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10 Helpful Tips For Running A Profitable Web Site
1. Address your targeted audience on your business site. Example: "Welcome Internet Marketers". If you have more than one, address them all. 2. Make sure your content and graphics are relevant to your web site's theme. You wouldn't want to use a...
Backing Up Your Stuff Part 4: Preparing For Disaster
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Finding Free Help Desk Software
Many companies recognize the benefits of help desk software. From streamlining technical inquiries to responding quickly to customer issues, help desk software has become a basic part of most company's business strategies. Pricing can vary and some...
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Microsoft Great Plains - Payroll & HR Inexpensive solution? Not any more
Microsoft Great Plains is main Microsoft Business Solutions accounting package for the US market. You should probably expect some issues when you have software development company to be bought by big player - in this case Great Plains Software...
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Things I Hate About The Internet
Spam - The number one thing that I hate about the internet is the proliferation of spam email. For every email that I receive I at least one spam message. Hardly a day goes by when I don't get some idiot asking me to help them smuggle a hundred million dollars out of Nigeria, increase the sizes of various body parts, or sign up (for "almost free") for some sexual site. It's gotten so that life without spam filters would not even be possible. Do these people make any money off their spam? What kind of imbecile would respond to a spam message and purchase anything?
http://www.internet-tips.net/Email/SPAM.htm
Email harvesters - Since we manage several dozen websites, my wife and I have had to take extreme precautions to ensure that our email addresses do not get picked up by email harvesters. These are software robots that scan websites for email addresses, which are then added to those "bizillion contacts" CD collections. Putting your email address on your web site used to be normal, now it's become suicidal.
Pop-up Windows - These include pop-ups and all of the clever derivations like pop-unders. In years past, a pop-up was the sign of a free site (such as Tripod or GeoCities) or some tacky spammy site. Now everyone seems to be doing it. I'll put up with one pop-up once and only once from a site. But if they want me to return or purchase something, they had better not put up another.
Anti-Microsoft ranting - I know that Microsoft has it's faults (more than their share of them) and I know the company often is it's own worst enemy, but is it possible to write about the company (positive or negative) without producing a slew of rantings? It used to be entertaining, now it's just more of the same.
Web Bugs - These are little 1x1 pixel graphics designed to help marketing companies track the performance of their advertising campaigns. More insidiously, web bugs can be used to track people's movement throughout the web. Life would be better without them, especially in HTML email messages.
Advertising for that "tiny little wireless camera that goes anywhere" - This has to be one of the most annoying advertisements on the web. Can't we just ban it forever?
Webmasters that are more worried about getting listed by search engines than creating quality sites - I understand that search engines are necessary for the survival of a web site. But adding countless link farms, keywords and other things is getting ridiculous. Removing content or links or webrings just to get listed is even worse. I believe we webmasters should just create good sites.
Sites that try to prevent deep linking - The web is all about linking. While it is indeed bandwidth theft to link to an object such as an image, movie or audio clip, linking to any HTML (or ASP, PHP or similar) page is not only fine but must be encouraged. You will hear similar arguments against fair use. As you no doubt already know, the fair use laws (part of copyright) allow you to quote or make minor usage of copy written works without permission or notification. The uninformed will often argue that any copying is bad - however, fair use is not only good but essential in a free world (how else could you write a movie review, for example, or a term paper).
Deep linking is equally essential to the survival of the web as such. Any attempts by those with hidden agendas or those with little intelligence to suppress our ability to deep link must be fought with all of our might. If not, the web will
cease to be free and will become a quagmire much like American television.
Bandwidth Theft - Please don't like directly to my pictures, videos, sound files and other similar objects. You can link to my pages, but not to the other things. This is called bandwidth theft, and it basically means you are stealing from me.
Changing my Browsers controls - Webmasters, please don't change my back key to back up to anything except the previous page. Please don't disable the right click function and don't do anything to the size of the browser window. It's rude and you can pretty much bet that I won't be back.
Free Hosts that Disable use - A new trend is free hosts which allow a certain amount of bandwidth to be used by each site per month. Once that limit is exceeded the site is shut down until the next month. This makes it really difficult for these free sites to survive, as they will drop from search engines and be removed from webrings because for a week or two they don't exist. Worse yet, most of these free hosts state the bandwidth is a certain amount (say 2gb/month) but the sites they shut down most certainly do not get anywhere near that much traffic.
Paid hosts that go to hell - Every single paid hosting service that I've used (about a dozen of them) started good and quickly went downhill. In the hosting world, poor customer service, poor performance and rudeness to customers seems to be the rule. Perhaps this is why they seem to be failing right and left.
Sites that include a statement like "Best viewed with" - A good webmaster makes sure that his site can be viewed (at least at a crude level) in any browser. Older browsers may only display text and text links, but the site should still work.
