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Internet News
Although not meant to be a comprehensive source of news related to the Internet, I'll be passing along useful nuggets of information concerning the Internet as I run across them.
Do you need fast ethernet or gigabit ethernet broadband?
Posted by johndilbeck on Wednesday, October 3 2007 at 10:12 AM
Category: internet
If your business is located in one of the major metropolitan areas of the United States, you may want to try the new Shop For Ethernet service offered by Telarus and Cognigen.
Why is Ethernet the future?
Ethernet is a matter of plugging your network directly into a telecom provider's network and bypassing your local phone company. Having direct access to customers allows the broadband Internet provider to control the user's experience from end to end and reduce the cost.
These savings are passed on to you.
How does Shop For Ethernet work?
1. You enter your building address in the form at Shop For Ethernet.
2. You will see a map with your location along with markers of surrounding buildings who have been "lit" by the major telecom service providers.
3. If you would like to learn more, you can enter you contact information to receive a phone call from our staff of Ethernet service experts.
How is Shop For Ethernet valuable?
The GeoQuote Ethernet locator is valuable for people or business who are looking to:
* move into a building with existing carrier facilities.
* substantially upgrade their current broadband connections.
* establish a direct relationship with a provider without the local Bell in the equation.
* find a carrier who provides QoS (Quality of Service) guarantees. Since the carrier you select is in complete control of your connection, it is much easier for them to provide QoS.
* gather information that will be helpful in the planning stages of broadband deployment for a new real-estate development.
Is Shop For Ethernet free?
Yes. We do not require that you pay a fee to access this information - however, we do require that you purchase service through us if you decide to buy. We are compensated from the participating carriers when you order through us, which pays for the development and maintenance of this web site.
Can I order Ethernet service online?
Not yet. Even if our Ethernet lookup tool shows you are in an On-Net building, we must still go through a manual check on both pricing and service availability. However, know that our Ethernet Experts are here to assist you with every step of the process.
Shop For Ethernet is not for all businesses
Shop For Ethernet is for the largest businesses that need lots of bandwidth (100 to 1000 mbps) and are located in areas with buildings that are served by fast ethernet and gigabit ethernet providers.
It is not for all businesses and certainly not for residential broadband provisioning.
Other alternatives: Business T1, DS3, and faster
If fast ethernet isn't available in your location, or if you just don't need that much bandwidth, you can find what is available in your area. Shop For T1 offers real-time lookup of broadband providers offering T1, DS3, and other Internet connections. Our broadband experts have helped hundreds of companies provision better service connections and most of them have saved money in the process.
Small business and residential DSL, Cable Modem, and Satellite broadband
If you are looking for affordable broadband for your small business or home use, Shop For DSL offers real-time lookup of DSL, Cable Modem, and Satellite broadband providers in your location.
We can't find a broadband connection for everyone - I live in an area without DSL access, for instance - but the first-class providers we help you find are extending their networks every day.
Act on your dream!
JD
Amazon.com launches a new search engine: a9.com
Posted by johndilbeck on Thursday, September 30 2004 at 6:12 AM
Category: internet
I guess each of us has our preferences for which search engine we like to use.
For the last couple of years, I've preferred to use Google.com for most of my searching, although I still use others to compare the results.
If I'm researching keywords or I want to see which sites place well on various search engines, I'll use a metasearch engine such as ixquick.com.
A couple of weeks ago, SiteSell released their Search It!, which really isn't a search engine, but is a front-end tool to help you search for a wide variety of things where appropriate, including the two mentioned above.
Recently, I became aware that Amazon.com has released a9.com, which can search several databases at the same time, including google, google images, inside books at Amazon.com, inside a movie database, and more. You can read more about it at Why Use A9.com?.
A9.com has the interesting feature of saving your searches so you can reuse them later. It also has a diary and a place to store bookmarks. I haven't used all the features, yet, but it's great to be able to search for something, such as "Murphy, NC 28906", and see results from google, from inside books at Amazon.com, and images returned from Google. It offers some truly useful features that I'll be using in the future.
Try it out for yourself and see what you think.
I do not send spam!
Posted by johndilbeck on Thursday, June 3 2004 at 7:27 AM
Category: internet
Have you recently gotten an email that appeared to come from me -- judging by the return address?
Is it spam? If so, I did not send it!
More and more, we're seeing emails that are spoofing the return address of someone who is in the address book on a system that has been infected by a virus or other malware. This means that my email address is in someone else's address book and their computer is infected. It randomly sends spam and sometimes it may have my email address -- or even yours.
