Camtasia Training: It’s easier than you think!

Posted on December 30, 2007
Categories: Computer, Internet.

With the advent of broadband and new age internet technologies, it is possible to impart instructions online. There are several tools to help you develop instructional materials. Each of these has been developed for a particular type of learning need. One such learning tool is called Camtasia

When you want to walk someone though a process to be completed on a computer or inside database software, or for that manner anything that can be illustrated on a computer screen, you will wish to walk the learner through the entire process. For that to happen, you need to record the sequence of activities performed yourself and record the events on the screen simultaneously using screen capture software.

Building such walk through training is achieved by means of screen recording software or simulation software. One of the market leaders in this arena is camtasia. It has proved its immense capabilities over time and is therefore regarded by everyone in the E-learning industry as one of the most user friendly tools.

You have a lot of options available in camtasia you can convert serious stuff into funny videos. You can record only parts of the screen or everything you see. You can add your own voice or voice over audio later The output is of course, a screen capture .

This software allows you to add captions, callouts, highlights text fields for the user to type in, mouse rollovers etc. You have the ability to produce only portions of the video and you can even provide navigation buttons beyond what is actually shown on the screen and edit the bitmap images for all presentation controls .This software is really a complete learning tool

Last but not the least, this software supports diversity by providing multilingual support . English, German, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, French and many more languages are supported. So, language is not a hurdle for delivering excellent simulations, if you happen to choose camtasia. The customer service is good and there are many learning tools available with which you can learn how to use camtasia in a matter of minutes.

Terri Roberts is the author of Camtasia Course and has been developing comprehensive Camtasia training for the her course.

- Terri Roberts

Send Flowers to Your Loved Ones

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Categories: Ecommerce, Internet.

Giving flowers as gifts have been very popular since I can remember. Of course I realize that people have been giving flowers to their friends and families as gifts for a long time. But I’m talking about the growing trend among gift givers to shop for flowers on the Internet. Only a few years ago, people felt uncomfortable buying flowers using the Internet. Some have even called it a fad. Now it’s quite common for people to log on to the Internet and buy flowers for their friends and family.

When you consider the alternative, shopping for flowers online is more convenient for a lot of busypeople. I can still remember when you’d have to go to a florist to buy a bouquet. Some flower shops didn’t even offer delivery services, so getting the gift to your loved one can get pretty difficult. If you can’t find the exact gift that you like, you’d have to look in another shop. It can get pretty tiresome.

Fortunately, there is now a flower supermarket on the Internet to make things easier . You can now browse through the categories to find whatever flower arrangement you’d like from the extensive selection available. ! From gorgeous rose bouquets to exotic orchid arrangements and everything in between, there is indeed something for everyone.

Searching for the appropriate flower gifts that you need is now simpler and faster, because you can also find them by category. You can easily find flowers for every occasion with just one click. Do you want a special arrangement to congratulate your son on his graduation? Or perhaps you want to send someone a thank-you gift? You can find the right gift for the right occasion every time, whether it’s for a new baby, a birthday, or an anniversary. You can even order get-well presents or sympathy gifts if you need to. Aside from the advantage of the great selection of flowers, you also get to choose whether you want your gifts delivered next day or even on the same day.

Technology has certainly made shopping more convenient for a lot of people, especially for those living far away from family. Using the Internet allows us to find, order, and send the perfect gift we want. We can shop without leaving the privacy of our homes, and we’ll have the pleasure our loved ones can receive their gifts on the exact date we specify. The prices at the flower supermarket are even more affordable than some local florists and the service is excellent. I have personally received a message from a satisfied customer testifying to the quality of the items and the service, saying that it was even better than going to the local florists.

Sending flowers tells our loved ones how much we care about them, in a way that nothing else can. Flowers can also express a wide range of emotions. You can use them to express romance, gratitude, or even sympathy and concern. What’s more, giving flowers as gifts are not limited to women nowadays. Several customers have already ordered house plants, bamboo arrangements, and even roses for the men in their lives.

About the author:

Azlan Irda is the co-founder of http://www.flowersupermarket.com which provides an extensive selection of high quality flowers for online flower deliver at affordable prices. Find out how you can save money and get the best, high-quality items when you buy flowers online

- Azlan Irda

Annuity Quotes: Income During Retirement

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Categories: Uncategorized.

An annuity is an insurance policy that in many aspects, functions like an investment product. In a typical annuity policy, the investor pays a premium to the insurance company providing the annuity. This payment can be made in one lump sum, or in a series of payments over a 10 - 25 year period. At some point, the investor can choose to begin receiving monthly income back from the annuity. This monthly income can continue either for a specified time or for life depending on the details of the annuity contract.