Sites without site maps - This is like trying to read a book without a table of contents. Please take the time to make a decent site map so I can get around your site.
Large Sites Without Site Search Engines - Sites with thousands of pages need to include site specific search engines. Why? Because it is not possible to have a navigation system that foresees everything I might want to find out. If you want me to use your site and it's large, then please include a good search capability.
Informational Sites with too much advertising - Look, I know some sites want to remain "free" and must pay the bills somehow. And I understand that the chosen dogma is that advertisers will pay for exposure. But do you have to include a half dozen banners, twenty links, three pop-ups, a pop-under and those silly monitors which fall from the top of the screen? Sites which do this would be better just charging people for access - if their content is good people will pay.
Sites which do not respect my privacy - I'm sorry, but you don't need my address, phone number or social security number unless I am doing specific kinds of business with you. And I am not going to tell you all about myself to fill out your silly survey. Just give me good content, a good shopping experience or good entertainment (whatever you are selling) and I will be happy.
And, oh yes, I do monitor where my information goes. If I find out my personal data has been given or sold to another company, you will NOT get my business again.
About the Author
Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets at http://www.internet-tips.net - Visit our website any time to read over 1,000 complete FREE articles about how to improve your internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.
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Tucows Downloads - Download Freeware and Shareware Software |
Download freeware, shareware, and demos. Maintains over 45000 software titles that are tested, rated, reviewed and ready to download. |
www.tucows.com |
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Free Software Downloads and Software Reviews - Download.com |
Download shareware, freeware and Demo software for PC, Mac, Linux, and Handhelds categorized into categories, plus software reviews. |
www.download.com |
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Computer software - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
This includes application software such as a word processor, which enables a ... Application software is often purchased separately from computer hardware. ... |
en.wikipedia.org |
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Shareware.com - Search for shareware programs and free software ... |
Search for shareware programs from more than a dozen downloadable software directories. |
www.shareware.com |
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Jumbo: Free & Shareware MP3 files, Games, Screen Savers & Computer ... |
Source of free and shareware computer programs and utilities for PC and Mac. Evaluate software and read product reviews. Download games and screen savers. |
www.jumbo.com |
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Computer Software in the Yahoo! Directory |
Browse categories featuring sites devoted to computer software, including shareware and freeware download sites, operating systems, desktop customization, ... |
dir.yahoo.com |
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IEEE Software |
IEEE Computer Society's magazine covering all aspects of software, including software engineering. |
www.computer.org |
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Free Downloads on ZDNet | Shareware, Trialware, Evaluation Software |
ZDNet's Software Directory is the Web's largest library of software downloads. Covering software for Windows, Mac, and Mobile systems, ZDNet's Software ... |
downloads.zdnet.com |
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FSF - The Free Software Foundation |
Free software is a matter of liberty not price. Think of "free" as in "free speech". |
www.fsf.org |
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Apple - Software |
Software products for your digital life. ... The perfect addition for professional review. QuickTime Broadcaster. Encoding software for live events. ... |
www.apple.com |
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Open Directory - Computers: Software |
In Partnership with AOL Search. about dmoz | report abuse/spam | help. the entire directory, only in Computers/Software. Top: Computers: Software (38471) ... |
dmoz.org |
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freshmeat.net: Welcome to freshmeat.net |
About: The Web browser is probably the most frequently used software today, ... Web professionals can use the software for functional testing and regression ... |
freshmeat.net |
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Software - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF) |
Listing of the GNU software packages. |
www.gnu.org |
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Sun Software |
Get enterprise-class software--Solaris 10 OS, the Java Enterprise System, ... Sun Java StorageTek Software reduces cost and complexity with a single, ... |
www.sun.com |
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Internet Real Estate.com -- owns and operates a portfolio of the ... |
SOFTWARE.COM · SWEEPSTAKES.COM · PHONE.COM PODCAST.COM ... Software.com | Sweepstakes.com | Phone.com | Podcast.com | Shop.com | Safety.com ... |
www.internetrealestate.com |
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Joel on Software |
A weblog by Joel Spolsky, a programmer working in New York City, about software and software companies. |
www.joelonsoftware.com |
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Amazon.com Software: Computer & video games, business, accounting ... |
Online shopping for computer & video games, business & office productivity software, software from Microsoft, Apple, Adobe & more; accounting, antivirus, ... |
www.amazon.com |
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IBM Software - Home Page |
IBM home page for all of its software products, including Lotus and Tivoli, with keyword search, category browse and AZ product names. |
www.ibm.com |
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Opera web browser: Homepage |
Copyright © 2006 Opera Software ASA. All rights reserved. Skip navigation. Opera Software ... Copyright Opera Software ASA . All rights reserved. ... |
www.opera.com |
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Google Directory - Computers > Software |
Search only in Software Search the Web ... Software Categorized by Letter: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z ... |
www.google.com |
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