US Advanced Technology

If you are one of the many families who own one or more laptops, you’ll know what a useful tool they can be. Our kids use theirs to research whatever they are studying at school, my wife finds new recipes to try and keeps in touch with friends and family, while I use mine to stay up to date on the news and balance my bank accounts.

My daughter recently had problems with her laptop overheating. One visit to the computer technician later and the issue was diagnosed and fixed – dust was removed from the fan, and a good wedge of cash removed from my pocket. Realising that something as simple as a build-up of dust could end up costing me a fortune, I came to the conclusion that we all need to take better care of our laptops.

As with any tool, you will find your laptops work best and last longer when they are cared for properly. The good news is, caring for and maintaining laptops isn’t difficult, and is something that everyone in the family can do. Here are my top tips for keeping your laptop in optimum condition.

ñ  Before trying any of of cleaning tips that I mention here, please note that your laptops should be switched off and unplugged to prevent accidents or damage. You should also remove the laptop battery.

ñ  Laptop screens tend to get dirty fairly quickly, and I find mine needs a basic clean once a week or more. I use a smooth surfaced micro-fibre cloth, which has a number of advantages over a normal duster. The first of these is that micro-fibre products are lint free, so that you won’t get little pieces of dust and dirt left over the monitor. The second is that micro-fibre cloths have been proven to clean efficiently without the need for household cleaning products, which eliminates concerns about damage to your laptops screen. What I do is dampen my micro-fibre cloth, then wring it out until it is almost dry, then give the whole laptop a quick wipe over.

ñ  Another task which you should perform regularly, and as I found out, one that is essential if you want to keep your laptops in good, working order is to clean up the build-up of dust which gets caught in the fan. The easiest and least risky way for you to do this at home is to use a compressed air spray can to gently blast the dust away.

ñ  A compressed air spray is also the best option when cleaning your laptop keyboard. If you have difficulties with a particular key “sticking” I have found that it is sometimes possible to remove the individual keys to clean under them. Before trying this tip, check in the manufacturer’s handbook for the model of your computer to confirm that this can be done.

ñ  In addition to the outside cleaning or your laptop, you should also run maintenance programs on a regular basis, which will help prevent any problems with the system itself. Cleaning the hard-drive, defragmenting, performing virus scans and updating any software you have on the laptop will help to prevent those tricky problems before they occur.

Long tail keywords, as the adjective indicates, are long keywords with three or more word phrases that are very specific to what you sell. The reason they become effective in SEO is the principle that a user who types long keywords is specifying exactly what he or she wants and thus would most possibly buy from you since the need is urgent.  Such searches are more likely to change into sales than the generic one-or-two-word keywords.

Let’s have a look at it with an example. Take the long tail keyword “storage furniture for bedrooms”. Rather than any furniture, the user has asked for “storage furniture”, and rather than storage furniture for any other room in the house, the user needs storage furniture designed specially for bedrooms. This long keyword indicates that the user is in need for this product and upon finding the right product would most probably go ahead and purchase it. The same possibility for sale would be absent if the keyword had been just “furniture” or “storage furniture”. For, in the case of these keywords, the user might just be looking for information or is planning to purchase sometime in future. Long tail keywords could also be questions like “which restaurant serves Italian food in Manchester?” Creating a content page based on these questions can actually increase your traffic from 100 visitors per week to 10,000!

Rendezvous conference management software is a valuable tool in both the hotel and restaurant industries, where effective organisation and operations management is required, not only in securing new bookings and repeat bookings but also managing every aspect of the conference or event until completion.

This cost effective conference management software is simple to use and fully supported by a team of expert staff. Its major benefits include:
• Conference & Banqueting – This user friendly sales and foodservice interface includes all of the functionality required to manage conference and banquet events.

• Guestroom Management – Rendezvous conference management includes a simple guestroom management solution. Integration can be developed as per the client’s needs of new HTNG standards.

• Private Dining – For chain restaurants with considerable private dining space or hotels with substantial F&B business, integrated restaurant management software can capture and schedule event information and billing and can also deal with bespoke events, private area booking, deposit handling and customer information interface.

