became more prevalent.  At around that time, e-mail, file transfer via FTP, and information access were  the biggest use of the Internet.

Fast forward to present…

How I use the Internet has totally evolved.  My use of it is completely intertwined with my life and day-to-day activities.  Here’s a typical day.

When I wake up in the morning I go for a run.  I use one of those things from Nike called Nikeplus.  When I finish, I take the little gadget that logs my run and plug it into one of my computer’s USB ports.  It uploads my running data to nikerunning.nike.com where my running record is maintained.  I’ve also tied that to my facebook account so that a facebook app logs an entry into my profile.

Thereafter I read the latest news through Google News; then check for any new e-mails through Google’s gmail and Yahoo’s e-mail.  From there, I go to Facebook for any new messages or postings from relatives, friends, and favorite pages.

On occasions, I have bills due to be paid.  For example, my city utility bill can be paid via the Internet.  I simply visit the city’s web site, go down to the finance section where one can log in to pay their bill.  I’ve saved countless amount of postage by paying my bills this way.  Besides, I don’t even have to use a check.  Everything can be paid using a credit card!  On occasion, when our checking account is low on balance, I would access our other bank accounts and transfer funds.  The transfers would occur within one business day.  Very convenient, and all that without having to stand in line.

When I have time, during early morning hours or late at night, I do a bit of writing.  Since I like to write, I thought that I might as well earn a few bucks while I’m at it.  To that end, I write various articles online at sites that pay writers to post short articles on their site.  I write for Helium.com, Bukisa.com, infobarrel.com, ehow.com, brighthub.com, hubpages.com,  and on my own blog site freetechzone.com.  All the money I make there goes to an online account on paypal.com or to my adsense account on google.com.  After a certain period of time, I actually collect enough money there to buy stuff online!  The good thing about this little gig is that even when I’m not doing anything, my articles earn me money!  By the way, sometimes while I write, I connect to pandora.com and listen to some online streaming music.  I simply identify a particular artist, and it plays music from that artist and others with similar styles of music.

At work, I sometimes have to visit a site that is several miles away from my office.  I use google maps to help me find a route to get there.  On my smart phone, I have a built in GPS which uses google maps to show my actual location, the route I’m following, and the estimate of how many more miles before I reach my destination.  Because of google maps, I don’t even buy maps anymore.  Who needs maps when one can get the entire world’s map through the Internet!

When my wife and I get a chance to relax, we sometimes watch movies or TV episodes.  We use to have cable TV, but not anymore.  Since 2010, we’ve been cable TV free.  We watch movies and TV episodes via the Internet.  Hulu.com has many movies and TV programming episodes you can watch for free, and if you have a projector and a big white wall to use as a projection screen, you can have one heck of a big screen to watch movies or TV shows.  If you purchase their Hulu Plus offering, you can watch even more recent TV episodes.  I’m not sure how it differs with regards to movies though.  YouTube.com has also come a long way.  They too offer movies (http://www.youtube.com/movies) and TV episodes (http://www.youtube.com/tv).  Most recently, we discovered Netflix.com.  They too offer streaming video service over the Internet.  If you purchase service from them, you can get watch relatively new movies, and TV episodes.

My family run a business.  We teach martial arts.  Like most business, we too have an online presence. We get leads through this web site.  When people look for a Taekwondo school in Stockton, California, (i.e. go to google.com and do a search for “taekwondo stockton ca”) our schools shows up at the very top!  I built that web site, and with the help of the Internet we can reach customers that would otherwise miss our street sign.

The last thing I would like to note is that I found my current job though an Internet job search.  I used the Internet to make my job search very easy and convenient.  Had I not done that, my search would have been limited to news paper clippings, actual business visits, and word of mouth knowledge of openings.  Today, you can set alerts that would send you emails telling you of the latest job openings.  You don’t have to look for them, as job openings come to you!

