http://www.articletrader.com/ Articles at ArticleTrader en-us http://www.articletrader.com/internet/security/how-to-avoid-viruses.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/security/how-to-avoid-viruses.html Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500
Since anti-viruses can't always give the best protection, it is good if you know how to avoid viruses. I know a few basic techniques you can use how to easily spot viruses. These techniques have worked very well for me. In fact it has worked so good, that I've never had the need to install anti-virus software on my machine. Please note that I would never recommend not having anti-virus software, I am just saying that these techniques are extremely practical.


Common stuff people don't know:

- You can't get a virus by browsing a website. You can however get a virus by installing software the website asks you to install.
- You can't get a virus by receiving an infected email and most of the time you also can't get it by reading the email the normal way it is presented to you. Important: you will very likely get a virus by opening the attachment(s) of an infected email.

The bottom line of avoiding viruses:

1. Don't ever install anything from a website if you do not know the website
2. If you receive an email and don't know who it came from, simply delete it


1. Don't ever install anything from a website if you do not know the website

One of my best friends was browsing a bad website 3 months ago (on his birthday actually) when he received a pop-up telling him that he has been infected with a virus and must immediately click here to install anti-virus software. Not knowing the signs, he followed the instructions and installed the virus (that was impersonating an anti-virus) on his system.

Soon after the virus was installed it told him that the supposedly 'virus' he had, could not be removed and that he needed other supposedly 'better' anti-virus software. Working along he was just helping the virus installing even more viruses on his system. Shame, I don't think it was his best birthday.

First sign he missed: the pop-up was not from his system, but from the website. This is easy to spot. If you use internet explorer to view websites, there will always be a 'Windows Internet Explorer' in the top of the pop-up window somewhere.

Second sign: The website he was browsing was bad. Websites that have questionable content, such as pirated software or adult content are bad.

Hint: If you are not sure if a website is safe, type the name of the website in Google. If it's a trap, plenty other more trustworthy websites will have warnings on their websites and Google is the way to locate those warnings.


2. If you receive an email and don't know who it came from, simply delete it

This is extremely important if the email has any form of attachment or a link to a website to download something! Don't be fooled by any promises, guarantees or emotional heart breaking stories – they are all lies!

Other less common ways of getting viruses:

- From friends

If a friend brings you software on a flash disk, you must think twice before installing the software. Does the person have good anti-virus software? (Remember: good trustworthy friends can also accidentally give you viruses)

- Website impersonations

Watch out for fake websites. The easiest way to spot a fake website is to analyse the address of the website, which is always displayed at the top of your internet browser.

How an internet address (also known as URL) works:

It consists out of 3 parts: The "http://", the "domains" and the path

It always starts with http://, so you can just ignore that part of the address
The domains are the part after that up until the first "/" character and the path are the rest.

Example: http://www.google.com/accounts
Domain = www.google.com
Path = /accounts

The path simply says where on the current server the page is, so the important part is the domain, because this actually says which server to use.

A domain is always divided by "." characters, for example "mail.google.com".

Start from the right. So "com" would be the first domain (known as the top level domain or TLD). The guy who controls this domain controls all the ones that are beneath it. The .com registry is currently controlled by ICANN.

The second level domain is "google.com" and is logically controlled by Google (but ICANN can bypass them if they want). And the third one is "mail.google.com" and is also controlled by Google.

The important lesson here is if a website address is http://mail.google.123web123.com or http://secure.bank.123web123.com it belongs to 123web123.com and not Google or your bank! Therefore the website can impersonate the real websites to get you to log in details or to ask you to install viruses! Also watch out for any strange characters like the "@" in the domain name. Most of the time, this is associated with fake websites.

- Fake links

People can send you an email with a link that looks like a legitimate link, but actually links to a completely different website. Here is a perfect example: http://www.google.com
It looks like Google's website address, but if you click on it, it takes you to http://www.yahoo.com!
The easiest way to spot this is to move with your mouse over the link without clicking on it. On the bottom left corner of your screen it should show the correct link you are actually going to go to when you click on it!

Also remember the section above on how internet addresses work. An address could actually be the address you are visiting, but not the people you thought owned it.

Also Google a website or a website address if you are not sure. This is a safe way to find out which 3rd parties know about them.

About anti-virus software:

I would currently recommend AVG. Its free, doesn't slow down your computer too much and relatively up to date.


--
Majority shareholder in Matogen Corporate Web Development (www.matogen.com). Studied electronic engineering, computer sciences & industrial engineering at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. Started first web development business in November 2003. Have a passion for business and adding value to other busnesses.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/email/how-not-to-fall-prey-to-fake-articles.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/email/how-not-to-fall-prey-to-fake-articles.html Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500
I regularly receive untrue emails from friends. The sad thing is it usually comes from good people who do not really know what they are sending.

Popular examples of this untrue information:

- Beta testing software: Bill Gates shares fortune with Microsoft users
- 'A virtual card for you': Another hoax virus warning: "It sends itself automatically to all contacts on your list with the title 'A Virtual Card for You...'"
- Nigerian money scam

Step 1: Decide if it's questionable

For example if it says Microsoft is giving thousands away for forwarding an email - red lights should go on. Not all fake articles are so obvious, but if the article makes any strange claim you should check it out.

