Last
week we have talked about the basic factors need to consider in chosing
web hosting. We will keep discussing the web hosting and list out
something that you may miss when chosing the web hosting. These items
are also important too.

#1 Technical Support

Technical support
is one of the important factor you need to consider. But how to know
their services level? You can test by sending them an email with some
questions or just make a phone to their support hotlines. If they
respond quickly, this is a good sign. If they cannot provides you
answers, you’d better find another one.

#2 UpTime

The more uptime
they guarantee, the better. 99% uptime is the minimum acceptable
standard. You’d should Look for 99% plus guaranteed uptime.

#3 FTP Access

You need an FTP
program to transfer files to the server. You should seek for an
unlimited and unrestricted FTP access, otherwise it will troublesome to
maintain your website.

#4 Control Panel

Most web hosting
company will provides a web based control panel for you to maintain your
web site. You should looking for one with a easy-to-use interface.

#5 Statistics Program

A good stats
program is handy if you want to keep an eye on how many visitors you are
getting, where they are coming from, referrers, top entry and exit pages
and so on. Some companies offer excellent stats programs as standard
while others offer basic stats but you have to pay extra for advanced
statistics. You should ask the company what kind of statistics
information they can provide.

This
week we will talk about internet again. Many clients have talked to us
about their online business and they would like to have some suggestion
in chosing a web hosting company. There are so many companies and
packages for them to choose. Here we will listed out some factors that
need to be considered.

#1 Disk Space

Disk space is
depends on the size of your web site. So, have a look on your web site
folder and see how much disk space it takes up on your computer. You
should always get more space than what is taken up on your computer. For
example, if your web folder is 200MB, you should probably get 250-300MB
of disc space. This extra space allowed you to further expand your web
site and put more materials there. Remember that you need to think about
what kind of materials you pland to add later. If what you plan to add
is some flash animation or some audio/video file, you’d better to get
some more buffer.

#2 Bandwidth

Bandwidth is the
amount of data transfer that your web site can use. If you plan on
having a massively popular site with a large amount of files, then you
should have a high bandwidth. For casual web sites, bandwidth is not as
big a factor. Again, consider cost and try to have more bandwidth than
you need, not less. It is also important to check the bandwidth for
local and overseas.

#3 Web site speed

Web site speed is
seldom taken into consideration. Web site speed is a really important
factor. If your web host has a very slow speed for all of its web sites,
then you may not want to go with that host. People won’t stay around at
a page forever. If you want many people to visit your site, having a
fast speed is very helpful. You should check with the web hosting
company and ask them to provide a list of their sites. You can then try
to access to see the response of these sites.

#4 Database / Programming Language support

Database and
Programming Language support are important if you plan to have a dynamic
website and interact with your customers. Currently, most web hosting
provides support for database and programming language, but there are
great variety on database and programming language. You should check and
pick the one you plan to use.

Of course the
above factors are depend on how much you want to spend on it. It’s
always difficult to take all the best. You should think about your own
case and find out the best fit. For example, you have a text-centric
site with little photos and target in local market only, you may find a
hosting with little disk space, enough bandwidth for local (overseas is
not important in this case) and normal web site speed.

Microsoft’s
Internet Explorer is one of the most often used, programs on the
world’s personal computers. But Microsoft hasn’t made any important
functional improvements in Internet Explorer for years. We only heard
about the security issues, or patch release about IE. Another browser
Firefox become more and more familiar and more than ten million user
switch to use it. It provides a faster, secure and efficient browser.
Wall Streets Journal wrote
href="http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20041230.html">
Security, Cool Features Of Firefox Web Browser Beat Microsoft’s IE

Let have a look why Firefox is so cool?

Improved
Pop-up Blocking

Firefox’s built-in pop-up blocker has been enhanced to block more
unwanted pop-up and pop-under ads.

Tabbed
Browsing

Use tabbed
browsing to open multiple Web pages in a single browser window, and
quickly flip back and forth. Drag and drop open tabs to keep related
pages together.

Stronger
Security and Privacy

Firefox keeps you secure when you’re browsing the Web, closing the door
on spyware, worms, and viruses. The Firefox community of developers and
security experts works around the clock to monitor security issues and
release updates to better protect you. You can protect your privacy with
the new Clear Private Data tool. With a single click, you can delete all
personal data, including browsing history, cookies, Web form entries
and passwords.

“ href="http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2004-09-08-zombieinfect_x.htm">Beware
of spyware. If you can, use the Firefox browser.” -
USA Today

Integrated
Search

Tap into the power
of the Web’s most popular search engines with the built-in Search bar,
and easily add new engines.