With the fast upsurge in smart-phone technology and its integration with applications tied to the Internet within the last 2 years, expect more amazing things to come.  As things stand now, the power of the Internet is no longer limited to your desktop.  You can be anywhere, and have access to the Internet and everything that can be done through it.  Isn’t the Internet and technology amazing?

If you have comments about how you use the Internet in your daily life, please share it here.

by ·Comments Off on Free Maximum PC Magazines online!

Can’t afford to subscribe or buy technology magazines? Guess what, if you have Internet access and you don’t mind reading PDF files, and you don’t mind your content being about 2 to 3 months old, then you can get them for free!

Maximum PC is one such magazine who provides archives of issues from their web site. Just head on down to their PDF archive page and you’ll see what I mean.

by ·Comments Off on The next Wave in Communication: Google Wave

I’ve been hoping to get invited to beta test Google’s new online application called “Wave”.  Well, after submitting two requests over a period of a month, I finally got an invitation!

I am now one of the lucky few who will get a chance to test drive what could be one of the most paradigm changing revolutions in our Internet times.

As I go through the use of Wave I will post my opinion of it and it possible applications, and how this new communications medium can possibly impact the way we do things online or with our daily lives.

by ·Comments Off on Internet Explorer 8: Safety

Introduction

Most people with very minimal computer background use their web browser without thinking about web safety. They just expect their computer to do its job. Well, there is more than meets the eye when surfing the Internet, especially if you are using someone elses computer or a computer shared by many other people. Here’s what I mean.

When you are browsing the Internet, your web browser leaves a trail of where you’ve been, what you’ve typed, what you’ve seen, and the various information you’ve been entering in web forms. In Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), it even remembers the state of you browser so that if it crashes, you can be restored to the last state of your browsing activity.

Now think about who could potentially see this if you are using a public computer or a shared computer! This is an identity theft scenario just waiting to happen.

IE8's Safety

IE8's Safety

This is where IE8 Safety feature comes into play.  Microsoft has updated IE8 with Internet safety as a major change.  As an example, one of the key things you will notice is that IE8 has an InPrivate Browsing feature–a way for you to browse without leaving a trace.  Note that IE8 has no Phishing Filter as it has been replace by SmartScreen Filter.

Delete Browsing History

Clicking this menu item will bring up the Delete Browsing History dialog box where you can select the specific items in your browsing history you want to delete.  The options include:

  • Preserve Favorite website data:  to keep cookies and temporary Internet files that enable your favorite websites to retain site preferences and display faster
  • Temporary Internet files:  copies of web pages, images, and media that are temporarily saved by IE8 for faster viewing
  • Cookies:  files stored on your computer by websites to save preferences such as your login information
  • History:  list of websites you’ve visited
  • Form Data:  information you typed into web forms
  • Passwords:  saved passwords that are automatically filled in when you login to a website you’ve previously logged in
  • InPrivate Filtering data:  Saved data used by InPrivate Filtering to detect where websites may be automatically sharing details about your visit

If you are paranoid like me, you’ll want to make sure that any trace of your browsing history is truly deleted by making sure you check all of the above and uncheck the first one–Preserve Favorite Website Data.

InPrivate Browsing

InPrivate Browsing

InPrivate Browsing

Selecting this menu item or pressing CTRL-SHIFT-P, will open a new IE8 window running in “InPrivate” browsing mode.  This means that your browsing activity isn’t leaving any trails behind.  Be advised that this InPrivate protection is only in effect for this window.  By default, IE8 will open in its normal mode.

You should use this mode when using public or shared computers to prevent others from finding information about your web activity.

Web Page Privacy Policy

This is basically a report of which sites you’ve visited showing if cookies were accepted or blocked.  Depending on your browser’s privacy policy setting, you may or may not have any reports of cookies being accepted by your system.

