Sample Background Tile

To add a colored background with an imprinted design to your web page, you generally upload a small image such as the one shown on the left of this post that is “tiled” when viewed on the Internet.   Although I personally think that white space is better, there are times — especially on a short sales page type of site — where a colorful background can enhance the site appearance.

Unless you are good at graphics, it might take hours worth of “hit and miss” attempts to create a background that looks professional.

There’s an easy solution — and you can generate your background image online and download it.

The Tiled Backgrounds Designer site gives you a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) background viewer.  You can select the color, the canvas, the image and other components of your background.  Then, click the  “apply background” link and you’ll be able to see what your background will look like on the Internet.  Keep changing the design elements to get the look that you want.  Once you are satisfied, just download the image and you have a background that will look great.

Here’s a screenshot that shows the design options available.

You’ll like the price of this convenient service:  It’s free.

The drawback is that you can’t add text, like your company name,  as an image.  But if you’re looking for a zero-cost, quick and easy way to design backgrounds, check out the Tiled Backgrounds Designer.

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Earlier this month, the Obama administration created a stir amongst the IT community with its announcement that it would be following the same draconian policies of the Bush administration with respect to a secretive anti-counterfeiting trade agreement known as ACTA.

PC World reported that The Office of U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), part of President Barack Obama’s office, denied Knowledge Ecology Internation’s equest for information about ACTA, citing national security concerns.

With the ensuing uproar over Obama’s apparent flip-flopping over his campaign promises to ensure a more transparent government, IT World reported this week that the USTR  pledged to review the transparency of its trade negotiations.

ACTA has a broad scope and allegedly addresses counterfeit physical goods and the distribution of copyrighted works and information technology over the Internet.  Negotiations began in October 2007 between the United States, the European Community, Switzerland and Japan.  Since then, Australia, Korea, New Zealand, Jordan, Morocco, Mexico, Singapore, Canada and the United Arab Emirates have purportedly joined in the negotiaitons.  These negotiations have been held secretly.

According to a Russian news report, ACTA will contribute to a growing surveillance culture in the United States.  The government would be able to access your hard drive to see if you have engaged in peer-to-peer distribution of copyrighted material.  Border guards would have the authority to look at your laptop or other digital media to see if you have illegal downloads.

Here is Russia Today’s report:

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If you have paid text links in your blog, you’ve probably heard of the Kontera Content Link network.  One of the nice tools that Kontera has recently issued is an update to its Wordpress plugin.  With the update, you can specify whether or not the content links will show on each post.  Here’s a snapshot:

Once your blog is approved into the system, you can get a lot of links delivered by Kontera if you have a lot of content.  You can have multiple blogs in Kontera, but each must be first approved by Kontera.

I have found that although there is a lot of linked content, these links do not result in much money.

I’ve discovered inLinks and have to say, I am making over 52587% MORE money with inLinks than with Kontera.  InLinks has a tremendous support system, has an easy-to-use interface and, unlike Kontera, lets you add as many blogs in as you wish within your membership area.

Although you will not see as many links in your blog content from inLinks, believe me, they pay a heck of a lot better.  We’re looking at quality vs. quantity.

The InLinks system lets the advertisers review your blog.  The advertisers offer to pay “x” amount for a link per month.  All of the negotiating is done by inLinks.  I’m planning on signing on as an advertiser there (as well as remaining a publisher) because I’ve been so impressed with their program.

If you are looking at ways to add additional revenue to your blog, I highly recommend that you take a look at inLinks. I have been extremely pleased with them and think you will be, too.

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Windows users may be experiencing slow computers right now.  I am not sure what is causing this.

In my case, my computer itself has not been slow but web pages are unusually slow to load on the Internet.  I have a Gateway and the “Big Fix” that came with the computer is constantly saying there is a problem with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer; yet, no “fixlet” shows up.  I don’t use Explorer unless I have to.  Some legal information sites I routinely work with and some GIS mapping applications are viewable with Explorer only. Other than those sites, I use Firefox for everything.  I recently updated to the new Version 8, but the “fixlet” probem was happening before the latest version came out.

Several people I know are experiencing very slow computer time, regardless of whether they are on the Internet, and some are seeing a message pop up when they are about to shut down their computer that someone else is logged into their computer’s network, even though they’re not connected to a network and no one else has access to the computer.

For the time being, I don’t know the cause of these problems, but what I can say is this:

1. Make sure you are backing up your important files!
2. Defrag your computer’s hard drive regularly.
3. Update your anti-virus and other security programs and run them.
4. Use Firefox — and install today’s update which fixes some security issues.

Has anyone else seen some unusual Windows activity or slow time?  I’m curious if there’s something going on, or if it’s just where I live that people are experiencing weird computer problems.

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Do you want to be able to unzip your downloads without having to pay for software that can unzip it?

I know a few people whose free trial has run out and they are unable to pay for the full version of WinZip, so I’ve been looking around for an alternative solution for them and finally found it:  7-Zip.

7-Zip is totally free and open source.  It is as  robust — if not more so — than WinZip.  Here’s a partial list of what it can handle:

• Supported formats:
  • Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR.
  • Unpacking only: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, DMG, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MSI, NSIS, RAR, RPM, UDF, WIM, XAR and Z.
• For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip.

When you download software and ebooks, it is essential that you have an unzip utility since most of it will come in a compressed format.  7-Zip is the free solution you’ve been looking for.

