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Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

Keeping secrets a secret (i.e. encrypting files)

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

There are lots of scary things that can happen to you with computers. Not only can you have your computer hacked, but what if you lose your computer? For most of us, our computers are like a personal diary with lots of important information, and perhaps information we don’t want others to share. Things like your passwords to websites, bank accounts,  should probably not be left out in the open on your computer.
So how do you go about protecting such information? In most cases, you’ll want to encrypt your data.  File and/or folder encryption (along with an up-to-date firewall) is your first line of defense against unauthorized access.

Here is a list of some ways to go about doing so.

  • HowStuffWorks.com – A detailed article about what encryption is with links to further reading

For the Mac

For the PC

(The below section is adapted from http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080213200436AAAPdY4)
Windows 2000 and XP Professional (XP Home might not have this built in) include built-in encryption for files and folders.

Double-click on ‘My Computer’ to open Windows Explorer. Choose the folder or file you want to encrypt and right-click on it. In the window that comes up, select ‘Properties’ and click on the ‘Advanced’ button. Here, select the ‘Encrypt contents to secure data’ check box, and click OK twice. Click OK again in the next dialog box to accept the default choice, ‘Apply changes to the selected items, sub-folders, and files’.

It’s not recommended to encrypt your whole drive. Your computer may slow down and it may cause other problems.  You may be better off  just adding a log in password for when the computer starts up, if that’s what you need.

A few software options if you’re not able to use the above instructions.

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SEO and Links

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the talk of the town these days. SEO essentially consists of a few attributes applied to building websites.  Here are a few things that should be considered when building a site:

  • Page titles using keywords (this goes in the HTML title tag)
  • Meta Tags for keywords and descriptions should be included in the <head> tags of your HTML page.
  • Heading tags (h1, h2, etc.. HTML tags) should be used and should have relevant keywords included in the headings.
  • A navigation system that search engines can follow.  The days of fancy navigation buttons that hop, skip, and jump are long gone.  These days, a bulleted list is the way to go.  You can then use CSS to style the navigation and make it appear lots of different ways, including drop down or fly out menu’s.
  • Linking text within your page content to other pages on your site is also helpful.
  • Your page content should also be keyword rich, yet be legible and useful to your readers.
  • Web pages should be coded with HTML (or XHTML) and CSS coding techniques should be used to style the page.  Previously, tables were used to organize content and images. Tables are much harder for search engines to follow and they are also much more difficult to make edits to.     You can check this on your web page by going “View Souce” or “View Page Source” (in Internet Explorer and Firefox you can right click on the mouse for this option) and then looking in the HTML code.  If you see a bunch of code below the <body> tag that looks like <div>, </div>, <div class=”header”> then it’s likely you site was created this way.  If you see a bunch of tags like <table>, <tr>, <td> then you are looking at code for tables.
  • Include alt text descriptions for your images.
  • Linking to other sites that have helpful and relevant content is a good thing.
  • Having other sites link to you is even more useful.  That tells the search engines that you have useful content on your web site.  Search engines also put importance on link/site popularity.
  • Creating a Robots.txt file to hide coding and pages you don’t want to have the search engines seeing is a good step to take.
  • Creating a sitemap.xml file to show search engines what pages are on your site.

Search Engine Optimization is just the begining of getting your site indexed and on top of the search results.  This is however, an important first step in getting there.

Here is an article about this topic for further reading.
The New SEO – Let’s Get Real

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To Blog or Not to Blog

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

Six Reason Every Small Business Should Blog

This is a convincing article about why to blog. At Visual Adventures, we have been building almost all of our sites lately as custom designed WordPress blog sites. For about the same amount of time it takes to create a regular website, you can have one with a content management system, a blog, photo galleries you can manage, and lots of other options available for this popular software.

In case you haven’t noticed lately, the search engines love blog articles. The majority of search results I end up on these days are blog articles. That is a huge reason alone, why you might want to consider a blog. Read the article to find out more!

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Free Software!

