Archive for November, 2009
DIY cat feeder now enabled by a Cisco switch, streams food and video
Published on November 30th, 2009.
Continue reading DIY cat feeder now enabled by a Cisco switch, streams food and video
DIY cat feeder now enabled by a Cisco switch, streams food and video originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Lifecycle Energy Costs of LED, CFL Bulbs Calculated
Published on November 30th, 2009.
necro81 writes "The NY Times is reporting on a new study from Osram, a German lighting manufacturer, which has calculated the total lifecycle energy costs of three lightbulb technologies and found that both LEDs and CFLs use approximately 20% of the energy of incandescents over their lifetimes. While it is well known that the newer lighting technologies use a fraction of the energy of incandescents to produce the same amount of light, it has not been proven whether higher manufacturing energy costs kept the new lighting from offering a net gain. The study found that the manufacturing and distribution energy costs of all lightbulb technologies are only about 2% of their total lifetime energy cost — a tiny fraction of the energy used to produce light." The study uses the assumption that LEDs last 2.5 times longer than CFLs, and 25 times longer than incandescents.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Dell, HP, and Lenovo bringing SDXC to laptops alongside 32nm Intel chipsets?
Published on November 30th, 2009.
Dell, HP, and Lenovo bringing SDXC to laptops alongside 32nm Intel chipsets? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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NZ Government claims ‘clear mandate’ for $NZ300m rural broadband initiative
Published on November 30th, 2009.
New Zealand's communications and information technology minister, Steven Joyce, says that submissions received in response to its proposals to deploy fast broadband to rural communities have given the government a...Filled under Telecommunications - Policy & Regulation, latest news. No Comments.
CenITex seeks youth boost
Published on November 30th, 2009.
Victorian Government IT services provider CenITex is looking to rejuvenate itself by hiring young graduates under a scheme developed in association with the Australian Computer Society.Filled under Information technology news - Enterprise, latest news. No Comments.
Inside Sharp’s new LCD factory, we can see our next HDTV from here
Published on November 30th, 2009.
Inside Sharp's new LCD factory, we can see our next HDTV from here originally appeared on Engadget HD on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Web Development - Get Deep Insights About Your Customers to Precisely Target Products and Services
Published on November 30th, 2009.
No business can be successful without a deep understanding of its customers. This knowledge can help you to adapt your business style and advertising techniques to attract more customers and expand your client base.
Though face-to-face interactions are most suitable for understanding customer requirements and behaviors, web entrepreneurs do not have this luxury. Therefore, you must know your customers through indirect methods. Here are some of the methods you can use.
Tracking your Website Traffic
Traffic reports can serve as an excellent first step in understanding your customers. Ask your web hosting company about the free reports they offer on website traffic. Analyze these reports to determine key trends in traffic and visitor information. Once you have familiarized yourself with report information, use it to track your traffic and modify your website in accordance with customer’s requirements and trends. For instance, if you notice that you have many visitors from China, you can add features on web pages that attract attention of Chinese people and ensure that they keep coming back to your site. Tracking will also help you to assess the impact of specific advertising and promotion campaigns on customers and if they have been profitable for your business.
Some web hosting companies, however, do not provide any traffic reports. In this situation, you can look into your log files directly. Go to your web hosting service and look for a directory named “Logs.” Within the directory, download the most recent file to analyze the location of visitors, the pages viewed, the duration for which each page is viewed and the links attracting the most traffic. E-commerce websites can also recover information on sold products and where, in the ordering process, do customers bail out. Most text editors can open the file containing this information.
Collect E-mail Addresses and Stay in Touch
Give your visitors incentive for registering with your website by offering them free a newsletter subscription, an e-book or articles. Websites selling services can get customers to register by offering short free consultation. These methods let you collect the emails while the visitors get a glimpse of the good stuff you have to offer.
After you have obtained the email addresses and the permission to send mails to your customers, you can use the addresses to contact potential customers, and keep in touch by sending them discount coupons and special offers, information about sales, newsletters, articles and catalogs.
Getting Feedback from Customers
There is no better way of getting to know your customers than asking them directly about their requirements and expectations. Use your website to develop customer databases, and build user profiles and mailing lists. Give your customers an option of joining your mailing list on the homepage of your website. However, when seeking feedback directly from your customers you should always make it a point to respond to their messages or you risk alienating them. Analyze customer responses and requests to determine common problems and then aim to develop solutions to them. If you show genuine concern about their problems and needs, they will reciprocate by being loyal to your business and brand.
