He Who Stands Alone, Stands Alone



There’s an endless supply of tools available for webmasters to help make their site a success; of these a powerful and effective one is reciprocal linking. Reciprocal links have been around a long time. Since before the wild-wild-west was won. Unfortunately, they are an often overlooked or under-used method these days. How many times have you searched for a link partner to find that many websites do not even have a links page? Of those that do, few have an area on their website that actually welcomes you to request a link trade. It seems these websites are just islands unto themselves. They miss the beauty of the World Wide Web's strange, yet brilliant web linking system.

Perhaps it’s because it takes so long to build a quality website and the owner is not at all interested in promoting anyone else's enterprise. Or maybe it’s just too much work. Maybe they are in a hurry to see immediate profits. Therefore instead of putting in the effort and taking the necessary time to build a web presence, they look to search engines to solve all their troubles. Some may think that linking to another website is making it easy for their hard-earned visitor to leap over to another website. While that may be correct, it is also true that the other website's visitors are jumping over to their website in return.

Little do they realize that reciprocal links would give them a big boost in the search engines. When calculating a website's page rank, link popularity is one thing that is considered by search engines. While it is accurate that one-way inbound links are given more weight. Reciprocal links do aid in reaching a higher page rank too.

However, a critical mistake can be and has been made by many a newbie webmaster. That is trading links with every website that is willing to return the favor. Search engines take a dim view to indiscriminate linking. Therefore assuming you have a dieting website linking with a pet or travel website; well that could be detrimental to your scoring. For instance, for your site, you would be wise to start trading links with health food, exercise or vitamin websites for maximum benefit. By creating a tightly knit link directory of complimentary websites, you would be encouraging your visitors to see your website as a valuable resource for browsing their favorite topic. As a result, these visitors will bookmark the website providing you with plenty of free return visits.

There is even an additional advantage for you if you have limited time. That is when a search engine robot has indexed your link partner's website; it locates your link and then crawls over to your website. This may happen before you have a chance to submit the website directly to that particular engine. It's like getting free website submissions!

As a webmaster, you not only need to keep your website updated and fresh. You should assure its success by developing a healthy traffic-producing plan. Certainly it is important to stay abreast of all the latest techniques of creating traffic. However, it is equally important to remember some of the time-tested methods like reciprocal linking to achieve this goal.

Reliable Geeks

Could Your Email Compromise Your Safety?



Have you heard the term Phishing (pronounced "fishing")

Phishing, viruses, worms, hackers... simply having your computer online can expose your data and personal information to all kinds of malicious and worrisome problems. If you’re somewhat new to the 'net' or to computers in general, these four tips could help protect you from identity theft, credit card fraud, or a complete computer takeover – all of which can happen without you even knowing about it!

1. What’s in Your Inbox? – If your e-mail program allows you to preview the entire message before or while it is being downloaded, turn this setting off. Some e-mails can contain dangerous code that could unknowingly compromise your computer and leave you vulnerable to viruses, worms or worse! Check the options in your e-mail program for a way to disable the message preview pane.

2. Scrutinize Your Messages – Don’t ever respond to messages claiming to be from your bank, credit card company, or other financial institution, which ask for personally identifiable information such as card or account numbers, passwords, or other private information – even if the e-mail looks to have come from the actual company. It may be a hoax designed to get you to unknowingly part with crucial financial or private contact information, leaving you vulnerable to credit card fraud, identity theft or credit card theft. Contact the institution or company that claims to be sending the e-mail and verify the contents of the message with them. Chances are – they never sent it. Only use the number on your statement though, and not the number that appears in the e-mail message. It may direct you right to the scammer, who will do everything they can to assure you that nothing is wrong!

3. If it’s From a Friend, it must be Safe, Right? – It’s logical to assume that a message from your friend or colleague is safe, but that isn’t always the case! If you receive an email from a friend or colleague which contains an attachment (could be a media clip, a screensaver, a picture or anything else), call them up to check and see if they really did send it. Many viruses and worms can hijack your computer and blast out a virus-ridden email to everyone in your address book, making it appear that it came from you and therefore, making it appear trustworthy.

4. Read Your Messages in Plain Text – Some e-mails written in HTML (the coding language that makes up many web pages) can be harmless. Others can contain malicious code that can hijack your e-mail program, browser, or your entire computer – and send your personal and financial information out to a hacker or scammer without you even knowing about it! Stay safe by setting your e-mail program to only show messages in plain text format (often in the options or settings section of the software). This will prevent threatening code from installing itself and compromising your system and private information.

Possibly one of the best ways to protect your e-mail is simply by exercising common sense. The Internet is a lot like a crowded plaza. Would your banker or credit card lender walk out into the middle of the throng of people and shout out to you to ask for your account information? Would you tell him where everyone could hear? Definitely not! The same caution should be exercised when checking your e-mail. These tips can help you stop scammers dead in their tracks while keeping you from becoming another victim of fraud or theft.


