Glossary - Blog

A Blog, or Weblog, is a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged cronologically, that can be viewed using a web browser.

"A Blog is an online personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking news outlet. A collections of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world." 

an anonymous writer 

See also:

• Wikipedia

Glossary - Cusomer-to-Consumer (C2C)

Cusomer-to-Consumer (C2C) is transaction between a consumer and othr consumers, mostly through online auction.

A good example is eBay, which is an American online consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages an online auction and shopping site.

See also:

• Wikipedia

Glossary - Consumer-to-Business (C2B)

Consumer-to-Business (C2B) is a means through which consumers decide what they want to pay, and the vendor decides whether or not to accept. This is also called reverse auction.

An example of C2B is where consumers form groups to strengthen their bargain, and the vendor gives in to the large number of purchases.

See also:

• Wikipedia

Glossary - Business-to-Consumer (B2C)

Business-to-Consumer (B2C) is a transaction that occurs between a company and a consumer. The term may also describe a company that provides goods or services to consumers.

The online version of B2C is where the transaction takes place on the Internet, or by electronic means.

See also:

• Wikipedia

Glossary - Business-to-Business (B2B)

Business-to-business (B2B) is the exchange of products, services, or information between businesses. From an online perspective, B2B is e-commerce between businesses.

An earlier and much more limited kind of B2B prior to the Internet was Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).

See also:

• Wikipedia

Glossary - Marketspace

Marketspace is a virtual market place such as the Internet in which no direct contact occurs between buyers and sellers.

See also

• Wikipedia 

Glossary - Decision Support Systems

Decision support systems are computer systems that store data and transform them into accessible information.
These include databases and softwares.

See also:

• Wikipedia

Glossary - Data Warehousing (or mining)

Data warehousing, or data mining is the storage and analysis of customer data gathered from their visits to websites for classification and modeling purpose so that products, promotions, and price can be tailored to the specific needs of individual customers.
This is the use of powerful computers to work through large volumes of data to discover purchasing patterns among an organization's customers.

See also:

• Wikipedia

Glossary - EDI

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is an electronic link between suppliers, manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors and retailers that allows the exchange of structured data, by agreed message standards, between the computer systems of these trading partners.

See also:

• Wikipedia

Glossary - Cookies

Cookies are bits of information about website visitors created by websites and stored by client computers.

See also:

• Wikipedia

Glossary - Clicks and Mortars

Clicks and mortars are online retailing business who also have physical retail stores complementing the online ones.
Bricks and mortars, on the other hand, are physical retail stores.

See also:

• Wikipedia

Glossary - e-CRM

Electronic Customer Relations (e-CRM) is using digital communication technologies to maximize sales to existing customers and encourage usage of online services.

The concept is an online approach to the traditional Customer Relations Management (CRM) which is defined as the approach to building and sustaining long-term relationships with customers.

Wikipedia

Electronic CRM concerns all forms of managing relationships with customers making use of Information Technology (IT). more

Glossary - Web 2.0 Concept

Web 2.0 refers to a collection of web services which facilitate behaviors online such as community participation and user generated content, rating and tagging.

Wikipedia

The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. more

Blogging Tips: Be Cautious at third party 'Expert' Advises

Even though most of the third party information that we pick around from Web 2.0 may be helpful, a good number of them can be misleading. As a Blogger you should be cautious, especially when you are stuck and looking for a way out.

The routine

It all starts when what we think we kow begins to show that we don't know it yet. All of a sudden, we become frustrated at the fact that blogging is not as easy as we initially thought it to be, or, as we were initially told it is. This can be a time when you want to integrate that cool social media button to automatically appear below all your posts, or, that time when you don't want your adSense unit on the sidebar anymore, rather, inside the content of your posts.

The next step is finding a solution, and we always want it to be fast, easy and straight forward. So, we get down to the search engines. The high ranking results take us directly to either groups, forums or Yahoo answes, and, the first few comments... That's it!

Reasons

Some good reasons that explain why you should be cautious include:

• The Internet is just full of experts.
• We interact with all kind of people online, including those who may want to mislead you intentionally.
• Some people do strange things that only work for them - as they claim. They are very kind to share the tips too!

My advise

1. Take your time, research and make a list of a few trusted sites that you can run to for help.
2. Always pay attention to details and seek clarity where you don't understand.
3. If you use Blogger, the Blogger help should not be taken for granted.

Glossary Definitions: U -Z

Glossary | U - Z

This Glossary section lists terms that start with letters between U and Z.

Each term below links to a post that gives you:

• The definition of the term in details.
• Quotation of Wikipedia's definition and a link to the respective reference page.
• Links to other related terms which are handled in the same manner.

List of Terms

Web 2.0 concept

Glossary Definitions: P - T

Glossary | P - T

This Glossary section lists terms that start with letters between P and T.

Each term below links to a post that gives you:

• The definition of the term in details.
• Quotation of Wikipedia's definition and a link to the respective reference page.
• Links to other related terms which are handled in the same manner.

List of Terms

[Watch out for this space]

Glossary Definitions: K - O

Glossary | K - O

This Glossary section lists terms that start with letters between K and O.

Each term below links to a post that gives you:

• The definition of the term in details.
• Quotation of Wikipedia's definition and a link to the respective reference page.
• Links to other related terms which are handled in the same manner.

List of Terms

[Watch out for this space]

Glossary Definitions: F - J

Glossary | F - J

This Glossary section lists terms that start with letters between F and J.

Each term below links to a post that gives you:

• The definition of the term in details.
• Quotation of Wikipedia's definition and a link to the respective reference page.
• Links to other related terms which are handled in the same manner.

List of Terms

[Watch out for this space]

Glossary Definitions: A - E

Glossary | A - E

This Glossary section lists terms that start with letters between A and E.

