Monday, September 22, 2008

Health and Beauty Products

For women it is a must to maintain their personal hygiene and looks. Thus many products of health and beauty sold on the internet. But choosing the right product for your body and skin is not as easy as it seems. You need to choose the product wisely or you might end up with regrets. The use of beauty products which is not suitable for you could damage your skin and sometime the damage can not be undone. So before the damage is done, be sure to check out the product description first or better find a site to get reviews of the product.

ShopWiki is the best site for you to get reviews for health and beauty product. For example if you want to find the best cosmetics you can type in cosmetics in the search box provided at the site. In a matter of seconds you will be given the search result. The good thing about ShopWiki is that it gives you guidance in choosing the best product for you as well as finding sites on the internet which sold that particular product. This way you will be able to choose the best place for you to shop for the product. For a specific product such as Pretty Pretty Lip Matte, there are so many online stores to choose from. Before choosing it won't harm you if you read what others think about the product. So what are you waiting for, shop now for health and beauty products with ShopWiki.

7 Winning Search Engine Optimization Tactics

by: Lee Kendrick

Search engine optimization should always be considered long before your website structure, colors, layout, and overall site design. But, the majority of people usually get caught up "in the moment"... thinking of riches instead of "how" they're going to attract more website visitors. This article is meant to get you back on track, and provide you with 5 winning search engine optimization tactics.

Identify Keywords

1. The single biggest mistake that most business owners make is trying to think of a "cool name" for their website, when they should have chosen a keyword-rich site name like 'prevent-corporate-bankruptcy.com' instead of SmithLawOffice.com' (as an example). Your potential customers search for keyword phrases... not business names... unless you're already a household name like Wal-Mart, eBay or Apple. Facing reality, many business owners gave up on websites ever helping their business a long time ago... usually because of a poor website name choice. And, it doesn't have to be this way.

Simply, discover what terms people are searching for. Identify the "action" keywords and phrases that people are actually using when they are searching Google, Yahoo, MSN or any of the other major search engines. I highly recommend looking for keyword phrases that incorporate the following keywords: buy, want, need, order, download, etc. I'm sure you're getting the idea now. Then, you need to purchase website names that are centered around the most popular keyword phrases. And, redirect these visitors to your current website. And, I promise that you can setup a website redirect in less than one minute... even if computers scare you. You just need to have access to your website hosting interface, with cPanel being the most popular choice.

Optimizing Your Web Page

2. After identifying a minimum of 10 keyword phrases, I recommend optimizing your current website pages' title tags, meta tags, image "alt" tags. You need to start using these keywords within your webpage content in bold text, underlined text, and as text links. Do not overuse these keywords though. These keywords should only comprise 4-6% of each page. So, if you have 500 words on a webpage, limit your keyword usage to 20-30 words. Most of the major search engines index every word of your page and compare them to your title META description and META keywords. So, you should never hide or add non-related keywords to your webpages: like Anna Kournakova, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, etc. This is a "black hat" tactic and should never be used, unless your want your website to be permanently banned by the search engine directories.

Most of the major search engines don't even consider the META keywords anymore, which is why the actual content of your webpages is becoming more and more important. Excessive repeating of keywords is considered as spamming, which will get your website penalized with a lower ranking. And, be sure mix your keywords in different combinations throughout the page and in your ALT tags, instead of using the same phrase over and over again.

Link Popularity

3. One of the most important factors to achieve a high ranking in the search engines is link popularity. The overall number of links to your web site is important, but the quality of the links are even more important. All the search engines are very fond of "on topic" links. Links from sites that contain your same keyword content and are focusing on the same topic as your site, are known as "on topic" links. Three of the best ways to get "on topic" quality backlinks are to comment on other industry-related blogs, make comments in industry-related forums, and to submit articles to article directories. Just make sure that you're adding comments or articles to high pagerank sites, avoiding low page rank sites.

Misspellings

4. Adding misspelled keywords within your META tags can also boost your website traffic, because many people are likely to misspell your keywords when browsing the search engine directories. As an example, here are several popular misspellings I found people making when they searched for a site submission service, as follows: "free search engine submision", "sumit", "subit", "search egnine submission", "submition", and "saerchengines".

Add Fresh Content

5. Adding fresh content to your website on a regular basis is another key factor that plays a critical role in your search engine rankings. Adding new content regularly gives your visitors a reason to come back. Search engine robots will also visit your website more often, once they notice that you update regularly. This is one of the main reasons why WordPress blogs are so popular right now. When visitors leave comments about blog posts you have made, the search engine bots see this as new content. And, it really helps your site rankings when a visitor makes a comment with a permalink back to their high pagerank site. This helps website owners save time, by allowing website visitors to create content for them.

