Hey, can you do something for me real quick? Could you enlist in the Army? I’m only asking because I was just wondering about it, because it would be great, I think. If you joined the Army. And it would definitely help me out.

You would really get something out of it, too, I think. You could travel to whole other countries. All around the world. It would be an adventure. You would get to use equipment and stuff like that. It could be amazing. Just think about it. Plus you would be doing me such a huge favor that I cannot even tell you.

Seriously, why not sign up? I’ll get you the form. It will only take a second. You just sign on the line and you’re in. I can be there with you and show you where to sign and everything, if you want. I’m happy to do it. Especially since you’d be doing such a nice thing for me by signing up. So you should really do it.

Man, thanks so much in advance.

As far as going to other countries goes, which I mentioned earlier? Yeah. You totally could. You might get stationed anywhere—there’s tons of other countries. And you’ll get sent to one of them. You’ll go somewhere for boot camp, too. Maybe in Kentucky or California. Not bad, huh? And then they will ship you off to just about anywhere you can think of. Unfortunately, I can’t say for sure where you might eventually go. That’s not up to me. It depends on your deployment orders, and what might be going on at the time, as far as where your help would be needed in the world, and I don’t have any control over that. Wish I did. I’d send you to Hawaii or some other fun place just as a way of saying, “Hey, thanks for signing up, buddy.”

You got the DVD I sent you, right? Pretty cool. And the razor? Did you get that? There’s a video game, too. It’s fun. Would you like to play it with me sometime? Come over whenever. We’ll play it.

Let’s see, what else? I already mentioned it would be an adventure, because it really would. You get to learn about weapons and other skills. There’s ropes to climb on. And Jeeps. I’m not even kidding you. You will get to shoot a gun. It’s going to be amazing. Serious. And there will be other people there.

Once again, I can’t tell you how much it would mean to me if you signed up. You would really be doing me such a solid if you could just commit to like 18 months in the Army.

And did I say the thing about pay? Yeah, I don’t know how I could have forgotten that part. You could get thousands of dollars. For school or whatever. What could be better than that? It’s just our way of saying we appreciate your joining up. Plus, you could get your life on track. Not that your life is screwed up or anything. I don’t mean to imply that.

You’d really have a lot of respect, I think, too, if you went in the Army at this particular point in time. It wouldn’t just be about helping me out of a really tough spot and everything. It would be about the uniform, which is one of respect. When you wear it, you would hold your head up high.

I think it’s great and all, your coming to my aid and signing up, if you do.

Oh, another thing I mentioned before that I almost forgot about was all the amazing equipment that they would let you use if you signed up for the Army. Guns and cannons and tanks. Some really cool stuff. And that’s not even to mention the advanced satellite and electronics machines. All of that! Those things are unbelievable. If you sign up, you could be learning how to use those things. That’s what I did: I learned all of that stuff and it wasn’t even that hard. That’s what’s so amazing about it.

Now that you know my story, and see that I joined and went and I turned out great, why don’t you just hop on over and join, too? You like me, right? So then just do me this favor and sign up and go into the Army for me. And for you. Probably even more for you.

Because, yeah, there’s so many reasons why joining the Army is a great thing for you personally. The money and the respect. And training? Also, you know, because if you could sign up that would be so nice of you. I don’t want to say I need you to join up, but I would like you to. I’ll seriously owe you a big one.

That’s all you have to do. If I got you one of those enlistment forms, could you just sign it? I’d really, really, really, really, really appreciate it. Really. A lot.

If you make it back, I promise I’ll totally do something for you. I’ll help you move!

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Important Decisions before Starting an Online Business

Your brightest idea will fail to attract profitable revenues if you are unable to create an ecommerce store that provides uninterrupted shopping with an assurance of a secure online transaction.

Your shopping cart software will largely define your viability for selling online. But there are other aspects to be examined before you start an online business.

Decisions for selling online before starting your online business:
Devoting quality time & resources in deciding the following will favor in creating a robust ecommerce store.

1. Hosting Provider:
Always look for a secure and reliable hosting service provider. Examine the ‘Uptime guarantee’ provided by the service provider. Also analyze the physical infrastructure where your ecommerce store will be hosted. Perhaps the most important component in scrutinizing the hosting provider is the ‘Back Up’ and the ‘Data Security’ system.

