Archive for October, 2008

General Computer Tips

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

UPS. UPS in this context does not mean United Parcel Service, it means Uninterruptible Power Supply. This is a battery that sits between the wall socket and your computer. If there is a power outage or brownout, the UPS instantly kicks in and keeps your system from crashing.

Depending on the size (and cost) of the UPS, it can keep your system running for a few minutes or for several hours. A large hospital will have huge (and expensive) UPS’s that will keep their computers up for as long as it takes to fire up their backup power generators! This is something that I would appreciate if I were having open-heart surgery at the moment of a blackout, but it is probably beyond the budget of the small business owner or home PC user.

For those of us on a budget, a small UPS may be the best insurance policy we could buy. A small UPS will keep your system running for 5-10 minutes. The purpose is not for you to keep working (as it would in the hospital scenario,) the purpose is to give you enough time to save your work and perform an orderly shutdown. It could save you a fortune in lost data. Another benefit of a UPS is that some of them (the good ones) act as a super surge protector. At least one on the market is warranted to stop a direct lightning strike! It will self-destruct in the process, but it will stop the surge from hitting your PC. That’s a lot of protection for about $100.

A wise old computer guru once told me that the value of a PC is not in the cost of the hardware, the value of a PC is in the data that you store on it. You can always write a check for new hardware, but what will it cost you if you lose your data? Could it be replaced for ANY amount of money? If you depend on a PC for your livelihood, a UPS can be the single best hardware investment you can make.

Windows XP mouse Snap To

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

Enable the Microsoft Window XP mouse Snap To feature to automatically focus on dialog box buttons. Enabling this feature will automatically move your mouse cursor to the default button on any dialog box that appears on Windows. This is a great way to save a little time and not have to move you mouse cursor to the “Ok” button each time a dialog box appears. To enable this feature follow the below steps.

1. Click Start, Settings, Control Panel.
2.  Double-click the Mouse icon
3. In the Mouse Properties window click the Pointer Options tab and check the “Automatically move pointer to the default button in a dialog box” option.

Searching the web

Saturday, October 11th, 2008

Searching for web pages on a particular topic is as easy as typing a few words into Firefox’s Search Bar.

For example, if you want to find information about the world cup:

1. Click in the Search Bar.
2. Type the phrase world cup. Your typing replaces any text currently in the search bar.
3. Hit EnterReturn to search.

Search results for “world cup” appear in the Firefox window.

Selecting search engine

You can switch the search engine by clicking on its icon and selecting the search engine of your choice. Some search engines, like Google, search the whole web; others, like Amazon.com, only search specific sites.

Manage search engines

Click on the icon of the search engine and select Manage Search Engines... to add, reorder, remove, or restore the default search engines. Select a search engine and click the appropriate button to to move it around within the list or remove it. You can install new search engines by clicking the Get more search engines… link.

Five Firefox Tricks and tips

Saturday, October 11th, 2008

1) More screen space. Make your icons small. Go to View - Toolbars - Customize and check the “Use small icons” box.

2) Smart keywords. If there’s a search you use a lot (let’s say IMDB.com’s people search), this is an awesome tool that not many people use. Right-click on the search box, select “Add a Keyword for this search”, give the keyword a name and an easy-to-type and easy-to-remember shortcut name (let’s say “actor”) and save it. Now, when you want to do an actor search, go to Firefox’s address bar, type “actor” and the name of the actor and press return. Instant search! You can do this with any search box.

3) Keyboard shortcuts. This is where you become a real Jedi. It just takes a little while to learn these, but once you do, your browsing will be super fast. Here are some of the most common (and my personal favs):

* Spacebar (page down)
* Shift-Spacebar (page up)
* Ctrl+F (find)
* Alt-N (find next)
* Ctrl+D (bookmark page)
* Ctrl+T (new tab)
* Ctrl+K (go to search box)
* Ctrl+L (go to address bar)
* Ctrl+= (increase text size)
* Ctrl+- (decrease text size)
* Ctrl-W (close tab)
* F5 (reload)
* Alt-Home (go to home page)

4) Auto-complete. This is another keyboard shortcut, but it’s not commonly known and very useful. Go to the address bar (Control-L) and type the name of the site without the “www” or the “.com”. Let’s say “google”. Then press Control-Enter, and it will automatically fill in the “www” and the “.com” and take you there - like magic! For .net addresses, press Shift-Enter, and for .org addresses, press Control-Shift-Enter.

5) Tab navigation. Instead of using the mouse to select different tabs that you have open, use the keyboard. Here are the shortcuts:

* Ctrl+Tab (rotate forward among tabs)
* Ctrl+Shft+Tab (rotate to the previous tab)
* Ctrl+1-9 (choose a number to jump to a specific tab)

6) Mouse shortcuts. Sometimes you’re already using your mouse and it’s easier to use a mouse shortcut than to go back to the keyboard. Master these cool ones:

* Middle click on link (opens in new tab)
* Shift-scroll down (previous page)
* Shift-scroll up (next page)
* Ctrl-scroll up (decrease text size)
* Ctrl-scroll down (increase text size)
* Middle click on a tab (closes tab)

Does it really possible to earn money online

Friday, October 10th, 2008

Yes , It is possible to make money online.But it need hard work form your end .don’t think you can make good amount of money by just clicking some link or reading mails.

If you got a web site then you can earn some money by spreading your business or by ADS.

It is batter to use you mind for making money then to depends on some ready made solution.

There is no Ways to Make Fast Easy Quick Money Online Today. making Quick Money is every one’s dream but this dream can’t be full filled without hard work.