Instead of monthly payments you can also purchase annuities by making a one-time payment. Many of the people who choose this option are workers retiring with a 401k account. They can better use their 401k funds by investing it in an annuity after they retire. The money received from the 401k continues to be tax-deferred if invested in annuities and thus provides additional benefits.

Though some think an annuity is only an investment for the rich, this is not the case. Annuities are a viable investment option for anyone saving for retirement. Many people have discretionary income, which is money not earmarked for bills and expenses, and ar placing this money into a savings account. These funds can just as easily be put towards an annuity.

It is very important that you find the best quotes when purchasing an annuity. You should do some comparison shopping by looking at many different insurance companies that provide annuity quotes. You could compare this to shopping around for the lowest rates and best coverage for your car insurance policy.

If you were to go and talk to multiple annuity providers you would be presented with multiple annuity quotes. You would be very well informed on the current state of the annuity market, and would be best suited to choose the optimal annuity for you. However, there are numerous options for annuities based on length of pay-in, length of pay-out, amounts paid in and out, and many other factors. Searching through annuity quotes from multiple providers can be time-consuming, frustrating and confusing.

Fortunately, finding the best annuity is quite easy. Researching and obtaining multiple annuity quotes from various providers at one place is nowadays quite simple for potential investors. Investors can visit the websites of annuity providers and can find all the details. Searching and finding the right annuity is extremely simple and it makes a lot of sense to at least look into it.

- Ken Nuss

Binary bad behavior.

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Categories: Computer, Internet.

Malware is a generic term for bad software. Malware is malicious code planted on your computer, and it can give the operator a truly alarming degree of control over your computer, network, and files - all without your knowledge. Malware is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner’s informed consent. Malware is a combination of the words ‘malicious’ and ’software’ and is a program written by someone with mischievous or, more usually, malicious intent.

The Internet

Trojan horses also known as droppers are used to start off a worm outbreak, by dropping a worm into users’ local networks. A worm, on the other hand, is a program which actively transmits itself over a network to infect other computers. One of the most common ways that spyware is distributed is as a Trojan horse, bundled with a piece of desirable software that the user downloads off the internet or a peer-to-peer file-trading network.

Most early infectious programs, including the first worm and a number of MS-DOS viruses, was written as experiments or pranks generally intended to be fun or merely annoying rather than to cause havoc. However, since the rise of broadband internet , more malicious software has been designed for profit motive. Software that offers to speed up the internet will probably contain malware. Some malware is known to interrupt your internet connection or even make your computer to crash. Internet trojan horse programs, spyware, keyloggers, rootkits, pseudorootkits, hijackers, adware, annoyware, email relays, spam proxies, spam relays, scam downloads and email/spam robots are perhaps the greatest security threat to individuals and institutional networks in existence.

Email

Email will continue to be an important vector for malware authors, though the increasing adoption of email gateway security is making malware authors turn to other routes for infection. Emailed malware is also looking more professional and people who assume they can identify any infected emails through bad spelling,bad grammar or suspicious subjects will be caught out. Be careful about any attachments, particularly those that you receive from unknown people. You should also be careful with attachments from those you know. Never open any attachment you are not expecting , even if it appears to come from a co-worker ( you cannot acquire malware by reading the main text of a mail message, unless your patching is out of date). By the end of the decade, the use of email gave malware an effective infection route into new machines.

Malware is a catch-all term for various malicious software, including browser hijacking software, adware and spyware. Malware is usually included with ’spam’ and avoiding this will reduce your exposure to malware. Malware is now being written for every possible platform, communications channel and businesses that do not update their systems religiously or fail to use security software and internet protection will find themselves at risk of getting infected.

Any one not investing in security software, will eventually get infected. That’s the hard truth! Maybe your PC is already infected… You may scan your PC for FREE here: SpywareRemover or AntiSpyware 2007.

Have a safe day :-)

Robert Patero is a computer scientist/programmer, adviser and internet veteran. In his daily job he works mostly with security and programming. He has extensive knowledge about computers and the internet. He recommends a FREE scan with: SpywareBot / SpywareRemover / AntiSpyware 2007.

- Robert Patero

Digital Security Reports: Battle The (google) Bots

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Categories: Ecommerce, Internet.

Back in the days around 3 B.G (Before Google) AltaVista was the new search engine on the block. In an effort to show off the power of their minicomputers, the AltaVista team at Digital decided to crawl and index the entire web. This was at the time a new concept. Many web masters didn’t relish the idea of a “robot” program accessing every page on their web site as this would add more load to their web servers and increase their bandwidth costs. So in 1996 the Robots Exclusion Standard was created to address these web master concerns.

You can use a simple text file called robots.txt to keep search engines out of a directory. Here is a very simple example that will prevent all search engines (user-agents) from accessing the /images directory.

User-agent: * Disallow: /images

By disallowing /images you are also implicitly disallowing all subdirectories under /images, such as /images/logos and any files beginning with /images such as /images.html.