Each term below links to a post that gives you:

• The definition of the term in details.
• Quotation of Wikipedia's definition and a link to the respective reference page.
• Links to other related terms which are handled in the same manner.

List of Terms

e-CRM (Electronic Customer Relations Management)

FAQ - Social Networking

FAQs > Social Networking

Below are Frequently Asked Questions on Social Networking.

Each question is a link to a post that gives you:

• Brief, detailed and thoroughly research answers to the questions.
• Links to related Glossary definitions of relevant terms that have been used in the answers.
• And, a link to any similar question which is handled in the same manner.

FAQs List

[Watch out for this space]

FAQ - E-Commerce and E-Business

FAQs > E-Commerce and E-Business

Below are Frequently Asked Questions on E-Commerce and E-Business.

Each question is a link to a post that gives you:

• Brief, detailed and thoroughly research answers to the questions.
• Links to related Glossary definitions of relevant terms that have been used in the answers.
• And, a link to any similar question which is handled in the same manner.

FAQs List

[Watch out for this space]

One Secret Affiliate marketers Overlook

Affiliate marketing is the first Internet marketing option that new internet marketers commonly opt for. This is mostly because it is the easiest to start and maintain. It is also a good first internet marketing decision because here is where you learn the pros and cons, if not the ups and downs, of the marketing practice without taking so much risk.

On the other hand, there is one thing that most people overlook about affiliate marketing. Most people take affiliate marketing to be a totally new isolated field, one that exists on its own. The misconception is that you don't need any experience to do it.

What is affiliate marketing?
This is a very good question. It is a question we should ask ourselves before signing up for any of the affiliate programs like Amazon Associates program.

Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates (an agent who links back to the e-commerce site e.g. Amazon, Clickbank, with the goal of making commission for referred sales) for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own efforts. 

If you are paying attention you must have just realized that the word 'marketing' is in bold. This is simply because Marketing is that secret, what we overlook, that I am talking about.

Correcting the misconception
You don't just need a site to qualify to be an affiliate marketer, you need marketing skills. With at least the basics of marketing, an affiliate marketer will know that:

• He/she needs a good product to market.
• The prices of the products should be good, reasonable and acceptable.
• Sound promotion is essential.
• The place to market the products matters a lot.

The four points above make what is called the 4 P's of Marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

One Attitude Bloggers Should Learn to Acqiure

One Internet Marketing professional said, in one of his Internet Marketing guides, that the first thing you need to work on when setting up an equation that would see you through to success, is you.


"Where do we come in actually?" I wondered. "And how do we fit ourselves in?" I asked myself.


The guru smiled and said: "Simple. Your success is you. You have to shape your attitudes first before setting off for the big race. For instance, for you to be a professional, you have to behave, think and feel like a professional yourself."


Every other thing he said was all about marketing online and I don't think you want to hear it. I am not a marketer myself, so please excuse me.


Ever since then I have been thinking, really thinking about what he said. But this is from a different point of view, a blogging perspective; as a Blogger.




I have been wondering. What if we looked at blogging as a business, irrespective of whether we are blogging for money or just for fun.


How?
Let me answer this question with another one: What attitude do business people have towards their businesses?
Any business has three things in mind:

1. Making profit.


2. Surviving the market.


3. Growth.

How does this relate to blogging?
A business has to make profit. Infact, this is the sole reason that qualifies it to be called a business:

"A business is any activity carried out with the aim of making profit."

Making profit, as far as blogging is concerned, can be interpreted differently. It could be directly taken as it is and mean making money online or it can be interpreted as: anything you get from your blog. Do you get fulfillment? Does it help you improve on your writing skills? Or, does it give you a platform where you share your knowledge with others?


When it comes to surviving the market, I get a little excited here. Here is where you get to know what your fellow bloggers are doing.

What are they up to? Am I publishing static (plain or flat) post while they are posting dynamic (interactive) ones? What kind of programs or sites are they using to generate traffic to their blogs? What do the ones blogging in your niche offer? More detailed content? Free e-books? Guides and 'how to" articles?


And finally, Growth comes in. Do you continuously upgrade your blog, or is it just the single-post schedule you have every day and that's it?
Do you continue to look for cool stuff that will help attract new readers to your blog and maintain the existing ones? For instance, a shop that sells Computers would have computer accessories as a complementary. This, too, can apply to your blog, don't you think?

The Story of the Internet

Once upon a time, there was a cold war closing the chapter of world War II.

The cold war was a unique one, it was a battle characterized by success in technology and science.

Rivals showed off their developments and no one wanted to be left behind. As a result, a single idea evolved that lead to the availability of all the opportunities today; to the possibility that you are reading this post.

The idea

The cold war had another consequence. It led to the formation of a single organization that focused on computing. This organization, for the first time, linked four computers to develop a computer network - the first one on earth.

The first Computer network

The new collection of connected computers really changed the world. It created new possibilities and stretched the limit past the sky :-o.

Changing the world

But that was not enough. Something else had to be added on top. The computer network had to be expanded to one that would cover the whole world, to the one that is facilitating communication between you and I, right now.

The Internet

Then that's when the focus shifted to the maintenance and continuous improvement of the Internet.

The WWW

Ever since then, this mime has continued and it's still going on.

Thank you.

It Loads Web Pages as you type their URL

There is so much competition as far as Web browsers are concerned that most of us end up being spoilt of choice. I am spoilt of choice myself.


The market place is filled with all sorts of browsers ranging from Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari, and do you know that Google Chrome has just upgraded to version 9?


