Archive for June, 2009
June 8, 2009 at 6:22 am · Filed under Software + More
Money is the very crux of adware and spyware. These pose several problems and are a security risk.
Adware is a program that displays advertisements on the computer whether you want them or not. They are not just connected to particular websites or free software but are programmed to start up whenever your computer is switched on.
Programs like Eudora mail client display advertisements in lieu of charging registration fees for use of software. It helps developers recover program development costs. Kazaa the file sharing application comes bundled with at least three ad-ware programs. Two of them serve ads to the desktop while another redirects the user’s browser to a search engine with advertiser sponsored web results. Well known ones are: BroadcastPC; Comet Cursor; GeoWhere; Network Essentials, 123 Messenger, Direct Revenue, and so on.
Unfortunately, other guises of adware are spyware and malware.
Spyware is a program code that relays information about you and your work without your permission or knowledge. Some just “spy” on you conveying your Internet habits to marketing companies, while others are “thieves” they access credit card information as well as other sensitive files. In plain terms, it is malicious software that can intercept or take control of a computer’s operation without user knowledge or consent. Termed as “malware” the redefinition of spyware, the programs can:
• Steal personal information and the address book.
• Flood the browser with pop-ups.
• Spam the system.
• Slow down programs and connection.
• Hijack the browser and redirect the user to a “con” page.
• Uses the computer as a server to broadcast porn.
• Can cause a crash.
Spyware reaches a computer through innocent web pages, game demos, MP3 players, search tool bars, and other downloads like free software. It installs itself and leaves a mark on the windows registry. It can hog the computer resources such as memory and hard drive and cause a crash or lock up. Keystroke-logging spyware can steal passwords and credit card information for thieves.
To protect the files one has to:
• Use anti adware and spyware programs. Examples: Spybot, Search & destroy, Pest Patrol, and Lavasoft’s Adware.
• Keep windows as well as Internet explorer up-to-date by applying the latest security patches.
• Maintain the security level of the Internet Explorer at medium. Users must not lower the security level.
• Use firewalls and web proxies to block access to web sites known to carry spyware.
• Install layered protection.
• Update the antivirus program. An up-to-date program will stop spyware as well as Trojans.
• Install a startup monitor to protect your system.
• Never accept “free” as being free—check out free software and downloads, there will be a hidden surprise or catch.
• Never download software from warez sites. Pirated software is always distributed along with adware and spyware.
• Use Spy checker to determine if the download has spyware. This can be accessed from the free computer securities pages.
An anti-spyware coalition has been instituted by Microsoft, Earthlink, McAfee, and Hewlett-Packard. They are working towards anti-spyware legislation and putting protection systems in place. A survey shows that 87 percent of users know what spyware is and of this 40 percent through firsthand experience. Protect yourself and your work; keep your system free of adware and spyware.
Paul Wilson is a freelance writer for www.1888SoftwareDownloads.com<www.1888SoftwareDownloads.com/>, the premier website to find Free Software Downloads including free anti-virus software, free spyware detection software, free toolbars, free chat software and more. He also freelances for www.1888FreeOnlineGames.com<www.1888FreeOnlineGames.com/> .
June 7, 2009 at 8:39 pm · Filed under Business Opps, Insurance Infos, Living With Medicine
Many doctors, clinics and hospitals have begun to outsource their billing services. This allows them to save money and staff time that is needed to care for patients, and running the facilities in an efficient manor. Medical billing has always been a problem area in the medical industry. It is hard for the office staff to keep up with the ever changing collection of forms needing to be filled out for insurance and Medicare, to name a few. If the forms are not filled out correctly it means a long delay in payment or even knowing how much reimbursement will be made. The customer will need to be billed for what is not covered by the insurance program involved.
It is often impossible to hire in-house staff for preparing medical billing, because they may not have in-depth knowledge and time to handle claims. Many health care providers resort to medical billing outsourcing which involves the hiring of billing professionals. The medical billing company acts as a consultant for the doctor. The company assists the doctor in handling all medical billing needs, coding practices, and preparation of fee structure. A good medical billing outsourcing company is a great method of maximizing the average earning of a doctor than employing an in-house biller.