Computer Support Techs

Are You Prepared For A Hard Drive Crash?



Its just a matter of time before you experience a hard drive problem. Are you prepared to loose your data? If your hard drive crashed right now do you have an action plan to follow?

Most people only think of backing up their data after they experience a problem. Don't set yourself up for a data loss disaster.


Your data integrity action plan should consist of the following:

1) How often you will back up your data

2) What data you will back up

3) What back up procedure you will use

How often you back up your data can only be determined by how important you feel it is. Answer this question "If my hard drive crashed right now, I would be alright if I had the data from at least (time) ago".

Of course you would want everything but if you could have the data from 1 month, or 6 months ago would that be sufficient? Whatever time is sufficient mark it on your calendar both a hard copy and set up a meeting on your PC to remind you.

You change your smoke detector batteries when you turn your clock back and when you turn it ahead right? Well back up your data then too.

If you don't change your clocks then pick some holidays or special dates that happen close to the timeframe you want to back up your data so you won't forget.

What data you back up depends on how you use your PC. Some of the key directories, if you are using Windows, are the My Documents, Favorites and Desktop directories.

Remember if you are using multiple profiles on your PC then the three directories above can be different for each profile and each one would need to be backed up.

You will also want to include your email data. Don't forget to write down the email accounts you have. You should also write down any username and passwords so they are not lost. You should look at every directory to see if it has information that you would need.

Make a list of all the software programs you are using. If you have the physical CDs put them all together in a safe location.

Don't forget the CDs for your peripherals like your scanner, digital camera, PDA etc… Collecting these CDs may remind you of additional data that you need to back up.

If you are running software that you installed from downloaded files, burn them to a CD-R and add it to your collection. If you use a CD-R or DVD-R you can update it as you download and install new applications.

What procedure you use to back up your data can be determined by the amount of data you want to back up. Your data might fit onto a CD or DVD in which case you just need to burn it and you're done.

If it spans multiple DVDs then you might want to consider getting a second hard drive to copy your data onto. If you are not comfortable with adding a second internal hard drive or you are using a laptop then you can purchase an external hard drive to back up your data.

The information you have on your hard drive could disappear in a flash. If you don't want to spend up to $3,000 to have a data recovery company retrieve what information they can from your hard drive, then take a few minutes right now and create your back up action plan.

If you ever have a data emergency your action plan will be your insurance policy. If you adhere to it, your valuable data will adhere to you!

Reliable Geeks

Buying the Perfect Computer?

It's easy to make a mistake when buying a new computer. Many people end up spending a ton of money on something expensive that they'll never use to its full potential, while others buy something so small that they have to do expensive upgrading in a matter of months.

There's few things more disappointing than finding out your 6 month old computer can't do what you want it to do, or that you don't really need that $400 graphics card to run Microsoft Word.

Don't just buy blindly. Hopefully this article will help you ask the right questions and get the right hardware for your needs in return.

Power Supply:

Often overlooked as a component, your power supply is an important part of your computer as it powers all the internal components. The power supply you need will largely be determined by the components in your PC - in particular CPU type, graphics card and number of internal devices.

For Pentium 4 and all AMD CPUs, a minimum 300W power supply is recommended. If you want to run one of the new ATI X8xx or GeForce 6xxx series 3D graphics cards, don't even try anything weaker than a 400W power supply.

Never overlook the significance of a power supply - an underpowered system will be prone not only to unreliable operation, but also to component damage.

CPU:

On the entry level side of things you have a choice between AMD's Sempron CPUs and Intel's Celeron D. These CPUs are not for the hardcore gamer - they're for the average user who only want to run office applications and use the Internet.

For the hardcore user/gamer there's the Pentium 4 and the AMD Athlon 64 CPUs. There's little to choose between the two big guns in the CPU business. The slowest Pentium 4 CPU readily available at present is the 3Ghz version, while AMD's equivalent, the Athlon 64 3000+ will likewise satisfy most users' demand for processing power.

Go faster than that and the increase in cost becomes quite significant, and you'll have to weigh that up against your budget and your demands.

Motherboard:

The most important thing to keep in mind when picking a motherboard is to get one that's fairly future proof.

For Pentium 4 that means a motherboard that supports socket 775 CPUs, and for AMD a motherboard that supports socket 939 CPUs. Also, make sure your motherboard has enough expansion slots (most commonly PCI slots) to support all additional cards you may want to use in future - including sound cards, TV cards, wireless network cards, etc.

If you're a gamer, also make sure that your motherboard supports either an AGP 8x (obsolete soon), but preferably a PCI-Express 16x slot for a 3D graphics card.

3D Graphics Card:

While most motherboards these days feature an onboard graphics card that is suitable for the casual user, these aren't adequate for gamers.