The New Chrome 9

The new version of the browser, which resulted after Google fixed nine flaws in its former Chrome 8, has hit the market with 3 most important new features.
These are:


WebGL support for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics: WebGL is based on OpenGL ES 2.0 and provides a programmatic interface for 3D graphics. It is a context of the canvas HTML element that provides a 3D graphics API implemented in a web browser without the use of plug-ins. It uses the HTML 5 canvas element and accessed using Document Object Model interfaces.

Chrome Web Store for browser applications: only for chrome users in the US.


Chrome instant search: a tool that begins to load a web page as soon as you start typing its URL into the address bar of the browser.

On the other hand, where is the race heading to?

Google upgraded its chrome browser four times last year alone from version 4 to 8, where the last upgrade was in December 2010. Two months have hardly passed and we have version 9.

Do you think the giant company is making a nice move?

Are Social Networking sites making us 'Less Humans'

A friend of mine looked directly into my eyes and said: "I have more online friends compared to those in my real life".

"What do you expect? Internet is the new world." I couldn't wait to reply.

But then there was this silence and I started to digest what I had just said. In real sense, I also have so many online friends that I can't even think about comparing the number with my real friends. They are just incomparable.


But what, really, is the impact of this? I am not alone here.

Is the new technology, under the illusion of allowing us to communicate better, actually isolating us from real human interactions?

Is it dominating our lives by making us 'less humans'?

It is not Facebook, MySpace, Tagged, Twitter, Digg... it's great opportunity... we are everywhere... it's fun!

On the contrary, there is also a great risk of depersonalization, alienation, self-indulgence, and the dangers of having more virtual friends than real ones.

Let's not forget to ask ourselves: "Who is my neighbor?"

Alt text for Web Accessibility

I was once given a traffic tip that I should always include an alternative text, or let me call it an alt attribute, in the HTML for my images. As a result, I have been doing this ever since.


What they Hardly Say
But there is something the guru didn't tell me, something that I had to learn on my own. The alt attribute is used in HTML and XHTML documents to specify alternative text that is to be rendered when the element to which it is applied cannot be rendered. It is specified for several non-textual elements including img, area, applet and input, where it must be specified for the first two and optional for the last two.

Why you should Provide for alt text
Specifying alt text assist different users. Just to mention a few, alt text assists:

1. Users without graphic display terminals.


2. Users whose browsers don't support forms.


3. Visually impaired users.


4. Users who use speech synthesizers.


5. Users who have configured their graphical user agents not to display images.

This means that when alt text is provided for, the elements can be accessible to everyone including:

• The disabled, for instance, the blind.


• People in rural areas with low bandwidth who turned the images off to speed download.


• People who turned off images on their mobile phones to lower bandwidth charges.


• And equally important, accessible to technologies that cannot see images such as the search engines.

A common misconception : Alt attribute is not supposed to literally describe contents of the element; it is supposed to be an alternative for the element.

Internet For the Disabled

Have you ever wondered how people with disabilities, let's say the blind, access the Internet? Have you ever asked yourself whether they access the Internet at all?

We all need the Internet
The Internet is currently a crucial part of our lives and it's imperative that no culture or element of the society be left out. "The disabled are no exception", says the W3C.

According to the consortium, the web is fundamentally designed to work for all people. This is irrespective of their hardware, software, language, culture, location, physical or mental ability.

As a consequence, Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) brings together industry, disability organizations, government and research labs from around the world to develop guidelines and resources to help make the web accessible to people with disabilities including auditory, cognitive, neurological, physical, speech and visual disabilities.

Understanding Web Accessibility
Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate and interact with the web. It means that they can also contribute to the web.

How are we going to achieve this?
WAI works with these organizations around the world to develop strategies, guidelines and resources to help make the web accessible to people with disabilities.
The guidelines and techniques include:

Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG)
Accessible Rich Internet Application (WAI-ARIA)
Authoring Tool Accessibility Guideline (ATAG)
User Agent Accessibility Guideline (UAAG)
Evaluation and Report Language (EARL)

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"Let's bring awareness to the general audience of what issues exits for the people with disabilities and why access to the Internet is so important to them."

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Goo.gl under attack on Twitter

This has been the case ever since December, 14th 2009. As a routine, we publish a post, quickly ping Feedburner and we get our feed items automatically published in our Twitter accounts using the Google URL shortener at goo.gl.



The Breaking News
"A new worm is posting links on Twitter user accounts that lead to a fake antivirus site." Online security and Sophos and Kaspersky report.

The Bad News
The worm is using Google URL shortener goo.gl to spread this link :(

"If you follow the link, you will land on a site that advertises a rouge antivirus solution called 'Security Shield'. This 'antivirus is in fact malware which should fortunately be detected (Sophos detects it as Troj/FakeAV-CMG) as such by popular antivirus solution."

What has Twitter done in reaction
The Twitter Safety account is on the move. An update claims:

"Twitter is working to remove the malware links and reset passwords on compromised accounts."

My question
Do you think this is going to affect our Feedburner feed updates to our respective Twitter accounts?

Blogging Tip of the Day - A Post that is Easy to Read

My experience online has taught me one very crucial lesson: it's hard to read from an electronic output display than a printed one. In other words, it's simply hard to read online.

One consequence brought by the difficulty of reading online, for Bloggers, is that our blog visitors don't stay for long. Typically, suffers scan blog pages and determine within a few seconds whether the pages are worth staying on, or whether they should click away.

So for bloggers, there is a need to write posts that are rich, relevant and easy to read.

A Post that is Easy to Read

• Make sure that your post titles are clear and concise.


• Use mini-heading in your posts to describe the structure of your content.


• Use lists: bullets and numbers.


• Use varying text formats, for instance, italicize conversations, and make key points bold.


• Add relevant links.


• Use images.


• Write short posts and paragraphs.

However, too much of anything is poisonous - too much links, images, videos, text formatting... will none other than scare your visitors away.

