EssayBoard

From the read at Venturebeat, ZoneAlarm has just toughened up its software, and now more people can be better protected against computer viruses and worms.  One feature that has caught my attention is that ZoneAlarm provides keystroke encryption.  This very feature allows ZoneAlarm to encrypt whatever you type on your computer in real time, and as ZoneAlarm claims, it will stop keyloggers.  Keyloggers are programs that stay hidden on your computer and logging what you had typed down; this can be used by hackers to retrieve passwords and other confidential information from you.  Also as more laptops get sell than ever before, protecting data on laptop is now even more important, and so ZoneAlarm is now providing hard-drive encryption.  Hard-drive encryption is important for laptops since laptops are easily be stolen or lost.

[poll id="3"]

Walmart is growing its business through online sales by selling other companies products on its website.  Not all companies are now qualified for partnering up with Walmart through its online store.  Walmart is doing this to counter its recent offline slow growth of sales.  So why are we talking about how Walmart sells its products in a technology blog?  Because what Walmart is doing is utilizing a technology that everyone is using everyday known as the Internet.  Walmart is using the Internet to grow its business.

If you want to make money online, and you’re telling your friends about this, some of them may say that you’re dreaming.  They may be speaking of the truths since not everyone gets to make lot of money by doing business online.  It’s harder, a lot harder, than you may think!  Using the Internet technology to grow a business is part art, part psychology, and just plain old technology.  We can safely say that the Internet is an old technology, whether you agree with me or not, Internet has been around for decades.  Humans have been tinkered with the Internet since 1960s.  Now the Internet is not something that we just being amuse of, but it is powering companies and business to transact sales, transfer encrypted data, and much much more.

Doing business online is part art because you have to know how to create a website that can maximize the user experiences to potentially boost your online sales.  Just a few things on the top of my mind that you may have to consider of when making a website for your business — picking correct pictures to display on your website, display website’s links using attractive buttons and navigation styles, using attractive website layout, applying correct programming languages and content management systems to ease the process of adding contents and products, writing attractive introduction and contents for your business and products, using good third party services or your own system to accept payments, applying correct online security technology to protect your customers’ personal data and payment data, and so much more.  I’m calling this an art because you have to know what technologies you need, how to arrange these technologies together and have them working as a whole, and either hiring a web designer or bringing the creative side of you to create a beautiful looking website to attract customers.

Doing business online is part psychology because you have to know what your customers want.  Surprisingly, this process is not at all different from doing business offline.  All businesses need to know their customers’ behaviors, desires, and so on to be able to target the customers with the right products and generate sales.  Online businesses need to know how to market their products online to be successful, and everyone knows that when come to marketing either for offline or online — the right way — sometimes require the field of psychology.  Some online businesses use Google’s Adwords to advertise their products in Google’s search engine.  Google offers Adwords, but it doesn’t offer you a psychology class, and that you have to know how to do on your own.  Others use Adbrites, Commission Junction, LinkShare, Walmart, Amazon, Ebay, Craigslist, and so on to market their products online.  Some online businesses go as far as utilizing the social network portals such as FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, and so on to market their products.  Using social network portals to connect to customers is just another way that businesses are applying psychology!  I’m sure there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other ways that someone else can think up to help boost sales online — it’s all about the psychology!  Don’t every business, either online or offline, want to know how to control the minds of the customers?

When come to cost, in most cases, doing business online is cheaper than doing business offline.  You don’t have to worry about the cost of atoms such as electricity, space, and large personnel.  You still need to do some hiring for doing business online such as doing the hiring of engineers, web designers, database engineers, and so on, but in many cases you can usually hire some of these folks on case per case basis.  Without the need of shelling out huge sum of cash to get a business going online, big businesses like Walmart and others have no hesitation to launch their online businesses.  In this case, Walmart utilizes its brand name and online present to help other businesses sell products online.  What Walmart is doing is not cutting edge, but what it’s doing is smart.  In a way, Walmart is the offline king, but the online king is Amazon;  Walmart is just playing catch up with the likes of Amazon and Amazon itself.  In a way, Walmart can grow its business even more by utilizing the Internet the right way!

Snow Leopard is the latest release of Apple’s Mac OS X (operating system).  Surprisingly, Apple’s Family Pack of Snow Leopard is only $49.  You can find roughly the same or cheaper prices for Snow Leopard on Blogmyway Store (selling Amazon’s products).  If you’re only going to install Snow Leopard only for yourself, then you don’t need the Family Pack, and so you will save roughly half of the Family Pack’s price.

Why Snow Leopard?  I’m not knowing this first hand as I don’t have Snow Leopard yet, but from what I read, you can install Snow Leopard faster than you can install Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.  The performance wise in term of speed, Snow Leopard is probably a lot faster than its older brothers.  Unlike its older brothers, Snow Leopard can support 64-bit Mac.  Multicore support is also another feature that Snow Leopard has gotten an advantage over its older brothers.

Although Apple slashes its OS’s prices by more than half of its older OS’s versions, I still think that it’s just another way that Apple thinks it can get you to buy its hardware.  Cheaper software on Apple’s expensive hardware — as if things are getting cheaper for Apple’s products, but when you take an overall look at the real cost, Apple’s hardware is still too expensive.

For your information:  I get commission in U.S. dollar if you go to Blogmyway Store and buy Snow Leopard.