There is nothing that I can do about this. I don't even know of any way to determine who's computer is sending the email in the first place.
Be aware, nobody but me sends email from JohnDilbeck.com, and an email from me will have my signature block at the bottom of the message. It will also say it's from John L. Dilbeck and not just my email address.
Nobody ever sends email from my other domains or the domains I manage. Any email from any user with a domain of ArchAvary.com, PatMoretz.com, AHCcrafts.com, DilbeckMarketing.com, DilbeckConsulting.com, DetailsNow.com, 21stCenturySales.com, 21stCenturyClassifieds.com, AYearFromNow.com, or any of the rest is not an authorized email. It is spam.
The only email that comes from me will have my personal identification in it. If it doesn't, please just delete it. I didn't send it.
This is getting to be a real problem for all of us. I wish I had control over any email that looks like it comes from me, but I don't.
Sooner or later, the whole email system must change to stop anyone from spoofing a return address, IP address, domain or anything else that leads to mistaken identity.
In the meantime, we have to exercise patience and good judgement. I appreciate your cooperation.
Geographic-specific search results -- hype or coming reality?
Posted by johndilbeck on Thursday, April 8 2004 at 2:53 AM
Category: internet
Will Local Search Live Up to its Hype?. The potential exists for more geographic-specific search results and advertising, but meeting Web users' needs and getting local businesses to advertise remain challenges, say executives of search and online directory companies. [eWEEK Technology News]
April Fools Day is just around the corner
Posted by johndilbeck on Wednesday, March 31 2004 at 6:27 AM
Category: internet
Net Hoaxes Snare Fools All Year. Infinite power supplies, 87-pound house cats and dehydrated water do not exist. Yet people continue to be fooled by online hoaxes. It's that time of year again, so watch out. By Joanna Glasner. [Wired News]
Google puts one more nail in the yellow pages coffin
Posted by johndilbeck on Wednesday, March 31 2004 at 6:11 AM
Category: internet
About a year ago, I started recommending, to anyone who would listen, that it was important to put full addresses, city, state, zip code and phone numbers with area codes on their websites.
Sharon Fling has been predicting the importance of promoting small local businesses on the Internet for a couple of years now, and those who have followed her advice are very well placed as we see more of the major search engines incorporate local searching in their arsenal of search tools.
Google now offers local search results -- something they've been working on for months -- and their implementation is coming along nicely.
For example, I just entered "restaurant 28906" on their search page, and at the top of the results it shows a heading link for "Local results for restaurant near 28906" followed by three local restaurants with their address and phone number.
If you click on the link just mentioned, it brings up a page of restaurants near Murphy, NC sorted by distance. It even lists the mileage and direction to the restaurant with a link for directions.
At the top of the page are other categories related to restaurants.
Right below that is a compass icon with a link to see the listings on a map of the region.
Clicking the link brings you to another page with a Mapquest map showing numbers indicating the restaurants. There is a legend to the right of the map showing the restaurant indicated by each number, with a link to the restaurant.
Mapquest maps for our mountain area are not extremely accurate and I often get erroneous results, but this map looks mostly accurate -- although not 100%.
If I click on my favorite restaurant in Murphy, Shoebooties Cafe, next to its number in the legend, it brings you to a page dedicated to Shoebooties, with its location noted on the map and a button for getting driving directions.
I'm less satisfied with MapQuest's driving directions, since they give you a 23 minute, 12 mile drive to get to a location that is about a 30 second walk from the main intersection in downtown Murphy. The last two or three steps in the directions are accurate, but I have no idea why they start where they do, way out west of Murphy a long way from the town.
Regardless of the deficiencies of the MapQuest directions, the Google implementation of local search is accurate and fast.
Let's try another. How about "antiques 28906" or "real estate 28906"?
For antiques, it lists three shops in the local section at the top of the page, but misses Pickled Parrot Antiques which is right in downtown Murphy and starts with a shop over two miles away. Pickled Parrot Antiques is listed first in the regular search results, right below the local results -- so there are still some bugs to be worked out for the most accurate results.
For real estate, the link to the full page is more accurate than for antiques. It correctly lists the downtown real estate agencies and extends outwards from there. This is clearly useful.
While the Google local results feature is not as accurate as being listed in the yellow pages, it is free and fast. As time goes by, I'm assuming it can only get more accurate as Google improves their algorithm and cross-linking.
I think you'll find this to be a very useful tool.
Looking for a bagpiper near you?
On a lark, I tried searching for "bagpiper 28906" and learned that Clay Will lives about 40 miles southeast of me on the north shore of Lake Rabun in Georgia. I bet I never would have found him in the local yellow pages!