Easier Download

All the
download from internet will be saved into your desktop, it’s much easier
to locate the file.

Customize
Firefox

Select new button controls for your toolbars, install extensions to add
new features, or change the look of your browser with themes – the way
Firefox looks and works is under your control.

Simple
Installation

Firefox（Windows
Version）only 4.5 MB。Installation process help you greatly in
installation of Firefox. It can help to duplicate the setting, like
Bookmarks, Saved Password, Plugins and other settings, from IE or other
browser.

Firefox have many powerful features, for example it can change the look
similar to IE

src="http://moztw.org/docs/ff/extension/extensions.png" title=""
alt="Like IE" style="width: 450px; height: 298px;">

Have a try on Firefox now.

If you want to increase your website traffic or increase the ranking in
Google, you may find the following Google tools useful.

#1 Google Webmaster Section

http://www.google.com/webmasters/

The Google Webmaster Section should be your first stop when you want to
know more about what things can be done to improve your website in
related with Google. Particularly for new site owners or operators,
checking this page first has saved many from needless anxiety.

#2 Google Sitemaps – Help Your Pages Get Discovered

https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

Google Sitemaps gives you the opportunity to present your website’s
pages to Google in XML format. Google will then come by and spider the
pages, getting you indexed faster.

This does not mean your pages will be listed for your favorite
keywords, the index process by Google will take place faster than with
manual submission. Google Sitemaps will also give you some basic site
stats after your site is verified, such as the top keywords, errors it
found when crawling, and the types of documents at your site.

#3 Google Web Page Information

If you type
info:yoursite.com into Google, it will show you a page that has your
link at the top of the page, with a short description, and other
information from Google about your website.

#4 Google Analytics – The Hot Stuff.

http://www.google.com/analytics/

After a recent purchase of Urchin Stats, a free online version has been
made available, and re-branded as Google Analytics. This cookie-based
invisible visitor tracker can give you information that go a bit beyond
standard stats such as bounce rates, visitor loyalty, keyword discovery
results for a single day, click paths through your site, and page views
per visit.

With the ability to analyze your traffic, you can help learn where the
holes in your site are, and how to keep them on your site for longer
periods of time, as well as better ways to steer a visit towards a
specific action, such as a subscription. Results come in flavors for the
executive and the search marketer alike.

However, this services is too hot and temporarily closed for new
registration. But you can still check the above link to see if it is
reopen or not.

This time we will talk about some related
to your office daily work. Did you encounter the following situation?
You want to send an email with a Word file attachment, but the email
cannot be send out cause the Word file is too large. And you waste many
efforts in making the file slim. You can try the following methods,
which can reduce the size a lot.

1. Save as

In Menu, choose
“File > Save As”, and save the file with a new name. You can compare
the new file with original one; you will find that the file size of new
one is much smaller.

You can also work in this way. Select the whole content of the
document, copy and paste it to a new blank document and save it. Again,
you will that file size of two documents is different.

2. Delete old versions

If there are many
old versions kept in the file, the file size will be larger. In Menu,
choose “File > Version”, check to see if there is any old version
saved. You can delete those versions with no value to make the file slim.

3. Insert picture wisely

“Insert Picture”
is one of the main reasons for the word file get fat. Try to insert a
smaller picture. You can use graphic editor to reduce the size of
picture before insert into the file. The file format should use GIF or
JPG and do not use those high-resolution graphic, like BMP.

4. Don’t “Embed True Type Font”

“Embed True Type
Font” will increase the size of word file. In Menu, choose “Tools >
Options”, switch to “Save” tab page. Confirm that your word file have no
true type font, and cancel the “Embed True Type Font” option. If you
embed true type font, then choose “Embed characters in use only”.

Try the above four
methods, you will see your word file getting slim.

Search engine spider crawl your
periodically. How to limit the access of the spider? So the search
engine only crawled the page pages you want to show and leave others
ignored. What we need is a file called “robots.txt”. The robot text file
is used to disallow the search engine spider’s access to folders or
pages that you don’t want to be indexed.

Why you need “robots.txt”?

For example, you
may create some personal pages or you may have some company web pages,
which is for internal use only. You may also do not want to expose the
image folder.

How to use “robots.txt”?

You just need to upload “robots.txt” to the root of your web site.

How to create “robots.txt”?

