How To: Optimize Your Computer

How To: Optimize Your Computer

A computer is almost like the best friend you never had. It stores all the information you want; allows you to play games whenever you feel like it; gives you access to a whole world wide web of information; has new functions that you discover on a daily basis; and best of all, it never talks back.
How do you plan to care for this friend of yours, the one that always seems to be there and readily at your service? Get the most out of your computer by ensuring that it remains virus-free and does not lose potential space and memory.
optimize your computerHere

are some basic ways to optimize your computer's functions, so that it works as quickly as possible.

Defragmenting

This is something that should be done every couple of weeks, to ensure that you save space on your hard drive and ensures a longer life for your hard drive.

Keep it on

Avoid shutting down and rebooting your computer at the end and start of every computer session. Don't be afraid to keep your computer on for long periods of time; simply re-start your computer weekly to make sure your RAM is cleared.
If you do keep it on, set your computer to go into "sleep mode". Similar to a screen saver, your computer will go into sleep mode after a given period of inactivity (a longer period than for activating a screen saver).
Your computer will go right back on with a touch of a key, or with the slightest move of your mouse. By setting your computer to go into "sleep mode," you are not only saving energy while leaving your computer on, but you are also preventing your hard drive from spinning.

Screen saver

Install a screen saver onto your computer to activate after a few minutes of computer inactivity. This is good for your monitor, as it prevents images from "burning" your computer screen.

Firewall

If you are always logged on to the Internet with a constant connection, make sure to install a "firewall" to prevent people from getting into your computer via the Net. ZoneAlarm by Zone Labs is a popular and highly recommended brand of firewall.
This will ensure that your computer remains secure from possible intruders. To check it out, visit Zone Labs.
Similarly, if you use instant messaging software such as ICQ or MSN Messenger, exit the program every time you leave your computer. Keeping these on for extended periods of time increases the chances for another Internet user to gain access to your computer and get information such as your IP address. If you aren't on the computer, you're better off closing these programs.

Clear your cache

Your cache stores all temporary Internet files on your computer, which end up there whenever you download or visit a page on the Net. Clearing this every once in a while is a good idea, as these files are unnecessary.

Scan disk

Run a scan disk on your computer every now and then to make sure that everything is safe and sound on your computer. The scan disk can detect bugs, errors and even possible viruses.

Minimize fonts

Although having a wide range of fonts is fun and adds variety to your documents, limiting the amount of fonts you have on your computer is a good idea; fonts take up memory on your computer.

How to bring visitors to your Web site

How to bring visitors to your Web siteBy Bob Palmer

Everyone with a Web site wants more visitors. In the last few months, I've spoken several times to different groups about this topic. It seems to be a popular topic, since many people aren't happy with the number of visitors their sites log. I'll try to explain how to get visitors to a Website and will be a tutorial as much as anything else.

Promote Your Web Site In Your Current Advertising
One of the first things you should do is put your Web site address on everything. Put it on business cards, stationery, print advertisements, brochures, product literature, mailing labels, envelopes, hats and jackets. Put it in your TV ads and radio spots. If you can get your salespeople to agree, tattoo it on their foreheads. Don't forget things like billboards, signs, tradeshow booth materials, vehicles, and banners. In short, put the Web address everywhere.
Frankly, this alone won't generate much traffic to your Web site, but it will reinforce the other things that you're doing. If you really want major increases in Web site visitors, you'll have to do something else.

Design Special Advertising To Promote Your Web Site
You should begin to think about your Web site as another business destination-like a storefront in a strip mall. You will get a few visitors wandering by and stopping in, but the traffic will increase greatly if you give the visitors a reason to visit you. Remember that inertia is a great motivator. Just because you announce that your site is open for business doesn't mean that you'll have lots of visitors-you'll have to overcome their tendency to sit still.

Here's a suggestion: think direct response advertising in everything that you do to generate Web traffic. Develop an offer (something that the consumer can have if they respond), and be sure to ask for action. Let's start with the concept of an offer. A jewelry store might offer a "free ring" to the first 50 who register on the site after seeing the ad (and keying in a special code to identify the ad they saw). A law firm might offer the brochure, "How To Keep Your Inheritance Away From The IRS." A realtor might offer the brochure, "How To Sell Your House Fast For Top Dollar." A distributor might offer free shipping.
The idea is not to spend a bunch of money on giveaways. The idea is to overcome inertia and get the customer to the Web site.

