Surf7.net Blog

Attention bloggers who blogs on blogspot (blogger.com) platform. I only have one advice. Please get your own domain name and use it as custom domain for your blogspot account because, whatever happen to blogspot, your domain stays with you - forever!

One classic example is blog of Malaysia’s ex prime minister; Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. Previously, his blog was hosted by blogspot. Not long after his blog become popular (remember the 1 million hits record?), blogspot unreasonably shut down his blog. Luckily he is using his own domain name; chedet.com. Can you imagine what a disaster it would have been if his blog’s address was something like chedet.blogspot.com? He would have lost all his readers. All the efforts in promoting the blog and search engine ranking would have gone down the drain! Now, his blog is self hosted using Movable Type (a blog CMS) on a dedicated server. Well, it was down for few days, but at least the damage was very minimal.

Don’t take it for granted. You never know what will happen in future. It could be another dotcom burst coming soon.

One great feature from blogspot is they allow you to use a custom domain name on blogspot platform. That means, you still blog normally using the same platform but using your own domain. How cool is that?

For example, if you own abc123.com, you can easily convert your current address from http://abc123.blogspot.com/ to http://abc123.com/ for free. Anyone who goes to the old address will redirect to your new domain. Not only you will not loose any readership, it is short and easy to remember too.

All you need is…

1. A domain name
2. DNS management service

Finally, refer to this article to learn how to use a custom domain name on your blogspot account.

Have you ever receive a complain from your supplier or customer that they cannot open the PO or invoice you send to them because they don’t have the compatible software to open the file? Or, they can open it but it doesn’t display correctly because they are using out dated or different version of the software from yours? I am sure many have experienced it. That is why PDF become so popular. Anyone can open any PDF file as long as they have the reader (it is free!) and it displays and prints out exactly like how you intended it to be.

Good news is, you don’t have to spend RM 1,800 simply to create a pdf file. In fact, you don’t have to spend a single cent to create a PDF file. Here is how…

1. Download PDFCreator. Current version is 0.9.5.
2. Install it. PDFCreator will install as a printer driver in your Windows. That means, you will find a new printer call PDFCreator in the printer selection window whenever you want to print your document (refer to below image).
   
3. To create your PDF file, just open the file with any Windows application that has print function. Go to File > Print or press CTRL+P. A window similar to above will appear.
4. Select PDFCreator from the printer selection list. Click on Properties if you need to adjust the output setting. Click OK when you are ready. This window will appear.
   
5. You can ignore it and click Save and this window will appear…
   
6. Firstly, select a location in your PC to save the PDF file. Then, enter the filename of the PDF file. Finally click Save.

That is it. You just created your first PDF file using PDFCreator. Hope this will help you save some expenses on your company IT budget.

Firefox 3 is here at last! If you haven’t already upgraded to Firefox 3, you can get it here.

Remember that Mozilla is trying to set a new Guinness World Record on Firefox 3 Download Day, so please do your bit.

Top New Features:

• Password Manager - Remember site passwords without ever seeing a pop-up.
• One-Click Bookmarking - Bookmark, search and organize Web sites quickly and easily.
• Improved Performance - View Web pages faster, using less of your computer’s memory.
• Smart Location Bar - Find the sites you love in seconds—enter a term for instant matches that make sense.
• Instant Web Site ID - Avoid online scams, unsafe transactions and forgeries with simple site identity.
• Full Zoom - See any part of a Web page, up close and readable, in seconds.
• Platform-Native Look & Feel - Browse with a Firefox that’s integrated into your computer’s operating system.

Read more about it here.

I have mentioned before in “10 tips for choosing a good domain name for your company“; one way to get a good domain name for your company is to register your domain name first before you choose your company name. Here is a cool and extremely fast way to do that. Try our new Random Web 2.0 Domain Name Generator to get new idea for your domain name. You are able to check the availability of the domain name instantly.

Here are some samples of really good domain names generated by the generator that are still available at the time of publishing this blog.

• setcut.com (register it!)
• jamfolders.com (register it!)
• lifemuses.com (register it!)
• slashdesks.com (register it!)
• simplebosses.com (register it!)
• behindshack.com (register it!)
• nugogo.com (register it!)
• conboo.com (register it!)
• setpeers.com (register it!)

Now you can have a Web 2.0 domain name for your brand new website.

In Must have free softwares for your company, I have highlighted portable applications (portable apps) for many reasons.

Before I go any further, a portable app is a computer program that you can carry around with you on a portable device and use on any Windows computer. When your USB flash drive, portable hard drive, iPod or other portable device is plugged in, you have access to your software and personal data just as you would on your own PC. And when you unplug the device, none of your personal data is left behind.

Personally, portable application has help me in a lot of ways. For instance, my web browser behaves exactly like it always do when I was away on vacation, I have all the required softwares ready for my presentation on that big meeting, the passwords to my online banks are with me while traveling and I have all the utilities with me to troubleshoot family or friends PC problems.

Here are more reasons why you should use portable apps…

Easy to install (and uninstall)
I personally don’t like software that anchored itself heavily on the Windows system files. It leaves a massive trial in the registry even after you supposedly uninstall it and it may slow down your computer. However, installing a portable apps is as easy as extract and use. If you don’t like the portable apps after some time, just delete it from your computer.

Easy to backup
If you do a clean reinstall of your Windows or buy a new computer, most probably you have to reinstall all your favorite applications and reconfigure them all over again. I have experienced this dreadful process until I used portable apps. Because portable apps never anchored itself to host computer, I can easily backup the applications by simply copy and paste the applications to another storage device such as my thumb drive. Once I complete reinstall my Windows, I can copy the applications from my thumb drive back to my host computer and all my applications are as good as it used to be.