Privacy Report

Privacy Report

If you select one of the sites in your privacy report, you will notice that the Summary button becomes enabled, and if you click it you will get the following dialog box:

Privacy Report Summary

Privacy Report Summary

If you decide that the current browser privacy policy isn’t sufficient or you simply wish to change it, you can click the Settings button Privacy Report dialog box.  When you do you get this:

Privacy Policy Settings

Privacy Policy Settings

As you can see, it can get pretty involved just trying to make heads or tails of Privacy Policy.  Suffice it to say that in this window you can control how cookies are allowed or disallowed on your computer.  You can also control the pop-up blocker  and control InPrivate browsing settings.  I’ll cover this area in more detail in another article.

InPrivate Filtering and Settings

When you select Safety then InPrivate Filtering from the command bar, you toggle on and off this feature.  What exactly is InPrivate Filtering?  It is a feature that allows you to block the sharing of information about the sites you visit to third party content providers.  This information can be used to generate a profile about you which then can be used for targetted advertisements.

You can choose to automatically block, choose which ones to block/allow, or to simply have it off by selecting the InPrivate Filtering Settings menu item from the Safety command bar drop down menu.  The window for InPrivate Settings is shown below.

InPrivate Filtering Settings

InPrivate Filtering Settings

Security Report

The feature activates when the site you are visiting is secure–meaning it is using HTTPS in the URL.  When you select this from the menu (under Safety in the command bar), IE8 will bring up a little pop up window that provides information about the site.  The example below show what I got when I went to the logon page of gmail.

Security Report on gmail

Security Report on gmail

As you can see, it provides information about who the certificate of authority (CA)  is and other information related to the site’s certificates.   Typically, the CA is the one vouching for the sites identity.  In this case the CA is Verisign–a very reputable CA company.

International Website Address

There isn’t really much information about this function in IE8.  The closest thing on this I can find from Microsoft is an article on “What are International Domain Names?”

This item appears to be disabled or grayed out all the time.  So there was no way to determine exactly what it does.  Although, I’m guessing that if a site is an international site where the domain name can be shown in its native language, then this feature might allow you to show it in its original form or standard text encoding.

This appears to be a security feature because it is possible for text encoding to look like a legitimate looking domain when, in fact, it is a foreign site!

You’ll probably not even use this, but it is good to know what it may be used for.

SmartScreen Filter

This is IE8’s replacement for the Phishing Filter that was introduced in IE7.  When it is on, IE8 will send the website you are visiting to Microsoft to check to see if it is in the list of phishing or malicious software distribution sites.  It it is, you will get an RED background in the address bar and you will get a block message from IE8.  You can ignore the message and continue to the bad site or you can go to your home page (recommended).

If you suspect a site is a suspicious or potentially malicious site, you can submit a site to Microsoft for review by selecting Check This Website from the SmartScreen Filter submenu.

Although it isn’t recommended, you can turn off this feature by selecting Turn Off SmartScreen Filter from the submenu.

If you visit a site that is obviously a malicious one, you can simply report this abuse by selecting Report Unsafe Website from the SmartScreen Filter submenu.

As you can see, this is a very powerful feature of IE8 to help protect users from malicious sites that are there to potentially steal your identity or to spread malware to your computer.

Windows Update

This feature will navigate you out of the page you are currently viewing to Microsoft’s update site.  There Microsoft will assess what updates your computer needs and you can opt to install them.

I recommend installing critical security updates at the very minimum as these will close any vulnerabilities your computer might have from hackers who will exploit them.

Conclusion

IE8 is a major change from the previous versions due to heavy focus on security.  The Safety feature of IE8 is a testament to that.

by ·Comments Off on Internet Explorer 8: The Page Function

Overview

The Page function of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is probably where most action takes place for web page related functions the user will take.  It has the following basic menu items

  • Cut, copy, and paste
  • Accelerators (links to sites)
  • Edit, Save As, Send page or link by E-mail
  • Compatibility viewing options (enable it or configure it)
  • Page displaying options like Zoom, Text size, Style, Encoding, Caret browsing
  • Properties
  • View Source

Most of the items here are common knowledge to the general user population; so we will only cover those functions that are more obscure to the most casual user.  We’ll cover those that are in bold above:  compatibility viewing options, style, encoding, caret browsing, and view source.