But that’s not all, because Rendezvous conference management software boasts a range of additional benefits particular to hotels which could greatly improve your conference booking and management procedures, including:

• Enhanced Revenue Generation – Our CRM offers instant availability information and colour coded booking details, and a variety of options to maximise sales opportunities. Your contact database can include booking history, activity, document management and much more.
• Streamlined Booking Process – Once time consuming manual processes, such as managing events, foodservice, AV requirements and more, are handled by the conference management software saving hours of administrative time at little extra cost.

The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2011 has taken place in Los Angeles, California. During the conference UK software reseller and Microsoft Dynamics specialist JMC IT were selected to join the prestigious 2011 Microsoft Dynamics President’s Club, ranking it among the top five per cent of Microsoft Dynamics partners in the world and one of only seven members in the their home country.

JMC has always prided itself on it’s Microsoft partner status and has Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Nav & GP amonst its software offering.

The Microsoft Dynamics President’s Club is an exclusive group of high performing Microsoft Dynamics partners whose commitment to customers is reflected in their business success and growth. Members are selected for achieving key business milestones while retaining high levels of customer satisfaction. JMC are no strangers to meeting high standards and are regularly featured in the illustrious Sunday Times “Best companies to work for” lists in their home country.

Doug Kennedy, vice president, Microsoft Dynamics Partners.said “Microsoft is proud to recognise JMC IT for its outstanding sales achievement, this honour is a direct reflection of JMC’s outstanding group of employees and management team, all of whom should be very proud of this accomplishment. JMC plays a very important role in the growth and success of Microsoft Dynamics.”

Andrew Burgess, managing director of JMC, comments: “It’s an honour to be recognised as one of the top channel providers in the world. We are very committed to ensuring our clients are happy with their investments in IT, which is one of the main reasons why an average client has been with us for more than ten years. Joining such a prestigious group of organisations reminds us why it’s worth going the extra mile.”

Automating Things with Batch Files
They Work on Today’s Computers Too!

If you’re familiar with MS-DOS at all, you’ll recall that it’s a command-driven operating system that performs functions issued at the C:> prompt. The only way to get an MS-DOS computer to do something was to type a command at this prompt and if you can imagine, it was a rather cumbersome way to use a computer.

As an example, to load up Microsoft’s simple editing program, you had to type the name of the drive that the program was on, the directory that the program was in, and then the name of the program. So if Microsoft Edit was in a directory or folder named “Process,” you could start the program by typing, “C:>processedit.com” Then, and only then would the program load up for use.

This is a small command, but just imagine if you had a program that was deeply nested within a series of folder. You could end up typing a command as wide as your computer screen or worse, long enough that the entire command would have to wrap onto the next line! Now imagine having to type these long commands every time that you wanted to start a program. Yikes!

That’s one of the reasons why batch files became so popular. Batch files are small text-based documents that contain a bunch of these commands on their own lines. When executed, they would process each command without the user having to type each and every one of them.

When Windows was developed, the need for typing commands was essentially eradicated thanks to the introduction of the point-and-click (mouse) interface. But this didn’t stop the batch file fever that started under MS-DOS – and in some small circles, batch files are still as popular as they were in the beginning.

Even though you may use Windows XP or Vista, batch files can save you tons of time by automatically starting multiple programs and performing different tasks at the single click of a button. They don’t require any extensive programming background and they don’t need to be encrypted with some weird, expensive compiler. Batch files are plain text files, and you can build one for your own personal use with Windows’ Notepad.

You could make a batch file that loads up your favorite websites at once for example, or you could make a batch file that fills your desktop with the most important applications for the day. To do so only requires a little knowledge about the locations of these applications.

Let’s say that every day we need to load up the Yahoo web browser, Microsoft Word, and then the calculator that comes with Windows. Instead of doing this by hand, we could write a batch file to do it for us.

First, we’d load up Notepad and type in the following:

START “http://www.yahoo.com”
START “c:/program files/microsoft office/office/winword.exe”
START “c:/windows/calc.exe”

We would then save this data into a file named, “mytasks.bat” onto the Desktop for easy access. Each time we double-clicked on this file, the Yahoo website would load up, Microsoft Word would start, and the simple calculator would pop up.