Once you have the offer, asking for action is easy: "Come to our Web site at www.great-deals-for-u.com (not a real Web site) and get our special deal."

ASP.NET enhancements debuted

ASP.NET enhancements debuted

Pasadena-based ASP.NET and SQL hosting company DiscountASP.NET introduced ASP.NET hosting enhancements targeted for developers with the launch of an on-demand application pool recycling tool and a real-time Web site stop/start tool. These new tools are additions to the IIS Management Tool Suite available in the DiscountASP.NET Control Panel.

The Application Pool Recycle Tool allows customers to shut down the process hosting their web application and spawn a new process. This tool is extremely useful to recycle a hung application, release locked files or databases, or to reset session variables. DiscountASP.NET hosts each web site in its own isolated application pool, so it can be used without affecting other customer sites. IT worker confidence plunges worker confidence among IT professionals fell substantially in August, as the sector's Hudson Employment Index dropped 9.4 points to 103.1 in August. Despite the decline, the latest reading is substantially higher than last August, when it registered 97.5. Based on responses from approximately 9,000 workers nationwide across all industries, the composite index rose one point to 102.9 in August.

The Hudson Index for IT workers also showed:
* After a record-high 21 percent of workers rated their finances as excellent in July, only 14 made that statement in August. There was also a five-point drop to 44 percent in the number of workers who said their financial situation was improving.
* Similarly, the number of workers expecting their employer to hire fell from a near record-high of 40 percent to 31 percent.
* While only one-quarter of the work force was concerned about job security in July, 28 percent shared that sentiment in August.

BrightCom gains IntelliNet contract Los Angeles integrated conferencing company BrightCom Inc. was selected as the Web conferencing vendor for IntelliNet, a provider of global network management services.
As a fully integrated "plug and play" network appliance, The Visual Collaboration System is optimized for hosting rich, interactive, live collaborative meetings via a Web browser.
BrightCom also said it had been selected as the video conferencing vendor for Medical Mutual of Ohio. Medical Mutual has over 1.5 million customers throughout the Midwest.

The Great Cache Hunt

The Great Cache Hunt

Windows - Past ArticlesThe Great Cache HuntKnock out the cache files that are slowing down your PC.By Joe DeRouen
As regular readers probably know, I'm a big supporter of Firefox. Their browser has proven to be leaner, quicker, and safer for Windows users than every one of their competitors, Microsoft's very own Internet Explorer included.
Have you ever gone to a Web site to find an article, story, or a piece of information that you remember reading, only to find that the relevant piece is missing--or worse yet, the entire site--has gone missing? That can be a frustrating experience, especially if you can't find the information anywhere else.
Enter Resurrect, a Firefox extension that just may save the day for you. The browser add-on allows you to search the Internet Archive (otherwise known as the Mr. Peabody and Sherman-inspired Wayback Machine,) MSN Cache, Yahoo Cache, CoralCDN, and the Google Cache for an archived version of the missing page or Web site. If the first one doesn't have the information you seek, chances are one of the other four will. You can activate Resurrect a number of ways, including right-clicking on a missing-page error message or selecting it through the Tools menu. Once you launch the plug-in, you can open the missing page in the same window you're currently browsing, a new tab, or an entirely new window. Sure, you can go to any of these services without this extension and manually enter the URL of the missing Web page yourself, but this extension is a great resource that makes finding that missing information just a little bit easier.
Resurrect is a free download.
Will Swap Cache for Windows Unlike the Internet Archive, you don't want your PC to save everything in its cache. In fact, you should periodically clear your Windows cache to prevent system slowdown. And that's where MemTurbo 4 comes in. This program helps you not only manage your PC's memory but also trains your computer to better use available RAM.
Cache, in this case, is an area of physical memory reserved by Windows to store the most recent operations and file requests. When a file is read from the disk, it's stored in the system cache. If there is another read request for the same file, Windows can retrieve it from the faster system cache memory instead of reading it again from the slower hard disk, which, in theory, will save you time.
File caching, however, can behave erratically after a period of time, corrupting your available RAM. Memory resources available to run applications will reduce and eventually bloat cache memory. In this situation, the system's performance may degrade, forcing you to restart your computer.
MemTurbo helps prevent that by sealing RAM leaks from poorly written programs, removing unneeded applications from your PC, and installing a memory monitor that keeps everything running smoothly and efficiently. Once the program is installed, the running apps will be able to use allocated memory without forcing Windows to swap from the cache.