Compatibility Viewing Options

Previous versions of Internet Explorer have the reputation of not following web standards, as it relates to how web page mark up codes are interpreted. In addition, they were known to use their own unique mark up code–forcing web masters to create various hacks just to make sure their pages work in IE6 or IE7.

Well, after many years, Microsoft finally saw the light and have come to adopt web standards–resutling in the release of IE8. Now, what happens to the pages that were designed to be best viewed in IE6 or IE7? In some cases, they might not look right. This is where the compatibility option comes in.

If you enable the Compatibility View option, IE8 will allow you to run in a sort of IE6 or IE7 mode.  So if you ever find a site that may have been designed for the older Internet Explorers, you’ll want to enable this option, and add the site to the list of sites you wish to view in compatible mode.  You can add them by selecting Compatibility View Settings.

Bottom line…if a page doesn’t look right, try enabling the Compatbility View option.

Style

The Style menu item has two submenu items–no style and default style.  As some people know, web pages may have styles associated with it.  Styles can be embedded in a page or it can be included using CSS (cascading style sheets).

Styles control how content is displayed.  So by default, IE8 uses styles.  You can disable Style by selecting No Style.  When you do, IE8 will simply show you content in a linear fashion–pretty much in the order they appear in the page, with no style.

When would you use “No Style”?  Probably if you want to keep the view to the content plain.

Encoding

Encoding is the language and character set to use when displaying a web page. Most people don’t have to mess with this because the default setting is “Auto” and most pages have information to tell the browser what language encoding to use.

However, if for some reason the page does not include that information, and you have the Language Encoding Auto-Select feature on, IE8 can probably determine the correct encoding. For the case it cannot, the Encoding feature allows you to choose.

Caret Browsing

No. This isn’t some new browsing trend where you eat carrots while you browse. It is an accessibility feature on IE8 that allows one to browse using the keyboard.

When it is on, a movable cursor will become visible. Using the keyboard, a user can navigate the browser with that cursor. That same cursor can be used to select and copy snippets of the page being viewed.

This feature can be applied on a per tab basis. Pressing F7 toggles it on or off.

View Source

Most people would probably not care about using this feature, but if for some reason you want to see how a web page is coded in HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), then this is how you would see it.

Closing Remarks

By getting yourself familiar with these features, you will become more knowledgeable about IE8 than probably 99% of the population! As a result, you can be more productive in how you deal with a web page.

by ·Comments Off on How to: Basic Google Search
Basic Google Search

Basic Google Search

Almost everyone uses Google to search the Internet; but not everyone really knows how to take advantage of some of Google’s basic search capabilities.  Knowing how to use Google’s basic search capabilities can narrow down your seach quickly from several hundred millions down to a few thousands relevant results.

Open your web browser to google.com.  This should open up to google’s simple, yet effective home page–the search page.  At this point, you can search the WEB, look for IMAGES, find some VIDEOS, or search for NEWS.  Most of the time, the default–WEB–will suffice.  Regardless, click the type of seach you wish to do.

In the search field, you can type relevant words that simply describe what you are looking for.  Say for example you are looking for an article on basket weaving.  If you simply type the words “basket” and “weaving” in the seach field, Google will come back with 1,150,000 results.  This is because google will look for articles that contain “basket weaving”, “basket”, or “weaving”.  Now, do you have time to look over that many articles?  Probably not.

To narrow down your results to more relevant searches, you can begin by using the “+” operator.  You can enter “+basket” and “+weaving”.  This will force Google to only return articles with both “basket” and “weaving”.  This approach narrows down the search to 704,000.  Better than the original 1,150,000 results earlier, but still too many.

To further narrow down the search, you can enclose your search criteria with quotes–i.e. use “basket weaving” including the quotes.  This forces Google to only return articles with the term “basket weaving”.  This narrows down the search to 370,000.  This is a significant improvement to the original result of 1,150,000.