Use a text editor (e.g. NotePad) to create a new file named “robots.txt”. The syntax is

User-agent: spiders_name_here
Disallow: filename_here

style="text-decoration: underline;">User-agent
You can use * acts as a wildcard and disallows all spiders.
Visit http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/active/html/ to find the name of user
agent.

style="text-decoration: underline;">Disallow
To disallow an entire directory use
Disallow: /directory_name/

To disallow an individual file use
Disallow: /filename

For multiple files, you need to write in separate lines.
Disallow:/file1.htm
Disallow:/file2.htm

Yes, it’s simple.
All you need is the above, and you can restrict the access of the spider.

Email is an important communication tool today. Everyday we need to handle many emails from customer, boss, colleagues and many others. This is very time consuming. Some users may have more than one email accounts. Outlook Express has a function call “Mail Rules” can help to organize the mailbox. It works like a postman to distribute the mail and take different action according to the criteria you specified. Let’s have a look on this “Mail Rules”

First: Open Outlook Express, in Menu choose Tools > Message Rules > Mail

In Message Rules window, click “New”

In the popup window, you need to specify the condition to trigger the rule and the action to be taken. You also need to provide description and name for the rule. You can see that there are different conditions and action to choose. For example: condition can be “From address contains word” or “Subject contains word”; action can be Move, Copy or Delete.

Now we add a rule, choose “Where the From line contains people” & “Move it to the specified folder”.

And we choose “People”, we can pick from Address Book or input directly.

Now we can choose the folder we want to move to.

Click to “OK” to finish. When a new email arrive, it will check the “From” to decide how to handle it. If it meets the criteria, the mail will be move to the specified folder.

Using the Mail Rule can help to organize your mailbox, filter the junk
mail automatically and backup the important message. There are many
areas the Mail Rule can apply to. (Note: the settings in Outlook and
Outlook Express are similar)

In
the company, some important documents need to strengthen the protection,
which restrict the users access. Today we will introduce some protection
tips about Microsoft Word document.

- Recent open files

When we open File (file) Menu, it will list
out the recent open files. Based on the security need, you may not want
others to know what file we have opened. You can

Tools -> Options -> General Do not choose “Recent used file list”

Also, in Windows, Start -> Document lists the recent opened files.
We can remove this by

Start -> Settings -> Task List/Start Menu ->
Customize Start Menu Options set as “Never Display”

(This is for WinXP. The operation for Windows 98/2000 is similar.).

- Set Password

If you do not want unauthorized persons to read your document, you can
set password for it.
Open

File -> Save As -> choose Tools / General Options -> input the password
and confirm.

Word provides two different password settings:
(1)”Password to Open” limit unauthorized person to open the document
(2)”Password to modify” limit unauthorized person to modify the document

These two passwords are independent. The maximum length is fifteen
characters and they are case sensitive.

- Summary

Even the document is password-protected; user can still get some
information about the document by File -> Properties. In Summary,
user can read part of the contents. As most user used to prepare the
document first before writing the title. MS Word will pick the first few
characters as document title. Next time when you prepare the document,
you should write down the title first. You can also revise some user
information

Tools -> Options -> User Information -> make the
modification (like user name, address)

- Document Review

When you pass the document for others to review, you should set the
document be protected.

Tools -> Protect Document

This can keep track the changes made by other people.

Another method is to use “Version”,

File -> Save As -> click Tools > Save Version.

Afterward, you can retrieve different versions to review.

Shortcut
key provides a simple but easier method to control your software.
Shortcut key generally combined with ALT, CTRL, SHIFT and a letter. Now
let have a look on some shortcut key

General usage

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Word

Internet Explorer

Different softwares have different shortcut keys settings. The above
shows part of it. You can view the Help to find more.

Today we will introduce some file management freewares. These freewares can help you to manage files in your computer. They can help to backup, restore, delete and encrypt the files.

- Backup

Some important company materials, for example customer records and financial material, certainly must make a backup. The backup can help company to keep the normal operation even the data is corrupted under the situation like system failure, virus attack and human fault.

http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm
This software is easy to use,
- allows to setup schedule to backup
- supports different encryption technology
- saves the backup into different media, like FTP
- allows remote backup

- File Undelete

If a file is deleted accidentally, and the Recycle Bin is clean up also. It is still possible to recover the file.

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

Although the user interface is a bit simple, it can help to recover the
deleted file.
- it can restore the file in memory card
- it is no need to install
- it is very small and the size is only 192Kb

- Wipe out the file

Wipe out the file can avoid confidential data being recover by others.

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

This software can wipe out the file completely by using different computational algorithm.

- File encryption

File encryption can help to improve the security level.

http://www.cypherix.co.uk/cryptainerle/index.htm?adv=snap

This software will save those files into an encrypted virtual drive.
- 128Bit Encryption
- Send encrypted email

All of the above are some useful freewares. Before using the softwares, you are advised to read the user license and manual first.