What is Contract Programming? An Alternative to th

What is Contract Programming? An Alternative to the Conformity of Everyday Employment

by: Michael Nigohosian

What is contract programming, you ask? Well, when companies need specific computer programming expertise, for temporary periods of time, they generally hire a contract programmer or an employee of a consulting firm. Contractors almost always have a higher hourly wage than a salaried employee and are often paid for overtime. Contracts can last from one to three months to many years, depending on the situation. A contract programmer generally does one thing: program (code) for the duration of the contract. So, contract programming is just an area of computer consulting. Other areas of computer consulting include custom developers, network consultants and information technology (IT) consultants. The contract programmer can work via two forms of contracts: 1) ขW2 ข contracts and 2) ข1099ข contracts.
Thereกs the กW2ก contractor
The ขW2 contractorข receives the typical IRS W2 form at tax time and works as a temporary employee of a contract broker or some form of employment agency. The contract broker basically acquires a contract with a client company and hires the contractor to work on that contract for them. Brokers make their money by charging the client an amount over your agreed upon hourly rate. In this form, the contract programmer is a temporary, hourly employee of the broker’s company and this is the form that is easiest for the newcomer to obtain.
And the ก1099ก contractor
As a ขW2 contractorข, your broker a.k.a.: temporary employer or agency will collect taxes from your paycheck, just as if you were a regular employee. The ข1099 contractorข, can still work through a broker, but gets paid on an IRS form 1099 and must take responsibility for paying all applicable taxes herself. This ข1099ข form is for, in IRS lingo, ขIndependent Contractors.ข Independent contractors have more work to do before they get a contract: they have to market themselves like any other business. This includes brochures, business cards, web sites, networking, etc. They have to consider obtaining more forms of insurance that may include general business liability and errors & omissions insurance. They also generally have to form a corporation in order to work for certain companies. The pay back for this extra work is a higher hourly rate. To the beginning contractor, I always suggest starting out as a ขW2ข contract programmer because it is generally the quickest and easiest path to becoming a contract programmer and the best way to determine if contracting is the right career choice.
The กW2ก contractor is like a typical employee…almost
The main differences between a fulltime employee and an hourly, contract employee working for a broker are, the contractor:
1) Will probably have to pay for his or her own health and disability insurance, which amounts to very little compared to the increased income one usually sees.
2) Generally gets paid topdollar for his or her work. Many earn $100 or more per hour for 40+ hours a week.
3) Can take as much time off from work as he or she pleases, while inbetween contracts.
4) Has independence from corporate politics.
5) Has the chance to live wherever she wants or live in different places as determined by the particular contract.
6) Is often seen as an expert in his or her field.
More work for ข1099ก contractor
These points apply to the ข1099 contractorข as well, but the ข1099ก contractor has more work to do in filing taxes, corporate paperwork, advertising and searching for her next contract as opposed the ขW2 contractor,ข who basically makes a few calls to her favorite brokers and tells them she is ready for another contract and the brokers do the jobsearching for her. Now, everything I’ve said thus far is pretty cutanddry, so let’s take a look at a more elusive topic: what qualities make a good contract programmer.
Signs of a good contract programmer
Over the last decade, I have met and worked with many varied computer programmers. From this experience, I have devised the following list containing what I believe makes a good potential contractor programmer. A good contract programmer:
1) Makes computers an avid hobby of his. When he comes home from work he plays with or hacks the computer trying to improve its performance.
2) Tries to learn more about computers than his peers do and he also likes to program the computer to have it do ขcoolข things.
3) Has often dreamed of being an expert, highpaid computer professional.
4) Has learned how to master the art of studying computer science.
5) Spends his free time reading computer books and magazines — yes kind of geeky!
6) May like to build his own computer systems and enjoys tweaking and upgrading them to extract the most performance from them.
7) Is very professional and humble.
Youกve got to love to do it!
These really are just some of the basic qualities of someone who loves computers and loving computers is really the main ingredient for a successful career in contract programming. If you don’t love doing it, you will not survive. If you do love it, it will be a joy to go to work every day and to continually update your skills. The computer field changes rapidly and only someone who really loves computers and makes it his hobby will have the desire to continually upgrade his skills and be the best he can be at all times. If you possess most of the seven qualities listed above and like the idea of using your hobby to catapult yourself into a highpaid, fulfilling career, even if the economy is down, you should consider a career in contract programming.