The phony bugger compensates the activating follower.

True Success Online

Do you know that the mobile phones were first designed to access the Internet in 1999? But the targeted effect of this innovation began to be fully experienced just a few years back. Right now mobile phones are widely being used to access the net and its accessibility graph is approximately 50% of the total.

The News
China's online population grew to 457 million in 2010 as the use of mobile phones to surf the net spread rapidly. This was a 73 million increase over the year of 2009.

The online population growth is not only in surfing the net, but also in the appetite for online shopping - hello online marketers!

To quench the thirst of their increasing customer base, China's largest e-commerce firm, Alibaba Group, and its financing partners are planning to spend $4.5 billion (30 billion Yuan) setting up a network of warehouse across the country.

In a report by Reuters:

"This investment will help give clients reassurance that the things they buy will not be damaged by a third party along the way, and will help client stickiness to Alibaba platform." said Victor Yip, an analyst at UOB Kay Hian in Hong Kong.

Keep it up China!

The DOS And DON'T When Using Facebook

The first thing you, or anyone, should put into consideration when using Facebook whether you want your account to be personal or professional. Alternatively, you aught to feel free to set up more than one account in order to keep the people and the messages separate.

Here are some of the DOs and DON'Ts:

DO: Be reasonably selective. You don't want to add your boss to your social account, do you?

DON'T: You don't have to confirm all the requests. Feel free to abandon the burdening ones and not 'poke' back. The good news is that it is not considered rude anymore.

DO: Consider whether your profile is private or public. Private is just for your friends while public for everyone.

DON'T: Don't use offensive profile photos, or put up an album with tasteless or pornographic images. You never know who is checking out your site don't risk upsetting anyone. Your profile is a reflection of your personality.

DO: Use the "report as spam" button to avoid junk mail. This is especially when you find an application is automatically sending you spam notifications.

DON'T: Don't send multi-recipient messages. What you don't know is that Facebook defaults the option "Reply to all".

Finally, about the wall-to-wall thing. If your conversation gets personal, please go to inbox. Not everyone is worth seeing you naked.

Homour - User Friendly!

The term user friendly is quite common these days. To depict it, a user friendly appliance is one which is easy to use and which, often, keep giving you tips on ways to use it at every stage. This is very common with almost each and every computing device we purchase today. But this, also, was not the case some years ago. In short, early computers were not quite user friendly and some of the feed back they gave to their users were sometimes provocative.

There was a quick tempered scientist working at an early version of a PC in his laboratory. He kept keying in data and commanding the computer to give him feed back. "GIGO" was the first bit of reply the computer gave,, meaning, " Garbage In, Garbage Out". In other words, the PC was saying, "If you give me nonsense, I give you nonsense back".

The answer to the scientist's second query was, "That's dumb".

The computer's third message was a little longer but no more friendly. "How can you ask such a stupid question?"

But the last straw came when the computer answered one query with the feedback, "IDIOT!". The scientist jumped to his feet, lifted high the stool on which he had been sitting and brought it crashing smack on top of the computer!

I think we should, really, consider user friendliness when purchasing computers. Just a penny of my thought, what do you think?

They Control the Internet

Have you ever asked yourself: who really controls the Internet?

I am talking about a body, or agency, that exercises authority, controls and administers Internet public policy, and directs and controls the actions of its subjects...I'm talking about Internet governance.

Policies and mechanisms for Internet governance have been topics of debate between many different Internet stakeholders, but the ultimate response is that no single body can control the Internet.

Individual Governments can control and promote the utilization of the International network, but only in their jurisdiction. In as a whole, they can only have a say on the Internet, but their control is diminished. Check out the US Senate Internet services usage rules and policies.

All in all, there must be some Internet governance. The Internet is a system and there has to be some sot of administration and regulations.

Esther Dyson, a journalist and commentator on emerging digital technology, an entrepreneur and a philanthropist, described Internet governance as the control put in place to manage the growth of the Internet and its usage. In her words below...

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"Now with the advent of the Net, we are privatizing government in a new way - not only in the traditional sense of selling things off to the private sector, but by allowing organizations independent of the traditional government to take on certain 'government' regulatory roles. These new international regulatory agencies will perform former government functions in counterpoint to increasingly large companies and also to individuals and smaller private organizations that can operate globally over the Net."

Esther Dyson, 1998

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So, once again, who controls the Internet?

There are 5 supra-governmental organizations that control different aspects of the Internet, these include:

1. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). This is a non profit body formed for domain names an IP allocation and management. It is perhaps the most public of the Internet control organizations since domain names or web addresses are one of the most tangible aspect of the Internet.


2. The Internet Society (ISOC). This is a professional membership society, formed in 1992, and that focuses on technical issues of standards and protocols. Similarly, the organization is conscious of how these will affect the global society.
   


3. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). This is an International community of network designers, operators, vendors and researchers, concerned with the development of the Internet Architecture and its transport protocols such as IP. It is one of the main technical bodies.
   


4. The World Wide Web Consortium (w3c). This is an organization that is responsible for web standards. It focuses on improving publishing standards such as HTML and XML.
   


5. Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture Consortium (TINA-C). This is a consortium that takes a higher-level view of how applications communicate over communication networks. This approach makes it somewhat different from the others mentioned above. It does not define detailed standards.
   

Internet Development Time-line

We have always been provided with brief histories of the Internet, stories of the Internet...all trying to explain how the Internet came about. But my focus is a different one.

I am simply talking about a summary that lists the Internet development time-line, and since I have just mentioned the word 'summary', I'll go direct to the point.

The Internet is the latest in the series of developments of how the human race has used technology to disseminate information. It is evident that many of the major advances, in the use of information, have happened within the last hundred years. This, I'm afraid, may prospect the difficulties in managing technological changes. But as far as the Internet is concerned, the likely or appropriate administrations are in place - so there is totally nothing to worry about.