The program is easy to install and, once it's loaded, you probably won't even notice it's there. An improved task manager helps you to better monitor processes in memory, while also supporting better graphic displays to improve performance of 3D games and graphics-intensive applications. And if you're a power user who wants to have more control under your PC's theoretical hood, you can do that too; MemTurbo allows you to tweak what parts of memory are allocated where, leaving you to decide your own destiny in terms of how your PC runs.
A 15-day trial version is available, and the application costs $19 to register.

Digital Media Distribution Opportunities for the Film Industry

Digital Media Distribution Opportunities for the Film Industry

Technology advancements such as those in Windows Media 9 Series are enabling new distribution opportunities for the film industry including online, on CDs and DVDs and in theaters.

Growing Options for Viewing Films:
The PC as an entertainment hub is fast becoming a reality with increased processing power combined with a fast broadband connection, connectivity to a variety of displays, and increases in the compression/decompression of high-end audio and video. These new capabilities open up an opportunity and a challenge to film distributors: how to target this new digital entertainment gateway with digital movies and video but not lose control of the content in the process. Already today some estimates say there are as many as 500,000 digital movies being exchanged illegally over the web. How can technology help to bridge the gap between what consumers want (find, acquire, playback and share movies online) and what the film industry wants (secure content, business models that work, a great consumer experience)? Advancements in digital media technology are opening up new distribution opportunities for the film industry. In order to take advantage of these new opportunities the film industry requires the ability to secure valuable assets, deliver them to customers and ensure a high quality playback experience on par with other playback options such as watching a DVD in a home theater or a pay-per-view movie on cable. Technology such as Windows Media 9 Series is being developed to meet those requirements and open up new distribution options. This whitepaper discusses key features in Windows Media and how they are enabling three distribution channels for the film industry: the Internet, CDs and DVDs, and digital media enabled theaters.

Internet Distribution:
The advancements in Internet digital media distribution have happened so quickly. The first generation of streaming came online around 1994 with the first upsurge in Internet usage. This experience was audio only and bad quality audio at that. But the potential was realized by technology pioneers and teams of developers worked to get higher quality into the small file sizes needed to be able to transport the data in a stream in real-time to the user.The second generation of streaming is what we’re familiar with now. Good audio quality in reasonable file size and acceptable video quality when played back in a small window. The second generation of digital media streaming also introduced digital rights management, the ability to secure content and associate it with licenses that authorized the playback. The third generation of digital media on the Internet is where Microsoft is now focusing development efforts. This new technology will meet the requirements of the film industry in the following areas:

Security – The third generation will include more robust digital rights management solutions to secure the delivery of digital media.

Quality – The consumer needs to have a high quality experience, similar to what they’re used to getting when watching movies at home on TV both in the video quality and in the quality of the delivery.

Improved economics – With technology providers like Microsoft focusing on creating digital rights management technology to secure the content and building the technology to deliver a high quality consumer experience, the film industry can focus their efforts on creating business models for distributing content online. Windows Media 9 Series was built around these requirements and includes some new features that directly impact these areas.

No More Buffering Delays:
A new feature in Windows Media 9 Series called Fast Streaming delivers an "instant-on " streaming experience for broadband users, effectively eliminating the buffering delays that consumers experience with streaming video today and offering a more TV-like viewing experience with the ability to quickly channel surf around video content on the web. This also eliminates the buffering users get when an ad is inserted into a video stream. Fast Streaming also automatically optimizes the delivery of streaming audio and video to take advantage of the full bandwidth available to the user, which vastly reduces or eliminates the impact of congestion on the Web for broadband users.

High Quality Audio and Video:
Codec improvement is an ongoing process. The new Windows Media 9 Series audio and video codecs improve quality approximately 20% without increasing the file size. This means online film providers can either increase their current quality levels or decrease their current bandwidth costs by switching to the new codecs. Combining Fast Streaming with the new audio and video codecs brings a greatly improved online video experience to consumers and makes online distribution of films via video on demand services even more attractive to consumers and film distributors.

Advanced Encoding Techniques with Windows Media 9 Series

Advanced Encoding Techniques with Windows Media 9 Series

Introduction:
Working with digital media is an art, not a science, so be prepared to practice, test, and tweak to achieve the highest quality. This document provides tips that you can follow to ensure that you start with the best-quality content possible before you begin encoding. It also provides information about techniques that you can apply in the encoding session to ensure that you end up with high-quality encoded content.