Many Internet companies pay you to surf the web, read emails, visit web sites or sign up for free offers on the internet. It is natural to get attracted towards such an offers. but after trying these most of people find earn money is not that easy as shown by these sites.

If you earn some then there is no guaranty of payment.you may end up with just thinking about money, money, money.

Do you know you can Earn Money On Net For FREE

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

Well there are many resources and articles on net which tell you how to earn money on net.But most of then don’t work well.

You can find whole web sites are made on the topics like
“Make Money Online,Earn Money at Home Business and Work”
OR
“Earn Lots of Money Online With The Best Free Home Based Business Opportunity Of The World”

All these sites looks very promising. But they are just earning money for the owners of these sites.

They are using it for marketing purpose and making you people fool by wasting both your money and time .

If you has ever participated in any such program then you must be agree with me that earning money is not such a easy task.

Components of design consideration

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

The design of components can go a long way in determining how much a game is enjoyed. A good game does not necessarily require good components but they certainly don’t hurt. Imagine playing Chess with flat, cardboard counters. It’s still the same game but would it be as enjoyable an experience?

* Tigris & Euphrates tilesMake tiles smaller than they spaces they’re placed on. If your game includes playing tiles onto spaces such that they’re next to each other, it’s better if the tiles are slightly smaller than the spaces they’re placed on. This means that they can be slightly bumped and moved without disturbing all the others. Good: Tigris & Euphrates (Hans im Glück); Bad: Streetcar (Mayfair Games).
* Use highly contrasting/distinguishable colours for player pieces. This is a bit tricky as many people suffer from (one of several forms of) colour blindness. So, there’s no list of colours that will be guaranteed to be easily distinguishable for everybody. Further, the particular colours available to you (as determined by your parts manufacturer) can vary widely so it’s a really good idea to ask for samples to determine that the blue and green are not identical (as an example). With this in mind it’s almost never a good idea to include both orange and red as player colours.
* Use shapes as well as colours to distinguish pieces. A fair percentage of the population have trouble distinguishing certain colours, even colours that many other people see with a high degree of contrast. Adding different shapes or graphics can help tremendously, even for those of us who do not suffer from colour blindness. For example, every city in Trans America has a unique shape corresponding to the five colours. Ursuppe is another example that uses different shapes in addition to colour to distinguish the players’ amoebae. It’s also important to use graphics in a way that helps differentiate colours. An example of a poor design is Schotten-Totten in which there are nine cards in each of six colours. Each card has a picture of a Scotsman, from a feeble codger for the 1’s to a great strapping lad for the 9’s. It might seem that pairing the picture with the value to be a natural choice. However, it does nothing to help those who have difficulty differentiating colours. A superior method would be to pair the picture with the suit (so that all the red cards show the strapping lad for example). This would allow a colour blind individual to distinguish the suits from each another. Zirkus Flohcati employs just such a method and is far more useful as a result.

Design Considerations

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

One of the things I really enjoy about games is their physical presentation. I’m much more likely to enjoy one that has had a lot of thought put into the design of its box, rules and components. Often there will be a clever idea or method used that makes you wonder why all publishers don’t do it that way. With this in mind I present the following list of ideas and suggestions that I think greatly increase a game’s appeal.

When deciding what to include here, I’ve limited myself to ideas and concerns that do not (for the most part) require extra expense beyond time. Using hand carved wooden pieces would be great but the cost could hardly be justified. Similarly, advice along the lines of “use only fabulous artwork” is not all that helpful. Rather, the points I’m trying to state fall into the category of things that cost exactly the same to do the “right” way as they do the “wrong” way.

Further to this, it’s not my intention to make a definitive set of “rules” for good design. There are some suggestions made here that will not be practical for all games. For example, Murder at the Abbey contains a lot of information on its Monk cards and it would be impractical to index it on all four corners. Instead, I think it best to view this as a check list, either implementing the suggestion or deciding why it would be impractical to do so.

Getting link exchanges right

Sunday, October 5th, 2008

To engage in a successful link exchange request campaign, it’s really not rocket science - just an observation of common courtesy and a recognition of the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) motivators in regards to the people you are approaching.

For tips and suggestions on how you should approach other webmasters with a reciprocal link offer, read our guide to Internet Marketing etiquette.

Exchanging links - the pitfalls - plus link management software review

Sunday, October 5th, 2008

Link exchange strategies and linking management software have become increasingly popular over the last couple of years as webmasters have come to realize the importance of gaining increased coverage on other sites.

Having a solid link exchange campaign is a crucial part of your overall marketing, not just as a traffic boost from having a listing on another site, but also from a search engine perspective. It’s no secret that many major search engines will boost your rankings not just based on what’s on your site, but also what’s off it; i.e links from other sites pointing back to you.

Every day I receive several requests for reciprocal links trades and out of 100 such requests, perhaps one or two I will actually respond to.
Web masters searching for cross-promotional partners have a tendency to make many mistakes when approaching other web masters for a link trade. The popularity of Windows based link management software packages and the consequent misuse of them has also provided many traps for web masters:

1) Tone - the request is more like a demand.

2) Impersonal link request - I can tell that the person hasn’t really looked at my site, just at my rankings.

3) Unbalanced link trades - many people create a huge “list o’ links” - hundreds of entries on a single page and then expect a premium placement. These kinds of link farms are of no benefit.

4) Failure to exchange - on a couple of occasions where I’ve agreed to a swap, after a few of days I’ve noticed the link to me has disappeared from the reciprocating webmaster’s site