Don't Kill the Search Engine Crawlers

Avoid using flash intro pages where it says "Click Here to Enter Site", because the search engines have a very difficult time indexing (seeing) anything beyond the intro page... unless you've submitted every webpage of your site to the search engine directories manually, which is very time consuming. Even if you use the alt attribute to specify alternate text for flash images, that text will not be anywhere near as important as real text on a main index page.

Provide Relevant Title Tags

7. Making your page titles simple, descriptive, relevant and "keyword rich" makes it easier for search engines to know what each page is about. Keyword rich titles help the search engine directories provide consumers with more relevant search results, helping them determine whether your website contains what they are trying to find. The title description is the most important element of your website design, after you have chosen your website domain name.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Tracking Your Loved Ones

Have you ever been cheated by your loved ones? Although you may have forgiven him or her but in the back of your might still feel suspicious if your loved one go out with friends. You might also think that you will experience the bad memory all over again. So to ensure that your loved one will not cheat on you ever again and to ease your mind what would you do? Well the answer is really simple, why don't you install a GPS Tracking system in your car. That way you will always have a way to know where your loved ones is.

This whole idea of tracking the people you love with a GPS Tracking is in a way would be an invasion of privacy. But think about this, if you have a teenage girl and you know that she is hanging out with some bad friends you will probably do anything to keep her away from danger. Thus installing the system in your car to locate your daughter where about would be a wise thing to do. As soon as she enter a bad neighborhood you can go there and pick her right away. This GPS Tracking system is not only used by common people but also government agencies such as FBI, US Navy, Raytheon, Army, Police in their fight against crime. The system has its controversial side but nonetheless it also has lots of good implementations.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Game Development

Story Bible Example

by: Sebastian Gross

The bible deals exclusively with story and its elements. While the design document guides the creation of the entire gaming experience, the bible controls the game’s interactive screenplay.

Log Line

Let’s say we’re working on a game titled “Hangnail,” the latest game inspired by Quake. Hangnail’s bible would include a “treatment” or synopsis of the game’s story. That treatment should include one- or two-sentence reviews of the story’s beginning, middle, and end. In some cases, the treatment could go into greater detail, stretching from one page to 20 or more, if the designer or game writer chose to really flesh out the story in the design stage. If the game’s narrative is truly based on cinematic story construction, the story might include first, second, and third act reviews. Leave those bits to your writer—we waste hours worrying about that act-structure nonsense. At the very least, the synopsis should include a “log line,” or a brief review of the game’s story, like this:

Hangnail:

Synopsis: A big, tough guy with heaps of muscles and a heart of gold walks through mazes and kills lots of stuff to battle evil, find his boxed lunch, and save the future of humanity…at least until the sequel comes out.

Characters

The second portion of the bible would include character reviews. The most important component of any effective narrative, whether it’s in a game, a movie, a TV show, or a novel, is good characters. They should have well-rounded histories and solid motivations. Most importantly, they should be clearly drawn out so anyone who reads the bible or works on the game sees the same person in their minds. If a writer or designer creates a game revolving around a Schwarzenegger-type action hero and fail to describe his all-American, psychopathic personality, the artist or renderer could end up drawing Marv Albert. Here’s what our character bible would say about Hangnail’s protagonist:

Character Name: Dirk Squarejaw

Age: Late 20s

Appearance: Ruggedly handsome and in the kind of impossibly good shape that you’d need to spend 25 hours a day in a gym to achieve.

Equipment: Death Ray of Death, Grenade of Severe Owies, Swiss Army Knife of Animosity, Pulse Cannon of Mild Mood Swings.

Attributes: Wonderfully and relentlessly violent. With an overdeveloped sense of honor. Dedicated to saving all life on Earth, or at least all attractive women on Earth. He enjoys painting in splattered blood, rainy days, long walks on the beach, thermonuclear devices, and backgammon.

Background: Orphaned at birth and raised by wolves, Dirk was rescued by nuns at the age of 4. The nuns instilled in the young Dirk his sense of honor and his bizarre obsession with backgammon. When the evil villain, General Payne, destroyed the nuns’ village to hijack all their dice, Dirk set out on his lifelong quest to end evil around the world. He will never rest until Payne is defeated, peace and justice restored, and double sixes rolled everywhere.

All the information in the character description above could be distilled into one long paragraph entry, if the designer chooses to limit the length or the scope of the bible. However, every character in the game (even supporting players) should be presented in this same detail.

Such enriching character sketches can provide inspiration when planning game maps or missions (depending on the game’s genre). For example, in Hangnail’s case, given Dirk’s devotion to backgammon, the designer could construct a maze or a level in which the objective is to slaughter all of General’s Payne’s agents to recover their ill-gotten dice.

