Know Your Shopping

Mobile broadband is the trendiest technology in the technological world that is the key to the development of broadband. Until recently, broadband was available via a standard phone landline, ADSL connection, which links to a PC using an ADSL modem or router. Wireless broad-band is going to be increasingly spread, whereby the Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line modem is attached to the laptop via a wireless intranet, and as a consequence internet users are getting rid of cables. However mobile broadband is pushing the internet technology one step further and offering another important step in the technology of internet; a broadband connection pretty much in any room without using a traditional landline cable.

The option of connecting to the internet with a reliable high speed internet connection anywhere is obviously attractive to potential users, like those who generally use internet with their personal computer away from home. People who usually travel for business meetings are the target for mobile high speed internet since they will enjoy the chance of not having to look for a wifi hotspot for an adequate internet connection. Mobile broadband reaches much further than that, and if costs soon begin to go down and internet connection speeds is faster soon we will experience most of broad band potential clients buying mobile broadband.

Mobile high speed internet works by using a portable modem to a personal computer, often called a ‘dongle’, from which your computer is able to connect to whichever mobile broadband internet package the customers have purchased. Telecom companies are selling mobile broad band connections and coverage of the networks, which is well known as three G networks, which is now said to be around 90% of GB.

Broad-band speed has been an important issue with any broad-band connection and mobile high speed connection companies at the beginning struggled to persuade potential clients that one day mobile high speed connection could perform as fast as traditional, landline broadband. Connections are changing, recently Vodafone has reported mobile high speed connection speeds up to more than 7 mb, which is as fast as most of the normal landline connections. Many countries, including the United Kingdom, are laying plans to put lot of money in fibre optic cable networks, because they want to improve broad-band line to up to 100mb. Get your hands on the best broadband packages.

In New Zealand, however, a famous telecom provider has reported that mobile high speed internet networks will soon improve rapidly over the coming years and they have announced that mobile broad band will deliver connections of up to 100mb by early 2011, which is when the UK’s fibre optic network is due to be delivered. This could create a serious change in industry thinking, with the discovery of a super fast mobile high speed connection network with obvious advantages over the laying of thousands of miles of fibre optic cables, without mentioning the practical point of view.

RSS feeds seem to be the breakout technology for the year. With more users turning to them for driving traffic to their site, it’s no wonder that a trail of RSS feed spam is following in the wake. A careful editing of your RSS feed could make the difference between being classified as genuine content or RSS spam.

RSS search engines are just beginning to pick up steam. As more RSS feeds become searchable, the number of visitors will increase and spam is sure to follow. It is an unfortunate side effect of free communication. While RSS users can typically unsubscribe to feeds they deem as spam, browsing with keywords in an RSS search engine is where the problem arises.

RSS spam largely consists of three main types most often found in the RSS search engines. The first type is keyword stuffing.

Keyword stuffing involves filling each RSS feed article with high-value keywords for a specific topic. The articles are not intended for human visitors, but instead for search engine robots to direct traffic to a target web site. This RSS spam technique is nothing more than an adaptation of the typical keyword-stuffed web page, often banned by major search engines.

The second type involves RSS feed link farms. These RSS articles often contain very little content, if any, other than a simple keyword. Their main attraction is the feed title. Clicking the feed title takes the user to a blog containing tens or hundreds of other blogs and RSS feeds, each directing to more links within the farm. The goal of this type of RSS spam is to trick the user into clicking advertisements or directing them to a product web site.

The third type is the creation of fake RSS feeds. These appear as legitimate, but often duplicated, article content. Whether they provide value or not is certainly debatable. These feeds are usually created in mass, using automated scripts, and appear similar in nature to the link farms. By attracting the users to seemingly valuable content, they hope to gain advertisement clicks or product web site traffic.

Your RSS feed might happen to fall into one of these three categories. While you may currently be experiencing increased traffic from the RSS search engines, these directories are working on filtering out the RSS spam techniques. However, you can still take advantage of RSS feeds and their power by following an RSS-friendly guideline.

Refrain from using automated scripts to create online content used by your RSS feeds. Instead, write your own original thoughts, product descriptions, and reviews. It takes a little more time, but the search engines will value this content much more highly, your visitors will appreciate the unique content, and the subscription count to your RSS feed will grow. It is also important to keep your feed updated with changing content as opposed to using a static feed, which remains the same. Search engines value dynamic feeds and will likely rank you higher as a result.