Completing insurance paperwork is time-consuming and sometimes confusing. Each diagnosis and procedure must be assigned a proper code for the insurance company to pay the claim. An assistant in a doctor’s office may not have the proper training to complete this paperwork. The doctor does not receive any of this training in medical school. Outsourcing this work allows staff to focus on patients, scheduling and managing files. In addition, a person only working on claims does not have these distractions. They become familiar with the insurance company’s policies and procedures.
Those who wish to advance can look into the possibility of specializing in a certain area (such as cancer billing) or becoming supervisors over a group of medical billing specialists. Most forms of advancement, however, require you to get further education.
Though there is a wide range of salaries for people working in medical billing services, most people make between $28,044 and $34,046 per year. Those with more experience and more qualifications will be on the higher end of the scale, and those with less experience and fewer qualifications will be on the lower end of the scale.
June 6, 2009 at 8:55 am · Filed under Books And More, House Of Languages, Multimedia Resources
An active life often makes it hard to squeeze in everything you would like to read. Often we don’t notice that extended journeys and various different tasks may take up sizable chunks of our precious time. Favorite hobbies take a back seat to earning a living, dealing with children, or household tasks. If you enjoy learning and find it troublesome to fit it in, your commute may be an opportunity to enjoy an audiobook. Thanks to media files, you can spoil yourself with Hear & Play Chords 101 by Jermaine Griggs for sale from Download Audio Book Online, or audio books brought to life by Brahma Kumaris without ever picking up a book. Today multitasking has become necessary. Audio books such as Rich Dad’s Advisors: The ABC’s Of Real Estate Investing by Ken McElroy available from Download Audio Book Online occupy the dead hours in life, whether it is waiting time in a dentist’s surgery or taking the kids to soccer practise. Audible books are now available to download as audio files suitable for computers, laptops and ipods these titles include Glenn Harrold’s Ultimate Guide Quitting Smoking Forever by Glenn Harrold, so use of your mp3 player and get ready to check out a bestseller or a wonderful novel, such as audible books written by Louisa May Alcott without dragging a heavy book around. Another advantage of audible books is hiring or purchasing the title which interests you and listening to it in your own time. How about studying Polish? Try an audio book! Maybe the latest commercial practices matter to you, you can even explore religious or spiritual trends.
Audible books are for sale in a tremendous assortment of titles and genres. Whether you like natural history, or you are crazy over politics or if your interests lie in personal development, most are available through online downloads. Options are wide open; it’s simple to take a subscription to a service and rent or instead purchase what interests you.
Please check out our one of a kind webpage for language schools tips.
Reading will always have its place, however the thousands of audio titles available offer convenience. Numerous chronicles, such as audiobooks recounted by Joyce Sandilands, can be more enjoyable when performed by the writer or an illustrious actor. Reading a title isn’t quite the same as enjoying an audio book told by Shel Silverstein, including the additional subtleties presented during a rendidtion. Hearing audio-books performed by Brooklyn Porter can bring something special to your reading experience and often go much deeper the words on a page.
So the next time in future when you are thinking of buying the hard copy of a book that might collect dust on your bookshelves, remember an audiobook as a better alternative.
June 5, 2009 at 3:11 pm · Filed under Software + More
One obvious solution is to approach a software development company and obtain a custom built product. However to take this approach one needs to first know what features and functionality is desired. Then on the other hand in some instances the need does not warrant the cost of commissioning a custom application.
A plethora of free open source web applications exist today. Regardless of the specific circumstances of the need these applications can quite often prove to be a valuable resource.
http://freshmeat.net is one of the best online directories of open source applications. A quick search on freshmeat.net for say “intranet”, “cms” or “groupware” will yield pages of results. Browsing these results any application marked beta, stable or mature is a possible solution. A large majority of the available web applications would also state PHP + MySQL as the platform.
Oh well I need to have some Linux Server and it’s way too hard is a common reaction. Fortunately this is not entirely true. If you wanted to host a large scale production site then the chances are that a custom Linux server may well be a requirement. However just evaluating on your own PC, or setting up a solution on your LAN for anywhere between 1 to 100 users can be easily realized without custom Linux servers.
The solution is in another open source free product known as WAMP server. The acronym stands for Windows Apache MySQL PHP server. WAMP is extremely simple to install and a good platform for either evaluating PHP + MYSQL applications or operating the same for up to a few hundred users.
