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  • Key Ingredients to Successful Online Selling

    Key Ingredients to Successful Online Selling

    Technological advancements have given our society many benefits and advantages. Numerous opportunities have opened up for consumers and business providers. Consumers now have a variety of products and services within easy reach and businesses are now able to connect with customers easily and quickly through various online means – website, social networks, etc.

    With online selling, businesses are no longer restricted locality limitations. Online sales have been on a steady rise for the past couple of years; and this is a worldwide trend. More and more people are now opting out of real brick-and-mortar store visits by choosing to do their shopping from the comfort of their own home.

    By the end of 2013, the UK reported an all-time record of over £10 billion, based on IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index, according to “The Guardian”. North America and Asia-Pacific are also experiencing this upward trend.

    With these thoughts in mind, starting an online business is a very wise move. In considering how to sell online, note the following key ingredients to successful online selling.

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  • Use of Color and its Importance While Designing Websites

    Use of Color and its Importance While Designing Websites

    Often a major question that is faced by the designers while designing a website is about the choice of a particular color that will suit the identity of the brand and the niche of the website. The choice of a wrong color for a website might prove to be disastrous as a color can have a negative impact on the psyche of the readers. It is imperative to say that color communicates more than the words that are published on a website.

    Prior to deciding on the color scheme, you need to consider the profile of the target audience, the nature of the services that are offered by the website, and most importantly, the aim of the site.

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  • How Can Web Conferencing Be Used in the Classrooms?

    How Can Web Conferencing Be Used in the Classrooms?

    It is reported that around 80% of the people associated with the education sector believe that web conferencing has significantly helped schools globally in achieving their goals of academics, according to Online Teaching and Learning Resource Guide. This sudden rise has proven how efficient and effective this tool and method is in the education sector. Web conferencing is an interactive method of implementation especially in the online classrooms. It has several benefits to offer to the students.

    There are several innovative software related to web conferencing that have yielded magnificent benefits, not just for the students but also to the teachers. These interactive and synchronous tools add the factor of accessibility. Accessing lessons from anywhere in the world has become easier than before. The concept of active learning has experienced a humongous rise due to the introduction of this method. Active learning has been witnessed by the teachers as well as the students due to the introduction of various visualization and feedback methods.

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  • Why Common Sense is Vital to Computer Security

    Why Common Sense is Vital to Computer Security

    I read an article about the how Justice Department in Canada launched a mock scam as a security exercise to determine how the employees react to a phishing e-mail. Much like a real phishing e-mail, the mock e-mail was made to look like an official government or financial institution e-mail, with a link to a fake website made to look like a real site.

    The results showed that people can still be tricked into navigating to a fake website with the intention of obtaining personal information. Unfortunately, phishing is still a popular method for malicious people to get information from others, and use that information for criminal purposes. This is a good reminder of how important it is to be vigilant about what we do while online, regardless if it is viewing a website or checking e-mail.

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  • The 3 Main Types of Web Hosting

    The 3 Main Types of Web Hosting

    When looking to start hosting a website, there are various options to choose from. This article is going to list a short description of the two main types that should both be taken into consideration when starting up a website. Depending on what you are planning to do with your site should decide which kind of hosting you should choose. Below we have listed some of the main types of web hosting to consider before you start up your new website.

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  • How We Used the Internet Before YouTube [Infographic]

    How We Used the Internet Before YouTube [Infographic]

    There can be little doubt about the popularity of YouTube. Just about everybody has visited YouTube at least once or twice, and some of us pay daily (hourly?) visits to watch our favorite videos or surf for new videos. What did we do with our time on the Internet before YouTube, though? The infographic below, created by our friends at YouTube Downloader, lays out some of the milestones along the way to that grand time waster, YouTube.

    Since it first came online, we’ve looked to the Internet to connect with others and find entertainment. Before we started being able to watch our friends’ videos, we would chat with our friends online. A number of sources allowed us to do that, even before Facebook came around in 2005. We could log onto a chat room on IRC, or use AOL Chat rooms to find new and old friends to hang out with online.