Since we want these programs to load every day, we could create a shortcut to this file and then place the shortcut inside our computer’s Start Up folder. That way, these three programs would load every time we turn on the computer. If you wanted these programs to start minimized, you could type the following into a batch file instead:

START http://www.yahoo.com /m
START “c:/program files/microsoft office/office/winword.exe” /m
START “c:/windows/calc.exe” /m

This will run all three programs as before, however the “/m” parameter will minimize them so that they don’t clutter up the desktop.

Other people have found much more creative and effective ways to use batch files, but the important thing is that you know they’re a resource you can use to save a few seconds or minutes in performing important tasks. We’ve come a long way from MS-DOS, but it’s still a valuable source of automation that anyone can use with no programming knowledge at all.

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Accessorizing Computers
What Comes Out of the Box is a Really Just a Starter Kit

Yesterday, we spent about three hours trying to convince a client of ours that brand new computers just don’t come equipped with the all things that most computers need in a PC. We tried to convince him that a fully functional computer is one that is personalized with specially selected hardware and software accessories – and that the computer purchased at the store doesn’t come with these things. Unfortunately, all of our convincing was to our avail. Our client insisted that he should never need more than what came with his boxed product and that we were just trying “bilk” more money out of him.

As computer consultants, it’s our job and mission to make sure our clients are 100% satisfied when they walk out our offices. But our job is unnecessarily made harder when people don’t take the time to learn about computer accessories and familiarize themselves with the limitations of store-bought computers. Hopefully by the time you finish reading this article, you’ll understand the lesson that we were trying to teach our client: “What comes out of the box is really just a starter kit.”

The typical computer package comes with a CPU unit, keyboard, mouse, and speaker set. That may be just fine for some, but most people require more than that especially in today’s “connected” society. Today’s users require full multimedia capabilities, a wide range of graphics tools, and accommodations for the various portables we now enjoy. These extras aren’t included with “what comes out of the box,” and the only way to get them is to accessorize.

To illustrate the importance of accessorizing, we like to use the “plain dough” analogy. Let’s say that a brand new computer is a batch of plain dough – waiting to be flavored and baked into something useful. If we want to use this dough to make a delicious batch of chocolate chip cookies, we would need to “accessorize” this dough with chocolate chips and a little brown sugar. If we want to use this dough into in a warm loaf of sesame seed bread on the other hand, we’d need to “accessorize” the dough with yeast and sesame seeds.

Like “plain dough,” the brand new computer isn’t very useful by itself. It needs accessorizing.

Depending on what’s needed, accessorizing doesn’t need to be expensive. In fact, you can get away with paying a minimal amount for extra software and hardware if these accessories are for children. It’s when these accessories are work requirements or when they’re needed to produce works of quality for any other reason that they can become rather expensive. And this expense applies to microphones, digital cameras, PDAs, scanners, video cams, and more.

Regardless of cost, it’s important to understand that accessories can become “necessities,” and that the best time to get them is the moment you buy a new computer. Waiting too long to accessorize can cause more problems than necessary because while you wait, manufacturers continuously develop new technologies – technologies that your computer won’t be able to accommodate in the future. Once you’re ready to accessorize, the new products on the market are too advanced for your computer and they just won’t work. This is a typical problem experienced by those who want to use hardware designed for Windows Vista on a Windows XP or Windows 2000 machine.

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What’s That File?
An Introduction to File Extensions

In an effort to be “user-friendly,” Windows (and perhaps some other operating systems) hides the most important part of a file name from new computer users: the extension. Okay – we’re assuming that the reasoning behind hiding extensions is a “user-friendly” one because we just can’t come up with any other reason for hiding them. No harm could ever come from seeing an extension, but plenty could be learned from it. Fortunately you have this article to guide you through some of the most common extensions that you’ll run into.

But before you can see file extensions, you need to turn them on. From Windows Explorer, click on the “Tools” menu, and select “File Options.” Click the “View” tab and then uncheck the box next to “Hide file extensions for known file types.” Click “OK” and you’ll notice that the files in Windows Explorer show a dot and group of three letters after their names. That dot and group of three letters is known as an “extension,” and the extension explains what kind of file it is.