Visit http://www.wampserver.com
Or http://www.wampserver.com/en/ for the English version
First it is important to note that most open source PHP + MySQL applications will not run correctly on the latest versions of PHP and MySQL. For this reason instead of the downloading the latest version of WAMP server click on “downloads” from the left menu and then click on “older versions at sourceforge” This will take you to
https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=116092
scroll down and select “WAMP5 1.4.3″. Download the WAMP5_1.4.3.exe file and install it on your computer with default options.
Once installed and started a new icon will appear in the icon tray near the date/time on your task bar. Left click on this icon to activate it’s menu which allows you to restart or edit the configuration files.
Changing the web server port if necessary.
One common reason for wanting to edit configuration file is in case you already have a web server running on the same computer. In this case you would need to change the port address used by apache to something other than 80. In this case 8080 would probably be a good alternative choice.
——-Changing the web server port address Begin———–
Click on the WAMP server icon and from the menu under “config files” select “httpd.conf”. A long text file will open up in notepad. In this file scroll down to the line that reads “Port 80″ and change this to read “Port 8080″, Save the file and close notepad. Once again click on the wamp server icon and select restart all services. One more change needs to be made before we are done. In Windows Explorer find the location where WAMP server was installed which is by Default “C:\Wamp”. Next goto the subfolder named “www”. Inside here you will see another subfolder named “phpmyadmin”. We are looking for a file named “config.inc.php”. In a default installation this file will be at “C:\Wamp\www\phpmyadmin\config.inc.php”. Open this file in wordpad and find the line that reads
$cfg[’PmaAbsoluteUri’] = ‘localhost/phpmyadmin/’;
Change this line to read:
$cfg[’PmaAbsoluteUri’] = ‘localhost:8080/phpmyadmin/’;
——-Changing the web server port address End———–
Now open a web browser and access http://localhost . Or if you changed the port address to 8080 then goto http://localhost:8080/ You should be greeted by the WAMP welcome page. For each application that you wish to install create a new folder inside the “www” subfolder of where WAMP was installed. Lets assume that WAMP was installed at “C:\Wamp”.
Let say for example you wanted to install Mambo (www.mamboserver.com)
1) You would download the .zip or .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 file and uncompress it using winzip or winrar into “c:\Wamp\www\mambo”.
2) You would access the wamp welcome page http://localhost/ or http://localhost:8080/ and access phpmyadmin. In here you would create a new database for mambo.
3) You would then access the wamp welcome page http://localhost/ or http://localhost:8080/ and from the list at the bottom of the page you would click on Mambo
4) You would then be greeted by the mambo installer which is a simple 5 step process. (the default username for MySQL is root and the password is blank as in an empty string)
Let say for example you wanted to install oscommerce
You would download the .zip or .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 file and uncompress it using winzip or winrar into “c:\Wamp\www\oscommerce”.
5) You would access the wamp welcome page http://localhost/ or http://localhost:8080/ and access phpmyadmin. In here you would create a new database for oscommerce.
6) You would then access the wamp welcome page http://localhost/ or http://localhost:8080/ and from the list at the bottom of the page you would click on Mambo
7) You would then be greeted by the oscommerce installer which is a simple process. (the default username for MySQL is root and the password is blank as in an empty string)
And so on and so forth.
Any PHP + MySQL web application which does not provide an automated installer is most likely not a very mature application.
Good luck
Web Application Development
Dot Net Web Design and Development by Zap Strategy
June 5, 2009 at 12:19 am · Filed under Software + More
Getting Organized in the Computer Age
A database is a collection of information, a sort of electronic filing system. Database software provides a way to enter the information, or data, organize it and view it when needed. Databases are effective programs for organizing and manipulating large amounts of data.
Databases are normally organized into fields, records and files. A field is a single piece of data, a record is a set of fields, and a file is a set of records. For example, if you were to create a database of the names and addresses of everyone who lives on your street, your last name would be a field. Taken together, your name and address fields would be a record. The collection of the records of all the people on the street would be a file.
Large databases contain quite a bit of data and it would be too difficult to search through each record for the one you seek. Database software allows users to run a search or query to select records. Users simply type in the data they wish to see, and the database returns the records containing that data.