    Some of us would play roleplaying games online. For many years, multiplayer dungeons (called MUSHes) were a great source of fun for gamers all over the world. You’d never believe it today, but we typed everything we wanted to say or do, and that was how we played the game! Later, we’d see the advent of graphic roleplaying games that were online and had huge followings, like Ever Quest and later Worlds of Warcraft.

    These pastimes still kick around a bit, but they aren’t nearly as popular now as they were before YouTube. These days, the online community checks Facebook, then goes to YouTube to watch videos and post those videos on Facebook. It might be hard to believe there was life before YouTube, but the infographic below will show you a few more of the things we did before we could watch any kind of video imaginable on our computers, phones, or tablets.

    How We Used the Internet Before YouTube

  • Interesting Gadget: Window Solar Battery Charger for Mobile Devices

    Interesting Gadget: Window Solar Battery Charger for Mobile Devices

    The mobile device market has exploded since the introduction of the iPhone. Music players, smartphones and tablets can be found everywhere, and it would be hard to walk down the street and not see someone using a mobile device. Of course, one issue with mobile devices is battery life. Whenever a new smartphone or tablet is introduced into the market the discussion can quickly turn to the battery life of the new device.

    With the battery life of a device being important, it is equally important to recharge the battery anywhere at anytime. The last thing you need is to have a dead smartphone in the event of an emergency. There may be times where you aren’t near a power source, so an alternative is to use another method of charging your device: the sun.

    The Window Solar Battery Charger

    If you are like me, you would probably plug an adapter into an outlet, and then connect a USB cable to the adapter. The USB cable would then plug into your mobile device and begin charging the battery in the device. You can easily carry the adapter and USB cable from place to place without any problems.

    Of course, if you are also like me, you may forget to charge your device and realize that the battery in the device is low on power, or completely dead. While you can simply just plug the phone into an outlet to recharge the battery, but what if the power is out? What if you are at a place that doesn’t have an available power source – think camping?

    In such a situation you can use an alternative method of charging your device with a window solar battery charger. Don’t be fooled, though, as the charger can be used without a window as it is essentially a solar charger.

    The charger has a 1800 mAH rechargeable lithium battery that can fully charge in 13 hours with direct sunlight. When you connect a device into the USB port of the charger, the battery will then charge the device.

    There are two USB ports on the charger: a standard-size USB port and a small-sized USB port. The standard-size USB port is the same as most wall adapters use for charging devices.

    The charger is 3.94 inches x 3.15 inches x 1.97 inches (length x width x height) in size, so it isn’t overly large and can be stored or carried easily. Most of the size is probably taken up by the internal lithium battery. It weighs 7.04 ounces so it is heavier than a typical charger that can be plugged into a wall outlet – but then again the outlet adapter doesn’t contain a battery.

    Of course, as with any solar product, the charging capacity of the device is relative to the amount of sun available. Direct sunlight will charge the battery faster. Using the window solar battery charger on a cloudy day will still charge the battery, but it will take more time as the sun isn’t has strong.

    For under $30 on Amazon, the window solar battery charger is not a significant investment, and can help out in the moments where you need to charge your device in an emergency where power isn’t readily available.

  • The FLAC File: Replacement for MP3 Files?

    The FLAC File: Replacement for MP3 Files?

    FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) files aren’t as popular for playing audio as MP3 files, but FLAC files do offer better audio quality than MP3 files. When audio was first being downloaded from the Internet back in the 1990s, MP3 files were chosen because they offered good quality, but more important, small file sizes. Back when people were connecting to the Internet through dial-up modems, smaller file sizes were preferred. I remember waiting 15 minutes while a 3 MB MP3 file downloaded.

    These days, high-speed Internet connections are more the norm, so downloading a 30 MB file can take less than a minute. Because of this, many people have started to switch from downloading MP3 files to FLAC files.

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