About The Author

Michael Nigohosian is the author of the awardwinning and bestselling series, ‘the Secret Path to Contract Programming Richesก and instructor for the course กIntroduction to Contract Programmingก. He is also director of Rapid Mastery Technology™ at McGillis, Wilcox, Webster & Co., Inc.™ http://www.mwwcorp.com

This article was posted on June 15, 2004

by Michael Nigohosian

Software Companies, Don’t Sabotage Your LongTerm

Software Companies, Don’t Sabotage Your LongTerm Success!

by: V. Berba Velasco Jr., Ph.D.

Over the years, I’ve paid a lot of attention to how companies recruit computer programmers. During that time, I’ve noticed how managers frequently make hiring decisions that seem to make sense in the short term, but which result in longterm chaos. I’ve seen the kind of havoc that this can wreak, and how devastating it can be to the company’s future.

I’d like to say a few words about that today.

The companies that I’ve observed typically pay attention matters such as industry backgrounds, years of experience, and so forth. They want to know what types of projects the applicants have worked on, which compilers and operating systems they’re familiar with, which communication protocols and software packages they’ve used, and so forth. Many also want to know about the employee’s work ethic and personality, but in the end, the hiring decisions frequently boil down to the employee’s work experience and how much training that person would require.

All of those are important, sensible considerations. As I observed these companies though, I noticed that most of them—about 80% or more—paid little or no attention to whether the applicant had a clean, readable programming style. They were deeply concerned about whether the applicant could get the job done, and didn’t seem to care much about whether their software could be easily understood and modified by others, years down the road.

To some extent, this is understandable. After all, the immediate goal of most companies is to develop working products that they can sell. What many forget, however, is that they are supposed to be marathoners, not sprinters. They need to think more in terms of finishing the entire race, and less in terms of achieving shortterm victories.

It also betrays a certain naivete about the immediate damage that can result from poor programming style. After all, even the best software is rarely bugfree. A programmer who writes clean, legible software will be able to debug his own work more reliably than someone who writes patchwork code. The latter may arguably provide fixes more quickly (and even that’s debatable!), but the results will be unreliable—and when time is short, that’s a luxury which companies cannot afford.

Employers should also remember that good programming style is not something that’s easily taught. Any competent programmer can learn the mechanics of language syntax and function calls; however, someone who understands little about the artistry of structured programming or proper object orientation is unlikely to master these things on the job. I’ve seen this happen (or rather, fail to happen) time and again. This, despite the abundance of books and journals which discuss this matter at great length.

I also think that companies should pay greater attention to the prospective employee’s technical writing skills; after all, external documentation (e.g. user manuals, design documentation) can be critical to the software’s maintainability. Besides, in my experience, programmers who write well in English are more likely to write software too. And why not? Programming languages are ultimately just that—languages. Someone who can express himself well in English is more likely to communicate clearly and effectively in his source code as well.

For these reasons, I urge any company that’s hiring a programmer to ask incisive questions about an applicant’s coding style. How does he name his variables? How many lines of code should a function occupy? Does he use global variables, and if so, when? What kinds of books has he read on programming style? Ideally, companies should also ask for samples of an applicant’s source code and technical documentation, to verify that these lessons are put into practice. This takes a little extra effort, but it can help a company avoid sacrificing longterm success for the sake of dubious shortterm gains.

About The Author

V. Berba Velasco Jr., Ph.D. is a senior electrical and software engineer at Cellular Technology Ltd (http://www.immunospot.com, http://www.elispotanalyzers.de, http://www.elispot.cn) where he serves with great pride. He has seen how proper attention to software usability, maintainability and elegance can spell the difference between mediocre products and great ones.

This article was posted on October 29, 2004

by V. Berba Velasco Jr., Ph.D.

Basic Steps Toward a New Language

Basic Steps Toward a New Language

by: Scott Foreman

I thought I was unique, but the more folks I talked with, the more I realized that many people started just like I did. When I first got into my online business, I knew nothing about computer programming. I figured that I must be the only one in online marketing with such undeveloped computer skills. It turns out, there are many of you that started just like me.

No matter where we start, however, computer skills are essential in the online world. More and more frequently, programming knowledge is not only helpful, but required. It’s just not businesssmart to pay someone else to make every single change on your website.