Here goes the time-line:

• 1958 - US responds with ARPA when USSR launches Sputnik 1.


• 1961 - First paper on packet network switching theory.


• 1966 - First ARPAnet plan.


• 1969 - Node 1: UCLA (30th Aug, hocked up 2nd Sept), 4 nodes by December.


• 1973 - First International connections: University college, London and Royal Establishment (Norway). First e-mail.


• 1976 - Elizabeth II, Queen of the UK sends an e-mail.


• 1982 - TCP/IP protocol adopted, first definition of the Internet.


• 1984 - Domain Name System (DNS) introduced.


• 1985 - Symbolics.com becomes the first registered dot-com.


• 1987 - NFSNet backbone developed, upgraded to TI in 1988.


• 1988 - Early worm virus affects 6,000 of the 60,000 nodes, IRC developed.


• 1989 - Countries connected to NFSNet include: Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Greece, India, Ireland, Korea, Spain, and Switzerland.


• 1991 - WWW released by CERN.


• 1992 - Surfing the Internet term coined.


• 1993 - WWW proliferates at 341, 634% annual growth rate of service traffic.


• 1994 - First malls, virtual bank, online pizza and SPAM.


• 1995 - Netscape floats and browser war ensues.


• 1997 - Web sites pass 1 million.


• 2002 - 2 billion indexed web pages on over 20 million websites.


• 2006 - Wide spread use of Blogs, RSS and Podcast.

What do you think?

Qn: This is just up to 2006, what about 2007 -2010?

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"We may find that the more we succeed in removing barriers to the Internet Communications, the more we may help reduce those other, far more important obstructions to human communications - the one that divide nations and estrange demographic groups."

Vint Cerf

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Too Little Too Late!

Let me give you a brief description.

The T-shirt was black, high quality, with a Blogger 'B' barge on the chest and three vertical thick stripes at the back. The number at the back was 11 with the word 'Blogger' on top of it. Do you get the picture?

Let me explain how I came across the T-shirt.

As a Blogger user, I obviously follow Blogger Buzz. But I must confess that I'm not quite good, especially when regular follow-ups are concerned. So I ended up stumbling upon the post about a survey that was to be taken by Blogger user and the award would be the T-shirt. Since I know Blogger in-side-out, do I have to explain how I felt?

But the straw came when I clicked the link to download the electronic form. "Oops!" the survey was closed.

How many of you won the T-shirt?

Why are Existing Organizations Hesitating to Use E-Commerce Strategy?

It wasn't long before I realized that the guy I was siting next to was a Marketer in one of the local popular organizations. With confidence I managed greetings. The social mood led to introductions, and we were talking.

The little conversation seemed to interesting to both of us, even though, mostly, I was playing the passive role. The man was just talkative. He enjoyed explaining the details of his work while I was happy to get answers to some of my curious questions.

Contrary to my expectations, the anti-climax came when I brought up the issue of E-Commerce.
"Are you using E-Commerce?" I asked.
"No" He had nothing to add further.
"But what do you think about the strategy?" I tried again.
"I find it complicated in a way that doesn't make sense." He managed carelessly.

The immediate change in his mood was surprising. I looked at him and I remember sighing. I simply knew that I was going no where. Before I could say anything else, he looked at me back cautiously, and said: "Listen, E-Marketing has a lot of disadvantages than advantages." And that was period.

The Internet era is moving fast. The short-spaced developments in the Technology have profound effects. This is especially in E-Business where it is really stretching and widening the available opportunities for all. For instance, the W3C is currently working on two relevant principles:

1. Web For All - which focuses on removing all the barriers to Internet accessibility by users, irrespective of disability, language, etc. This project has drastically increased online population, the existing and potential customer base.
2. Web On Everything - which focuses on enabling Internet accessibility on a wide range of devices. The development has awoken M-Commerce, where business people negotiate and carry out transactions worth millions using their handset devices.

The fact that a good number of sound business organizations, both in developed and developing countries, are still hesitating to implement the E-Business strategy, is sad. Thorough research reveals that there is a remarkable opportunity online. One effective barrier to this open opportunity it the individual and collective negative attitude of the business people.

Do you want to hear my view point? I anticipate a future when all forms of businesses will be forced to fully computerize their systems, and to grab a place in the online market. Or, they simply won't be able to compete!

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The first Internet company to reach 10 million customers: Amazon, 1999

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What they Hardly Tell You About Running Ads On your Blog

There is nothing as fulfiling as signing up with a new advertising program, accessing your paying account, scrolling down through the dashboard, checking the payments report, and, the dolar sign '$', is always 'thats it'. As a consequence, we end up joining dozens of these programs.
You know what I'm talking about, right?

The next step is always as much interesting. It is always more of integrating ad widgets... Oh! I meant to say cool ad widgets, onto our Blogs. This is always either on the sidebar, below the header, at the footer, and there is an argument that a traditional ad link within a post, that is relevant to it, gets more clicks than a micro media flash widget on either the sidebar, below the header, or at the footer.

Since the integration practice is always from the many individual ad programs that we would have joined, we end up with shopping malls. A shopping mall on the sidebar. A hypermarket below the header. A mall at the footer. And the posts are more likely to be victims.

But, let me ask you a question: Do you know the immensity of the harm overrunning ads may do to your Blog?

Well, let me say it like it is:

• Your Blog loses its initially intended focus. Confirming your current Blog activities with your initial Blog description would be a wise first step here.


• You lose your focus. Imagine having more than 20 paying accounts to manage. And, there is always something new that you should match up with.


• You scare your existing and potential readers away.