Curiously there was no “Allow” directive in the first draft of the standard. It was added later, but it’s not guaranteed to be supported by all search engines. So anything that is not specifically disallowed should be considered fair game for web crawlers.

A robots.txt like this is used to keep robots away from anything on your web site.

User-agent: * Disallow: /

If User-agent is * then the following lines apply to all search engine robots. By specifying the signature of a web crawler as the User-agent you can give specific instructions to that robot.

User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /google-secrets

Since the initial specification was issued, some search engines have expanded the protocol. An example of this is to permit the use of wildcards.

User-agent: Slurp Disallow: /*.gif$

As a result, Yahoo!’s web crawler (named Slurp) cannot index files on your site if they end in .gif. You do need to preface these lines with the requisite user-agent line, since not every search engine presently supports wildcard matches.

You can combine several of the above techniques in one robots.txt file. Here’s a theoretical example.

User-agent: * Disallow: /bar User-agent: Googlebot Allow: /foo Disallow: /bar Disallow: /*.gif$ Disallow: /

Computer programs are pretty good at following instructions like these. But for a human brain it can quickly get overwhelming, so I highly encourage you to keep it simple.

For us mortals there is a robots.txt analysis tool in Google’s webmaster tools. Highly recommended. Another good resource for more information on the Robots Exclusion Standard is www.robotstxt.org.

Many corporations are prepared to drop a large sum on getting their page into search engine listings. So leaving yourself out of this mix might seem backward. However, there are smart security reasons to putting a limit on how much of your site a search engine can index. My Digital Security Report offers more information on this subject.

Nick Dalton’s blog is TipsTricksToolsTechniques.com where he regularly shares tips on Internet security. Also worth checking out is his latest report called The Digital Security Report it has essential advice for Internet business owners selling products online.

- Nick Dalton.

How To Pick The Best Web Host

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Categories: Internet.

If you are looking for a web host the thing you should look at the most is reliability. By surveying people who run sites and people who run online stores, this has become clear.

What does “reliability” really mean? Most web hosting companies upgrade their systems. Most are technically competent. Most have products for sale at reasonable prices. The only difference may be in their quality of customer service. Where you need “reliability” most is in customer service.

The important question becomes, “How can I get a quick, direct resolution for problems with my website?” Unfortunately, fast and simple solutions can be hard to come by.

You may have gotten the impression that when calling web technical support, the representative is handling multiple calls at a time. They have thousands of clients, and many calls coming in come in waves. This can lead to your tech person and yourself becoming frustrated.

A good technical support person will use a helpful tone of voice and offer solutions. They will assume that you are basically competent and not automatically assume that you have somehow caused the problem at your end. After all, they are most qualified to check out problems at their end.

In a lot of cases this is the best approach, because the problem is occurring on the user’s end of things. Unfortunately, a lot of cases does not equal all the cases. When the problem is not on the user’s end, and the user has spent a lot of time only to find the problem was on the server’s end, it can be frustrating.

The sad fact is that many web hosting tech people do not understand the meaning of customer service. Many suffer from superiority complexes. This is how they manage to get away with giving shoddy, and unfriendly service because changing hosts is too inconvenient for their clients.

Thankfully this is changing. There is enough step-by-step information available to help you change hosts without too much difficulty, and many hosts will actually help you transfer your domain to their system.

There, is, sad to say, no completely reliable way to ensure that you will receive the best customer service.

It is hard to find honest reviews or comparisons on the various web hosts. Most of the comparison sites are not reliable because they are trying to promote their own site and may even doctor “reviews” to be favorable to them. Public opinions that are posted may also be may be fictitious and praise the site they are posted on and criticize their competitors.

Forums on sites about web hosting can also supply reliable information, though they may be subject to the previously mentioned manipulations. However, the rapid pace of change in the web hosting industry means that comments over a year old are probably no longer applicable.

One good suggestion is to look closely at the website of the host itself. If it is overly technical and confusing that may indicate the host is not particularly concerned with communicating with clients. That usually spells trouble. You may find it difficult to navigate their support system, and getting plain and simple answers to your inquiries may be next to impossible.

You can tell if a company is customer focused by their website. You are looking for a simple layout and products designed for the customer, combined with a support system that is easy to work with. Contact customer service before you have a problem, and see if they are willing to work with you.

A good idea would be to look for recommendations from actual web hosting customers. Be certain that they are plainly marked with names and website addresses. You may even want to get in touch with some of these customers directly.

Considering how competitive the business of web-hosting is, finding an easy to follow, customer driven host is definitely what you should be looking for. But of course, none of this will be fool-proof.

Get reliable low cost web hosting. Effective article marketing.

- Howard Brule

Hermann Strijewski, Software Developer is Digg proof thanks to caching by WP Super Cache!