Several hundred thousand articles are still too much to search through.  Think about what is unique about your search.  Say for example that you are only interested in nylon basket weaving techniques.  You can update your search to use ‘+nylon +”basket weaving”‘. This asks Google to find web articles that have the terms “nylon” and “basket weaving”.  This narrows down the search to 3,190!  This is definitely orders of magnitude less than the original 1,150,000 search result.  Most people will probably continue to get results of this magnitude; however, you now know basic Google search capabilities and should be able to limit search results to a few relevant thousands.

by ·Comments Off on Underlying Internet economy most people don’t see

Overview

If you’ve seen the movie “The Matrix”, you may recall the part where Neo, the main character, was asked by Morpheus to take the red or the blue pill.  Taking the red pill meant he’ll wake up and see reality; blue meant he’ll remain oblivious to reality–continuing his life in the virtual world of the Matrix.
What I’m about to tell you is the reverse.  Most people are oblivious to what is happening within what I call the “real matrix” in the Internet.  I will give you the blue pill so that you may see the virtual world or community that most people don’t realize exists!  The “real matrix” is the thriving Internet economy that only a few have seen and can comprehend.
If you are like most people, When you take the blue pill, you will be enlightened.  Your view of the Internet will never be the same.  You will realize that there are a few people out there living solely on the Internet.  I’m not referring to people selling things on eBay or Craig’s list; I’m referring to those people who earn income through the pure bits and bytes that flow through the Internet. Their product is not physical, but intelectual; thus it is created out of thin air and converted into the bit and bytes of information people need or seek through the Internet.
This income generating power has been around since the beginning of the Internet, but was never easily available to anyone until the emergence of the Internet giant Google.com.  They have single handedly revolutionized online advertising and have created opportunities not previously available to anyone.  This article will enumerate the various ways people are making money online.

Opportunities Abound!

Perhaps you’ve heard of rumors about how some people were able to leave their day job because they pursued and took advantage of this underlying economy.  The interesting thing is that most people are oblivious to this–only seeing what is on the surface of their Internet browsing experience!
So go ahead, take the blue pill.
Now have a look at this link:  http://website.ws/kvmlm2
Be advised that this will show you a video of an opportunity that might inspire you.  You don’t necessarily have to sign up because the main objective is to watch the video and see what point they are making.  Note that this is in not my link nor am I endorsing the product.  Only pay attention to the video message.
Have you finished?  Are you excited?  OK.  The main point I’m trying to make is that anyone can actually improve their financial situation by taking control of life, and that age and education doesn’t matter–only the strong desire to change your destiny really counts.  And all this can be done from the comfort of your home and computer.
After I saw the video, it inspired me to dig deeper into how people made income while working from home.  What I discovered inspired me even more.  Check out these articles:
Before making the above discoveries, I really thought that blogging was an activity that people did to document their activities and thoughts online.   In reading the above articles, I quickly realized that it was more than that; it was really the strong desire to share useful information with others, and in the process earn income from web traffic–enough income in some cases to leave their day job!
At this point I thought that I needed to build myself a blog.  But before I delved into my own blog, I tried my hand at various sites that allowed me to post information and earn from those postings.  Here are some that I tried:
For some reason, my efforts gravitated only towards the following sites; it is probably because it seems to be easier to setup and create articles.
eHow.com is probably the easiest place to post useful information and get micro-streams of income from the “get go”.  Note that the income may start flowing as soon as you post your article.  There is no limit to what you can write, and this site gives you a taste of how it would feel like to generate residual income from your postings.  Imagine if you took time to write hundreds of short “how to” articles.  You might think that you don’t know anything, but everyone knows how to do many things.  Your unique perspective can give your posting a special touch of personality.  If you wrote on topics you know, there is most likely many other people interested in those topics.  When they search the Internet for that topic, yours will show up.  And through the ads within eHow, you will earn some income.  It may not be much from the start, but if you build up a good set of “how to” articles, the residual income stream can start becoming significant.  Why?  Because you earn income even when you stop writing!  This is the power of residual income generation.
Next is Helium.com.  This site is a little tougher to get into, because they require longer articles.  However, because your articles are rated and compared with others, you get that extra motivation to improve your writing.  Your own motivation will help you push for the top 5 position.  At Helium.com you earn badges and various writing recognition. You are also encouraged to review other people’s articles and rank them.  Hence the name helium–quality rises to the top.  Another way you can earn income is by writing an article through their market place section.  There you get paid a certain amount based on what the topic requester is willing to pay.  This site too has residual income generation potential because you can earn income even if you stop writing.
The third site–bukisa.com–is also relatively easy to write to.  You don’t have to write about “how tos”; you can write about almost anything.  Some people on eHow have started to replicate their articles to Bukisa.  One unique thing about Bukisa is how you can earn from others’ work if you were able to recruit them into your network–like an MLM scheme.
The fourth site–hubpages.com–isn’t bad either.  I would say that it is almost at the same level as Bukisa, but I’m making more money ther than Bukisa.  In bukisa you can have people become fans.  The more fans you have, the better as it allows you to spread your knowledge faster through your fans.
At each one of these sites, I generate microstreams of income while I sleep, eat, and go to my day job.  Imagine if I had more articles in them; over a period of a couple of years there might be enough income there to earn hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month!