Even if you are a programming newbie, all is not lost. You probably already know, for instance, that a huge amount of website programming is done in HTML (HyperText Markup Language). HTML was designed so that the ‘average’ website owner could create and edit content easily and quickly. If you don’t know what HTML looks like, get a glance by going to your favorite website. In the menu at the top of the screen click View and then click Source. Theoretically, this will give you the HTML code for the page you are viewing. There is an amazing amount of functionality involved with HTML coding. With knowledge of just a few commands, you can make a huge number of formatting and esthetic changes to your web page. With just a little bit more knowledge of the basic commands, you can enact very detailed adjustments to your site.

Let me give you a few examples that you may already know. When you use the command …, all text that replaces the ‘…’ will be emboldened. With … you can probably guess that the enclosed text will be centered. If you want a line break, use the command at the end of your sentence.

As I said, you probably already know those commands, but there are many that are just as easy and useful that you may not know. Just a little bit of research into the standard HTML commands can give you a world of knowledge in this userfriendly programming language.

Whether you have to completely redo your website or just want to make a few choice format changes, basic HTML knowledge is invaluable. Learning a few of the commands can give you a significant advantage over your competition, not to mention saving you money through doityourself programming work.

When you’re ready, check out how much HTML you can learn in just one hour. http://www.buildpassiveincome.com/cmd.php?ad=127595

Remember, be good to yourself and never underestimate the power associated with the intensity of your passion.

Copyright 2005 Foreman Enterprises

Scott Foreman BuildPassiveIncome.com

mailto:[email protected]

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First, we will pay you up to $25 for every person who visits our site and purchases a product as a result of you running or posting this article.

PLUS, once you confirm we will give you a FREE DISPLAY AD in our Internet Success Newsletter (thatกs how much we appreciate it)!

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This article may be reprinted for use in newsletters and websites provided that the information box is kept intact. Email notice of intent to publish is appreciated but not required: [email protected]

About The Author

Wayne and Scott Foreman are coowners of

http://www.buildpassiveincome.com

This Secret Book Made Terry Dean Rich! You Can Get it Free IF you click below now (you won’t believe the simple techniques it reveals that ANYONE can use)

http://www.BuildPassiveIncome.com/secret

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 16

by Scott Foreman

Get Started in Computer Game Creation

Get Started in Computer Game Creation

by: Daniel Punch

Getting Started in Game Creation

I’ve always loved video games, ever since I first played them on a friend’s computer in the afternoon after elementary school. There’s something almost magical about the fact that we can move images around and interact with virtual worlds, a living fantasy presented for us to interact with however we please. I’ve also always wanted to make games myself but, until recently, didn’t have the technical knowledge to do so. Now, I’m a second year software engineering student, so if I weren’t able to code a game without too many dramas there’d be something drastically wrong. But what about the common person: the person for whom the term ‘memory leak’ conjures up images of their grandfather, ‘pipeline’ is where the water flows, and ‘blitting’ is unheard of? Well, everyone can get in on the game creation process, and you don’t even need to learn ‘real’ programming to do so.

So where do games start? With an idea. Games, like all fiction, require an idea to be successful. Sure, in the same way you can just sit down and write a story without foresight, you can jump on in and slap a game together. However, unless you get ridiculously lucky, the best works are usually the ones that have been well thought out beforehand.

There are two methods of planning a project. You can start from a known technological standpoint and build your project on top of that or you can just go for the design, add as many features and ideas as you like, and then remove the ones that you can’t use when you’ve decided on the technology you’re going to implement the game with. In general, the second type is probably the best one to go with when designing games. When you’re first starting out however, the first option will save you many headaches.

So, for a first game you’re going to want a pretty simple idea. Don’t get me wrong, crazygonuts game ideas are fantastic, and there should be more of them out there, but you’re not going to be able to create a real world simulator with fifty billion virtual people all interacting real time with your actions having a butterfly effect on the future of the virtual universe when it’s just your first game. Really. Many people try it; none that I know of have succeeded. Imitation is the best way to start out. Simple games such as ‘Space Invaders’, ‘Tetris’, ‘Pacman’ or even ‘Pong’ are great places to start. All are largely simple to create but have some inherent challenges. ‘Pacman’ for example, requires path finding for the ghosts. I recommend that you start even simpler than that for your very first attempt. ‘Space Invaders’ is a nice point to jump in. You can make a simple, complete game without much effort and it’s almost infinitely extensible.

