News from Networks Plus

March 2009

A professional, well-built web site is a leading way to help your company grow. Our team of web designers will be happy to consult with you on building a new web site or critiquing your existing web site.

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Have you missed some of our past newsletters and now you are worried that you also missed some valuable information? Visit our home page to see past newsletters by clicking HERE

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For Your convenience Networks Plus takes credit card payments. To pay your bill with a credit card call April @ 856-786-3500

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Leveraging the Web for Your Business
Advice from Jerry Caruso

I am amazed at the number of clients we have pursuing websites for the first time as well as seeking updates to their current site. In these tough economic times, our customers see the web as a second or third income stream that, if designed correctly, can supplement downturns in business experienced between the walls.

But first, a quick primer on web development:
There are three basic parts to starting a web presence. First, you need a website name, a www.something.com. This is an electronic address that provides potential customers with the ability to find you on the web. Web names must be unique throughout the entire WWW (World Wide Web) so that means the entire world! Names are registered through websites called "registrars". These sites are designed to research name availability and lock in names on behalf of potential clients.

There are thousands, so how do you pick one? Call Networks Plus!!

Some things to remember about web names:

*They are cheap so DO NOT get hung up on picking just one. If there are several that you like, get them all. Through a method called "parking" we can point all of your electronic names to the same website.

*They DO NOT have to match your corporate name or any other trade name and they DO NOT need to be registered in any way with a government authority (there are some exceptions to this rule in the banking and securities industry.)

*You DO NOT have a right to ANY name regardless of how long you have used your trade name. If mcdonalds.com was available, I would snatch it up immediately (a technique known as cyber-squatting).

*You DO NOT need to end in .COM, although this is most desirable. You want to avoid using other extensions (.net or .org, etc) unless they fit your situation, such as a non-profit. The main reason for avoiding them, however, is the most obvious. If your competition is at www.WeSellWidgets.com and you are at www.WeSellWidgets.net, who do you think is going to get the most customer hits?

*Your web name should be easy to say without spelling it out. (I know, I know - networksplusco does not exactly roll off the tongue, so let my mistake be a lesson to you!)

*It is advantageous if your website is easy for your customer (or any potential website visitor) to remember.

*Your web name should also say something about who you are (duh!). This makes it a little easier for the search engines to pinpoint your site.

Now that you have a name, which is basically the equivalent of a one-liner in the white pages, you need a website host. This is equivalent to the yellow pages part of the book. Most website domain registrars also double as web hosting companies. After all, you can't make much money just registering names at $3.00 to $4.00 per year.

These sites may offer features like email hosting, website building assistance, etc. Be careful when choosing a web host. You want to make sure they are reliable with minimal interruptions; you cannot sell what people cannot see. You also want them to have a "We'll get to that right away/ We never close" attitude towards customer service.

How do you pick from the plethora of purveyors? Call Networks Plus!!

Finally, you need a web design or should I say web designer. This is not something you should take to task on your own unless you are either masochistic or do not really care what your website looks like, and if that is the case, why have you continued to read this far?!
A carefully constructed site will be easy to find, easy to navigate, and have a modern look and feel. It will use the latest technologies available, features that you will not find in the cookie cutter templates of the cheap registrars such as GoDaddy. In addition, your site will be portable, meaning you can move it from host to host with little hassle. (Not something that you can do with a GoDaddy site or many others like it.)

How do you pick a web designer for your site? Okay, everyone, on the count of three.........

Geek Tip Contest

Thank you to the winner of our first Geek Tip Contest, Ms. Elyse Fithian of Collingswood New Jersey, for her submission of the following tip:

""Have you ever lost a document on your own PC? I have lost documents and then been unable to find them because I was unsure of the exact name I gave them. Someone told me about using a Wild Card during a Search/Find in Windows. A Wild Card is an asterik in place of letters or numbers. For example, I lost a document that I knew started with art, becuase it was for my art history class. So I typed in art*, and came up with all the documents that began with that word. I could fine tune the search if I knew it was a word document by typing art*.doc. Then only Word docs would come up in the search.

This tip has come in handy, especially after I save a document in a hurry, not paying attention to where it went or the exact name I gave it, and have to find it again. I hope it helps you, too.""

Elyse received a Networks Plus mug, from which she now enjoys her morning coffee while checking her emails. Thank you, Elyse!

Do you have a tip that our readers would find helpful? Do you have a little computer trick up your sleeve that you find yourself using all the time? Send them to tips@networksplusco.com. We will select the most useful tip and thank that tipper with their choice of a Networks Plus hat or coffee mug.

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Deciphering the Technological Jargon

A Bit of Tech Insight from April Stavely

Spyware is any software that covertly gathers user information through the user's Internet connection without his or her knowledge, usually for advertising purposes.
Spyware applications are typically bundled as a hidden component of freeware or shareware programs that can be downloaded from the Internet. Once installed, the Spyware monitors user activity on the Internet and transmits that information in the background to someone else.

A jpeg is a picture file or an image file. JPEG is an acronym for
Joint Photographic Experts Group. It is a color image compression technique. It can reduce files to about 5% of their original file size. However, the more you compress a jpeg the more detail is lost.

Giga-Hertz is most commonly used in computer lingo when discussing a processor's speed. Hz (Hertz) literally means one wave or cycle per second. So 1 GHz (Giga-Hertz) is 1 Billion cycles per second. It's a measure of the clock speed of the processor. The more GHz that a computer has, the faster it runs. All things being equal, a machine with a 2 GHz processor will run twice as fast as a machine with a 1 GHz processor.

MIND TEASER::: March 14th is Albert Einstein's Birthday, so a riddle written
by Einstein himself seems appropriate. Besides, we are all a bunch of
Einsteins here at Networks Plus... right? :)
Try this riddle and see if you are among the 2% who can solve it. Pen and
paper recommended to chart this puzzler!

ALBERT EINSTEIN'S RIDDLE
There are no tricks, just pure logic, so good luck and don't give up.

1. In a street there are five houses, painted five different colours.
2. In each house lives a person of different nationality
3. These five homeowners each drink a different kind of beverage,
smoke different brand of cigar and keep a different pet.

THE QUESTION: WHO OWNS THE FISH?

HINTS

1. The Brit lives in a red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The Green house is next to, and on the left of the White house.
5. The owner of the Green house drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the Yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The man living in the centre house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbour who drinks water.

ALBERT EINSTEIN WROTE THIS RIDDLE EARLY DURING THE 19th CENTURY.
HE SAID THAT 98% OF THE WORLD POPULATION WOULD NOT BE ABLE
TO SOLVE IT.

The answer to last months mind teaser: (This is an unusual paragraph. How quickly
can you find out what is so uncommon about it? It looks so ordinary that you may
think nothing is odd about it until you match it with most paragraphs this long. If you
put your mind to it, and study it, you will find out, but nobody may assist you. Do it
without any coaching. Go to work and try your skill at figuring it out. Par on solving
it is about half an hour. Good Luck!) Although "e" is the most commonly used letter
in the english language, there are NO "e"s in this paragraph.