Calculate the minimum time required to reinstall you ecommerce store in case of total infrastructure failure on the part of hosting provider. This calculation will help in deciding the least possible business loss in case of emergencies.

2. Merchant Account:
The processing capabilities and the data security provided by a merchant account are the major aspects to be analyzed. A merchant account should provide faster processing and help in smooth transactions.

3. Shopping Cart:
Allocate your maximum time & resource in deciding a shopping cart for your ecommerce store. Choose a shopping cart that is easy to manage and provides maximum customization of your ecommerce store. Check a shopping cart for its capability to perform important functions like the inventory management, catalog management and store design & layout. Go for a shopping cart that gives simple and easy management with minimum investment.

Your choice for shopping cart decides your efforts in integrating payment gateways and shipping carriers. Certain shopping carts provide built-in integration facilities and expedite processes to start your online business. In such cases, you are only required to choose a shipping carrier or payment gateway and pay the required fees to start selling online.

4. Payment Gateways:
Map a payment gateway with your business needs. Ideally, a payment gateway should provide faster processing and should be averse to every possible security attack in transferring credit card details. The scale of transactions expected on your ecommerce store is also an important criteria in deciding a payment gateway.

5. Shipping Carrier:
The scope of distribution of products (globally or locally) besides the cost per transaction and the reliability may be important criteria in deciding the shipping carrier for your ecommerce store. Analyzing the feature of ‘online tracking’ may provide important insights in the distribution system of the shipping carrier

Starting an online business is risky and requires dedicated business analysis. Reduce your risks of selling online by considering the above mentioned points.

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Have you ever wondered whatever happened to your high school sweetheart? How about your best friend who you lost contact with overtime?  If you have there is a good chance that you have tried to contact them.  Unfortunately, many individuals get married or move away.  This may make it difficult to contact those that you used to know. That is unless you join one of the most popular online social networking websites. That website is known as Classmates.

Although classmates is considered a social networking website, it is, in a way, unique from most of the others.  This is because classmates focuses on connections that were made in school, whether it be elementary school, high school, or college. Although it is encouraged that you contact those that you know from school, you are able to contact just about anyone on the website. That is one of the many features of Classmates that makes the social networking site worth joining.

The only problem that many internet users have with Classmates is the fact that it is often requires a paid membership. There is a free membership plan that is available, but you are limited with what you can do on the site. Despite the fact that you have to become a paid member to enjoy what Classmates has to offer, it is well worth it. In addition to being well worth it, the membership fee is easy to afford. Currently, there are three different levels of membership that you can sign up for, the highest being only five dollars a month.

If you are interested in seeing what Classmates has to offer, you can easily do so by visiting their online website at www.classmates.com.  Once at their main page, you will have to go through the process of selecting your school.  Once that has been done, you will then need to create a user profile. This profile is part of what will be displayed on the website; however, once you officially become a member you can add more information to your profile.

With a free membership, you can post your own profile and view profiles from other members. Viewing the profiles of other members, especially those that you went to school with, is easy.  Classmates has separated everyone into categories. These categories not only include the schools that everyone went to, but the years that they attended. This means that whether you graduated in 1970 or 2000, you should easily be able to obtain information on your classmates.

Although you can view other member profiles with a free membership, you cannot contact them. To make contact with those that you have lost touch with, you will need to become a paying member. As previously mentioned, this membership is relatively easy to afford.  Once you have become a paid member, you cannot not only contact your classmates individually, but you can also send out broadcast messages or announcements to everyone that you went to school with.  A paid membership also gives you the ability to use the message boards.

By joining Classmates, you will not only be able to make contact with your old classmates and friends, but you may also even be able to renew old friendships or make new ones.  Reconnecting with your old friends and making new ones, what could be better than that?

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If you try to sysprep a Vista reference system and get this error:

”A fatal error occurred while trying to sysprep the machine.”

then you should check your Setupact.log file and see if you can find the following line:

0×80070020 / ERROR_SHARING_VIOLATION

If this line is present in the log file, then sysprep is failing because MSDTC is trying to reset its log but sysprep has locked the log for exclusive access. The only solution for this at present is to contact Microsoft Customer Support Services (CSS) for a hotfix.