If you’re stuck for an idea, pick a genre that you enjoy. Do you love adventure games such as ‘Monkey Island’, ‘Grim Fandango’, ‘Space Quest’, ‘King’s Quest’ etc.? Design one of those. Are you into fighting games like ‘Street Fighter’, ‘Tekken’, ‘Soul Calibur’, ‘Mortal Kombat’ and so on? Come up with an idea for that. Do you like first person shooters such as ‘Quake’, ‘Half Life’ or ‘Doom’? I don’t recommend it as a first project, but you can always give it a go. Feel free to be as generic as you like, this is a learning experience after all.

Now that you have your idea it’s time to flesh it out. Don’t worry about the technology or the fact that you may not know how to actually implement a game just yet, just grab yourself some paper and a pencil and go crazy with ideas. Describe the main characters, game play, goals, interactions, story, and key mappings, anything you can think of. Make sure you have enough detail so that someone can read through the notes and play through the game in their head with relative accuracy. Changing game design during the coding process is almost always a bad idea. Once it’s set, it should remain set until the tweaking phase (I’ll go into this more later) or you’re likely to enter ‘development hell’, where the project goes on and on; more and more work is done with less and less outcome.

At the end of this period of your game creation, you should have the following:

A written outline of the game’s characters and possibly a sketch or two (be they space ships, yellow circles, cars or the prince of the dark kingdom of Falgour, you need to know who or what the player will be and who they will compete against)

A written outline of the story (if there is one, this isn’t too vital for ‘Space Invaders’ or ‘Tetris’, but for ‘Uber Quest: An Adventure of Awesomeness’ it’s a really good idea)

A description of game play, written or storyboarded. Storyboards are visual representations of ideas. Draw your characters in actions, with arrows showing the flow of action and short written descriptions detailing the events occurring in your image (because some of us aren’t fantastic artists and our images can be a little… open to interpretation…)

Now that you have a fleshed out idea, it’s time to work out how this will all get put together. If you’ve gotten to this point and are worried that you’re going to have to spend years learning complex programming languages in order to implement your idea, fear not! Others have already done the hard yards for you. There are many RAD (Rapid Application Development) Tools available for game creation, a number of which are available for free online. Some of them still require you to learn a ‘scripting language’ (a simplified programming language made for a specific task) but in general this isn’t too complicated or involved. I’ve compiled a brief list of some of these I have found at the end of the article. The free ones are listed first, organized by game genre.

Well, that should be enough to get you started in the creation of your game. The most important thing to remember once you’ve gotten this far is that you need to complete your game. Many people start a project and then lose interest and it fails, or they keep moving on to one new project after another without finishing anything. Start small, build a working (if simple) game that is, above all else, complete. When you get to this stage you will always have a huge number of things that you wish to change, fix etc. but you’ll get a great feeling from knowing that it is, in its way, finished.

From this point, you can start the tweaking phase. Play your game a few times and ask others to do the same. Take note of what isn’t fun or could be better and change things here. At this stage, it is more important than ever to keep backups of previous versions so that if a change doesn’t work you can go back and try something different without losing any of your work. It is at this point that you can add all new features, improve graphics and sounds, whatever you please, safe in the knowledge that you’re working on a solid foundation.

When you’re happy with your game, why not share it with the world? There are many cheap or free places out there for you to host your files on and then you can jump on link lists and forums and let everyone know about your creation. Well, I hope that this has been a helpful introduction into the art of creating games. It’s a great deal of fun, and can open whole new avenues of creative expression for you to explore. Jump in and have fun!

Links:

General Game Creation:

(Tools that allow easy creation of many different game types)

Game Maker: http://www.gamemaker.nl

MegaZeux: http://megazeux.sourceforge.net/

Adventure Games:

(Games such as Monkey Island, King’s Quest, Space Quest etc.)

Adventure Game Studio: http://www.bigbluecup.com

AGAST: http://www.allitis.com/agast/

3D Adventure Studio: http://3das.noeska.com/

ADRIFT (for text adventures): http://www.adrift.org.uk/

Role Playing Games (RPGs):

(Games such as Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, Diablo)

RPG Maker:

OHRPG: http://www.hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgce/

RPG Toolit: http://www.toolkitzone.com/

Fighting Games:

(Games such as Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Soul Calibur etc.)

