Thursday, January 31, 2008

The term "authentication" refers to the process of securing access to a web page, document, or resource by means of credentials (e.g., username and password) or account verification. Authentication is deployed when there is a need to ensure that an individual is who he or she claims to be.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Bob Gaskins conceives his "easy-to-use" presentation program idea in 1984. He hires a software developer to build a prototype they call Presenter, but later change to PowerPoint for trademark reasons. PowerPoint 1.0 is released in 1987. Later that year, his company and the PowerPoint program are purchased by Microsoft for $14 million. Today, according to Microsoft, more than 30 million presentations are made around the world with PowerPoint every day.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

IP version 6, also known as IPv6, is a new version of the Internet Protocol, designed as a successor to IP version 4, the predominant protocol in use today. Changes from IPv4 to IPv6 are primarily in the following areas: expanded addressing capabilities; header format simplification; improved support for extensions and options; flow labeling capability; and consolidated authentication and privacy capabilities.

Adobe Shockwave is a 3D animation and interactive learning format developed by Macromedia. Shockwave was designed for making online movies and animations, however its use has become popular in the area of game development. A freely available Shockwave browser plug-in is necessary to see a Shockwave animation.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

The term "brand" refers to the collection of concepts and ideas representing a product or service. A brand expresses and reinforces the underlying values and personality of the service, product, or organization it represents. In a literal sense, brand refers to the concrete symbols such as a name, logo, slogan, and design scheme.

Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an Internet protocol that allows a local client to access e-mail on a remote server. IMAP is replacing the Post Office Protocol (POP) as the main protocol used by email clients in communicating with email servers. The advantage of IMAP is that messages are stored and accessed from a network server versus being "downloaded" to a client's email program.

Friday, January 25, 2008

According to search engine author Alan K'necht, the first rule of web page search engine optimization is to avoid web pages that are all or mostly graphics. Text is required for a search engine to read and index a site. K'necht also advises against using a login page as a site's home page because a search engine will not get beyond the login.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Archie is a search engine designed to find files stored on FTP sites. Archie was the first recognized search engine and was developed in 1990 at McGill University in Montreal. Archie was very popular when FTP was the main method for moving files over the Internet. By 1999, Archie had been almost completely replaced by web-based search engines.

A website log file records all activity on a web site. Each time a user performs an action on a website, such as viewing a page, an event record is captured in the log file. Web log data is used to compile and analyze visitor traffic patterns such as the number of visitors, page views, menu options and banner clicks, navigation paths, most downloaded files, etc.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

The term "streaming" refers to the audio and video process where a file is played as it is being downloaded, minimizing the amount of time a user must wait to experience the movie or sound clip. The key aspect of streaming is that the entire file does not need to be downloaded for the user to begin watching or listening to the file.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Blogging author Jason O'Connor suggests that online businesses can benefit from blogging. The business benefits of blogs are: they can help position a company as an industry expert; they are interactive in nature and can help obtain valuable customer feedback; they are easily marketed; and certain products or services may be stressed in blogs.

Blogging author Jason O'Connor suggests that online businesses can benefit from blogging. The business benefits include: blogs can help position a company as an industry expert; blogs are interactive in nature and can help obtain valuable customer feedback; blogs are easily marketed; and certain products or services may be stressed in blogs.

Monday, January 21, 2008

According to WebsiteOptimzation.com, China officially passed the U.S. in total broadband lines during the third quarter of 2006, and now has the largest subscriber base in the world. The U.S. and China are followed by Japan, South Korea, Germany, and France in total broadband lines per country.

According to WebsiteOptimzation.com, China officially passed the US in total broadband lines during the third quarter of 2006, and now has the largest subscriber base in the world. The US and China are followed by Japan, South Korea, Germany, and France in total broadband lines per country.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

The wav (pronounced wave) file format was developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft. A wave file is an audio format that became a standard PC format for everything from system and game sounds to CD-quality audio. Wave files have decreased in use due to their relatively large size in comparison to MP3 files.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

The phrase "pod cast" was coined by Ben Hammersley in an article in "The Guardian" in February 2004. A pod cast is a multimedia file distributed over the Internet for playback on mobile devices and personal computers. Pod casts are produced like syndicated feeds. However, subscribers listen to the content in stead of reading it.

Friday, January 18, 2008

Web design refers to the design of web pages, websites and web applications using HTML, CSS, images, and other media. Web development includes web design but usually refers to the non-aesthetic design aspects of building web sites, such as scripting, coding, database management, and markup.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Anti-aliasing is the process of removing or reducing the jagged distortions in curves and diagonal lines in images so that the lines appear smoother. Graphics images that are not anti-aliased may have an unprofessional look. Fortunately, most graphics programs automatically anti-alias text and shapes as they are created.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Firefox and Netscape are examples of Mozilla browsers. The name "Mozilla" is the principal trademark representing the software developed through the Mozilla open source project. Mozilla browsers are Gecko-based browsers. Also known as NGLayout, Gecko refers to the rendering engine upon which all of the Mozilla applications rely.

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen suggests that search functionality is such a prominent part of the web user experience that users have developed a firm mental model for how it is supposed to work. Users expect a search function to have three components: a box where they can type words; a button labeled "search" that they click to run the search; and a list of results that is linear, prioritized, and appears on a new page.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Search Engine Forum (SEF) has been a providing discussion forums for search engine and web marketing topics since 1998. Discussion area topics include search engines, web marketing and advertising, hosting and maintaining websites, and communities and networking. This is a highly recommended forum for finding answers to improve your website success. Visit SEF is at searchengineforums.com.