There are tools and services available, which aid in keeping an RSS feed updated with your changing content. Such services include FeedFire for converting your web site content to a periodically updated RSS feed or software such as FeedForAll for creating and editing RSS feeds.

A successful RSS feed is very much the same as a successful web page. It may take a little more time to digitize your thoughts, but the end result is well worth the effort. By avoiding the tricks in RSS feed spam, you can help make the difference in quality of feeds and enjoyment in your readers.

About the Author:
KSoft is a software company specializing in Internet products including RSS Submit http://www.dummysoftware.com/rsssubmit.html, software for submitting RSS feeds and pinging blogs to over 65 RSS directories.

You must be one of them experiencing a lot of unwanted emails flooding into your mail box every day. It is annoying, and a “daily” problem for many.

How do the spammers find your email? They can find your email address either in the text of a web page or in a mailto link. The spammers enjoy harvesting the emails and ultimately those emails are spammed with junk mails.

I came to know about some simple methods to protect our email IDs from spammers, which I hope may be of some help to you too.

1. While leaving your email address on the web page or on a text message or on a discussion board, write like this – username @ domainname. com (Please note the space in between). Then during the harvesting process it won’t work easily.

2. Write your email like this – username (at the) domainname.com or net, or edu, whatever it may be.

3. Use a web form. Those who genuinely want to contact you will fill the form with their details and get in touch with you. So you know who is contacting you.

4. Never reply to a spam email. Many advise that replying to a spam email confirms your email address to the spammer.

5. While leaving your email address for filling up a form to get more information please check with their privacy policy, to ensure that they won’t misuse your email for any other purpose, other than the one you’ve requested.

6. Make use of your email provider’s filtering facility to reduce spam.

Spam has probably joined death and taxes as one of those things that just can’t be avoided. However, there are prudent steps that you can take to reduce spam or even prevent it, especially if you run or are thinking about running your own website.

One of the chief ways that your email ends up on a spammer’s list is because of the action of spambots. Spambots are robotic programs that systematically go through the world wide web collecting information, in much the same way that search engines crawl the web. However in the case of the spambots they are not seeking information to index in a publicly used search engine. They are collecting any email address that appears in the html code of the web pages they visit. These email addresses are then sold to advertisers.

If you are launching a brand new website and proudly put your email address info@yourdomain.com , then very soon you will start getting spam email to this virgin email address, due to the relentless searching of the spambots. It’s a dilemma; you want your web visitors to be able to contact you but you don’t need hundreds of spam emails adding to your burden of unsolicited mail.

Here are a few things that you can do.

1. Use a form to collect feedback from your site. If you use a form to collect information from your web visitors then you don’t have to publish your email address on your site. However, you have to be careful about which kind of form collection method you use. Some form systems require you to put your email address in the html code of your web page. Although your email address is not visible when looking at the page in a browser, it will be collected by the spambots. Remember, the spambots are not human beings, they are only collecting the information that appears in your html code. Choose a script where the email address is kept on your server.

2. Render your email address in the form of an image: Instead using text to show your email address, make a jpg or gif image with your email address. You can match the normal background and text that appears on your page so that the image looks like your normal text. Someone viewing the site can just copy the address down and use it in their email program. Don’t try to be clever and link your image link to your email address, because the spambots will find your address in your html. Once again, the spambot is a robot is “looking” not at your visible web page, but, “under the hood”, at your html code.

3. You can scramble your email using special software or through an online utility. If you go to http://natata.hn3.net/ you can download the Natata Anti-Spam Encoder. You will end up with clickable mailto links which are invisible to spambots.

You can also visit the site: http://www.proles.net/emailencoder/ and scramble your email (but make sure that the link text does not contain your actual email address.

So, it is possible to maintain the interactivity and usefulness of your website, but also to protect your email address from the ruthless spam merchants.

Copyright 2004

Donald Nelson is a web developer, editor, and social worker. He has been
working on the Internet since 1995 and is the proprietor of A1-Optimization,
http://www.a1-optimization.com, a firm providing search engine optimization,
copywriting, reciprocal linking, and other web promotion services. He
publishes a monthly ezine, A1-Web Promotion Tips, available at
http://www.a1-optimization.com/newsletter.html

Unwanted email is no joke.