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Diversified Revenues with Distributed Responsibility

Unlike in other ecommerce transaction, Drop Shipping requires two entities to complete an order; namely an online store (where one accepts orders online) & a Drop Shipper (who actually delivers the order to customer). In Drop Shipping, online storeowner and Drop Shipper could be different individuals.

The operations:
a) Customer places an order (say of $100) on the online store.
b) A copy of the order details is sent to drop shipper, who ships the goods to the customer.

How does one earn in this process?
The drop shipper charges the online storefront owner for the goods shipped (say with $80) and the storeowner in turn earns the difference between the prices he charges from customer and pays to the drop shipper (in our case the storefront owner will earn $20).

Drop shipping helps both the online storeowner and drop shipper to diversify their sources of revenue and at the same time distribute their risks.

1) Benefits to Online Storeowner:
If you are an Online Storeowner, this can be a low risk Ecommerce business model. Drop Shipping is a sought after business model when you are risk averse and still want to fetch respectable revenues. Drop Shipping may have following benefits:

• Zero Inventory: You are saved of building a strong inventory of the goods sold, as you do not need to manage the inventory or shipping related issues. You pass on the orders to the drop shipper and he takes care of order fulfillment issues.
• Sell Unlimited Products: With no inventory to maintain, you can expand your business and sell unlimited products without getting bothered of inventory related issues.

Choice of Ecommerce Solution for online storefront will be one of the most important decisions in operating your business on Drop Shipping model.

2) Benefits for Drop Shipper:
If you are a Drop Shipper, this can be a low risk ecommerce model to earn through Internet without having an online store of your own. For you, as a Drop Shipper, contracting with web sites working on Drop Shipping model acts as a lower risk preposition. Drop Shipping has the following advantages:

• Expand your Reach: Contracting with multiple web sites selling merchandise through Drop Shipping, helps in expanding the reach of your business. You will be able to expose your business at various web outlets and as a result your sales may also increase.
• Accept online orders without a web site: You are only responsible to fulfill the orders received from the online store. You can earn revenues, without facing the challenges of selling online.

Selection of online store is one of the most important decisions for drop shippers. Other issues like the terms and conditions, the revenue sharing agreement, responsibility in case of goods returned, etc also need to be considered.

While into drop shipping, adequate caution needs to be taken in choosing products to be sold online, and deciding the terms and conditions. Besides, synchronized communication and complete coordination between online storeowner and drop shipper are other important requirements.

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Frozen desktop
Temporarily ‘freeze’ your friend’s desktop by doing a ‘Print Screen’ of their work area and saving it as their wallpaper. The next step is to minimize the taskbar and hide their desktop icons. They’ll never know what hit them as they try desperately to click on the ‘frozen’ icons.

Play switch!
If you’re in an office with computers really close to each other, you are in luck. Pick a person whose computer is next to yours or back to back. Make sure they have really long cables. Before the person who works across from you gets to his station, unplug his keyboard, plug yours into his computer and open a word processor on his terminal. When the person gets back to work on his PC, start typing and be prepared to double in laughter. You can also do this with mice and monitors.

A mousy trip
Tape the trackball to the insides of the mouse and watch with a straight face as your friend tries to hunt the mouse.

Smooth operator
From the Control Panel, change the doubleclicking speed of the mouse to the fastest it can be. To add to this, switch the settings for the mouse buttons from right-handed user to lefthanded user or the other way around

Sound start
Record your friend saying something stupid with a whole lot of sound effects. Then sneak up to their computer and pop it in as their Windows startup. Warning: your friend will probably have a lot to say to you afterwards ‘offline’.

Keyboard capers
Pick one key that is used most often, for example ‘E’ or ‘I’, take the spring out from under that key. Or how about witching the ‘M’ and ‘N’ keys? You can get away with this unnoticed for sometime. Works best when the person has a password containing the letters ‘M’ or ‘N’. If that doesn’t sound daring enough, how about changing your victim’s keyboard setting to a different layout. (Mind you, keep your windows install disks handy in case anything goes wrong.)

Where have all the icons gone?
Try to take control of a computer, go to Control panel > Display and change everything to black. Have fun watching the PC user trying to find all those icons.