Search Engine Forum (SEF) has been a providing discussion forums for search engine and web marketing topics since 1998. Discussion area topics include search engines, web marketing and advertising, hosting and maintaining websites, and communities and networking. This is a highly recommended forum for finding answers to improve your website success. SEF is at www.searchengineforums.com.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

FreeSticky.com offers free website content. FreeSticky is comprehensive source of free and low cost content that webmasters can use to increase the appeal, usefulness, traffic and "stickiness" of their website. The site offers twenty-seven categories of free content for a website, including weather, news, sports, financial and entertainment.

IBM scientist Edgar F. Codd publishes the paper "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks" in spring of 1970. The paper introduces relational database concepts and describes what constitutes a relational database system. The first commercial relational database management systems appear in 1979, offered by Oracle, Sybase, and Ingres.

Friday, January 11, 2008

FreeSticky.com offers free website content. FreeSticky is comprehensive source of free and low cost content that webmasters can use to increase the appeal, usefulness, traffic and eventually the "stickiness" of their website. There are twenty-seven categories of free content for a website, including weather, news, sports, financial and entertainment.

The first hypertext-based system is developed in 1967 by a team of researchers led by Dr. Andries van Dam at Brown University. IBM funds the research. The first hypertext implementation, Hypertext Editing System, runs on an IBM/360 mainframe. IBM eventually sells the system to the Houston Manned Spacecraft Center, which reportedly uses it for the Apollo Space Program documentation.

The "three-click" rule of thumb for websites says no page on a website should be more than three mouse clicks away from the site's home page.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is an open international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet. The mission of the IETF is to produce concepts and ideas that influence the way people design, use, and manage the Internet. Learn more at www.ietf.org.

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

The Web 100 is a guide to the best sites on the World Wide Web. The Web 100 provides an updated selection of 100 sites in areas such as entertainment, business, education, news, and sports. The site offers the ability to locate the most interesting, unique, and informative sites on the web. See the Web 100 at web100.com.

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

The Web 100 is a guide to the best sites on the World Wide Web. The Web 100 provides an updated selection of 100 sites in areas such as entertainment, business, education, news, and sports. The site offers the ability to locate the most interesting, unique, and informative sites on the web. See the Web 100 at www.web100.com.

Fear of flying (aviaphobia) can have negative impacts on employees and employers. An otherwise excellent employee may avoid career opportunity or advancement due to aviaphobia, while employers may not have the best employees in positions where air travel is required. Experts agree that most people who are afraid to fly can be treated. Statistically, the average person would have to fly every day for 29,000 years before getting involved in a fatal airline crash.

The Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format was designed to replace the GIF graphics format and the more complex TIFF format. Despite its acclaim, and a W3C recommendation for replacing GIF, PNG adoption on websites has been fairly slow. The main reasons include the lagging support of PNG by major browsers and the continued widespread use of GIF for web advertising animations.

Monday, January 07, 2008

The "web-safe" color palette is a specific collection of colors used during the early days of web page development when web publishers wanted to be sure that colors were rendered correctly on all computer monitors, primarily 8-bit color systems. Web-safe colors are no longer necessary with today's expanded color systems on standard PCs and laptops.

Sunday, January 06, 2008

The origin of the word "compute" dates back to the French language of the early 1600s. The French derived the word from the Latin phrase "computare," meaning to count or sum up. The term "computer" came into use in the English language in 1646 as a word for a "person who computes."

The Internet was born on October 29, 1969. UCLA computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock led a team of engineers in sending the first message from one remote computer to another on ARPANET. The actual message sent from UCLA to the Stanford Research Institute was the text "lo."

Saturday, January 05, 2008

Yahoo!Next is a showcase of some of Yahoo's newest and coolest projects. These projects represent the cutting edge of what Yahoo is doing today and working on for tomorrow. Take a peek at what Yahoo is working on today at next.yahoo.com.

Friday, January 04, 2008

Millions of web users are using the Yahoo Yellow pages to search for businesses and websites in their local communities. Yahoo uses several sources for its Yellow Pages including the InfoUSA database. You can add your website or business for inclusion into the searchable Yahoo Yellow pages at dbupdate.infousa.com/dbupdate.

Thursday, January 03, 2008

When providing Flash animation on a website, it is best to assume that not all browsers will not have a Flash plug-in installed. Make sure to provide a script on a Flash-enabled web page that checks for the required Flash plug-in. A website user without the Flash plug-in should be redirected to a substitute version of the web page that has a static image replacing the Flash animation sequence.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

A splash page is a preliminary presentation that precedes the regular home page of a website. It is recommended that you avoid the use of splash pages. Splash pages make a returning web user work harder by making them wait or "skip" to get to the websites home page. Splash pages also create "speed bumps" for visiting search engines and crawlers.

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

According to studies compiled by market research firm Forrester, the cost of bad web design equates to losing up to 40% of users, who do not return to a site when their first visit results in a negative experience. A company's website is the first impression to potential customers. If it looks amateurish, behaves in an unorthodox manner, or fails to provide services that web users expect, your visitors simply will not return.

According to studies compiled by market research firm Forrester, the cost of bad web design equates to losing up to forty percent of users who do not return to a site when their first visit results in a negative experience. A company's website is the first impression to potential customers. If it looks amateurish, behaves in an unorthodox manner, or fails to provide services that web users expect, your visitors simply will not return.