KOF91: http://sourceforge.net/projects/kof91/

MUGEN (unfortunately the site is largely in French): http://www.streetmugen.com/mugenus.html

SideScrolling Games:

(Games such as the 2D Mario Games, Sonic the Hedgehog, Double Dragon etc.)

The Scrolling Game Development Kit: http://gamedev.sourceforge.net/

There are many others available as well. One particularly useful site for finding game creation tools is: http://www.ambrosine.com/resource.html

Also of note, although not freeware, are the excellent game creation tools available by Clickteam at: http://www.clickteam.com/English/

Klik and Play and The Games Factory in particular are the programs to have a look at and download the free demos of.

If you really want to do things right and program the game yourself, there are some excellent programming resources available at the following locations:

Java Game Programming:

http://fivedots.coe.psu.ac.th/~ad/jg/

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1262.asp

http://javaboutique.internet.com/tutorials/Java_Game_Programming/

Visual Basic Game Programming:

http://markbutler.8m.com/vbtutorial.htm

C++ Game Programming:

http://www3.telus.net/alexander_russell/course_dx/introduction_dx.htm

http://www.rit.edu/~jpw9607/tutorial.htm

General Information:

http://www.gamedev.net/

http://www.gamasutra.com/

About The Author

Daniel Punch

M6.Net

http://www.m6.net

Daniel Punch is a university student learning how to make a living by having fun.

[email protected]

This article was posted on November 25, 2004

by Daniel Punch

The Benefits Of Outsourcing

The Benefits Of Outsourcing

by: Raymond Walsh

The year 2005 is expected to be the year of กoutsourcingก.

In case this word is new to you, then prepare yourself to the fact that this will be the buzz word of 2005.

Outsourcing is the act of exporting jobs to 3rd world countries, for the benefit of saving on production and administration costs.

The most popular form of outsourcing to this day is IT outsourcing, and the most popular countries where you can outsource IT jobs to are Romania and India.

For example: your firm is spending a lot of money hiring programmers to do some programming tasks and software writing that do not need special skills. You decide to cut costs by exporting these jobs to India, and let the same tasks be done by professional Indians instead of Americans, because their labor rate is a lot lower. This would easily save you money, sometimes up to 80%, that you can spend on other primary jobs (e.g: marketing).

Outsourcing does not only help you save money, but also gives you that push needed to walk and extra step towards winning the competitive market.

Brian Taylor, CEO of Comfosoft Inc. says that outsourcing to India helped his company ขsave more than $23,000 per month on software programming and debugging. There are a lot of talented Indians who can do the same job without getting paid a 5 figure number.ข

Today, and in the world of ขonline businessข, and to make things even easier for you, SupportUniverse.com (http://www.supportuniverse.com) has launched a new marketplace where programmers meet recruiters. All you need to do is post your project and let skilled workers around the world compete to bid on delivering the best work for the lowest cost and the shortest period of time. You can then select the best offer.

Although some people oppose the idea of outsourcing, the fact is that it is spreading like fever and it is becoming more and more ขmandatoryข for those who want to succeed in the internet world.

About The Author

Raymond Walsh, CEO of กBusiness 4 Pleasureก, and monthly printed newsletter targetting small and medium sized businesses.

This article was posted on December 10, 2004

by Raymond Walsh

Relevant Ads Increase Adsense Profits

Relevant Ads Increase Adsense Profits

by: Bas de Baar

If you’ve started using Adsense as a way to increase advertising income, but the numbers just aren’t adding up to what you expected, the problem might be with the ads themselves. If the ads being generated by Google’s Adsense aren’t relevant to your website, visitors won’t click on them. And, no clicky, no money. It’s that simple. And it’s a simple situation to fix.

One way to know if the ads are working is to monitor the clickthroughrate (CTR) on a page. If it’s low, it’s usually an indication that once a visitor arrived at your page using a certain keyword, that visitor did not find any ads relevant to that keyword. And unfortunately for you, the visitor found no reason to click on the ads.

How do I know this? It happened on my website. On one of my sites, I had a page dedicated to PHP programming (a programming language). The page had a low CTR. Upon further examination of the page, I noticed that not one of the ads was related to programming or even to technology.

What I did notice was that the ads were related to guitars. Guitars? I thought to myself, ขWhat relevance do guitars have to PHP programming?ข And I imagined visitors to my site wondered this as well.

After studying the ads, I noticed that one word seemed to keep jumping out at me. The word was ขstringsข as in guitar strings. Well strings are used in programming too, but Google was not able to make this distinction which is why it was generating guitar ads!