Virus alert!
E-mail someone you know every hour, on the hour, sending them a warning about the deadly virus that’s hit town.

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Issues that affect your ecommerce business

ECommerce is not limited to a choice of a shopping cart or a good-looking product. Ecommerce is well beyond that and you have to ponder various issues that may emerge, specifically in the ecommerce environment. In the following section we have highlighted remedies to deal with few of the business issues in ecommerce.

Security & Privacy:
Ecommerce fraud is on a rise and visitors are very skeptical about revealing their financial details online. Your ecommerce store should build a climate of assurance for every new visitor coming to your store.

• Have a Spam free, Popup free ecommerce storefront.
• Secure all transactions with latest SSL security standards.
• Host your store in a secure hosting environment.
• Display a disclaimer during the checkout process and respect the privacy of the visitor.
• Keep a constant watch on the changes in Internet security environment and periodically test your store for safeguards against any security threats.

Compromise with security issues can cost you dearly. It is always recommended to be with the best in the industry when it comes to security of your ecommerce store.

Processing Capabilities:
The speed and accuracy of various processes that go in managing an ecommerce store are also very important. Your ecommerce store should be powerful, yet stable.

• Look for an ecommerce solution that gives you real time processing & inventory management capabilities.
• Accept all possible popular pay methods.
• Integrate with secure payment gateways for better payment processing.

The processing power of your estore will be the foundation on which your online storefront will work. Make the best of the ecommerce software that is behind the performance of your store.

Order Fulfillment:
Your major task is to deliver the orders placed on your online store within defined timeframe and above all, as shown on your ecommerce storefront.

• Place special importance on the order processing capabilities, as any mistake there will multiply further.
• Establish a powerful web of suppliers before you go online.
• Do not let your online store get overburdened with orders that cannot be fulfilled.
• Deliver goods through proven shipping carriers that reach to all locations within time frame.
• Allow users to track their orders online.

Successful order fulfillment is one of the necessities for any ecommerce store and should be given special attention.

There are many other issues like legal laws, state economic barriers and governmental provisions that also needs to be accepted. Since Ecommerce is not limited to geographical boundaries, you should always be cautious that you do not over-step any legal and economic restrictions.

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How you would like to meet and communicate with other internet users, especially ones that share the same views and beliefs as you do? If you would then you may want to think about joining a social networking website, if you haven’t already done so. When it comes to easily finding and communicating online with other internet users, social networking sites are, perhaps, the best way to go.

If you are interested in joining a social networking website, the first thing that you will need to do is find a network to join. You can easily find a number of networks by performing a standard internet search. For the best search results, you may want to search with the words social networking or social networking websites.  In your search, it is likely that that you come up with a fairly large number of different networking sites.  Popular sites that may be included in your search results may include, but will not be limited to, MySpace, Orkut, Yahoo! 360, FriendFinder, FriendWise, Facebook, and Classmates.

Once you have made the decision to join a particular social networking website, whether or not it is one of the ones mentioned above, you will need to need to register with the site.  Even free networking communities require that you go through the registration process. Once you are registered, you should be able to start communicating with other community members.  Before you start communicating, you may need to develop your online profile or profile page, depending on the networking site in question. Although it may seem easy enough to create a profile, there are many internet users who are unsure exactly what they should and should not include.

Perhaps, one of the most important things to include in your online website is your picture. While a personal picture is optional, it is ideal. Many internet users enjoy taking to someone that they can see in their minds, without a picture this is difficult.  If you are looking to use social networking websites just to meet new friends you may not necessarily need to post a private picture, but you may need to if you are looking to find love online. When it comes to internet dating, many individuals will not even view an online profile if a picture is not included.

In addition to your photograph, you may want to include your name.  Now, when it comes to your name, you need to be cautious.  You are advised against giving your full name, especially if your profile or profile page contains a personal photograph of you.  In addition to your name, you may want to put down your location.  As with your name it is important to display caution.  Your picture, your address, and your full name can be dangerous, especially if it falls into the wrong hands. As much as you would like to fill your social networking profiles with personal information, you are advised to think about your safety before anything else.