Blog and Earn Money

In parallel to this effort, I was trying to figure out what my blog should be about.  After much thought, I settled on a blog that would inform the common computer user about the various technology available out there for free.  This gave birth to my main website at http://www.freetechzone.com.  Before settling on this, I tried wordpress.com and blogger.com; however, most information about how to maximize income suggests setting up a blog under my own control.
Now that I have a blog, where’s the flow of money?  Well, the real secret to making money on the Internet is “web traffic.”  One has to build traffic to a site, as I am doing now.  You’ll want to do a Google search on how to build traffic to your website.  Of course, the best way to do that is to show up on the first or second page of a Google search.  To do that, a site has to be very relevant to the search topic; and based on Google’s own documentation, that can happen if you have high ranking sites linking to your site and that your site has very relevant content.  There are many other things that Google take into account in determining your relevance; the ones mentioned are definitely what Google mentions in their recommendations.
OK, so now that I got traffic, where’s the flow of money?  Well, money wont flow unless you have some form of advertising on your site and a way for you to receive payment.  To do this, you need to do three things.
  1. Sign up for a paypal.com account.  This will allow you to have a place where your money will accumulate as income starts to flow.
  2. Sign up as a publisher for Google.com through their adsense program.  This will allow you to get ads and have them placed on your web site.  Later you can sign up with affiliate sites like linkshare.com or Commision Junction (www.cj.com).
  3. Monetize your website!  To monetize, you will need to place Google and/or affiliate ads on your website.
Note that the effort towards generating income from the Internet this way will take time and effort.  On almost all articles I’ve read from those people who were successful in doing this, they indicate that this is not a “get rich” scheme.  You must be patient and must work hard to help keep your content relevant.  The more work you put into it, the higher the chance it has being relevant to the search engines.  If your content is useful, you will have thousands of visitors daily, and you can convert those visits into income–income that keeps flowing even when you are not working.  How cool is that!

Internet Money Making Explained

If this is all confusing, let’s step back and try to explain how websites make money from the point of view of the user.
OK, almost all sites that you go to now-a-days are free.  I would even say that it is probably safe to say that 99.9% of web sites out there are free.  How then are web sites able to keep open?  As everyone really knows, nothing is really free.  All sites, have one or more form of advertising on their site.  You see it everywhere and probably don’t even notice it because you’ve just gotten used to them being there.
Anyway, those ads pay for the site and more.  Some ads provide revenue to the website publisher on a page impression basis.  Some provide revenue to the site when a user clicks through the ad.  Some ads pay the website publisher if the ad generates a lead.  Last but not least, others’ ads provide commision on actual sales resulting from users clicking and then purchasing through the ad.
Picture this…
Let us say you are a website publisher or blogger and you are using an ad that pays $1 for every lead your site is able to generate.  Let us also say that you get 100,000 hits on your web site a month.  If you are able to convert 1% of those hits into leads, then you can potentially generate about $1000/month.  This is just from one ad.  What if you had 4 ads that generated as much revenue per month?  This means that you, the publisher, is able to generate $5000 plus per month!  This can be pretty conservative, if you have a very highly visited site, and this might just be enough to make you quit your day job.