• The excessive widgets integrated would weigh down your Blog and really affect its loading speed. AS a result, your FeedBurner feed account would have stats reading: hundreds of 'clicks' and zero 'reach'
  

I know that making money with ads, for most Blogs, is a necessity. But lets be cautioned at the same time!

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"Your readers will feel like they are not a priority to you if ads take center stage"

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It Has Been Said on the Facebook Blog

As I was taking my usual excursion through the facebook blog, I met one post that my eyes couldn't help but single it out. Let me make the picture clear first. The facebook blog is a community blog with approximately over 30 bloggers and about 20 blogging categories. The blog gives its readers total freedom to browse the frequently published posts by providing its archives either by date of post, category or blogger. In short, it's a Blog worth it!

The post that I have just mentioned, was short, simple, straight to the point and well intended. But what I found strange, in an amusing way, was the opinion that was communicated. The blogger suggested that people on facebook should consider using the 'page' as a means to share photos, videos, music, and all that can be shared.
In other words, the suggestion is that everyone on facebook should have a page, and this conclusion is simply because everyone on facebook shares.

Suppose this would be the case, what would facebook be like?
Let's mull over some of the side effects:

• How many facebook friends do you have? Imagine getting an invitation from everyone of them asking you to be a fan of their pages. Don't forget that thia would be compulsory because that's the place they would be sharing.


• What would happen to the wall? This is just too hard to imagine!


• Would you be ready to take up the whole responsibility of web-mastering a page? And since the main purpose of your page would be to share, it would have to be fully interractive. That is, dynamic, not static. Are you getting the picture? micro-media flash... down loadable widgets... frequently updated sections...

It is creative, innovative and enterprising to have a facebook page, but, only when it is relevant.

5 Facts that went down the History of E-mail

Today, there are more individual e-mail messages sent on the Internet more than data of any other kind.

But, do you know:

That

"The first e-mail ever to be sent was in 1972 and on the first Computer Network ever to be created"

That
"Ray Tomlinson is the person crowned with 'inventing e-mail'. First, he invented a simple program for sending files between computers. The software opened a connection, sent a file to another computer and then sent a message back to say that the file had arrived safely at its destination. Since e-mail boxes in computers are really just files, the next step was simple. Tomlinson changed his program so that it carried a mail message from one computer and added it to a mail box of another computer. This is how the era began."

That
"Ray Tomlinson was the person who chose the @ sign, which means at, in e-mail addresses."

That
"In 1976, Elizabeth II, the Queen of UK sent her first e-mail."

That
"The US postal service delivered 101 billion pieces of paper mail in 1998. Estimates for e-mail messages in the same year range from 618 billion to 4 trillion."

The Origin of the World Wide Web

The Internet, today, is a fun place for everyone. The newbie who is learning to use computers is no exception. Unfortunately, this was not the case back before 1989.

Back then, one had to be a professional, like a computer engineer, a software engineer... to be able to use the Internet. During then, one had to mingle with the back Command-line interface to enter source codes to issue instructions commanding the various Internet Protocols to perform a task.
Proudly, this is not the case today as we all know. Thanks to the WWW.

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Story of the Internet
Part 1: A Fact that Provoked the Idea of the Internet.
Part 2: The First Computer Network to be Created.
Part 3: How the First Computer Network changed the World.
Part 4: The Creation of the Internet.
Part 5: The Origin of the World Wide Web (current post).

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The World Wide Web (WWW), in definition, is a system of internet servers that support hypertext to access several internet protocols (IPs) on a single interface. This definition takes us back to Tim Berner's Lee first creativity: Hypertext.


Hypertext
Tim Berner's Lee is an English engineer and I'm glad to say that we have one thing in common - we both have computers in our blood.

In, 1980, Tim had a contract to work at CERN for 6 months. This is where and when he created a program called 'Enquire Within'. Enquire Within was new and unique. It had electronic connections within a document and between different documents on different computers. It could organize information according to the content of document, not where they could be found, and... Enquire Within was Hypertext.

Hypertext is a special kind of text that is intended to give more freedom to the reader and the writer. It contains links that lead to other places: documents, text, pictures, programs, webpage, audio and video recordings. In simple terms, the power of hypertext is that it can lead to anything.

A New Invention
Nine years later, in 1989, Tim was back working again at CERN. This time he felt that he ahd a new responsibility. But this was a responsibility that was not part of his day-to-day work schedule. It was a responsibility that was deeply motivated by who Tim is, a man who just can't help but improve everything. In short, Tim wanted to improve communication between scientists and engineers at CERN. He wanted to make communication easier and more efficient. So, one morning he approached the person in charge and explained his idea:
" But Tim, that's computing, an area that does not concern us." The man incharge replied.
Tim tried harder to explain the benefits of his new idea but the final answer he received was not assuring:
"Ok, I'll think about it."

Plan 'B'
Mr. Lee saw that it wasn't going to be easy to get his way through and create a new program. But then he thought of this place where the computer men, engineers and scientists often meet during the breaks. He thought of the coffee room and he smiled at the wits of his second plan.

This was simply to face his colleagues and use them to pursue the creation of his new program. So he decided to meet the one by one:
"Would you like to have links to all the information you need at work?" He would ask.
"That would be great Tim, I have to travel all the way to CERN to get some information." Most of them answered.

Consequently, the pressure was not only coming from Tim, but all directions, and the ultimate response was the administration giving way.

The New Program
Immediately, Tim started creating the new program and he called it the World Wide Web.
This program used a new invention, a system of addresses. In this system, anything, anywhere on the internet could have its own special address called URL - Uniform Resource Locator.

Tim's browser program could allow writers to create links to anything they liked, and readers had the freedom to follow their interests from link to link. Tim also invented a set of rules for sending texts and pictures over the internet. The rules allowed documents to appear almost exactly the same, whatever the computer system was being used.
For web authors, Tim created a new scripting language called HTML (Hypertext Markup language).

