Anyone that frequents message boards is familiar with the terms “troll” and “spammer.” These are people that sign up for a message board solely to spam it with comments and links. This happens all over the Internet, from message boards to blogs to the comments section on news articles. To prevent this many webmasters are adding a new security feature when users sign up for a site or post a comment. It is called captcha, which is an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart. We have all seen captchas. They are usually images of distorted numbers and letters, and often times they are accompanied by a message that says “just to make sure you’re human,” or something similar. Other times they are audio recognition captchas, where users must listen to a voice say a common word and type in that word. The idea behind all captchas is that humans can interpret them, but computers cannot.

The Captcha Cons
1. Captchas will not stop all spammers.
There are plenty of malevolent people in the world that will spam websites personally, rather than use a computer. People cannot be stopped by captchas. There are also people that make money by helping computers to Interpret captchas. They are described as data entry jobs and the employees type the numbers and letters that appear in the captchas in order to help spammers.

2. Captchas are annoying.
Let’s be honest, people do not like having to enter captchas. Some of them are really hard to decipher, which can make simply signing up for a website a hassle. It will turn some website traffic away.
3. Visually impaired users cannot read captchas. They may have computers that will read every word on the page for them, making it easier to surf the web, but the computer cannot read the captcha for them.

The Captcha Pros
1. Captchas work most of the time.
There are exceptions, like those above, but captchas do work most of the time, generally speaking. High volume sites will benefit greatly from captchas. They are the most likely to be targeted by spammers and therefore losing some traffic due to the inconvenience of captchas may be worth it.

2. Captchas are easy for the webmaster.
They are fully automated images, meaning that the webmaster simply has to implement captchas on their website and then they are set. It is one of the simplest ways to cut back on spammers.

The big con here is that captchas may make websites lose some of their traffic. This goes against everything that the webmaster wants. But the big pro here is that captchas do work the large majority of the time.
Do the pros outweigh the cons? Maybe. Probably, for large and popular websites. But small websites should probably stick to a simpler way of keeping out spammers, like email confirmation. Users generally get less annoyed with email confirmation than they do captchas, and they still help cut back on spammers. Ultimately this is a decision that only the webmaster can make.

Sam Mauzy is a blogger with a background in helping clients improve their ecommerce conversion rate.

Auction Sites – Auction sites like eBay make spending a small fortune as easy as pie; the lower-than-retail prices and wide array of available goods are almost irresistible.
Flash Sale Groups – Fashionistas and home décor enthusiasts are well-acquainted with the flash sale groups. Notifications are sent via email, informing members of an impending event; for a very short time, generally less than three days, high-end designer goods are available at deep discounts. The lure of 95% off of haute couture pieces is undeniable.
Online Gambling – Blowing money in a casino is easy enough; when the internet offers the opportunity to play the same games in your underwear, a small fortune can be spend in no time flat.
Multi-Player Fantasy and Simulation Games – Few things are as addictive as an online role-playing or life-simulation game. Unfortunately, the companies that put them out understand the loyalty of their fan base and are constantly introducing new expansions and add-on packages. These charges, in addition to monthly subscription and membership fees, can add up very quickly.

Wholesale Sites – There’s something about a discount that makes a perfectly rational person feel certain that they should buy 144 boxes of cocktail umbrellas or 100 plastic whistles. Because the internet makes it so easy to find these wholesale vendors, it doesn’t take long to end up with an empty wallet and a house full of trinkets.
Secure Pay Services – The act of entering your credit card number for a frivolous purchase can often make you think twice before clicking that Check Out button. Secure pay sites and vendors that store account information to enable “One-Click” purchasing know this, and have eliminated the step altogether. Without that last chance to rethink the purchase, it doesn’t take long to overspend.
Access to Collectibles and Other Rare Items – Once upon a time, collectors of rare items had to save up their money and make the trek to a dealer or convention to make purchases. Now, it’s as simple as locating a forum of like-minded collectors or dealers around the world.
Buying Music – Since the advent of iTunes, it’s a snap to spend a bundle, .99₵ at a time. Finding one track that you love leads to the purchase of an album; when you fall in love with it, you have to buy the entire discography.
Free Shipping – Many vendors offer free shipping after you’ve spent a minimum amount; most of us will keep adding things that we don’t need, spending $50.00 to save $5.00 on shipping charges.
Product Suggestions – The product suggestion is the impulse-buy section at the supermarket on steroids. Just before you complete the transaction, a site will show you what other users who were interested in the items you purchased bought. Suddenly, you’re seeing products that you forgot you wanted; in to the cart they go!

Article re-published by eMarketing 21 with permission from My ISP Finder.

If you have a relative that is a technology geek, you are grateful. He can sit down at your computer and accomplish in a matter of minutes what may have taken you hours or days to figure out. Plus, he can save you a ton of money on tech support. If he is a ‘true’ technology geek, he will fit these 10 signs.