Capturing Quality Content:
This section outlines topics to keep in mind as you prepare to capture your audio and video content.
The following points are explained in detail throughout the rest of the section:
Capturing to an AVI File. For the best quality, avoid combining the capturing and encoding processes. Instead, capture to an AVI file first, and then encode.Comparing Audio and Video Sources. Keep in mind that some audio and video sources are better than others. For the best quality, capture SDI video and digital audio. Setting Proper Audio and Video Levels. Set your video and audio levels properly before you start capturing. Optimizing Your Computer. Check that your computer is optimized.
Capturing to Optimal Pixel Formats. Capture to a YUY2 pixel format to avoid color conversions during encoding. Capturing Optimal Resolutions. Capture video at either a resolution of 320×480 or 640×480.

Capturing to an AVI File:
To ensure the highest-quality results, it is recommended that you capture to an AVI file before encoding. Doing so has the following advantages:
*. Removes any issues related to the processor falling behind the capture process, and enables the encoder to optimize all calculations.
*. Enables the use of editing programs to perform steps such as trimming the start and end times of the file, or doing color correction.
*. Simplifies batch encoding when you source from an AVI file.

Comparing Audio and Video Sources:
It is important to start with the best-quality source. This section lists possible sources, in the order from best to worst:
Serial digital interface (SDI) video. Used for digital video cameras and camcorders. Because the content stays in a digital format throughout the capturing and encoding processes, this results in the least amount of data translations, and results in the best-quality video.
Component video. Used when sourcing from DVDs. With this source, the video signals are separated, for example, into the RGB or Y/R-y/B-y format. Results in good-quality video.
S-Video. Used for S-VHS, DVD, or Hi-8 camcorders. The video signal is divided into luminance and chrominance. Results in good-quality video.
DV video. Used with DV devices, such as MiniDV digital camcorders connected through an IEEE 1394 video port. Results in good-quality video.
Composite video. Used for analog cameras, camcorders, cable TV, and VCRs. Composite video should only be used as a source as a last resort. With composite video, luminance and chrominance components are mixed, which makes it difficult to get good-quality video.
Audio. If possible, capture digital audio. If you must capture audio from an analog source, balanced audio connections are better than RCA.

Setting Proper Audio and Video Levels:
To set audio and video levels properly:
*. Adjust your video monitor using SMPTE color bars, and then adjust your computer monitor to match, using a high-resolution bitmap of the SMPTE bars.
*. Adjust your video capture card levels (hue, saturation, and brightness), so that the picture matches the video monitor.
*. Check and normalize all audio levels in your system. Use a professional-grade audio card, such as the Echo Layla24 or the M-Audio Delta Series.
*. If possible, use a digital waveform monitor.

Optimizing Your Computer:
Before you start capturing, optimize your computer using the following steps:
1. Defragment your hard disk.
2. Turn off network and file sharing.
3. Close all other programs, especially if a program accesses the hard disk.
4. Monitor system resources, making sure that the computer is sufficiently powerful to keep pace with the data feed.
5. During the capture, watch for frame dropping. It should be possible to capture an entire movie with no dropped frames.
6. Watch for direct memory access (DMA) buffer conflicts between the capture card and the SCSI card, which can result in frame dropping. This is less likely to occur now than in the past. If conflicts occur, one solution is to use a dual PCI bus motherboard configuration, in which the capture card and the SCSI card are on different buses.

Capturing to Optimal Pixel Formats:
It is recommended that you capture to a YUY2 (4:2:2) pixel format, which enables you to avoid pixel format conversions during encoding. The Windows Media Video 9 Series codec is primarily a 4:2:0 pixel format, except that if you choose to maintain the interlacing in your content (a new feature with Windows Media Encoder 9 Series), then a 4:1:1 pixel format is used. Because the YUY2 format is a superset of both 4:2:0 and 4:1:1 pixel formats, the content can be converted to either format without any data loss.An important note is that if you capture to a 4:2:0 AVI file (for example I420, YV12, or IYUV), you will not be able to maintain the interlacing in your source video.Older capture devices may create AVI files that do not fully conform to published specifications, resulting in upside-down video with the YUY2 pixel format. To prevent this, you can either set the driver on your capture device to use a different pixel format, or you can "flip" the image if your driver provides such a feature. Finally, there is also an option to flip the video in the encoder.

