Looks great from first impressions

Can't wait to start making good use of this service and add tips hints and additional information using Sidewiki....

in reference to: Share : Master advanced features - Toolbar Help (view on Google Sidewiki)

Inbound linking strategies explained + Tool to help out

Inbound linking explained..

Almost every website owner wants high organic rankings in Google, Yahoo and Bing for specific keywords, relevant to the content on their website. When taking on the task of building quality inbound links to you website, apart from having to have the most relevant and interesting content on your site, it is extremely important to have links from a balance of paid directories, industry specific websites as well as blogs and from social network user profiles of people, or businesses, that are specialists or experts in the area your website. Search engines aren't silly and the guys that work on improving them aren't either. Using services that claim that they will add a link to your website in 1000's of directories, may create inbound links to your site, but if the majority of the directories are barely relevant to your websites content, then they are of little benefit to your websites ranking and in some cases can be of detriment, most probably due to the fact that the search engine will pick up a sudden huge surge in inbound links from the same old directories and work out that these inbound links are not links to a website with valuable content but an attempt to try and push your website up in the organic search results by using an automated service.

Generating inbound links to your website / blog from other industry related websites and from people in your industries social media pages is in reality something that is not going to happen overnight. Realistically and ultimately promoting and creating inbound links is an ongoing task that is going to be something that will need to be considered for the life of your website, should you wish to obtain high organic search ranking for your relevant keywords.

What I want to get across in this post is that a search engines aim is to provide the most relevant content for the keyword the user has entered. The service / script that I stumbled across today is an excellent concept, which I can't see why wasn't thought of earlier. I believe its development was inspired by the concept that approximately 6% of page views generate some sort of user interaction. This interaction could be leaving a comment, copying some of your content for reference or 'retweeting' your latest post. Now if a user is copying and pasting some content from your site, this obviously tells you that what they have copied is something this user is interested in and most probably going to end up on a relevant page somewhere on the web. The user may just be copying the content for a document of theirs but in the social web culture that we are current living in there is a big possibly your content is going to be pasted on a blog, in a comment on someone else's blog or on a social networking site that will generally relevant to you website industry and quite possibly a resource of information relevant to your website. Now this type of inbound link is one that will make a difference in your search engine ranking. From tests I have done over the years with search engines and how there complicated and sensitive algorithms work, this is why as soon as I saw this service I got excited. Having a script that can automatically create an inbound link to your website from a website that is relevant is going to take at some hours I spend building up relevant inbound links to my website and implementing this script on your site can help you out too! In my opinion this little bit of script has made my day.. hopefully that doesn't sound too sad..

Here is the link to the service called "Tynt" - http://tynt.com/ - It literally takes a couple of minutes to create an account and about the same time to install the code on your website if you know web programming languages. If you don't it's not a huge problem, it may take a bit longer to get working on your site, but there are instructions of how to install the script provided.

If you want to see how it works just select some text in this blog post, copy it, open up 'notepad', or better still 'tweet' the selected text and you will notice that under the pasted text is a link to this blog. Enjoy any SEO enthusiasts out there. Hope you will share the same enthusiasm I had when I first stumbled across this service. Please stay posted if you are into SEO as I have a few more posts in coming weeks that reveal some further SEO strategies I use.

Best Looking Wallpapers i'v seen in a while

This has to be one of the best wallpaper links I have ever stumbled across. The link below contains the most stunning themed wallpapers for

your desktop that I have found to date. I just had to share it. Anyone with any other links to

wallpapers sites that they know about that are free and offer similar quality as an art enthusiast I would be grateful to be given a chance to check them out. Just a short post but great post for wallpaper lovers.

By the way you don't need to sign up for the site and click the "Submit" button to get access, just click on the splash page image. Hope you like.

http://www.desktopography.net/

Follow the on Twitter - https://twitter.com/aeiko_

Requesting your users to update their website profile

A common practice among many website that I use is that on the odd occasion they request that you update the original information that you provided to the website. I don't know about you, but anyone email asking me to update any information makes me suspicious. There are so many spam emails going around these days that every time I receive an email that requests that I update my account details or requests information, whether they be legitimate or not always raises my suspicion as to its origins and motives. Could it be the launch pad of some sort of phishing attack or something along those lines.

I believe that website owners and developers need to put their heads together devise a set of new standards for the process requesting users to update their account details or other information that may be required! Even if the email comes from a legitimate site that looks well formatted while also coming from and email address, such as accounts@munchit.com.au, these days it just isn’t worth taking the risk of responding to these emails with so many tricks that the data thieves and hackers out there use and have up their sleeves.

A practice that I am going to adopt in the future with the process of requesting information updates from users, is to send them an email providing information that on a certain date the website will be requiring some additional information. Stated in the email it will state that an “sms” will be sent to the user (Already captured during sign-up). The "sms" will inform the user that an email has been sent to them on that date which will contain a link to the website. Also provided in the "sms" will be a confirmation code uniquely used to identify the user. When the user checks their email and clicks the link they are taken to a page where they have to enter the code before the fields required to enter their log in details are revealed. Once the log in is complete the user will be directed to the page that will capture the new information that the site owner requires.