It follows you!
OK, maybe I missed the main point here. Of course portable apps are meant to be portable. Like the namesake, you can carry your applications with you (just your applications without the computer!). This is particularly useful when you are on vacation. No more extra luggage for your notebook. Just a thumb drive in your pocket. When you want to go online, check your mail or chat with family members, all you need to do is find a cyber cafe and plug the thumb drive into the computer and start using your very own applications. No more worries about missing softwares on the host computer. Also, all of your data and settings are always stored on your thumb drive so when you unplug the device, none of your personal data is left behind.

You can’t online over a cuppa in Starbucks with your thumb drive though. But hey, you are on vacation, remember? Another thing I would like to stress here. Since thumb drives are extremely portable (meaning small), they can be easily misplaced. You must install some kind of password protection on the thumb drive to protect your personal data. Some thumb drives come with this feature. If not, you can try out Folder Lock.

Freewares
Almost all of the portables apps in the market today are freewares. A great place to start is PortableApps.com. You can find almost all kind of free portable apps you ever need there. However, all of the applications are Windows based.

Don’t waste your company IT budget on softwares you can get for free from the Internet. Some of these softwares are better than the “standard” commercial ones. Here is the list of all the highly recommended free softwares. You are advised to use the portable version. Since you don’t have to install it and it doesn’t write anything to your Windows registry, you can just delete it if you don’t like it.

What is portable version?
According to Wikipedia: A portable application, or portable app for short, is a software program that does not require any kind of formal installation onto a computer’s permanent storage device to be executed, and can be stored on a removable storage device such as a CD-ROM, USB flash drive, flash card, or even a floppy disk, enabling it to be used on multiple computers.

Web Development

1. Text editor - Notepad++ (Portable version)
2. Web page editor - KompoZer (Portable version)
3. Testing servers - XAMPP (Portable version)
4. File comparison - WinMerge (Portable version)

Graphics & Pictures

1. Image viewer - IrfanView
2. Photo and image editor - GIMP (Portable version)

Internet

1. Web browser - Mozilla Firefox (Portable version)
2. Free PC to PC call - Skype
3. Email client - Mozilla Thunderbird (Portable version)
4. FTP client - FireFTP (Firefox extension)
5. FTP client - FileZilla (Portable version)
6. Telnet & SSH - PuTTY (Portable version)
7. RSS feed reader - Sage (Firefox extension)

Music & Video

1. Audio editor & recorder - Audacity (Portable version)
2. Media player - VLC (Portable version)

Office

1. PDF viewer - Sumatra PDF (Portable version)
2. PDF creator - PDFCreator
3. Office Suites (alternative to MS Office) - OpenOffice.org (Portable version)

Utilities

1. Antivirus - AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
2. CD/DVD burner - InfraRecorder (Portable version)
3. File compression and archiver - 7-Zip (Portable version)
4. Backup tools - Syncback Freeware
5. Password managers - KeePass Password Safe (Portable version)
6. PC Auditor - Belarc
7. Disk usage statistic - WinDirStat (Portable version)

You have called 100, do all the troubleshooting and yet your Streamyx connection still won’t work. Don’t smash your monitor or crush the modem yet. You still have one more option to turn to. Yes, that’s right. The good old 56k dial up Internet connection to the rescue. Many people do not realize that they still can connect to the Internet using dial up after they have terminated their 1515 TMNET account. Instead of dial to 1515, you dial 1315! No registration and login id/password required. Read more »

“Anyone can create a website!”, exclaim Kevin, my 12 years old nephew who just posted his first entry in his Blogger account. Like young Kevin, many people has this misconception. Even though what Kevin just did was something I can be proud of, but creating a successful corporate website is not a child play. It is a continuous journey that requires effort and lots of technical knowledge. Any experienced webmaster can tell you this. Without proper technical knowledge, your website will be just another pile of HTML files lying unnoticed in the vast cyberspace.

You know your website is successful when…

1. Your website rank higher than your competitors’ website in Google on your targeted keywords.
2. You begin to form a new department dedicated to handle sales lead from your website.
3. Your returning visitors is more than 50% every month and stays for more than 30 minutes.

So what makes a successful corporate website?

1. Search engine friendly - The common problem I have seen with most corporate website is they are not optimized properly for search engines. Even though there are many factors in determining your website ranking in search engine result, having a website which in “not ready” for search engines will simply throw away all your efforts, no matter how many incoming links you have or how great your contents are. FYI, 90% of our sales begin in Google. So search engine is important! Don’t neglect it.
2. Regular content updates - Another problem faced by most website owners is they find it too troublesome to update their content. Most of the cases are due to lack of proper tools. In the end, they gave up and left the content unchanged for years. Regularly updated content is one of the “secret” to a successful corporate website because other than your visitors, search engine also love fresh content. Editing your web pages or even add new web pages should be as easy as writing an email.
3. Attractive Design - Your website design is very important after you manage to generate huge traffic to your website via search engines. A good impression stays forever and it will persuade them to stay longer so that you will have more opportunity to convince them to buy from you. A good design should project your corporate image the moment your visitors look at it. It must not be too confusing and easy to navigate.
4. Easy Contacts - You know your website campaign is successful when you are overwhelm by phone calls and emails from your website visitors. That time, you might want to set up a new department dedicated to handle your website sales. That is why your visitors should be able to reach you conveniently online and via telephone or email.
5. Know your visitors - Are your visitors leaving your website after 1 minute and never come back again? How do they find your website? If it is from search engines, what keywords do they use to find you? These are some of the information you should know if you want your website to be successful. The more you understand your visitors and their preferences the easier it is to convince them to do business with your company.
6. Reliable facilities - A successful Website must be supported by a solid IT foundation with minimal downtime and a proficient technical team.