Character description and background is one area where a story bible can really enrich an interactive game. If the bible can draw out a game’s central character with convincing depth and detail, the production can present an interesting and exciting person around which you can build a game and story.

In some cases, the player becomes that character. In other games, the player merely guides an already existing character. In either case, the story bible can outline what the main characters wants! That’s the key. The entire game story should be built around what the main character or hero wants and needs. Once that is pinpointed (be it the damsel in distress, a magic amulet, or the enemy capital), a designer can build an entire game around that quest. Battles in the cold reaches of space. Races through monster-filled mazes. Puzzle-solving through a haunted library. Anything that makes the game more entertaining can stand between the hero and the goal. But, the goal must be clear, ever-present, and motivated. The story bible can help a design team do that.

In another example, if Dirk was scared of water because his wolf parents couldn’t swim, the designer might wish to create an underwater level and cause Dirk’s air supply to disappear quickly because he hyperventilates too easily.

Using a methodology like this, in which you define the background, attributes, age, appearance, and equipment of a character, can help ensure truly motivated and enjoyable characters and gives the design team ideas for gameplay. A game’s characters need to be compelling. If the player becomes a hero in the game, that hero must be attractive enough that the player wants to assume that persona. A game villain should be rotten enough that the player generates genuine passion and satisfaction from defeating him or her.

An essential rule of thumb states that every character, even the most incredibly butch of heroes, needs to have weaknesses or shortcomings. If a character seems too omnipotent and has every skill imaginable down pat, no player will believe he or she could possibly lose or die. You don’t have to make your hero or heroine a simpering wimp, but don’t make them invulnerable. Even Superman has his kryptonite.

In the final document, Dirk’s bible entry might include an artist’s sketch (if created early in the game development process) or a 3D rendering (if created farther along in the development process) which might also be the actual avatar used in the game if the product makes it that far along.

To digress for just a moment, I have approached the use of game bibles for story development solely from the perspective of the hero thus far. Lately, games such as Bullfrog’s Dungeon Keeper and LucasArts’ Dark Forces II have made it possible for players to assume the role of the villain. However, that doesn’t turn the narrative rule on its ear—the same guidelines still apply. A villain also has wants and needs. In the best possible scenario, the bad guy wants exactly the same thing as the hero. In drama and writing courses, that’s called the “Law of Conflicting Need.” A good story (and therefore a good game, if it has story components) has a protagonist and an antagonist wanting the same thing for perfectly opposite reasons. We usually want the hero to get to that goal before the villain. However, in games where we become the villain, we assume the motivations of the villain. The bible should outline the history, personality, and motivation of the bad guy as well as the hero. That way, if we become the antagonist in gameplay, it works just as well if we had chosen the hero’s role.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Active Directory

Maintaining users who use computer network in your company would be a very hard thing to do. It requires a good knowledge of networking, especially active directory if the company use Windows operating system. The Windows 2003 Server version has a built in active directory management to control all operational resources such as network password, domain registration, user rights and many more. Using all of these active directory tools oblige you to be an expert in IT. But sometimes people want to try different things. One solution that you can consider to use is provided by Ensim.

Through it's Unify solutions which are offered in four different version namely Enterprise, Shared, Managed and Saas, Ensim provides a reliable tools to maintain legacy systems, implement new services and reduce the cost all at the same time. Obviously when you are working with a large number of users in your network they bound to exchange files and resources to improve the productivity. This looks like a simple matter to solve with Microsoft Exchange. But the tiniest of misconfiguration could lead to a fatal error. Thus Ensim propose an exchange management system that is really easy to configure. The system can work side by side with the active directory by using the exchange tools provided by the solutions. This way your IT manager can set up you exchange environment and guarantee the uptime. Try the demo version of the solution so you can feel the difference. Go to the site now and download it.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Pointers For Choosing Your Laptop Computer

by: David Burton

Pointers for buying a laptop.

If you're thinking of buying a laptop computer there are undoubtedly some great deals to be found, but what should you be looking for when you're in the market for a updated or even your first laptop computer.

Well, it's always worth sitting down with a pen and paper and thinking about exactly what you need your new laptop computer to do. If you're simply going to use it for word processing and the odd email here and there you don't need the super fast processor and hard drive that can hold thousands of files, so don't let a slick salesman tell you otherwise that’s just going to hurt your pocket.

If it's a family laptop computer you're in the market for you'll want a good all rounder. kidshave a great knack of loading games and other large applications onto a PC without you knowing. which can really effect performance for when you need it for more important things like business or your own games. So make sure you get a good-sized hard drive and a good amount of ram.

Regardless of the type of laptop computer you're in the market for make sure you explain to the salesman exactly what you need it for ( ie is it for the home or on the road). More often than not they'll be able to show you in the right direction, but make sure you only spend an amount you're happy with.