Jealous Wife – If he is married, his wife is jealous, not of other women, but of his electronics, which always have his attention more than she does.
GPS Dependent – A true technology geek can no longer give you directions anywhere. He is dependent on his gps to get him wherever he goes. Without it, he probably couldn’t find his way to work or back home again.
Digital Bathroom Reading – You will not find print magazines for reading material in the geek’s bathroom, a Kindle or Nook will be available with magazine subscriptions and the rest of his library. You will not find “The Dummies Guide…” to anything in his library.
Sweetheart Tweets – When a geek is feeling especially affectionate towards his wife, the world will know it, because he’ll send her a tweet telling her so, even if she’s sitting in the same room.
Lightning Fingers – Just watch their fingers fly over a keyboard, and you’ll know if they are true geek or not. The fastest typist in the world can’t keep up with the lightning fingers of a techno geek.
Black Friday Shopper – Yes, you will see the true technology geek out early on Black Friday and waiting in line before the stores open. Of course, he will be at the Apple Store, not Target, and Best Buy will be next on his list.
Hard Drive Multiples – Most people only have hard drives in their computers. A few might have a backup hard drive. A true geek will have many, many hard drives of various sizes and they will probably all be full.

Trekky – This doesn’t mean that he wears Spock ears and dresses up in Star Trek uniforms, but he is a Star Trek fan nevertheless. Star Trek may have even been his first introduction to the  fascinating world of technology.
Flash Drive Carrier – If you need a flash drive for any reason, just ask him. He probably has at least one on his key chain and another in his pocket. Why would you go anywhere without one?
Speaks Geek – He talks in a language that only other geeks can understand. He puts posts on Facebook and Twitter that are written totally in geek and are responded to in more geek language from his geek network. All of it remains gibberish to the rest of us. Flux capacitor?

If your techno geek does not possess all ten of these signs, then he may not be fully matured into true geekdom, as of yet. If no one stands in his way, he will get there. May he always be available when your computer crashes and your cellphone needs programming. We love our geeks!

Article re-published by eMarketing 21 with permission from DSL Service Providers.

Encryption is the method of scrambling or encoding pieces of information so that they cannot be deciphered by anyone other than the intended receiver. When it comes to doing this with information on or being transferred through the internet, encryption relates to software, which encodes information in order to protect it from unauthorized access. Encryption is used in many ways on the web today.

1. Consumer’s Financial Data – Protection of consumer’s credit card and banking information when they are purchasing items online is one of the most common uses of encryption on the web. The encryption allows the information to be safely transferred and used by the retailer for the purchase transaction. The same kind of software that encrypts the information during input is used to decipher it on the receiving end.
2. Email privacy – Encryption is used to keep email messages private. Individuals needing their information to be secure, such as missionaries working in dangerous areas, and government entities, use email encryption regularly.
3. Online Banking – No one would use online banking if they felt they were risking access to their bank accounts by outsiders. Online banking sites use very strong encryption software.
4. Paypal transactions – Paypal has become one of the most used and trusted sources for transferring funds on the internet. To keep its users protected, Paypal keeps its data encrypted.
5. Online accounting – Several accounting programs for small businesses now offer online accounting options. Well maintained encryption is a key ingredient in keeping the business information safe and secure from hackers.
6. Online backup services – If you use an online backup service, the information you backup to their servers is being encrypted to keep it safe from theft and viewing by unauthorized users.
7. VPN’s – Virtual Private Networks relate to the ability to privately access a small network from a remote location. In order to allow only authorized users into the network, powerful encryption and security tools are used.
8. File sharing/transfers – Transfer of computer files has become quite common. Encryption is part of the process that keeps your data safe as it is being moved from server to another.
9. Remote logins – There are services on the internet that allow you to remotely login to your home or work computer from another location. These remote login services must be protected from intruders with encryption software.
10. Government security – Governments are the other big users of encryption on the internet. Keeping their information and communications secure from capture is a matter of national security; they take this very seriously.

Most of the software you use involves encryption of data in some way, even if you are not aware of it. Unfortunately, human beings can’t be trusted. Therefore, it behooves us to protect our critical information through encryption.

This article was published by eMarketing21 with permission from PhoneInternetTV.com blog.