Step 2: Google it

The internet is the biggest source of information that exists. Google is the way to access it. There are hundreds of websites that keep track of all these untrue articles and Google knows them all. The easiest way to check if something is valid is simply to copy a line that makes the article unique and give it to Google. Google will give you plenty of websites that will tell you whether the article is true or not. The nice thing about Google is that the website with the most authority tends to be listed first in the search results.

If you do not know how to use Google, it is strongly recommended that you ask somebody to quickly show you how. It will save you tons of time in the future.

Step 3: Reply to the person who send it

If you find a website that confirms that the information is incorrect, reply to the person who sent it to you with the following:
1. Something like "Dear John, I'm not sure if you were aware of what you sent me, but I think you should check out this/these websites"
2. A web address (also known as URL) of the website
3. A copy of this document you are staring at (so that we can stop the lies from spreading)
If the person sent it to a lot of people, click on the "Reply to all" button on your email program to also tell the other people in order to increase the chances to stop it from spreading.



--
Wim Conradie is a majority shareholder in Matogen Corporate Web Development (www.matogen.com). He studied electronic engineering, computer sciences & industrial engineering at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and started first web development business in November 2003. He has a 'passion for business and adding value to other busnesses'.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/online-business/most-useful-pages-to-have-on-a-new-website.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/online-business/most-useful-pages-to-have-on-a-new-website.html Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500 - Home

State exactly what your company do or offer summed up in the first sentence. First impressions last, so try to immediately attract a newcomer to view the rest of the website. Statistics have shown that most anonymous visitors only visit the home page.

- Products/Services

Make sure all the company's core information is stated here. Keep this section organised and up-to-date as out-of-date products will make your site lose credit.

- Pricing

Try not to have prices available on your website. Visitors are more likely to make an enquiry for a quote if they have no idea what your pricing structure are. If the client contacts you directly, it also leaves room for negotiation.

- Portfolio/Projects/Testimonials

Any impressive jobs that you have done and good testimonials is one of the best ways to reassure newcomers of your expertise. Try to include work that you've done over a period of time.

- About us/Company

Give some company background and anything you could brag about. Keep it sweet and short. If your company has been around for a while it would be wise to say so.

- Contact us/Enquiries

Contact details (email/phone/fax/address), Enquiry form

Other

- Terms of service

This section is important in order to protect you legally. List any special conditions to back you up.

- Sitemap

This is a navigation page (almost like Windows explorer) so that the visitors can see how the website is laid out hierarchically. This page also gives a quick summary of the site's pages and easy access to the whole site's sections.

- News/reviews

Some credit from the media or any publications that could make you look good is always a bonus to have on your website. This section also functions as another excellent reference and testimonial for your site.


--
Wim Conradie is a majority shareholder in Matogen Corporate Web Development (www.matogen.com). He studied electronic engineering, computer sciences & industrial engineering at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and started first web development business in November 2003. He has a 'passion for business and adding value to other busnesses'.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/email/using-google-spam-filters-for-your-own-mail.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/email/using-google-spam-filters-for-your-own-mail.html Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500 The ultimate anti-SPAM solution
By filtering your email through Google's spam filters

Google currently has the best known anti-spam filters. The idea of this document is to explain how to make use of spam filters for any email account(s).

The basic steps:
1. Create a free Gmail account
2. Setup your normal email account to forward all incoming mail to your Gmail account
3. Enable your Gmail to work with Outlook (or any other mail client)
4. Setup Outlook (or any other mail client) to download the mail to your computer
5. Change the FROM address to your normal email account
6. Optional (recommended): Forward all other email accounts to this Gmail account

1. Create a free Gmail account

Go to http://mail.google.com/mail/signup
Follow the instructions

2. Setup your normal email account to forward all incoming mail to your Gmail account

If not sure, contact your service provider, who supplied you the email account, to help. Normally you will have an account where you can log in to change settings such as forwarding options, out of office reply, passwords, etc.

For Matogen clients:

- Simply visit http://yourdomain.com/webmail (kindly take note that the 'yourdmain.com' web address should be replaced by your own website's name)
- Enter your user name and password (please take note that the username is your full email address and not just the part before the "@")
- Click on "Forwarding Options", and then on "Add Forwarder"
- Enter your Gmail email address and click on the "Add Forwarder"

3. Enable your Gmail to work with Outlook (or any other mail client)

Google calls this "Enabling POP", because the protocol that is being used to download your email is called POP3. To do this:

Log into Gmail
Click on the "Settings" link at the top right
Go to Forwarding and POP/IMAP options

Choose "1. Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on"
Choose "2. When messages are accessed with POP archive Gmail's copy"
Click on "3. Configure your email client"

4. Setup Outlook (or any other mail client) to download the mail to your computer

Click on the appropriate email client (most people use Outlook 2003)
Click on the 2nd link to help you with configuring your mail client.
Open your Outlook (or other mail client) on your computer and follow the exact instructions that Gmail gives you to setup your account.