If you're an online shopper then there are some great deals to be found, so just make sure you conduct proper research before jumping in to make that purchase. You'll probably see a lot of adverts for the newest laptop computer on the market , Buying a laptop computer , its just like anything else , make sure you do a good amount of research, be clear about the amount you want to spend and weigh up your options.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Modern Furniture

Everybody want to have a nice and comfort house to live in. A good way to make your rooms more comfortable is by installing furnitures. There are many kinds of furnitures that you can choose to put, but if you want something different then try the Modern Furniture. It will surely make your house nicer. Your kids will stay much longer at home knowing that the house looking more beautiful.

If you don't know the latest model of furniture then the best place to look for ideas is ERoomService. On the site you can see many references of the latest model including Contemporary Furniture, Italian Furniture, etc. Design your kids room with the most suitable furnitures available on the site. Simply click on a category and you will be given various items available for you to choose. Before selecting the item be sure to check out the detailed information for it. Add all items that you want to buy to your shopping cart. Shipping will be done via ground carriers and all items will be shipped within 1 week. The Designer Furniture you bought on the site will be given a 1 year warranty against defect. But you can be sure that all products offered on the site are selected from the finest manufactures to give you top quality products. So if you are thinking about remodeling your house with new furnitures, you should check out the site first to get furnitures of the latest model.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Suggestion for Work at Home Business

by: Tsuyoshi Suzuki

Make money online and Work from home is a new trend that is growing day after day. One reason people decide to work from home is the opportunity for greater freedom, and that perk is certainly there. Getting the green light to work from home is easier if you're prepared. The best thing about being able to work from home is the control of our time. My best advice for work from home is do not pay a fee, but research the company to find out if they are legitimate.

By the time you started looking for a work at home job, you probably already needed to start working and making money. Instead, you might choose to work beneath someone who has successfully started one of these businesses. The biggest obstacle for most people wanting to start their own business has been the high cost of starting a new business. However, with new technologies available today, you can start and run a successful home based business for virtually nothing.

Where do I start if I want to be an online marketer? How much time and energy will you put into your search and your job? Make Research before you start your home based business will help you a lot to answer these question. Actually there many people who lose factually a lot of money while searching for the winning work from home ideas, but that’s the way.

Write articles that will set you up as an 'industry expert'. When I was newly online and learning about online business, I go on the links in articles, forums, and discussion group’s signatures as my primary method of finding good information. It's fine to read e-zines and others' articles to see what people may be interested in and spark your own ideas, but don't pattern yourself after someone else.

There are also, of course, paid services and software that will do the submissions for you, but you may want to wait until you have successfully written a few articles before you choose to pay. Do this, and you'll be steadily cranking out articles that everyone wants to publish. If you want to make money online a good strategy that won't cost you is to write articles that relate to your product or service.

Friday, September 05, 2008

HD Radio

For people who were born before the new age of technology, radio was their favorite means of entertainment. They listened to it everyday to hear their favorite songs. With the introduction of television and internet, radio is no longer the number one choice of entertainment. But this can change if you listen to Florida High Definition Radio stations. This is not a traditional radio which use a satellite to broadcast but it is a digital radio. You can think of it as a digital version of AM & FM.

Check out the site and see the nearest station to your place. If you are country lover then you can look for new country music stations and tune it to it to get the newest country songs. If you have an iPod, surely you would love to hear it again. Well with the Polk Audio I-sonic ES2 receiver you can tag a song and the HD receiver will save the song to your iPod. The song will then appear under a playlist called "Tagged" and then you can buy and download the song from iTunes. This way you will never miss a new song which you really love but don't know the title of the song yet.

Monday, September 01, 2008

Designer Luggage

When you are traveling the most important thing to prepare beside the ticket is your luggage. It is really important to have the perfect luggage where you can put all of your things without having to worry that your it will torn apart. In Village Luggage you can find any designer luggage that you want from big brand names such as Briggs & Riley, Vera Bradley, Tumi, Hartmann and many more. Browse through their collections according their brand or type. In most of the products sold on the site you can have a sale price, so be sure to check it before you place your order.

To buy the item you want you just have to click on the item where you will be given the complete specification of the item. You can see some pictures of the item should you want to decide what you want to buy judging by its appearance. Choose the color of the item that you want and then put in the quantity. At the moment the site only accepts payment through credit card from American Express, Visa and Mastercard. As for the shipment Village Luggage uses mostly UPS Ground as their carrier. You can have a free shipping if you purchase more than $99. The site also has a 14 day refund policy as well as a 30 day exchange policy for merchandise which has not been personalized. Should you have any questions you can contact the site by phone at 1-888-LUG-4-YOU (1-888-584-4968) or send and email to vil.lugg@verizon.net. Village Luggage is the best luggage store online for you to shop.