Tuesday, October 30th, 2007

Well it’s sort of free. The idea is that you’ll donate to these hard working individuals. Fight the software monopolies! Did you know that there was alternatives to some of the top software that you pay for on a donation basis. How can this be true? See for yourself:

Microsoft Word / Microsoft Office
Check out NeoOFfice (http://www.neooffice.org) if you don’t want to make microsoft any richer. Keep in mind that it’s not the exact same software, just that it is an alternative. Try it out and see if it works for you.

Adobe Dreamweaver
Now that Adobe has taken over Macromedia it sure feels like all the design software comes from the same place. Check out these alternatives:
nVu – (http://www.nvu.com/) A WYSIWIG editor like Dreamweaver – sort of. It doesn’t seem as powerful or user-friendly, but it is an alternative.
Aptana – (http://aptana.com/) Although it doesn’t have the WYSIWIG editing, I have come to favor this software over dreamweaver. It’s clean and simple, and you’ll be forced to improve your coding skills.

Adobe Photoshop
Yes, there’s even software out there that does something like Photoshop. The installation seemed more time consuming than what I had for patience available so I haven’t actually tried this. The software is called GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/)

FTP
A way to upload and download files from web-servers.
Check out fireFTP that works with the Firefox browser (http://fireftp.mozdev.org). It’s not quite as nice as CuteFTP, but you also don’t need to run extra software.

Google
No, Google does not have a free alternative. In fact, most of Google’s tools are free. They will up coming out with web based versions of some of the mentioned software. It should be interesting. Be sure to check out Google Earth if you have not already!

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Which internet browser should you use?

Saturday, July 21st, 2007

After much research and consultations with industry experts, here is what Visual Adventures recommends you do to answer the internet browser question.

Mozilla Firefox (www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/) – BEST – Firefox does a wonderful job of supporting W3C standards (www.w3c.org), has great tools for developers and users that are free and you can download them from their website. Firefox not only has these great tools, but has also created a community of users to provide feedback and tools to better its product (http://developer.mozilla.org/).

Safari (www.apple.com) – NEXT BEST – Safari Version 3 beta has good support for CSS 3 code which means you get a better viewing experience than browsers without that support. It has a nice clean interface with most of the features the other browsers has and does a good job of displaying web pages.

Internet Explorer 7 (www.microsoft.com) – IF YOU DIDN”T KNOW THERE WAS OTHER OPTIONS THIS MIGHT BE ACCEPTABLE. The best thing I can say about Internet Explorer 7 is that it does display pages better than Internet Explorer 6. I have to write special code for Internet Explorer 7 on occasion because it does not display the pages as well as Safari or Firefox. Internet Explorer 7 has issues with Flash content and is reportedly full of security holes (http://www.dwheeler.com/blog/2007/02/05/).

Internet Explorer 6 (www.microsoft.com) – DON’T TOUCH THE BLUE E -
(http://browsehappy.com/why/) This browser does a horrible job at displaying pages, and has more security issues than IE7. Special style-sheets have to be written just to make up for how bad of a job it does. This browser is old technology and should be left to the scrap heaps. Unfortunately as of June ’07 37% of internet users are still on IE6 (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp). Don’t let yourself be one of them. We need to get this number down so that we all get on with our lives and stop writing code for this wretched beast. There is much better technology out there, use it! Do it for me! Do it for the children!

Opera (www.opera.com) – Using Opera is like voting for an independent candidate in an election. That pretty much sums it up.

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Dell Paperweights

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007

I have two 10 pound paper weights sitting on my desk with the inscription “Dell” printed on the top. Not long ago these were the latest in laptop technology. After having most all of their parts replaced and with an expired warranty, they still don’t work. I could rant on and on about how Dell has done me wrong, but I’m sure you’ve heard it all before. I can summerize it all in a few words: Don’t buy a Dell!
Most developers and designers that I know are going to Mac these days. With the option of running windows as well, why not? Oh yes, the price. Well, I’m saving my pennies and soon I will travel over to the other side. I’m sure I’ll have some days of frustration with Mac, I know I have already with their iPods. I at least will have done something about my Dell problem.

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