At the very least, unsolicited email wastes everyone’s time.

Much worse however, are the dangers that this unwanted

email brings.

I’m talking about the problems of spyware and adware, of

computer viruses, and of so-called phishing attacks that

enable identity theft and threaten your financial security.

There’s no doubt that reducing unwanted email helps just

about everyone, whether site owner or site visitor. This

article aims to help both.

==ASIDE==

Note: this article is based on 3 Tips to Help Webmasters

Reduce Sp*m in Their Inbox, Today, written a year or so ago.

Webmasters and site owners will find many more tips here

- http://www.anyonecansellonline.com/stop-spam.shtm
l

==ASIDE==

Let’s begin.

Here’s how webmasters and web visitors can reduce unwanted

email:

TIP 1. USE A CHALLENGE RESPONSE SYSTEM

What is a challenge response email system?

Well, “it is an anti-sp*m system which is designed to shift

the filtering workload from the recipient to the sp*mmer (or

the legitimate sender).

“The fundamental idea is that sp*mmers will not take the

time to confirm that they want to send you email, but a

legitimate sender will.” Extracted from

- http://domain-dns.com/docs/challenge_response.htm
l

Basically, a challenge response system aims to prevent

unwanted email getting through to your inbox.

COMMENT:

As a newsletter publisher, I find challenge response email

systems time-consuming to say the least. I have to confirm

my newsletter publication email address is valid so that my

free newsletter gets delivered to my subscribers. For a free

newsletter, that’s a lot of work.

However, I can see that challenge response systems probably

do ‘work’, to a degree.

LINKS:

- http://textmefree.com/control-spam-today.html#cha
llenge

or

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=challeng
e+

response+systems (all one word)

TIP 2. USE DISPOSABLE
EMAIL ADDRESSES

What are disposable email addresses?

Well, without stating the obvious, they’re email addresses

you can dispose of. They’re easy to set up, use once, and

forget. So if someone sends unwanted email to this email

address you’ll most likely never know about it.

COMMENT:

As a site owner and newsletter publisher, I am not a fan of

disposable email addresses being used to become a site-

member, etc. Responsible email marketing is one method that

webmasters or site owners use to keep their site free, after

all.

However, I can see why a site visitor might want to use them

also.

==ASIDE==

Disposable email addresses make perfect sense to use when

requesting one-off information, like my free articles

(ahem!). You receive one free article, like this one, sent

to your email address and nothing else.

- http://www.wise-buys.info/webmaster-articles.shtm
l

==ASIDE==

LINKS:

- http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=disposab
le+email

TIP 3. HIDE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS

This tip is aimed at anyone who leaves their email address

on a website or online forum.

Either replace all email links on your site with “contact

forms” or encrypt your email address. And be careful when

leaving your email on a forum.

There are several ways you can ‘hide’ your email address but

the basic idea is to try not to leave a ‘live’ email address

on a site or forum. (Technically speaking, I’m talking about

not using mailto: for your email addresses.) And you can do

this by:

o Encrypting your email address with ASCII-code;

o Encrypting your email address using JavaScript;

o Using an anti-sp*m feedback form, only;

o Putting your email address in an image.

As simple as that, really.

==ASIDE==

Hide your email address? From what? Well, programs called

sp*mbots search the internet for email addresses. They get

added to a database, and eventually used by sp*mmers. Find

out how to block sp*m bots from your site here

- http://www.kloth.net/internet/bottrap.php

==ASIDE==

COMMENT:

As a site owner, removing live mailto: links from your

website may take some time, but the amount of time

you’ll eventually save will make this activity worthwhile.

However, not all of the methods discussed above are 100%

sp*m-proof.

Here’s an example of a contact form that uses several of the

above techniques:

- http://www.best-digital-cameras.co.uk/contact-us.
html

As a site visitor, you’re relying on either not using your

real email address (see Tip 2, above), or on hoping that the

owner of the site you’re using has anti sp*m measures in

place to hide your email address. Do take care.

LINKS:

- http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=mailto a>+encrypter

- http://willmaster.com/master/feedback/

- http://www.privacysig.com/

- http://www.anyonecansellonline.com/stop-spam.shtm
l

- http://website101.com/SpamFilter/spamfilter.html<
/a>

TIP 4. FILTER YOUR EMAIL

If all else fails, you simply have to filter your email.