The program works with Windows operating systems, including Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP and Vista.

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Did you know that first class letter stamps are  going up again? Effective on May 11, stamps will be $0.44 (they are currently $0.42). All of the other rates, like book mailing rates, flat fee priority mail rates, and the rest of it will also increase.

Although I work online, I mail out quite a bit of “physical” stuff like letters, notebooks and CDs. For years, I have saved time and a lot of money in postage by using Stamps.com, which allows me to buy postage online and print it out from my computer, either on labels that they supply or directly onto envelopes.  They provide scales which will calculate the postage required to send off larger packages.

The Stamps.com service offers a lot of convenience.  I live in a rural area and it’s a bit of a drive to the post office.  There are times that it is a challenge to get to the post office before it closes for the day.  The ability to handle my postage from my computer and just drop things off in the mailbox has helped me meet a lot of deadlines.

There are a few more things that I like about them that is not apparent at first glance of their web site.  For example:

• You get software that you use to buy postage and print it out … the software will store all of the addresses that you specify in a contact folder, which is extremely handy.
• If you’ve typed in the wrong zip code, the software will automatically correct it.  It will also add the 4-number extension automatically.
• The software lets you specify that email notices with USPS tracking information be sent to your recipient and to you.  This is helpful for order fulfillment so that you and your customers know where their packages are at all times.
• For more expensive items, you can buy insurance online.
• Once you’re a customer, you don’t have to stand in line at the post office to have all of your larger packages inspected and approved for security purposes.
• They send you supplies such as shipping labels whenever you need them.

Right now, Stamps.com is offering some specials.  For example, you can get $25.00 in free postage for signing up.

With postal rates constantly going up, it’s nice to have a resource that saves some money.  I’ve been a Stamps.com customer for several years now and have been very happy with them.  If you have a home business and routinely need to fill Internet orders with physical documents or product, definitely check them out.

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When you are installing php or cgi scripts, sometimes the configuration file calls for the directory, such as /home/username/public_html/directory.  Other programs that have an email notice function in them will ask for the location of sendmail.

If you don’t know exactly where your root or other directories are located, there’s a handy perl script that you can install called “env.pl.”  The script will display your server IP, the location of sendmail, the name of your root directory, the version of perl and other scripts running on your site, and other useful variables.

Here’s a screen shot showing a partial list of environmental variables that the script will display:

You can find this script at Total Choice Hosting.  To install it,

1. FTP the script into your cgi-bin in ASCII format.
2. CHMOD the script to 755 (Read-Write-Execute – Read-Execute – Read-Execute).
3. Go to http://www.yourserver.com/cgi-bin/env.pl – you should be able to see all of your info.

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Keywords are what will pull in search engine traffic to your web pages, particularly if you have one-way links pointing to them. There are a number of ways to conduct your keyword research, including Google’s external keyword tool and other handy resources from Google (click the word “Google” on the tags cloud to the right of this article, and you will find “how to” reviews of what Google has to offer).

A quick and easy service is Soovle, which pulls the top search engine queries from Google, Yahoo, Ask, Wikipedia, YouTube, Amazon and Answers. When your search term is partially typed in, a number of suggested keyphrases comes up. Here’s an example, where I start to use the word “graphic.”

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Those of us who are Commission Junction affiliates recently received an email alerting us to California’s proposed Internet sales tax law which would be similar to the one that the State of New York passed and that its Supreme Court upheld.

According to Assemblymember Nancy Skinner’s press release,  AB 178, the proposed use tax, would raise $55 million per year for the State of California.  Skinner says that the bill would “provide that out-of-state companies which maintain a network in California and thus have a presence in the state would therefore be required to collect sales tax on orders received from within California. New York passed a similar law, and was sued by Amazon.com. The New York Supreme Court dismissed Amazon’s claim, based on an extensive body of legal decisions defining the nature of nexus and upheld New York’s right to levy the sales tax.”

The bill would purportedly exempt business that do less than $10,000 in California sales per year.

You can track the status of AB 178 here.

A hearing is set for April 13.  Commission Junction, which is based in California, plans to oppose the bill at the hearing.

Skinner’s press release indicates that the bill would make the playing field more level for brick and mortar businesses in California.  I think that this type of justification is not the main reason … the primary thrust of the Internet sales tax bill is to get money.  Period.  I think we’re going to see more and more of this type of legislation.  I also think that these bills will be upheld, no matter how much opposition there is.

The bottom line is that government always wants a piece of the pie.  And they intend to get it.

Watch for every state in the union to pass this type of bill.

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Every day on this blog, there are at least 50 comments that Akismet has caught and placed in the spam section.  Sometimes the comments are good ones but for the most part, Akismet does a great job in identifying what’s junk and what is not.

A common spam content looks like this (the screen shot only captures a piece of it … the whole thing fills up about one and a half screens):

Obviously, these types of comments are computer generated, but I don’t know what program the spammers are using.  Presumably, they’ve paid good money for the software … but why?

Unless a blog is not maintained and does not use Akismet or some other filtering plugin, I can’t imagine that these types of comments are making it through.  I’d give them a 0.005% chance of being published.

It seems to me that the folks who are generating this type of spam would get more results if they spent the time to write legitimate comments.  What do you think?

When it comes to creating and promoting sites, spending the time to write good articles, comments and web content is what creates lasting value … not purchasing software that automatically spews out spam and scraper material.

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