A deep knowledge of your customers helps you to precisely target your products and services and attract customer attention and interest. This in turn, helps you to increase your business profitability and significantly expand your customer base. If you want your web business to be successful and your website to be effective start getting to know your customers today.
Daljeet Sidhu is at TradeSeam. Read our web design development advice. Compare web designers quotes. Sellers JOIN for sales leads.
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Ethics of Releasing Non-Malicious Linux Malware?
Published on November 30th, 2009.
buchner.johannes writes "I was fed up with the general consensus that Linux is oh-so-secure and has no malware. After a week of work, I finished a package of malware for Unix/Linux. Its whole purpose is to help white-hat hackers point out that a Linux system can be turned into a botnet client by simply downloading BOINC and attaching it to a user account to help scientific projects. The malware does not exploit any security holes, only loose security configurations and mindless execution of unverified downloads. I tested it to be injected by a PHP script (even circumventing safe mode), so that the Web server runs it; I even got a proxy server that injects it into shell scripts and makefiles in tarballs on the fly, and adds onto Windows executables for execution in Wine. If executed by the user, the malware can persist itself in cron, bashrc and other files. The aim of the exercise was to provide a payload so security people can 'pwn' systems to show security holes, without doing harm (such as deleting files or disrupting normal operation). But now I am unsure of whether it is ethically OK to release this toolkit, which, by ripping out the BOINC payload and putting in something really evil, could be turned into proper Linux malware. On the one hand, the way it persists itself in autostart is really nasty, and that is not really a security hole that can be fixed. On the other hand, such a script can be written by anyone else too, and it would be useful to show people why you need SELinux on a server, and why verifying the source of downloads (checksums through trusted channels) is necessary. Technically, it is a nice piece, but should I release it? I don't want to turn the Linux desktop into Windows, hence I'm slightly leaning towards not releasing it. What does your ethics say about releasing such grayware?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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How to Dispose of a Multifunction Printer
Published on November 30th, 2009.
As with most electrical equipment, your printer is full of plastics, components and potentially hazardous materials. Therefore, when it comes to disposing of your old multifunction printer it would be irresponsible to simply throw it in the bin and consign it to landfill purgatory.
What you really need to do is recycle it. Okay, recycling might take a little more effort, it may even cost you a few pounds, but ultimately it is both a legal and moral obligation that we all share to ensure that we dispose of consumables in a way that is protective of our environment.
The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive (WEEE) came into effect back in January 2007. It governs the safe disposal of electrical items and is managed by the Environment Agency in the UK. The WEEE directive ensures that manufacturers conform with basic disposal and recycling codes, but they also extend to businesses and even homeowners.
Essentially it’s just about common sense. If you have something that isn’t biodegradable and could be harmful, then you have to find a responsible way of disposing of it. To conform with the WEEE directive, your business or household multifunction laser printer needs to be properly recycled by a certified agency. Again, this might sound like a hassle, but it really shouldn’t be.
In fact most printer manufacturers will provide recycling advice and information when you purchase a new model or contact them regarding your current device. This may even include a low-price or even complementary disposal service; although of course this will vary across the various manufacturers and models.
To properly dispose of a printer you also need to ensure that it is free from any additional consumables, which includes ink cartridges. If your ink cartridge or toner is empty you should also recycle this separately. Most cartridges come with recycling instructions, which often include an address or envelope, so you shouldn’t have too many issues when it comes to getting rid of your superfluous ink.
Of course if your ink cartridge is still partially full, you may also need to look into either finding a company that disposes of ink safely or transferring the cartridge to your new/remaining printer.
The cost of disposing with your old multi-function printer is being driven down all the time. In fact you may even find that some services, including specialist electrical recycling sites, will take your it for free. There are companies who will collect the redundant printers, along with most other electronic devices; these will obviously charge a premium rate for their services, but it will certainly remove much of the inconvenience associated with recycling.
The recycling process can take many forms. Some components can often be salvaged and reused in models here or elsewhere in the world, helping to ensure wastage is kept to a minimum. Others elements though, such as your plastic casing, will be melted down and used to remould other devices in the future. It is by no means a simple process, but it is an essential one if we are to safeguard natural resources and ensure our landfills aren’t overloaded with hazardous materials that will never be broken down.
So when you buy a new multi-function printer for your home or business, always keep in mind how you will dispose of your old equipment. The days of simply throwing them in a skip or including it within your daily rubbish collection are long gone. The WEEE directive has ensured that we are all accountable for the disposal of all the electronics that we purchase, helping to ensure a planet that is free from huge piles of unwanted consumables.
Derek Rogers is a freelance writer who writes for a number of UK businesses. For a wide range of printers and products by brand, he recommends Printware Ltd, a leading provider of Colour Laser Multifunction Printers.