A file could be a plain text file, an image, a sound, a video, or program. But without seeing the extension, you wouldn’t know it unless you double-clicked on it. The following list defines some of the most common extensions that you’ll find on your computer.

.au – This extension indicates a sound file. Most sound players will load up and play this kind of file.

.art – This extension indicates an image file that was compressed with AOL (America Online) technology. Both Internet Explorer and the AOL service software can display this kind of file, however if you don’t have AOL installed on your system, Internet Explorer will display it.

.avi – This extension indicates a video file playable by most multimedia viewers including Microsoft’s Media Player.

.bmp – This extension indicates another image file that might have originated from Windows Paint program.

.dll – This extension indicates a Dynamic Link Library which may contain additional programming code for software. Many different programs often share Dynamic Link Libraries and you’ll find a bunch of them in the Windows/System directory (but don’t ever delete them)!

.exe – This extension indicates a program or an application like Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, or Outlook Express. Use extreme caution when downloading .exe files from the Internet since malicious programmers like to hide viruses in these types of files.

.gif – This extension indicates another image file and it stands for “Graphics Interchange Format.” .Gif files are often smaller than .bmp files (described earlier) and they’re commonly found on Internet web pages.

.jpg – This extension indicates yet another image file and it stands for “Joint Photographers Experts Group.” Like the .gif file, it’s commonly found on Internet web pages, however it’s much smaller than both the .gif image and the .bmp image.

.mid – This extension indicates a sound file created with a Musical Instrument Digital Interface. Windows Media Player will open and run these files, however they don’t sound like normal .wav or .mp3 files (described later). .Mid files are designed to product synthetic sounds using a computer’s sound card.

.mp3 – This extension indicates a sound file that authentically reproduces voice and/or music. Windows Media Player will open and run this kind of file.

.scr – This extension indicates a screen saver file.

.sit – This extension indicates a Macintosh archive StuffIt file. They will not open on a Windows system without a special utility.

.ttf – This extension indicates a font especially designed for use on a Windows system. It stands for “True Type Font.”

.txt – This extension indicates a plain text file that can be opened with Notepad.

.wav – This extension indicates a sound file that like the .mp3 file, can be opened with Windows Media Player or Windows Sound Recorder. .Wav files are much larger than .mp3 files.

.zip – This extension indicates a Windows archive WinZip file. They will not open on a Macintosh system without a special utility.

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Viruses
What They Are And One Reason Why People Make Them

Over recent years, computers have become synonymous with viruses and viruses don’t show any signs of disappearing any time soon. In recent news, LiveScience.com reported that “Before the month is even done, April has set a record for virus e-mails.”1 In the past, we would be comfortable in telling new computer users not to worry about viruses and that catching a computer virus is rare. Today, that would be some of the worst advice we could give anyone. As reported in countless news reports, computer viruses are rampant and they’re extremely worrisome. This article will describe what viruses are and then point you in the direction of some rather unique protection and prevention.

In short, a computer virus is a software program designed to destroy or steal data. It attacks computers via distribution – often unknowingly – through email attachments, software downloads, and even some types of advanced web scripting. Viruses that destroy data are known as Trojan horses, viruses that explode their attacks are called bombs, and viruses that duplicate themselves are called worms. Some viruses are a combination of each, however they can be further identified according to where they’re located on a computer.

A virus originating from the boot sector of a computer is a boot-sector virus and this nasty devil does its dirty work the moment a computer is turned on. A virus that attaches itself to (infects) other programs is a file virus and activates the moment that an infected program starts. File viruses may also be referred to as parasitic viruses, however should a virus work from both the boot-sector and from an infected program, the virus is then known as a multipartite virus.

Why viruses exist remains a mystery, however we had privy access to the mind behind a virus programmer who explained his motivation behind his destructive inclinations. Apparently, this person had a deep grudge against a popular online service which shall remain unnamed. In this hacker’s mind, the online service failed to do a quality job in protecting children from online smut and as retaliation, he created and distributed a virus to as many file libraries of this service as he could. His intentions were to disable the computers of the online service’s users so much that they wouldn’t be able to connect for days. In his mind, the loss of connection meant loss of revenue for the online service.