I believe this more structured and secure approach that although will require a bit more development effort and cost it is something that would be worth implementing. I think users would generally feel happier about providing the additional information to the site as they would have previously been notified that they were going to receive an email of this nature.

Let me know if you think this is a feasible automated approach to dealing this common suspicion around these types of email requests? Can you think of any other innovative ways to reassure users that updating information and collecting new information from the user to use on the website is a safe process?

<strong> and <b> / <em> and <i> - Which is for what?

A question that has been bugging me all day today when I was conducting some SEO work today was is the <strong> and <em> tag any different to the <b> and <i> tag. The conclusion I have come to after researching the topic is that you use the <strong> and <em> instead of <b> and <i> tag when you are trying to emphasize keywords on a page as readers treat the two tags differently. They achieve the same visual effect however the <strong> and <em> tags are "logical" tags. This means that they are for when the developer wants to add emphasis to particular words or phrases. A reader for a user with disabilities may say the word louder for example. The <b> and <i> tags are for visual layout effects on a page and do not have the same effect on a reader or add any weight to your keywords in the search engines. I suggest when crafting a page and that if you want to format something purely for visual effect then you use the <b> or <i> tag, as they will reduce you page size very slightly, hence increase load time. This post by Nikki Pilkington also states that there is no effect in the SEO world.

http://nikkipilk.sc10.co.uk/blog/2008/09/30/tip-49-the-bold-and-the-beautiful/

Improve Your Businesses Wireless Security

A business wireless network should be a network that is safe from hackers and unauthorised users. Here are some steps to secure your network from such intrusions;

Create a Wireless Security Policy
Create a policy that specifies who can use the network, and how to protect the network This is one below is taken from a Cisco template I found on a website;
- Acceptable use policy, to specify what types of network activities are allowed and which ones are prohibited.
- E-mail and communications activities, to help minimise problems from e-mails and attachments.
- Antivirus policy, to help protect the network against threats like viruses, worms, and Trojan horses.
- Identity policy, to help safeguard the network from unauthorised users.
- Password policy, to help employees select strong passwords and protect them.
- Encryption policy, to provide guidance on using encryption technology to protect network data.
- Remote access policy, to help employees safely access the network when working outside the office.

Educate your Employees
Educate your employees and get them involved in protecting the network. Use informational posters and training about security, passwords, and privacy to help you keep your business information and communications secure.

Secure the WLAN
- Use strong encryption: When you install your network, set up the strongest wireless encryption you can. WEP encryption is adequate, but WPA and WPA2 are better options.
- Secure communications: Encrypt data that travels on the network, and authenticate users to be sure you know who is using the WLAN.
- Change the default network name to something that is hard to identify so it is unrecognisable.
- Use MAC address control lists combined with encryption to restrict user access.
- Be sure that management ports are secured with non default names and passwords.
- Hide the access points to prevent tampering.
- Use video surveillance cameras to monitor your office building and site for suspicious activity.

Protect Your Company from Outside Threats
Protect wireless devices with the same security you use for the your company network. (i.e. firewalls, VPNs, and antivirus software)

Protect Your Wired Network from Wireless Threats
Install wireless intelligent protection switching (IPS) devices to prevent unauthorised, "rogue" access points and other wireless threats.

Review of Untangle UTM

Recent open source start-up Untangle has launched one of the first open-source unified threat management software platforms (UTM) for network security, targeted at small to mid-sized businesses. The Untangled Gateway Platform was built around more than 30 open source projects, including SpamAssasin, ClamAV, and Snort, and competes with proprietary systems from SonicWall, Barracuda and WatchGuard, among others.

Untangle is aimed at SMB appliances and is geared toward 250 users or fewer, and is meant to work on one server although not released as an enterprise product it is targeted at SMB’s who previously may have used a combination of open source projects.

There is an enterprise-scale version slated for a 2009 release with the free version including a spam, virus, spyware, phish and attack blocker, as well as a web filter, protocol control, open VPN, intrusion
prevention, firewall, router and web reporting.

The paid version of Untangle includes active directory integration and advanced policy management, as well as remote access portal and configuration back-up.

Pricing for up to 10 users is US$25 a month, and it's double for up to 50 users. From 51 to 150 users it will cost US$150 a month, and for more than 151 users US$250 a month.

For more information go to
http://www.untangle.com/

Technology Tips Blog - Update - Dec 2008

Just a quick post to let you know that I have been moving around some of the page elements and navigation on the website to make it easier for readers to get around and discover the content on the blog. Moving the tag navigation closer to the top of the page I thought made sense as it makes it easier to find relevant topics on the website as well as adds the ability for users to subscribe via email to new posts, become followers of the blog and bookmark post on social media websites. Please sign up as a reader as a form of your appreciation for updated tips and site content. Just to let you know I have a guest called James Kambourian, a good friend of mine and a network administrator with management skills who will be featuring some posts in coming in the coming months and if I get a good response to his posts then I he will become a permanent feature on the site, so I will appreciate your feedback in coming months. Over Christmas time I will also be giving away some copies of software to some lucky readers so please leave comments on the blog as these are your entries into the draw for the software. Im still striking a deal with the software provider though as to how many copies they will be providing me so I will keep you posted on this one. It is likely to be a piece of software that has been featured on the technology tips blog recently though just to let you know.