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Secrets to Using Social Bookmarking For Link Building
Published on November 30th, 2009.
Social bookmarking became popular as a tool to share your favorite websites with others on the internet. However, the growth of ecommerce over the last few years has meant that almost all elements of the internet have been commercialized to a certain extent. So, it’s no wonder that social bookmarking too is being used as a way to create links to your website, easily and that too for free. There are a lot of websites that allow you to use social bookmarking for link building, but you can only use them to enhance your website’s popularity and page ranking, if you know how to use social bookmarking.
Here are some secrets to using social bookmarking that you may be interested to know:
1. There are lots of sites, but it is not advisable to join every one of them. The key is to join the most popular ones, which can provide you some useful back-links to your site. Signing up is a fairly easy process and so you can start using social bookmarking in quick time.
2. The key is to create ‘deep links’. You can create links to the internal pages of your website instead of just putting the link to your homepage in every social bookmarking site. This can be effectively done by means of submitting relevant content and blogs to these sites.
3. Most of these sites allow you to set up a profile. Use this opportunity to place at least one link along with anchor text in the profile. This can improve the overall value of your link considerably. If a site allows you to place more than one link then it’s even better!
4. In order to get maximum mileage out of social bookmarking, interlink your social profiles on various sites. This type of link benefit is also known as ‘link juice’. In order to utilize link juice, you can avoid sites which use ‘nofollow’ tags and other search engine optimization barriers, which stop you from interlinking your profiles.
5. It is also important that you use the best social bookmarking sites on the net. Some of the sites that can provide great link benefits are:
• Digg.com: this site provides you the opportunity to place multiple links accompanied by anchor text in your profile. You can also submit your articles here and gain popularity among other members. In due course you can gain many links too!
• Technorati.com: your blogs will get picked up by this site but you won’t get the benefits of anchor text. You also have to add a code to your website in order to be able to get a link.
• Google: If you have a gmail account, you can make it work for link building too! Don’t be surprised because, Google allows you to add links to your homepage as well as internal pages.
• Mister-Wong.com: this is another immensely popular social bookmarking site that allows you to add multiple links and anchor text.
Now that you know these secrets to using social bookmarking for link building, you may be raring to go and try them. So, why wait any longer?
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Google Maps Navigation makes trip across the pond, thanks to some hackery
Published on November 30th, 2009.
Update: As indicated, the gang at xda-developers forum have been doing this for some time now. Consider the tutorial provided here as very straightforward and easy to follow -- anyone with an Android 1.6 device would be remiss not to give Navigation a shot now.
Filed under: Cellphones
Google Maps Navigation makes trip across the pond, thanks to some hackery originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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What is Pagerank?
Published on November 30th, 2009.
The Internet is a vast expanse of space which contains matter on anything you can think of. Due to the instantaneous nature of the Internet, anyone who has access to a computer and a phone line indulges in some browsing on various subjects.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
When you search for something on the Internet you type out the keyword in one of the search engines and click “GO”. What you are confronted with are millions of pages relating to in some way with the keyword you typed in. How do you decide which one to choose form all these options?
Usually we click on the first three to five web links that come up in any search result to find what we are looking for. In case the search results do not match well with our subject we change the keyword or add a few more to make the search more exclusive.
As website owners we want to choose the best keyword that represents the subject matter of our content so that anyone searching for anything remotely related to our website will find the link listed in the top-five slot. There are many ways to ensure that your website features at the top of these lists on search engines.
Pagerank and SEO
Pagerank is another effective way of ensuring that your website is ranked high on search engines. Pagerank is a method used by Google to rank websites according to the relevance and importance of the content featured on them.
The rank ranges from 0 to 10, the highest being 10. Therefore, you should pay careful attention to what you post on your website to ensure high ranking on Pagerank.
We all know the importance of reference in writing. Whenever we remember a quote or a line from a popular piece of literature we include it in our work as a reference or a tribute. These references not only enrich the quality our compositions, but they also pay equal importance to the original piece.
If you refer to content published on another website or include the link to one of them as reference on your website then you are acknowledging the importance of that website. These references are closely monitored and noted by search engines such as Google. If your website has been referred to or linked to by other website it means that your content is relevant and important.
Google ranks websites that have such references attached to their content highly on Pagerank.
Pagerank and Link Building
• If you want Pagerank to list you on top, you should publish quality content and build links to increase the importance of your website.
• Originally it occurred as a natural result of web browsing. Although Google expects this linking to happen by default a lot of web coordinators indulge in back hand tricks to increase links. This can result in your website’s eviction from Pagerank.