With the old AGP 8x architecture almost obsolete, the way to go is a PCI-Express graphics card if you have a motherboard that supports it.

For casual gamers who want to play a bit of Sims and Harry Potter, nVidia's GeForce 6600 and ATI's X700 series of cards will do the trick.

For the hardcore gamer who wants to play cutting edge games like Doom 3 and Battlefield 2 at rocking frame rates, don't get anything smaller than a GeForce 6600GT or ATI X800 with 256MB of GDDR3 memory on the card. 128MB is also acceptable if you don't want to play at resolutions higher than 1152x864.

Before buying a graphics card, make sure that a) your motherboard has the appropriate slot for it and b) that your power supply is strong enough to support it.

RAM:

RAM is fast memory used by your computer to execute tasks. When your computer runs out of RAM, it starts swapping data to the much slower hard drive, which slows down your entire system.

With RAM being so cheap these days I'd recommend you get at least 512MB. If you're going to run Windows XP, don't get less than 256MB or you'll slow even the fastest CPU powered computer to a crawl.

For hardcore gamers, less than 1GB simply isn't an option anymore.

HARD DRIVES:

The smallest hard drive you can buy at the time of writing is 80GB. That's more than the average home/office user will ever fill, while it's not nearly enough for music/video collectors or avid gamers.

At the moment the first big price jump in hard drives comes between 200GB and 250GB, so 200GB would be a great option if you need some serious space. Be sure to make comparisons if you need more space - for example, two 200GB drives are much cheaper than one 400GB, even though you get the same amount of space.

On the other hand again, two 80GB drives are more expensive than one 160GB drive.

It's also worth getting a SATA hard drive if your motherboard supports it. It's much faster than IDE drives, which are still abundantly available.

Optical Drives:

Fortunately CD-ROM drives have quietly vanished off the market, so you can now get more versatile DVD-ROM and CD-ReWriter drives very cheaply.

If you want to be able to write DVDs, naturally go for a DVD-RW drive, and make sure the drive you get supports double-layer writing so you can use the new 8.5GB double layer DVD discs in it, which is a whole lot of backup storage.

So, that's just a quick rundown of the things to keep in mind when buying a new computer. Fortunately it's almost impossible to buy a slow computer these days - only gamers and other users of high-demand software need to pay special attention to what they get.

Computer Tech Support

How to Use Windows XP "System Restore"

Well, we all have been there. We turn on our computer (boot up) getting ready to type that school report, or business presentation and guess what, our computer just does not want to work today.

Whether it's the word processor, spreadsheet, or financial package that isn't working, most people do not know that Microsoft Windows XP has a built in feature that just may come and save the day.

That feature is called "System Restore." Basically, System Restore is like a little hound that runs behind the scenes taking "snapshots" of various parts of the Microsoft Windows XP operating system. So, if a part of Microsoft Windows XP stops working one day, the System Restore utility is able to reference one of the "snapshots" it took and restore your system from a previous day (a day when your computer worked). It's kind of like going back in time to a day when your computer worked. All your current data (Microsoft Word files, etc.) are still retained, so you don't have to worry about losing any present day files.

In order to restore your computer just follow these simple steps:

• 1. Close any open programs.
• 2. Click on the Windows "Start" button (normally located on the bottom of your computer desktop)
• 3. Click on "All Programs"
• 4. Click on "Accessories"
• 5. Click on "System Tools"
• 6. Then click on "System Restore"
• 7. At this point the System Restore wizard will launch. You will have two options:
  a. "Restore my system from an earlier date"
  b. "Create a system restore point"

If you just need to restore your system and get it working correctly again, just select option "a" and click "Next."

• 8. On this screen you can select a date from the calendar that you would like to try and restore from. So, if you knew that your computer worked fine two days ago, just pick that date on the calendar and click "Next."
• 9. The next screen is the confirmation window. Just verify the information on the screen and click "Next." Windows XP will then reboot and try to restore your system with the settings from the date you selected.

The System Restore process can take anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes depending on how much reconfiguration Windows XP needs to do and how fast of a PC you have. When System Restore is done, a screen will popup with the results of the restore. If it was successful, you can then log into the system and start using the computer again. Any quirky issues that you were having are now hopefully gone.

Now, on step 7b above, I mentioned the "Create a system restore point" option. This option is for when you want to force Windows XP to take a snapshot of your system just before you install a program or alter any system settings that you are not sure of. It is like a safety net for when you install any internet programs (sometimes riddled with spyware) or system drivers (video, audio, etc).

If you want to revert back to a virgin state just create a restore point "before" installing any software. This way, if your machine starts acting weird, you can just restore your settings from the selected point.

With a little practice, the System Restore utility is easy to use and a great way to help ensure the safety of your computer.

Computer Support Techs