That means automatically deleting the junk via a set of

rules (or filters). How you do this depends on what email

software you use: Outlook, Outlook Express and Eudora have

email filters (sp*m filters) that are easy to train.

Web-based email sites like AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo! etc. also

allow you to filter your email.

COMMENT:

I still rely on this method to filter out unwanted or bad

email, though it never filters out all of the junk. As a

site owner, one way I can be sure that the email is unwanted

is if it’s sent to an email address that I know does not

exist; e.g. AnythingGoes@mysitedo
main.com (I try and

avoid using these catchall email addresses nowadays).

LINKS

- http://www.slipstick.com/rules/junkmail.htm

So, there you have it: four tips you can use to reduce

unwanted email, today.

As I said in the beginning of this article, unwanted email

is at the very least an unpleasant waste of time. So it

really is important that you try at least one of the sp*m-

reduction tips shown.

Above all, site owners should remove their mailto: links

from their website, and site visitors should simply take

care when and where they use their email address online.

Everyone can learn more from the resources listed here

- http://www.anyonecansellonline.com/stop-spam.shtm
l

Have you started or are you thinking in starting an online business?

I bet that you know that the bulk e-mail marketing technique it’s widely used on Internet, it’s free, it’s easy and it’s fast…

But on the long run it can cost you more than you will gain with it!

Many people identify bulk e-mail with spam. Spam used to be referred about posting or broadcasting ads to unrelated discussion groups, but now this term has grown meaning “any unsolicited e-mail” or “any email sent to people that didn’t ask for it”. And the Internet Service Providers are taking steps that can be very dangerous to your business if you decide to use bulk e-mail as your promotional tool.

If the people that receive your unsolicited e-mail, complaint to your ISP and or your virtual host service, you may end up loosing one or both of them. This means that your web site will be shut down, and you will lose your connection to the Internet.

Of course that you can get another ISP and virtual host server, but this will harm you in three ways:

* It will be a waist of time * It will cost you money * It will damage your reputation

So this free medium for online promotion, can be the source of too many problems, and the best that you can do, is to do not get involved with it.

But SPAM can give you problems…

EVEN WHEN YOU DON’T WANT TO SPAM!

And this brings us to our next topic…

FREE SPAM CHECKING

Let’s say that you’re about to mail out your e-zine…

You can’t have an idea of how many will actually REACH your subscribers and how many will get filtered, junked, trashed, or stomped by ISPs, HotMail, Yahoo! Mail, etc., along the way.

Why?

Simple answer… spam.

You know how important e-mail is to YOUR business, right? What if I told you 10%, 20%, maybe 50% or more of it is not getting through?

Spam has reached epidemic levels. So much so that ISPs have been forced to combat it with filtering software.

Alas, many legitimate marketers aare getting caught up and hurt, even though they are not the target.

Now, instead of JUST hoping for the best…

With our SpamCheck feature, you can know exactly what to do to reduce the “spamminess” of your e-zines and promotional e-mail!

As a result, you will know that your e-mail and newsletters are being delivered directly into INBOXES of your clients and affiliates…

…. and NOT into the Junk Mail Folder.

It’s no longer just enough to send the mail… You must be sure that you can reach the INBOX!

What should you do to protect your honest business from being recognized as spam when it is not?

Send your marketing letters and e-zine issues to my special autoresponder, and you will get a SpamCheck Report.

Even if you don’t have an ezine or newsletter you should check your email signature file!

Why?

Simple answer… the average marketing sig file can contain enough “spam triggers” to throw you into Yahoo! Mail’s Junk Mail folder.

STEPS TO SPAM CHECKING YOUR MARKETING TOOLS

Send an email to spamcheck-RB@sitesell.net with the word TEST (in caps, no quotes)preceding your subject in the Subject line.

I repeat, because it’s important… Start the subject line with… TEST …. or we assume it’s spam (since the spambots will add affiliate spamcheck addresses to their dirty databases), and follow up with your usual e-mail or ezine’s Subject

i.e. if your Subject is:

“The best home business”

you should write:

TEST “The best home business”

On the body of the email put your ezine’s issue content or your marketing email’s content

Send it to: spamcheck-RB@sitesell.net

And that’s it, that’s all there is to it!…

You will receive an Instant free spam-checking, and a free Report telling you the results.

Written by Dr. Roberto A. Bonomi