Category: Technology

Many companies are struggling during the recession, but you couldn’t tell by viewing a certain list featuring a comprehensive look at 5,000 of the nation’s top-performing privately owned firms.

Based in Plano, Texas, web hosting provider Layer Technologies, Inc., just added another accolade to its long list of honors by ranking number 622 in Inc Magazine’s the third annual Inc. 5000.  Thanks to Northern Capital Insurance, the number one company on the list this year, insurance is leading the way as the nation’s leading industry with an average growth rate of a whopping 667%.   Other notable brands representing their respective industries featured on the list include beverage brewing company Honest Tea, rental car service Zipcar and internet powerhouse GoDaddy.

Jim Melloan, Inc. 5,000 project manager, says that the Inc. 5,000 is the best source for learning about new private companies that achieve success through innovative business models and older privately owned corporations that are still profiting and growing at an impressive rate.  Melloan noted that this is the reason investors and other spectators look forward to the list every year.

Layered Technologies made the prestigious Inc. 5,000 list due to its tremendous growth rate of 441% over the past three years.  The firm invests faithfully in research and development to implement the new technologies and features that has helped it remain one of the top 10 global web hosting providers.  Layered Tech evolved from a regionally known dedicated hosting provider to a world-renown web host with a scalable infrastructure that powers a broad range of internet applications and millions of websites.

Many are viewing Inc.’s 2009 list as a report card on the U.S. economy.  In light of the harsh economic climate, aggregate revenue of companies that made the list increased by an estimated $29 billion since 2008, with an average three year growth rate of 126%.  Since its inception, Inc. has played an active hand in creating more than one million jobs, serving as the perfect example of the positive impact fast growing businesses can have on the economy.  You can view the complete results of the Inc. 5000 list by criteria such as industry and region on the Inc.com website.

About Layered Technologies

Founded in 2004, Layered Technologies Inc. is a web hosting provider that specializes in managed hosting, dedicated servers, virtualization, cloud computing and a broad range of additional web services.  Leveraging the best of technology and a world-class infrastructure, the firm delivers the level of support that enables businesses of various sizes to eliminate costly upfront investments and save significantly on operating expense while focusing on the core aspects of their business.  Its highly scalable infrastructure lends its power to millions of websites and a host of web solutions and applications such as SasS (software as a service), SQL Server and content distribution among others.  Boasting one of the largest customer bases in the industry, Layer Technologies clients range from cutting-edge startup companies and thriving medium enterprises to some of the most successful integration and consulting firms in the world.

There is no question that more and more people are turning to the internet to start a new career.  The current world-wide economic situation has many people scrambling to find ways to supplement and/or replace their current jobs.  Many people are turning to internet marketing with hopes of eliminating the fear about their financial future should they lose their job.  While it can be a bit confusing to a new internet  marketer, there are some things you can do to smooth over the process.  Here are some tips to setting up your own business from home.

The first thing you will need is to find a domain name.  You can find a domain name online typically for under two dollars at places like GoDaddy or Namecheap. However, it is not the money that is an issue.  It is becoming increasingly difficult to find quality domain names for your business from home because of the millions of web sites that already exist.  But try to keep your name short and include your business name or a keyword in it. Although you can find cheap domains, keep in mind they are cheap for a reason.

Once you have found a domain name, the next step is setting up your hosting.  Take the time to find a safe and reliable hosting company because this is the company that is going to provide you with server space.  Without hosting, you have no way of making your web site live to the internet.  You can find hosting for under five dollars at places like HostMonster and HostGator.

As soon as you have set up your hosting, your business from home is ready to roll.  From here on out, it is up to you to devote the time and energy needed to succeed with a home business.  You have to develop your web site with quality content and visually appealing design.  You want your content to be fresh and enticing.  There is so much monotonous content on the internet that it quickly turns visitors away from your site.  You want to give them information and ideas that they have not seen before, which involves creativity and research on your part.

As for the design, your web site should stand out and keep the attention of your visitors.  You can do this with creative logos and graphics, video and audio for interactive features, and anything else you can think of to better your site.  Be careful of going overboard, because you do not want to take away the focus of your content.  The two should interchange smoothly to make it easy to follow.

Starting a business from home is far from being easy.  It is a challenge to start a business from the ground up and have success, but the rewards far outweigh the initial struggle.  But if you apply the tips in this article for when you pursue your online business, you will be on your way to success.  Remember that there is no overnight success, it takes time and dedication to be successful on the internet. Think of internet marketing as a marathon and not a sprint.

Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com

As an online business owner, you face treacherous Internet security risks every single time you’re online. Viruses, hackers, and spam await you at every turn. The reality is that these threats are always going to be a component of being online and doing business online. Unfortunately, they seem to be here to stay.

Given that, there are a number of precautions you can take to make yourself, your business and the visitors to your site as safe as possible. Here are 8 tactics proven to enhance your Internet security:

1. Virus Protection. Make sure you have the latest virus updates installed on your computer and let the software thoroughly scan your entire computer daily to ensure that no viruses successfully planted themselves on your hard drive. Set your virus checker to scan your email when it downloads, as well.

I use AVG Free to scan both my computer and my email. They also have a fee-based version that provides complete Internet protection. McAfee and Norton also offer similar products.

For spyware and malware protection, I use CounterSpy. The company that makes this software also has a new product to protect against viruses and spyware called VIPRE.