Over the years to today, the WWW has constantly been in a continued development. It is improved everyday to cope up with the current trends in technology.

As you are reading this, Mr. Tim berner's Lee is the President of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

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"We may find that the more we succeed in removing barriers to internet communications, the more we may help reduce those other, far more important obstructions to human communications - the ones that divide nations and estrange demographic groups."

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Why Search Engines Don't use Meta-tags to Crawle Site Anymore

Once upon a time, search such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, Alta Vista... ranked documents higher in their listings which had meta-keywords that corresponded to the queries typed into the search engines by their users. But the unexpected happened. The unexpected always happen. Competing Companies chuckled secretly at their wits; they started including the names of their competitors, or repeating keywords several times, in their meta-tags (standard HTML codes used to specify the content and characteristics of the document). This is a process known as 'search engine spamming'.



But this practice was not very genius, altogether.

Initially setting up their businesses, the search engine organizations had keenly taken calculated risks. Calculated in the nature that the unforeseeable uncertainties were bore both in mind and by a flexible procedural policy. Their security systems had to, in one way or another, reveal the threats. They, similarly, had to make the necessary adjustments. As a consequence, most search engines now attach limited importance to the keyword meta-tags. In fact, I have just realized that Google does not use them at all!

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"One of the biggest changes brought about by electronic communications is how approaches to transmitting and transforming Information can be used for competitive advantage."

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Ethics on Facebook - Watch out your updates!

One thing that confronts you when you log on to your Facebook account is this question: "What's on your mind?" What follows is a blank text area and a blue button with the label 'share' that is always aligned right below the text area.
You know what you do next, don't you? Of course. You update your status.

This share service is the most actively used in Facebook. Through the wall, we share our status; the joke we have just secretly laughed at; a photo we have uploaded; a video we have downloaded from You Tube ; and some people even use this same wall to market and earn revenue. But, this well thought of and developed service happens to be the most abused too.

How Do People Abuse the Wall?
Some people just share too much. They share irrelevantly.
Have you ever heard of the story where two guys ended up jobless because of their shared updates? Well, the story is a little out dated, and right now everyone is cautioned. People don't talk shit about others anymore. People talk shit about themselves these days.

For instance, last week a friend of mine updated his status claiming to be naturally attracted to older women. I am very sure his girlfriend, who happens not to be 'older women' read this. But that was not all. A few minutes later, he came back with another update. This time he claimed to be addicted to pornography.

I read this update. Rubbed my eyes. Read it once again. The second time straining to correct any blurred vision. But it was still the same words. This was not because I have never read shit. No. In fact this was polite. This was because I know him, and this was just not him!

I wonder what can motivate such an ego. Is it the fact that we type those words privately? It is always a private mobile handset, a personal computer in your room, or a privately secured desktop in a cyber cafe. But the whole world reads them.

Pals, let's watch out our updates.

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"The Internet describes censorship as damage, but routes around it"

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4 Secretes you would like to know about a Webpage

There are so many interesting mechanisms behind a dynamic web page. I am talking about a web page view that varies according to user preferences or environment constraints. I mean a site that is just interactive. One that can accept an input and respond to the request with the appropriate feedback. Are you getting the picture?

Let's take a little excursion to the back stage.

1. An Authoring Language.
First, there is always a Markup Language. The most commonly known is HTML, with its latest version, HTML 5. This is usually used to display unstructured web content, while XML is preferred for the display of structured text and data.

2. The Scripting.
Second, a standard software that provides a set of instructions to perform a particular task - a scripting language, is always embedded. These include: JavaScript, which was originally developed by Netscape, but is now widely used in web development, and is supported by all browsers; VB Script; Perl; etc
We also have Active Server Pages (ASPs), which is often related to database query and retrieval; .NET, which uses a different programming model if offer improvements in performance, scalability, reliability and security; and, Common Gateway Interfaces (CGI), which provides extensions to the web server allowing server-side scripts to be run which process information submitted through web-based forms.

3. Programming Languages.
Third, programming languages are not left behind. Java and its rival Microsoft Active X, are used to permit complex and graphical customer applications to be written and then accessed from a web browser.
These languages bring about a range of competing methods which can be used to enable users to interact with a website, e.g. by selecting menu options and entering data.

4. Micro-media.
Plug-ins from Micro-media such as Flash and Shock-wave are widely used these days. Have you ever tried to load a web page just for your browser to prompt you: "Plug-ins missing", and giving you a button option labeled: "click to install"?
The possibilities here are... wow! The plug-ins allow you to add new and powerful abilities to your web page and to dazzle your visitors with multimedia sounds, graphics, animation, etc.

These are just but to mention a few. Besides, I have been very brief not to post a whole novel and lose my intended focus. Right now, Microsoft might have just released the latest version of .NET, Active X...

Let me help you out. I'm providing you with a search box below at the footer. Why don't you just type in a query like: "Micro-media", and see wonders?

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"When I took office, only high Physicists had ever heard of what is now called the World Wide Web... Now even my cat has its own page."

Bill Clinton, 1996.

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The Creation of the Internet

It is interesting, very interesting, how the Internet we know today just came from an idea. The idea provoked the creation of the first Computer Network ever - ARPAnet, which was full positive effects benefiting everyone that was involved. But this same Internet, an International network of networks, was yet to be implemented by 1972.

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Story of the Internet:
Part 1: A Fact that Provoked the idea of the Internet.
Part 2: The first Computer Network to be created.
Part 3: How the first computer network changed the world.
Part 4: The Creation of the Internet (current post).