Capturing Optimal Resolutions:
If you capture 320×240 to an AVI file, the capture card throws away one of the fields, which effectively deinterlaces the video. If your target audience plays the video at 320×240, this usually produces acceptable results. However, to ensure the highest quality, you should capture both fields, so that you can use Microsoft Windows Media Encoder to deinterlace the video or apply the inverse telecine feature. Deinterlacing and inverse telecine require both fields of a frame to be present in order to function properly. For this reason, it is recommended that you capture either at 320×480 or 640×480. After deinterlacing or the inverse telecine filter is applied in the encoder, output video encoded at 320x240 will have higher quality.

Encryption: we know we need it—so now what? Encrypting backed up data stored to tape or other mobile media

Encryption: we know we need it—so now what? Encrypting backed up data stored to tape or other mobile media

Anyone in IT who's read the headlines understands that encrypting data is moving from optional to obligatory, and anybody who's not thinking about it now should be. Stored data that can be moved off-site--sometimes referred to as data at rest--is the most vulnerable. Once data has been backed up, it has to be stored, and that job may be handed off to a third-party business that securely stores data off-site, such as Iron Mountain. Regardless of who handles long-term storage, this data may be stored for years. That's a long time for an organization's data to be left unattended, so this data needs to be encrypted.

The next step is to figure out how to evaluate available encryption solutions. A few criteria are pretty easily identified:
* Robust Security: It makes sense to implement the strongest encryption method from the array of available options. The strength of encryption depends on the algorithm used, and AES-256 encryption is the gold standard. The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is approved by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for use in protecting federal information. AES can be implemented with any of three key sizes: 128-bit, 192-bit, and 256-bit. The more complex the key, the harder it is to break the encryption; so AES with a 256-bit key length renders the algorithm unbreakable.
* Key Management: The hard part about encrypting data is not how to encrypt it--it's how to manage it. If you don't keep the keys safe, your encryption plan is ineffective. If you keep the keys too far out of reach, you can't decrypt your data, which renders your encryption plan impractical. So a complete key management application--that helps you manage and protect data and keys, while helping you safely match encrypted data with the right key--should be a requirement for any encryption system you're considering.
* Price: Most data centers have a limited budget and a maximized workload, so the selected encryption method needs to be affordable and simple to implement and manage, which limits administrative overhead and expense.
In addition, evaluate performance and any unique factors that a specific encryption solution might offer. With this framework, you can assess available encryption solutions.
What are the Choices?

AES encryption for stored data can be implemented at several locations in the data path as data moves from primary storage to a stored state:
* Just before data is sent to the server running backup software--for example, by a network encryption appliance.
* While the data is being processed by the backup software.
* After the data is formatted by the backup software, a network encryption appliance can encrypt data before it's sent to the library.
* The library, where the data is written to tape or other portable media. (Tape drives do not yet provide encryption.)

Network Encryption Appliances :
Some sites encrypt data across the entire network using network encryption appliances, such as those from Decru and NeoScale. These appliances can also be dedicated to encrypting stored data. Appliances can encrypt data before or right after data is processed by the backup software.
Advantages
* Robust Security: AES-256 encryption. This option provides encryption across the widest area, since it can also handle encrypting network traffic.
* Key Management: Supplies key management along with the hardware-based encryption.
* Performance: Uses fast hardware-based encryption that offloads the backup server from computation-intensive encryption processing, so that the server performance isn't affected; it also provides compression.
* Unique Factors: Certified at various levels with the Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) that specifies data security--specifically, FIPS 140-2.
Disadvantages
* Price: Can be costly. This may be warranted for high-security sites, but for many, cost may be a barrier. They are also very costly to scale, and may be overkill given the incremental data growth that data centers typically manage.
* Ease of Implementation and Management: Introducing another set of interfaces, limitations, management complexities, and another support/service-level agreement. These are added to management responsibilities for backup software and hardware. Cost is also increased by the appliance's use of data center space, which is particularly expensive in metropolitan areas.
* Possible security issue: If the appliance is used before the data is processed by the backup application, check how file data is stored. Some backup software applications leave file data in cleartext (un-encrypted), which can leave the file names exposed--a possible risk.
Encryption through Backup Software
Backup software can also encrypt data as it's backed up.

Advantages:
* Price: It's easy to scale software by simply purchasing additional licenses. Also, support for the encryption module may be more expensive, but no additional vendor contract is necessary.
* Ease of Implementation and Management: You've already got backup software, you're already using it, and you can keep on using it when you use it to encrypt data. An additional encryption-specific module may be added, but you won't have to learn new interfaces.