It will take a new breed of innovators to bring the communications to their full potential for enterprises and consumers alike was the message at the IT Expo in Miami Beach, Fla., where top executives from Yahoo!, Polycom, and Free Conferencing urged the rethinking of legacy communication systems. IT Expo is an umbrella conference for several smaller events such as Digium Asterisk World, SmartGrid Conferenece, Cloud Communications Summit and 4G Wireless Evolution Conference… read more

Move over VoIP

Super-fast Wi-Fi is here. The 802.11n standard ushers in increased network throughput and range that will change wireless access, services and applications. Poor indoor cellular coverage creates unacceptable quality for users. This is especially true in the interior spaces of large buildings or in facilities with a substantial amount of electronic interference, like hospitals. Vo-Fi provides the flexibility to tune coverage to ensure that all areas where telephone access is required have exceptional coverage, eliminating dropped calls and guaranteeing excellent call quality…  read more

Sending information via light waves either in physical light guides or wireless is not new, but existing wireless systems either require direct line of sight or are diffused and have low signal strength. Optical communications systems could provide faster, more secure communications with wider bandwidth and would be suitable for restricted areas like hospitals, aircraft and factories…  read more

iPhone Users at Risk of Downloading Malicious Applications

Apple’s iPhone app review process is inadequate to stop malicious apps from getting distributed to millions of users, according to Nicolas Seriot, a software engineer and scientific collaborator at the Swiss University of Applied Sciences (HEIG-VD). Once they are downloaded, iPhone apps have unfettered access to a wide range of privacy-invasive information about the user’s device, location, activities, interests, and friends…  read more

Smarter Cyber Attacks in the Future

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, driven by botnets, have doubled in bandwidth since the attack was first identified in 2001. But according to the survey, botnet operators appear to be changing their tactics to make some DDoS attacks more difficult to detect and more focused on specific systems running a network. Security architects who monitor and manage many of the underlying systems that ensure smooth data flow across the Internet are growing anxious over the deployments of some of the latest technologies designed to improve Internet security and reliability…  read more

Apple’s new iPad is a handheld device that is designed for browsing the Internet, playing games, reading e-books, and viewing video content. It fills a product hole between the iPhone smartphone and MacBook laptop. However, the device has limited manageability and security features, which could be a concern for enterprises looking to manage the device remotely, analysts said…  read more

Predictions for Enterprise Social Networking

Just 25 per cent of enterprises will use social networking data to improve performance and productivity by 2015, according to analyst firm Gartner. The firm said in a new set of social software predictions that most businesses are still a long way from using social networks to analyse the information flows that occur between staff and business partners…  read more

Flash: The Adobe – Apple Cold War

For those who live their life on the Web, Apple’s seemingly resolute refusal to put Flash on its mobile devices (it works just fine on Apple’s notebook and desktop computers) is a bit of mystery. Flash has become ubiquitous on the Internet, providing the software environment for tens of thousands of online games, and millions of video streams…  read more

Energy-harvesting rubber sheets developed at Princeton University could be used to power mobile phones and other electronic devices in the future. The sheets, which are composed of ceramic nanoribbons embedded onto silicone rubber, work by harnessing the natural energy from body movements such as breathing and walking, and then using this to generate electricity when flexed…  read more

Google Inc. is taking a swipe at Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. with a new feature that makes it easier for users of Gmail to view media and status updates shared online by their friends…  read more

Is Google Stealing Your Content and Hijacking Your Traffic?

Giving Google the copyright to the information for free right out of the gate is the same as giving them permission to steal and develop a money making operation based on your labors without giving you any of the action…  read more

The Guardian of London reports a conservative member of Parliament is proposing a new clause to the Digital Economy Bill that requires any publicly accessible website to “give a standing and non-exclusive license to providers of search engine services to make a copy of some or all of the content of that website”…  read more

Google to Push Google Voice, Google Wave to Businesses

Google Enterprise President Dave Girouard said the company will release a version of Google Voice for businesses, roll out Google Wave to all users who want it and deliver as many as 200 small features to Google Apps in 2010… read more

Google warns Chinese copycat website

The warning issued to the “Goojje” website comes as Google is contemplating its future in China after saying it would no longer obey government censorship rules and could pull out entirely over alleged cyberattacks…  read more

The humbler beast that has emerged in 2010 is facing four definite threats; recent news has shown the company building preemptive bulwarks against them…  read more

“​The web has evolved in the last ten years, from simple text pages to rich, interactive applications including video and voice. Unfortunately, very old browsers cannot run many of these new features effectively,” conform to Google Apps senior product manager Rajen Sheth…  read more

The absence of Adobe Flash support on the iPhone for three years and counting, and now on the iPad, is either celebrated by users as a poke in the eye of one of the web’s most dextrous tools, or the most over-rated and overused crutch for decent design.

Google’s expansion of its lobbying activities on Capitol Hill

In just five years, the search engine giant has gone from almost no presence in Washington to spending more money on lobbying than all but one other Silicon Valley company in 2009. And in the past three months, Google topped all other valley spenders…  read more

Schmidt started routinely in Davos. For Google, the recession is over. They have success and growth pretty much everywhere in the world. They have a new phone out and now want to conquer the world of display advertising…  read more