Database software also allows users to manipulate the information by sorting it. Say in the above example you wish to see a list of everyone in the neighborhood in alphabetical order. You could accomplish this through a sort. Another day you might want to see the same data listed in order of house numbers. You could sort the database information in this way as well.
Reports can be created in database software to view data in easy to read formats. You can choose to have all the fields included in the report, or just a few.
There are many wonderful database software programs available. Here are a few of the top products.
Alpha Five Version 6 Database Software
The Alpha Five Version 6 is an award winning database software created by Alpha Software, a company that has been developing database solutions for over 20 years. The Alpha Five Version 6 allows users to make web databases without having to write code. IT professionals are able to produce databases quicker, resulting in lower costs. People who couldn’t make databases before because they did not know how to write code can now produce professional looking databases.
Filemaker Pro 8 Database Software
Filemaker’s newest offering, Filemaker Pro 8, comes in two versions - a standard version for new users, and Filemaker Pro 8 Advanced for professional developers. The standard version now allows users to find records with identical data in a certain field by using the Find Matching Records command. The newest version contains commands that allow users export information to Excel and to save files as pdf. The spell check function is also improved, with mispelled words being underlined.
Microsoft Access Database Software
Microsoft Access is simple, easy to use database software. Both professionals and new database designers can use it. One benefit of Access is that it is integrated well with other Microsoft products, such as Windows. Access is easy to use with small databases but can be more difficult when used for larger databases.
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June 4, 2009 at 7:41 am · Filed under Business Opps
In times of having a troubling economic condition, such as what is happening today, mere employment may not suffice to make both ends meet. While setting up a business always involves risk, which the current fiscal crisis may intensify, there are still profitable investments that potential investors can count on and one of them is the ATM Machine Business.
Not all ATM machines are owned by major banks. Some of these machines found gas stations, bars, and convenience stores, are owned by businessmen or by full-time or part-time ATM management companies. Unlike any other business, having an ATM Machine requires no inventory. The cost of having one is also lower compared to other business transactions since an ATM Machine no longer needs employees. Most of the time, charges for the rental space is waived thereby cutting down on the expenses. Monitoring the business is not even a problem since it’s a highly technology-based enterprise that can be checked through a computer.
Gaining profit from an ATM Machine Business is predictable since each transaction is guaranteed to bring a fixed amount of income to its owner. It’s also a good buy for those who are only starting to put up a business since the investment cost is so cheap and the return of investment usually takes only a year or six months for those machines located in strategic spots.
If you’re interested in establishing an ATM Machine Business and yet lack the funds to pursue it, you may try searching for a small business grant resource or seek the counseling services offered by Score, an organization based in Chicago, Illinois. Score has helped starters in getting their business financed through availing a small business grant resource from many of its partners.
June 2, 2009 at 10:10 pm · Filed under Business Opps
On the whole unless you are a well renowned successful figure in the business world such as Peter Sutherland it is likely that at some point in your past you have made some bad financial decisions. If this is the case it is very important that you are able to address the errors you have made so you can make certain that you dont repeat the same mistakes again in the future. An important lesson that needs to be learnt is that you need to adhere to better self discipline when it comes to spending money, much as a lot of people need to do with other areas of their life. It is a very handy strategy to identify to yourself those areas of spending you may well be able to reign in. More often than not this can be spending on frivolous things, but for others it could be something such as a gambling problem or spending too much money at expensive restaurants.
One of the biggest problems people have had in recent times has been the freely available credit which has led to people borrowing more than they can afford, and as it has turned out the banks lending far beyond their means. The best way to deal with a mountain of credit card debt is to ensure you work out in an organized fashion how big you can afford to make your repayments in a spreadsheet. This also gives you the ability to accurately forecast your financial future.
The majority of credit card companies and banks have suffered a lot in recent times, being stuck with a great deal of bad debt which people have been unable to reply. This in turn has led to a big surge in the amount of people declaring themselves bankrupt as they are unable to keep up with the huge monthly payments on their credit cards. A lot of people are in the situation where they have huge difficulty even making the interest payments let alone start hammering away at the actual debt on the credit card itself. In some cases those who have had to resort to withdrawing cash on their credit card are often in an even worse position being lumbered with the higher interest rate on cash which they are unable to get rid of until they have cleared the amount which stems from spending on goods and services.
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