5. Change the FROM address to your normal email account

The place where you entered your "From address", change it to your normal email account (not the Gmail account). In Outlook this is the send field from the top called "E-Mail Address" just under "User Information"

Important: Your "from address" and your user name are not the same! The username should still be your Gmail address, because Outlook uses this to connect to Gmail.

Your "from address" is only used to show the recipient of the email who it came from and is completely independent of any email accounts. You can even insert a completely false email address there and still send it, but be aware of getting blacklisted for faking email accounts.

6. Optional (recommended): Forward all other email accounts to this Gmail account

If you have a lot of email addresses within the same area of work, forward all of them to this one Gmail email account. When a person sends mail to any of them, it will be filtered through Gmail (all spam removed), and then downloaded to your Outlook. When you reply to it, it will look as if you replied from the one normal email account (not the Gmail account).


--
Wim Conradie is a majority shareholder in Matogen Corporate Web Development (www.matogen.com). He studied electronic engineering, computer sciences & industrial engineering at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and started first web development business in November 2003. He has a 'passion for business and adding value to other busnesses'.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/what-corporates-should-know-about-online-marketing.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/what-corporates-should-know-about-online-marketing.html Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500
When potential new clients/tourists need to choose between two companies with whom they aren't familiar, they are most likely to compare the websites. This is because a website is almost the only method for a person to actually see beforehand what he/she pays for. In general, more than 90% of these potential new client's decisions are decided upon the impression that is reflected from the website, regardless of the competence of these companies. The general truth is that most potential clients do not know how to technically compare companies, and therefore trust that the website's professionalism will reflect the expertise.

Therefore large amounts are invested in corporate website development.

Unfortunately most companies tend to overlook the importance of building a trusted web presence. Without having a web presence with authority almost no new visitors will end up at your website. And since every company wants to expand, they need to focus on improving their web presence in order to increase the chance of getting new customers.

The best and most effective long term solution to increase your web presence is known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It is a highly specialized field that focus on improving the amount of trust the rest of the world will have in your website. The more trust you have, the more potential new clients will visit your website daily.

The amount of trust your website has, is most of the time determined by search engines (for example Google, Yahoo, etc.). This is because the search engines have the most advanced mathematical algorithms available today – hence the acronym, SEO. Of all these search engines, the world's most accepted benchmark of website trust is known as the Google rank (or page rank) of your website. Therefore, if you could increase your Google rank, your number of new visitors to your website will most certainly increase.

Google Rank of well known organisations' home page:

Google Rank: Organisation(s)
4/10: Pick n Pay, Steers, KWV, News 24
5/10: Anglo Gold, Checkers, Spur, Shoprite, Nedbank, Old Mutual
6/10: Anglo American, Absa, Stellenbosch University, Telkom, MTN, Vodacom, Mobil, Virgin, Standard Bank, Die Burger, Sasol
7/10: McDonald's, Ford, General Electric, Nike, Coke
8/10: General Motors
9/10: Microsoft, eBay, Amazon
10/10: Google, Facebook

Another reason why Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is so important is because of the quality of the traffic (website visitors) you receive on your website. If somebody visits your website due to a search engine query, as opposed to other reasons (such as typing in the web address/clicking on a link from another website, etc), the new visitor will most likely already be looking for your services. For example, if someone types in the word "wine" in Google, they are probably looking for wine. So if your site comes up first on Google you can probably sell a bottle of wine if your offering is satisfactory. The contrary is that the person accidentally lands on your website, but has no immediate desire for the product or services.

Please note that it is possible to buy quality traffic, but these are expensive (depending on the product value and competition) and only effective in the immediate short term i.e. while it is active. SEO has a long term cumulative effect and is relatively inexpensive to maintain once a certain level of optimisation is reached.

Tips when hiring SEO experts:

- Whenever using a company in order to improve your SEO, always check out the Google Rank of their website. Since SEO is not that well known in management circles, there is a lot of companies that will try to sell SEO skills while there own SEO are terrible.

- Also try to get some form of guarantee. It is very rare that marketing companies ever give guarantees about the effects of their effort, but if they actually do, you know they are serious about their skills.

- Try to get clear benchmarks to calculate the results of the SEO campaign. For example monitor the number of visitors that your website receives that came from natural search engine queries during and after the time of your campaign. (If your marketing team don't know how to get these figures, don't use them!)

- Make sure your SEO team have a clean record. Sometimes SEO companies may get desperate in order to get results and might step over the moral line by trying to fool search engines with unnatural 'black hat' methods. When caught out, these websites are usually banned from search engines and will not show in any search result. To look into any company's track record simply Google them. Disgruntles clients tend to write their bad experience in public forums that will normally be listed in Google's search results just below the company's own website.

Good luck with your marketing campaign!


--
Wim Conradie is a majority shareholder in Matogen Corporate Web Development (www.matogen.com). He studied electronic engineering, computer sciences & industrial engineering at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and started first web development business in November 2003. He has a 'passion for business and adding value to other busnesses'.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]>