The solution to this problem was simple. I removed from my webpage the words ขstringข and ขstringsข (or I just used another word in place of string or strings). After Google found this page again and updated its view of it, the guitar ads were replaced with relevant ads. And best of all? CTR on this page immediately increased and so did my advertising income!

If you have a page with a low CTR, you may need to tweak your text so Adsense generates ads that are more relevant to the page. When making these types of changes to your webpages, use the same ideas you use for search engine optimization. Why?

Because Google uses the same logic to determine the appropriate Adsense ads to display on your page as it does to determine if your article should rank high for ขblue widgets.ข

Some areas on your page that might need a bit of text tweaking include:

The title of the page

The H1tags used in the page

The number of occurrences of the keywords in the text of the article

Changing the filename (this can be very effective, but only do this for new pages that are not yet in the search engines or you risk losing traffic)

One word of advice: Don’t forget that your keywords determine your search engine rankings so take small steps when changing keywords.

And remember, the only ads that will bring you the extra Adsense income you’re looking for are relevant ads!

About The Author

Bas de Baar is the author of the ebook กAnalyzing Adsense For Niche Websites.ก To learn how you can increase online profits by testing and analyzing what will work for YOU, go to: http://www.AffiliatePotion.com.

This article was posted on April 11

by Bas de Baar

Top 10 Design Issues According To Web Marketing!

Top 10 Design Issues According To Web Marketing!

by: Martin Lemieux

When it comes to designing your site, there are 2 ways you can ultimately go. a) Designing for yourself and no one else, b) Designing to fit web marketing and customer attracting methods.
Here are the top 10 issues you should always consider:
1) Flash vs. HTML vs. ASP vs. PHP: The type of code you use for your site may have a huge impact.
Flash is not yet ready to fully intergrate within web marketing. Although technology is advancing, search engines aren’t moving quickly enough to include this style of coding in their rankings.
ASP, if your site is completely data base driven, make sure that your code is writen into the page, not being pulled from tables everytime. Also, make sure to preplan your meta tags within the data base. Too many data bases out there never implement a meta tag strategy.
PHP/Java : These are both safe programming methods, just remember to keep it clean and simple. Don’t forget to test your programming.
HTML : Probably always going to be the programming method of choice when it comes to servicing search engines and user friendly web sites.

2) Always test your site for bugs. Even if you think your programming is perfect, most times itกs not. Search engines / Visitors will browse your site with more ease. Test your site here: http://netmechanic.com/toolbox/htmlcode.htm or here: http://www.thewebclinic.com

3) Make your site look as proffesional as you can. If you can’t hire a web designer / graphic designer, go out and spend a little bit of money and buy yourself a really great template for your site.

4) Put up your site for reviews! This is so important because other peopleกs reviews will reflect exactly what your visitors will think. Openin up to some reviews will create more sales. You can add your site for review here: http://www.webproworld.com/viewforum.php?f=4

5) Promote proper ‘title Tagsก. While promoting your site, make sure to create a proper title tag that best describes your entire site. Also, make sure to include your entire title within all the กLink exchangesก that you make!

6) Do not break any search engine / spamming rules! This is crutial for your long term survival. Spamming is only a quick fix with a high price attached to it.

7) Implement a link building strategy for your site. Make sure to include a link exchange program within your site when you are designing it. So many people add it on later and it seems like it doesn’t belong with the site. Less people will want to leave your site if your link resources looks like the rest of your design.

8) Always expand your information. Search engines / visitors get bored quickly. Bringing in fresh, new content will keep them interested and keep them coming back.

9) Try not to get wrapped up in the กGoogle Danceก. Too many people start watching their online performance instead of increasing it. Promote daily and always stick with it.

10) Create banners, towers, buttons for people to use. It never hurts having someone take your buttons and adding them to their site for nothing in exchange.

Stay uptodate with web marketing news. Whether it be กhttp://www.webproworld.comก, กhttp://sitepronews.comก, or กhttp://www.smartads.info/newsletterก, always keep up with standards of marketing online!

Good luck with everything!