2. Spam Blocker. I have a spam blocker that I use with Outlook called Cloudmark Desktop that does a great job of helping me train my email program to recognize spam. What I like about this program is that the program users tell Cloudmark what spam arrives in their inboxes, and the programmers update Cloudmark accordingly to recognize those kinds of emails. Other spam blocker programs include IHateSpam and MailWasher.

3. Web hosting Spam Blocker. To block spam before it even hits my Outlook inbox, one of my hosting accounts offers Postini spam blocking on my server. I pay a few dollars extra each month to add this service, but it is well worth it, as it routinely blocks at least 100 emails per day that are spam. I always have the option to log into that account if I am missing an email that may have ended up there accidentally, and I can “whitelist” the sender so that it goes though without a problem the next time. Every night this service sends me a list of emails that are questionable (i.e. the service isn’t sure if it’s spam), and I quickly scan them to approve any that have been misidentified.

4. Email Address Spam. One of the easiest ways your email address gets added to massive lists of spammed email addresses is by including a clear link to your email address on your website. Spambots routinely patrol the Internet looking for readily available email addresses to harvest online. Even if you have the link “cloaked” by saying “click here to email”, which will bring up your email address in the visitor’s email program, the spambot is able to read the HTML sourcecode and harvest the email address.

Instead, remove your email address off of all of your websites. Use a contact form for people to email you that incorporates CAPTCHA technology (where the form filler has to read a graphic representation of a word or set or numbers to prove that s/he isn’t a spambot). I use the free version of Freedback for this task.

5. Discussion List Spam. If your email address must appear on any discussion lists, blog posts, or forum postings, use a free email address like the ones available at Gmail or Yahoo. In this way, you protect your “real” email address from being picked up by spambots.

6. Catch-All Email Address. If your web host company permits, create a catch-all email address that receives all email not specifically marked for a set POP email address or email forward you may have set up. When you sign up for someone’s free giveaway, for example, that will add you to their marketing list you can then enter an email address that reminds you of the site or giveaway where you used it.

For example, if I’m signing up for Jane Smith’s free dog training tips report, I might use dogtraining@mydomain.com, which will then end up in my catch-all domain email address. In this way, you don’t have to give away your “real” email address, and you can determine if the list holder sells or rents your email address to another. So, then, if you suddenly begin to get emails to your dogtraining@mydomain.com address from a dog food company you’ve never heard of, you’ll know that Jane sold or rented your email address to them.

7. Firewalls and Hackers. Make sure that you are using Windows firewall protection, at a minimum, to protect your computer from being hacked while you’re online. Or, use a free firewall like ZoneAlarm. You can also upgrade for a fee to get enhanced protection.

If you use a wireless router, be sure to set a password to secure it so that anyone passing by your home or office cannot hijack your signal and potentially hack your computer. I was resetting the wireless connection on my laptop just last week and discovered that there were 3 unsecured wireless connections in my neighborhood. I live in a residential section with no businesses, so I know that these were unsecure wireless routers in my neighbors’ homes.

8. Secure Server. If you’re selling something online, either your website hosting account or your shopping cart provider needs to have a security certificate so that any monetary transactions can be made over a secure server. You can check to see if your checkout process is secure by looking for https:// in the address window of your browser when browser when you are on the payment page of your site/shopping cart. Some browsers will also show a gold locked padlock icon when you are on a secure server.

I had to purchase a security certificate from my hosting company for my membership site, as the secure server wasn’t built into the shopping cart that is integrated into the membership site software. If you use Paypal or some version of 1ShoppingCart.com, you are safe, as your customers’ transactions are being carried over a secure server.

When you make sure that your computer and email are protected from spam, viruses, malware and the like, your customers are then safe when you email them or upload something to your site for them to access. Responsible online business owners need to take every precaution available to them to enhance internet security for all involved.

Today, Google announced the completion of its new web indexing system title Caffeine. Google boasts that Caffeine, “provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered.” Google goes onto explain just how their old index and Caffeine differ:

Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you.

With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.

Google also shares statistics about just how fast Caffeine actually crawls the web:

Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

Not sure what iPods have to do with it. They could of just referenced gigabytes.  We’re not that stupid.  In any case, pretty impressive.

Everyone loves to watch satellite TV but watching free satellite TV on your PC is becoming very popular. Of course I’m sure you have doubts and may think that nothing these days is free. Well that is of course true to an extent and with most satellite TV programs you will pay a monthly fee and the costs can end up being very high. With a PC Satellite TV program however you only pay a one time low cost and then all your programs are free from that point on.

To watch satellite TV on your pc you will need a satellite software and they are very, very easy to use, you don’t need to have extensive computer knowledge to be able to install and use the software.

By having this software on your PC you can save hundreds of dollars in comparison to having satellite TV installed on your actual television. Not everyone can afford to pay a monthly fee to be able to watch their favourite programs and this pc software makes satellite TV affordable for everyone. The most current software programs sell for around the $50 price and that is a one off payment with no more payments ever, making all your satellite viewing free after that once only fee.

You can watch satellite TV on your pc anywhere in the world so if you have a laptop and are travelling then your satellite programs travel with you. You don’t have to be in the one location where your satellite dish covers as with normal satellite services, all you need is an internet connection and you can watch it anywhere.

Installing PC Satellite TV onto your computer is so simple anyone can do it and if you do have any trouble the software companies offer great customer service.