You may compete with your rival websites by keeping track of their score on Pagerank by installing Google toolbar, but use only legitimate tricks to do so.
Want to learn how to get FREE traffic to your sites? Sign up for free SEO Video Training here => http://www.InlineSEO.com/seoseries/
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Semicon Japan: Axcelis, KLA roll tools
Published on November 30th, 2009.
At the Semicon Japan trade show this week, Applied, Axcelis, KLA-Tencor and others have rolled out new products. |
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IBM achieves accurate brain simulation
Published on November 30th, 2009.
IBM succeeds in simulating a human brain with as many neurons as a cat brain in its Synapse project for the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, for which it recently received $16.1 million in federal funding.Filled under EETimes Latest News, latest news. No Comments.
No future for game consoles
Published on November 30th, 2009.
According to the head of one of the world’s most successful game developers has stated that his company is ready for the demise of the home entertainment game console as...Filled under Radioactive IT - Gaming and Entertainment tech blog, latest news. No Comments.
Once Microsoft goes black, can it ever go back?
Published on November 30th, 2009.
Reports that Microsoft’s latest updates are causing the users to experience a “black screen of death” have surfaced alongside a free fix by security company Prevx, which can even be applied as...Filled under Fuzzy Logic - The gadget blog, latest news. No Comments.
Osmotic power generators harvest energy from sea
Published on November 30th, 2009.
The first pilot osmotic electricity generation plant built in Norway by Statkraft was enabled by the pressure exchanger inventions of Energy Recovery.Filled under EETimes Latest News, latest news. No Comments.
What is Off Page Optimization?
Published on November 30th, 2009.
The term ‘optimization’ means, ‘an act, process, or methodology of making something (such as design, system, or decision) as fully perfect, functional, or effective as much as possible.’ Although this is the dictionary meaning of the word, in modern day ecommerce it has a more serious implication.
Optimization is vital for the success of your business. For example, when you want maximum number of people to visit your website, you need to do ‘search engine optimization’ or SEO. One of the important strategies you can use for SEO is off page optimization. In case you want to know what off page optimization is really about, simply read on.
Off page optimization can be summed up as those techniques that can help you improve your webpage search ranking but are not directly implemented on the webpage or the HTML file. These techniques are primarily involved with your website’s inbound and outbound linking or ‘link popularity’ as it is commonly called.
The commonly used techniques of off page optimization are:
•Inbound Linking: this is done by placing the links to your site on another website.
•Article Submission: this is the process of writing articles related to the content of your website and submitting them to various article directories and other websites. This can help create back-links easily.
•Directory Submission: unlike article submission you simply submit the link to your site along with a brief description of the content to various site directories.
Other popular techniques are press releases, link exchange, three-way linking, blogging, and posting on forums.
These are important because the major search engines look beyond the conventional on-page optimization, done for a website, while ranking a site. Some of the important things to be considered while doing off page optimization are:
•The quality and type of website that you are linking your site to: Search engines look for relevant content between two linked sites and so you must ensure that.
•The number of sites you are linking your site to: a considerable number of relevant sites that link back to you can establish your site as an ‘expert’ and thus, give it high page rank.
•The Google page rank of the sites that link back to your site: it is desirable that you have some high-ranking relevant sites linking back to you instead of many low-ranking ones.
•The anchor-texts of the links to your site: anchor text indicates the relevance between your site and the linking site. Thus it should include your primary keywords. But at the same time anchor text also needs to be variable in order to appear as ‘natural’ linking to the search engines.
•The title of the webpage that links back to your site: it’s not enough if the title is something like ‘link directory’. Ideally the title should be relevant to your site and include at least one of your keywords.
Because of the changing algorithms of search engines, it is important that you understand and implement off page optimization in your efforts to get a high page rank for your website.
Want to learn how to get FREE traffic to your sites? Sign up for free SEO Video Training here => http://www.InlineSEO.com/seoseries/
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Google boosts Chrome dev tools
Published on November 30th, 2009.
Google on Monday detailed recent improvements to its Google Chrome developer tools, which include the addition of a heap profiler for JavaScript and a timeline tab offering overviews of where time is spent when loading a Web application.
The tools were introduced in the Google Chrome developer channel. Chrome is the company's entrant in the browser market.
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NetStar gets Cisco unified computing certification, seeks staff
Published on November 30th, 2009.
NetStar has been accredited as a Cisco data centre unified computing partner, one of only three organisations in Australia approved to sell Cisco's Unified Computing Solution, its recently announced architecture...Filled under Telecommunications - Industry, latest news. No Comments.