But, just when this looks great, I tried searching for "musician 28906" and got results that were not very good. I know there are hundreds of excellent musicians within a 20 mile radius of here and none of them are listed.
"pizza murphy nc" correctly lists Downtown Pizza Co (where I had lunch a couple of days ago and enjoyed it) and branches out from there. It misses Papa's Pizza To Go in Murphy, but finds the franchise in Blairsville, Georgia, which it says is about 15 miles south of Murphy, but I'm pretty sure it's a good bit farther than that.
While still a work in progress, Google's local search is decidedly useful, especially for businesses that are most likely to have a website or which may be listed in various directories.
I could probably spend the rest of the day playing with this, but it's time to move on to other tasks!
Can spam be controlled?
Posted by johndilbeck on Monday, March 1 2004 at 3:05 AM
Category: internet
Spam Fight Gains Steam. A grass-roots movement to improve the SMTP protocol that governs e-mail traffic is gaining acceptance, and its lead developer hopes to get fast-track approval by the Internet Engineering Task Force to make the emerging framework a standard. [eWEEK Technology News]
Yahoo Dumps Google
Posted by johndilbeck on Thursday, February 19 2004 at 9:39 AM
Category: internet
"The change occurred at 9:30 p.m. PST Tuesday when Yahoo relaunched the search properties for its U.S.-based sites, including its Yahoo.com flagship home page. Yahoo replaced Google's results with its own Yahoo Search Technology, which combines an array of recently acquired search technologies, such as Inktomi and commercial search provider Overture Services. Yahoo also owns AltaVista and the Web search technology of Fast Search and Transfer. " [C|Net News.com]
MDI Telecom and Internet tools
Posted by johndilbeck on Tuesday, February 17 2004 at 8:12 AM
Category: internet
Last Friday, in the February 13, 2004 issue of my Home Business Tips newsletter, I discussed my introduction to MadisonDynamics, Inc., a new company recently created by Fred Stege of TrafficOasis.com and Simon Grabowski of GetResponse.com.
I'm still not sure what I think of the company as a business opportunity, but I wanted to pass along some information about their first products. (Sorry, fellow Mac users, these services are PC only.)
Their basic product is iCON Communicator, which provides worldwide, interactive conference calling, desktop application sharing, co-browsing features, with unsurpassed sound quality and text chatting for one low monthly rate. Operated through Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP), iCON Communicator consists first of all of excellent interactive voice and chat communication.
Their second product, iPROBuilder enables the average person to build a superb, professional-looking web site -- one that doesn't look like it was made with sitebuilder software. With iPROBuilder, you can create profit-pulling web sites in 24 hours or less, with no technical or design experience. This product includes all the bells and whistles: an easy-to-use online sitebuilder, domain name registration, unlimited web hosting, unlimited e-mail accounts, pop-ups, opt-in mailings, and much more.
Now, while I don't know much about iCON Communicator, I have been following the development of iPROBuilder, in it's original -- and still growing -- incarnation as Website Wizard. This product, produced also by Simon Grabowski, has been adding features continually over a couple of years or so. I have an account for iPROBuilder, but I'm unable to test it so far because it remains a Windows PC-only product and doesn't work with Macs. However, I've looked at sites created with the system and they look very promising.
I'm a very happy customer of GetResponse.com, which seems to be the very best autoresponder service available, and I have a Pro account with them that hosts my newsletter and does a few more things for me. (You can see for yourself the quality of their service by going to the site and signing up for a free account. Create an autoresponder and see how it works for you. Be sure to take Simon's free course on autoresponders to learn more about them. By upgrading to a PRO account, you can create unlimited autoresponders, each with unlimited follow-up messages.)
I've looked for months for sites that help folks with no technical skills build good websites. I still feel that Site Build It! is still a better product -- and it works on both Macs and PCs -- and it has proven to be very effective where it counts the most, building targeted traffic to websites. However, I think iPROBuilder may be a good tool for a large segment of the market, and it does have the advantage of being able to pay on a monthly basis, rather than the annual payment required for SBI.
Based on my experiences with GetResponse.com, I'm assuming the products offered by MDI will be top-notch in quality.
Check them out for yourself and see what you think.
MyDoom.b variant identified
Posted by johndilbeck on Thursday, January 29 2004 at 11:00 AM
Category: internet
MyDoom Variant Blocks Fixes, Targets Microsoft. UPDATED: Russian anti-virus specialist Kaspersky Labs has identified a variant of MyDoom, the worm that has been spreading through the Internet at a furious pace since Monday. [eWEEK Technology News]
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