Although the malicious code that this person generated may have worked for a small percentage of users, sufficed to say, the online service continued on and still exists today. Despite his motivation or intention, his efforts were null.

We wouldn’t be surprised to learn if other motivations behind spreading viruses were similar to this person’s, but that doesn’t justify the damage that viruses do. Innocent people become pawns for the evil plans of others who’ve convinced themselves they’re doing the “right” thing.

To protect a computer from getting a virus, or clean a virus from a computer system once infected requires the use of an antivirus utility. But may be something else we can do. Perhaps we could make an effort to educate the people who want put viruses into the public about ways to display dissatisfaction with a service or product that don’t involve harming innocent parties. In doing so, we just might reduce the number of virus news stories and protect our own investments at the same time.

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1 Source: http:// news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070426/sc_livescience/recordsettingspameffortturnscomputersintozombies

Every new computer that’s brought home from the store has an operating system installed onto it. But what most new computer users don’t realize, is that without an operating system, that computer would be a simple shell of possibilities. A powered computer lacking an operating system wouldn’t display anything more than a bunch of confusing text messages that describe the computer’s boot process. At the very end of this process, the computer looks for an operating system and if not found, it will prompt the user to tell it where it is.

Earlier computers didn’t have an operating system and if you have experience with the computers of the early eighties, you’ll remember that most to them didn’t even have a hard drive! These old computers booted an MS-DOS type operating system from drivers stored onto a floppy disk, and in order to use a program, users would remove the boot floppy and then insert a new floppy that contained the program. The floppy not only stored the program

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Understanding Compression
What It Is and What’s Involved

Downloading files from the Internet has always been one of the most popular activities on the Internet – third to sending email and browsing the web. We download files from software libraries, ftp directories, YouTube and Google Video, MP3 sites, and we download files sent to us as email attachments.

Being so popular an activity, it’s imperative that you compress the files destined for another computer. File compression combines a number of different files into one file, and it can also significantly reduce a very large file to a smaller one. As a result, the transmission of a compressed file across the Internet is faster and smoother. This article looks at compressed files a little closer and it describes how to compress and decompress them using two of the most popular archiving programs.

Identifying Compressed Files

Most files are compressed in .zip format (if you’re using Windows) or .sit format (if you’re using a Mac). The two most popular software programs used to compress and decompress files are Winzip and StuffIt respectively. There are other programs that do the same thing and there are even programs that can compress and decompress files for both the Windows and the Mac system. However since Winzip and StuffIt are the most popular, we will assume you will use either one to compress and decompress your own files.

If you download a compressed file from a website or file library that ends in an .exe extension, take note that although the file is compressed, it’s typically a file that will install a program onto a computer. .Zip or .Sit files don’t install software – they merely archive a collection of them into one, or they significantly reduce the size of a larger one.

Decompressing Files

Assuming that you have Winzip or StuffIt installed on your computer, you can access the files archived inside a .zip or .sit file by simply double-clicking the archive (a file ending in a .zip or .sit extension). Double-clicking one of these kinds of files will open up a window that displays the contents of the archive. In most cases, you can double click a file inside this window to use it, or you can select it and drag the file to a folder to view later.

Depending on how you elected to install Winzip or StuffIt, you may be able to right-click a .zip or .sit file and have the program extract its contents into a new folder for you.

Compressing Files

When you want to upload a file or email a collection of files to a friend, it’s best to archive it as a .zip or .sit file first. This will decrease the time it takes for your computer to send it elsewhere, and it will also decrease the time it takes for someone else to download it.

To create your own .zip or .sit file, you can select a single file or a group of files from within Explorer, and right-click the selection. Again, depending on how you installed Winzip or StuffIt, you can click the “Add to Zip” or “Add to Sit” option and have these programs automatically archive the file(s) into one.

Some files compress better than others and in some instances, you may not notice that much of a difference. The files that compress the best are images, documents, and multimedia files. Executable files (files that end in an .exe extension) don’t compress that well, however when they’re archived with a sizable number of other files, they compress rather well. Go figure!

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