About The Author

Martin Lemieux

Smartads President

Affordable Web Design & Web Advertising

http://www.smartads.info / http://www.smartads.ca

Eye Catching Print Design

http://www.3dimentionaldesign.com

Marketing Tools

http://www.smartads.info/newsletter / http://www.thewebclinic.com

This article was posted on May 25, 2004

by Martin Lemieux

The Contrast And Similarities Between A Web Design

The Contrast And Similarities Between A Web Designer And Web Programmer

by: Onaefe Edebi

The concept of web designing based on the nature and rapid growth of the Internet is nothing to boast of any more. This is because of the large number of web sites published to the Internet everyday, so as to showcase one’s presence and dominance on the World Wide Web. You may ask why this is so, well, the so simple answer is the rate at which technology is evolving.

An example is illustrated with the popular Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia’s Flash. They are two different web designing software which have the same basic function (to create an interactive website). However, a person who has used both programs would observe that Microsoft FrontPage, which has been existing over quite a long period of time, deals basically with HTML codes. No programming language or knowledge is involved; that is why I choose to term its use in the category of web designing. Almost everybody, who owns a computer with the Windows Operating System along side MS FrontPage installed in it, knows how to design a simple website. This is because of it’s format which does not require programming skills, but only requires the user to type the text, copy and paste even drag and drop a picture to the potential website. However, Macromedia’s Flash, which was released years after Microsoft’s first release of it’s FrontPage, shows it’s advancement in effects, animations and even graphics. This powerful also shows an advancement in web designing technology. You’re probably thinking, “how incorrect”. Well, I like you to know the programming and designing are entirely two different things. While designing as been discussed about using Microsoft FrontPage as an example let us look into programming on the web.

Now, unlike Microsoft FrontPage, Macromedia’s Flash creates a more animated and effectsfilled website that Microsoft FrontPage. However it require programming skills to maximize its use and put it to work. So as a person with ground knowledge of Microsoft FrontPage would call himself a web designer, the other with Macromedia’s Flash would call himself a web programmer so as to differentiate himself to a so called ‘novice’, who may have learnt web designing through the widely believed ‘easytouse’ Microsoft FrontPage. But whichever way a website is created, it is important to note that its primary function is to supply information about services, products and other functionaries. So, whether a web programmer or a web designer; if the same work given to them is to create a website, they symbolize oneness, in the sense that however way the site may be created, or how more interactive one’s work may be, compared to the other, they still pass the same information to the website visitors, thus making them both creative in the aspect of ‘web designing’, which almost every high school kid can do.

Yet as one, who is a programmer, I do not see much of a difference between the web designer and programmer, unless a far more advanced form of web programming than we (web programmers) have now, is created. But till then the socalled web programmers would continue to stretch on their differences from the web designer, irrespective to their similarities.

About The Author

As a student I studied the basic and intermediate concepts of Web designing and Web programming. I am also into webdesigning and webprogramming

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 25, 2003

by Onaefe Edebi

Connecting and Accessing Data through ADO.NET

Connecting and Accessing Data through ADO.NET

by: Pawan Bangar

Microsoftกs ADO.NET technology offers a solution to many of the problems associated with data access.

Accessing data has become a major programming task for modern software programming, both for standardalone applications and for web based applications. Microsoftกs ADO.NET technology offers a solution to many of the problems associated with data access.

ADO.NET is an improvement to Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects (ADO). It is a standardsbased programming model for creating distributed datasharing applications. ADO.NET offers several advantages over previous versions of ADO and over other data access components. These benefits fall into the following categories:

Interoperability

Maintainability

Programmability

Performance.

Connecting to a database:

For performing and operation we need to connect to a database. This is done automatically through ADO connection, of which code is associated with VS.net Programming environment.

Connecting Database

sharp1.cs class xyz1 {

public static void main()

{

try

{

System.Data.ADO.ADOConnection s;

S=new System.Data.ADO.ADOConnection();

System.Console.Writeline(กCSharp);

}

catch(System.Exception e)

{

System.console.Writeline(e.ToString());

}}}

Above program can be compiled through command line at DOS promot giving command line option as /r:System.Data.Dll

Because the code for ADO.Connection is available at this DLL. The above program consists of an object s resembling as System.ado.adoconnection .

Thus we are creating the object s by the statement:

System.Data.ADO.ADOConnection s;

From the output it is clear that the constructor has thrown no exception, as otherwise catch block would have been executed.

About The Author

Presently working in the capacity of the Technical Director of Birbals, an econsulting firm based in India dedicated in providing innovative and effective web, Hospitality and consultancy services to public, private and nonprofit organizations. Successfully founded Birbals and other IT companies like Ebirbals and SeoBirbals.