Closing Remarks

The underlying economy in the Internet is like “the matrix”.  If you take the blue pill, you will see.  Until then you will be oblivious to the fact that some people out there are actually making a living from the Internet, working from home, and are able to quit their day job.  So go ahead, take the blue pill, see the underlying Internet economy, and perhaps participate in it.
If you have any questions about this article or anything related to this topic, don’t hesitate to contact me at forlanda@gmail.com.

by ·Comments Off on Internet Explorer 8: Getting Input and Output

In this article we will quickly cover the three basic functions that allow you to get input or output from Internet Explorer 8 (IE8).  These functions are as follows:

  • RSS Feed
  • Get Mail
  • Print
IE* RSS Feed Function

IE* RSS Feed Function

The image on the left is the icon representing the RSS Feed function.  RSS

Active RSS Feed

Active RSS Feed

 stands for “Really Simple Syndication”, but lately it also has come to mean “Rich Site Summary”.  When you browse a site with RSS feed, this icon will change in color from it grey color to bright orange.  At that point, you can click it and you will be able to subscribe to the feed using your RSS reader (mine is set through Google).  Thereafter, any new update from the site will show up in your RSS feed.  Thus RSS feed is a way to get input through IE8.

IE8 Read Mail

IE8 Read Mail

Next is the Read Mail function.  This is tied to your default email program.  On my Windows Vista machine, it defaults to launching Windows Mail.  I don’t quite see how this ties to IE8, but I suppose it makes it convenient to have email readily available from the IE8 interface.

IE8 Print Function

IE8 Print Function

Last but not least is the Print function.  Obviously this is a way to get output from IE8.  When you click the Print icon, you will get three choices:  Print, Print Preview, and Page Setup.  If you select Print IE8  simply prints the page you are looking at to the default printer.  Print Preview allows you to see how the print will look like, possibly make some adjustmenets, before you commit to a print.  Finally, Page Setup allows you to make adjustments to your printing setup–to include margins, printing orientation, font to use, and header/footer information.
There are really nothing earth shattering about the functions just discussed; however, if you’ve never used them, you might not know how useful they can be–after all, these features are IE8’s primary means of inputting and outputting to its users.

by ·Comments Off on Internet Explorer 8: The Home Page

Your Internet browser’s setting for home page is your very first view into the Internet the moment the browser is opened.  It only makes sense that you set it to a page that you use most often so that you can save time in your Internet surfing activity.  This page is called your home page.

What if you have more than one page you wished you could open everytime you ran your browser?  Well, with Internet Explorer (IE) 8 (or IE 7 for that matter), you can open more than one.  As a matter of fact, you can open up to 8 home pages when you launch IE 8.

Home Page Icon

Home Page Icon

 The Home Page icon is illustrated on the left.  When you click the icon IE 8 will take you to your home pages.  If you only have one, you can add 7 more by clicking the down arrow immediately to the right of the Home Page icon.

When you click on that down arrow, you can choose from the list of your up to 8

Remove Home Page

Remove Home Page

 home pages or you can manage your home pages.  Specifically, you can

  • Add or Change Home Page
  • or Remove (a home page or all)

If you are setting your home pages for the first time, the quickest way to do it is to open IE 8, set each tab to browse to the appropriate page, then click the Tools item from the command bar, then select Internet Options from the drop down menu that shows. 

In the Internet Options window, make sure you are in the General tab.  From there, simply click the Use Current button, and that will set your home pages.  Click the OK button of the Internet Options window and you are done.

Internet Options dialog box

Internet Options dialog box

Most people don’t know these about Internet Explorer 8’s Home Page function.  You are now one of the few who does; make sure to pass this information on.