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By 1972, ARPAnet included dozens of integrated sites. But still hardly anyone, outside, knew about the network. So the ARPAnet team, together with the BBN (Bolt, Beranek & Newman), organized a public show.

Showing ARPAnet to the World
The Internet Conference on Computer Communications was carefully picked as where to show the network to the world. This was held at the Hilton Hotel, in Washington at the end of October, 1972.
The public show was meant for the real test of the network. For instance, a computer in the conference, in Washington, contacted another computer in UCLA commanding it to execute (run) a program. The results were then confirmed as the output was printed from a printer that was in the conference, which was also in the system.

Even though everything in the show never went smoothly, nothing stopped it from being a success. Finally, the ARPAnet team had convinced and proved to the world that a computer network was areal fact, not just a dream. The guest appreciated and accepted that a computer network could be built and that it could be useful. Universities, government departments and other organizations saw that networking could increase the power of their computers, the people who used them, and... Other networks began to appear.

A New Problem
But these new networks created their own rules. A system that was best for ARPAnet did not necessarily suit other organizations with different needs, different style of work and different hardware.
For instance, Alohanet in Hawaii used radiowaves to deal with the problem of communicating over mountains and between different islands. And, Atlantic Packet Satelite Network used a different system sending messages up to the satelite in space to communicate across half the world.

So then, once again, there were many different computer systems that could not communicate to each other. Just a few years after ARPAnet was invented, the appearance of the new networks had once again created the problem that caused Bob Taylor to imagine the world's first computer network.

Solving The Puzzle
This time it was not Bob Taylor's problem to solve again, but Bob Khan - the man who was now in charge of ARPAnet's projects. Khan was familiar with the new problem. He had worked on some of the newer networks that were designed to deal with different circumstances. This gave him a first hand experience to the problem in hand, and, in a college at Stanford, he asked Vent Cerf - an engineer, to work with him on a new project.

"I need to find a way to connect these networks", said Khan. "They are not like the ARPAnet. They all use their own software and hardware, its a mess!"
"They are not going to change over to the ARPAnet system now", responded Cerf. "They have spent too much money, and their systems work".
"I know, but I still need a way to join them together. Its worser than before the ARPAnet. At least then we didn't know what a network could do." Bob argued in return.
"So what do you want to do?" Asked Cerf.
"I don't know. How do we make a network of networks?"

It was generally challenging. But after Bob convinced Cerf, the two managed to begin to write a software that would allow networks to communicate.

Programming The Internet
Their aim was to come up with a kind of gate to each network. The gate was not to affect the architecture or the technical functioning of any network, but to facilitate communication by translating between the different networks to reduce the number of differences between them.

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In a set of rules they invented in 1973, they used the word 'Internet' for the first time. It meant: ' a network of networks'.

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The new software wrapped messages inside Internet 'envelopes' from each different network. The message could leave home network and travel from one gate to another. There, they would be taken from the envelopes and sent into the destination network.
Consequently, data lose risk, in this new software, was much higher compared to the individual computer networks.
Nevertheless, Khan and Cerf's rules are still the glue that holds the Internet together today, more than a quarter a century after they wrote them.

Bob Khan and Vent Cerf thought that the demand of the Internet would grow. But. they never imagined the size of this growth!

How the First Computer Network Changed the World

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Story of the Internet
Part 1: A Fact that Provoked the Idea of the Internet
Part 2: The First Computer Network to be Created
Part 3: How the First Computer Network Changed the World ( Current post)

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The first Network ever to be created was called ARPAnet. It was ARPA's project and the man incharge was Bob Taylor.
Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) was the highest bidding team, and the effects of ARPAnet began to be fully experienced immediately the Network became a living reality. The fear of losing computer power that enveloped the hosts during the busy discussions, when ARPAnet was still a plan, was confirmed otherwise. Contrary to the Initial worries, the hosts gained from the communication network. They could work together on projects and not repeat each others work. And this saved as well as earned ARPA money just as Bob Taylor had contempleted.

Furthermore, it was not long when an engineer at BBN, Cambridge, Massachusetts, could contact the telephone companies and...

"Your line between Santa Barbara and Utah ain't working properly"
"At which end are you?" The telephone companies could ask curiously.
"Neither, I'm in Cambridge"
"But how can you..." The telephone crew were confused.

This was because the IMPs (small mainframe computers that that were connecting two host computers facilitating their communication) were designed to make constant checks on the condition of the network, making its engineers at a position that they would know more about the performance of the telephone lines than the telephone companies that owned and operated them.

So were there new possibilities, for instance, BBN was able to send new a software to the IMPs, immediately, as soon as they were coded. The BBN could also fix an IMP problem from Cambridge, Massachusetts - many hundreds of Kilometers away. But the biggest surprise was that the network was soon being used mostly for something that was never part of Bob Taylor's plan - chat. Technically, the network worked exactly as it was designed to. Yet by 1973, three-quarters of all the traffic on ARPAnet was nothing to do woth sharing data or programs or logging onto distance computers. It was electronic mail - e-mail.

Ray Tomlinson was the first peson to send an e-mail on ARPAnet. Ray, an engineer and in 1972, invented a simple program for sending files between computers. The software opened a connection, sent a file to another computer and then sent a message back to say that the file had arrived safely at its destination. Since e-mail boxes in computers are really just files, the next step was simple. Tomlinson changed his program so that it carried a mail message from one computer and added it to a mail box file of another computer. This is how the era began.

But the speed at which e-mail spread was surprising. Almost as soon as it was introduced, it took over the network. Today, there are more individual messages sent on the Internet more than data of any other kind. And, being the person who chose the '@' sign, which means at in e-mail address, Ray Tomlinson has left his mark on every single one of the billions of e-mails that have been sent ever since 1972.

Part 4: The Creation of the Internet.