This article was posted on April 16

by Pawan Bangar

The Coming Television Revolution

The Coming Television Revolution

by: Terry Mitchell

The revolution is just getting started and will begin to make its mark this year. By 2010, it will begin to take off. By 2025, it will be the standard for all TV viewing. Itกs called Internet Protocol Television, or IPTV for short. IPTV works with a settop box connected to any broadband interface and to a TV. It will allow users to choose among thousands (and eventually hundreds of thousands) of hours of programming, including movies, sports, classic TV, etc., and download their selections from the internet to the hard drive of the settop box. Initially, settop box hard drives will be able to store up to 300 hours of programming at a time, but capacity will expand as the technology becomes more refined. Also, download times will become shorter and shorter as broadband connection speeds become faster and faster. Eventually, a twohour movie will be fully downloadable in a couple of minutes. Once the programs are downloaded to the hard drive, they can be viewed on the connected TV at any time via a DVRtype interface provided by the settop box.

Besides the convenience of an all videoondemand (VOD) environment, IPTV will provide a much wider range of programming than broadcast, cable, and satellite TV, or even major video chains, could ever provide. Because the programming is available from the internet, it will be almost completely unlimited and unconstrained. Programming from all over the world will be available along with every imaginable genre of niche programming. Also, previously unreleased independent films that have been sitting on shelves for years due to the lack of a distribution source will suddenly become available to the masses via IPTV. Films that previously could not be made at all will become a reality and be available on the IPTV services. Long forgotten films and TV shows will have new life breathed into them by IPTV. To top it all off, much of this programming will be eventually be available in high definition (HDTV)!

Most IPTV platforms will be divided into กchannelsก, but not the same kind of channels that we have grown accustomed to with traditional TV services. In this case, a กchannelก is defined as a division of an IPTV service by individual content provider. Each content provider carried by a given IPTV platform will have its own guidelines for delivering programming on its channel. Some will provide their content for free to everyone who owns a given IPTV product. Some will be subscription based, i.e., everything on their channels will be available for a monthly or annual subscription. Others will be all payperview. Still others will provide a combination of all of the above.

Several entrants into this market have either already debuted or plan to debut sometime this year. Among those are Akimbo (www.akimbo.com), DAVETV (www.dave.tv), TimeShifTV (www.timeshiftv.com), and VCinema (www.vcinema.com). Please see their respective websites for more details, as each one will offer a slightly different variation of IPTV technology. In addition, a joint venture between TiVo (www.tivo.com) and NetFlix (www.netflix.com) will be starting up later this year. TiVo plans to eventually make the entire Netflix DVD library available to its customers on an ondemand basis via a broadband connection to a TiVo box and a TV. Other potential IPTV contenders will be announcing their intentions over the next year or two. One of these nascent IPTV services headquartered near my home has already started placing กhelp wantedก ads in my local newspaper.

Within the next 20 years, all the fuss over broadcast TV indecency will become irrelevant, as there will be very little other than news and live sporting events on broadcast TV. The major networks will shift most of their entertainment programs to IPTV to avoid all the broadcast content restrictions currently being enforced by the FCC. Eventually, broadcast TV will cease to exist. Cable and satellite services as we know them will also become extinct. Yes, there will still be cable and satellite platforms, but they, along with DSL and wireless internet services, will exist merely as conduits for bringing broadband internet into homes and offices. There won’t be any more cable and satellite TV, per se. The now 60yearold paradigm of television schedules in which programs air at specific times on specific days of the week will pretty much be a thing of the past. Everything, except whatกs left of broadcast TV, will be exclusively available on demand via an IPTV platform.

These developments in no way mean that all TV programming will become more risqué. While there will be plenty of risqué programming available to those who want it, there will an almost unlimited supply of family and religious programs available. With a veritable smorgasbord of entertainment options at your fingertips, there will be something available for all tastes. IPTV may not turn out to be a TV utopia, but itกs at least going to come close that ideal.

About The Author

Terry Mitchell is a software engineer, freelance writer, and trivia buff from Hopewell, VA. He also serves as a political columnist for American Daily and operates his own website http://www.commenterry.com on which he posts commentaries on various subjects such as politics, technology, religion, health and wellbeing, personal finance, and sports. His commentaries offer a unique point of view that is not often found in mainstream media.

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 01

by Terry Mitchell