You may also want to include information on yourself. This information may include your hobbies, issues that are important to do, your likes, and your dislikes.  With many social networking websites, including MySpace, you will find that there are preset profile fields for this information. In addition to preset questions or categories on your likes and dislikes, you may also find additional information, including fun questionnaires.  Many social networking websites will ask that you describe your favorite color, your goals in life, your most embarrassing moment, and so on. As with your other personal information, it is important to stay as vague and possible and not use any full names, especially real ones.

By keeping the above mentioned points in mind, you should not only be able to create an online social networking profile that is filled with valuable information, but you can do so while staying safe at the same time.  Your safety on the internet is in your hands, that is why it is important to think about safety, as well as internet popularity.

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If you try and run sysprep.exe /oobe /generalize /shutdown on a Vista reference system and get the following error message:

“System Preparation Tool has stopped working A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available”

and the following event in your event logs:

Event ID 1000 Source: Application error Faulting application sysprep.exe

Then you’ve probably got a third-party driver issue. One case I heard of involved the SoundMax Audio Driver, which had to be uninstalled from the reference system before sysprep would work properly on the machine.

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We have compiled a list of basic ecommerce terms in our ecommerce glossary section. This section may help you to strengthen your knowledge about ecommerce.

A/B Split: A test that is performed in a controlled environment which interchanges two pages to random groups of visitors with the goal of testing the performance of specific page variables. However, this simple method can only be used to test one variable at a time. Also see Multi-variable A/B testing.

Abandonment: When a visitor exits a page or process without completing the desired action. Also see Shopping Cart Abandonment.

Above the Fold: The part of the page or email that is initially visible to the visitor without having to scroll.

Acquisition Cost: The total campaign expense divided by the number of leads or customers it generated. Also see Return-On-Investment.

Acquisition List: A borrowed list of prospects who have requested to receive online communication about a specific subject.

Acquisition List Address Book Whitelisting: When a company’s email address or domain name is added to a particular individual’s email address book, this prevents unintentional filtering out of emails that the consumer requested to receive.

Acquisition List Address Verification Service: A service provided by the credit card companies to verify the given billing address with the address mentioned on the records of the credit card company.

Acquisition List Addressable Calls: A key metric in the Pay per Call search which consists of description of phone inquiries that may result in an action or sale.

Affiliate: A partner who is paid a commission on the basis of the results shown by marketing your products and services. An affiliate may simply place a link to the merchant’s site on their own site or create a site dedicated solely to promoting the merchant’s products or services.

Affiliate Program: A popular website promotion tool where a website contracts with other websites for driving visitor to its site. The revenue is calculated according to the traffic brought by a particular website.

Alert: An online message notification sent to subscribers to share important information. Also see Autoresponder

Application Service Provider (ASP): A web-based services provider wherein the clients need not install software on their own computers as all tasks are hosted on the companies ASP servers.

Attachment: A file of any format included with an email that is not part of the main body of the email message.

Authentication: Automated verification of an email sender’s identity.

Autoresponder: An automated email message sent to a new subscriber as soon as they trigger an event.

Batched Records: A delivery of files in large quantities, instead of in real time.

Bayesian Filter: A content based filter that works like an anti-spam program to evaluate header and content of incoming email messages to determine the probability that it is spam. Also see Authentication

B2B: Business-to-business

B2C: Business-to-consumer

Bill Me Later: A deferred payment method provided on purchase of a particular product or service.

Blacklist: A database of addresses that includes domains or IP addresses of an email sender suspected of sending spam. Also see Authentication

Block: Refusal by an ISP or mail server to allow your email message to go through to a recipient on the basis of suspected spam, viruses or violation of email policy. Also see Blacklist

Browser: Software Application program required to access and read the websites on the Internet.

Business to Business: A business model for business on Internet. Popularly called as B2B,it includes ecommerce transaction between two business organizations.

Business to Consumer: A business model for business on Internet. Popularly called as B2C, it includes ecommerce transactions between a business organizations and an individual.

Domain Name: The unique name given to every website. It is used to physically locate a website over the Internet. A domain name consists of three different parts with each separated by a dot. These are host server name, the unique name of the website and the third defining the purpose/type of the website.

Ecommerce: A methodology used for executing business - either wholly or partially - over Internet or a network.

FTP: File Transfer Protocol (FTP). A globally accepted set of rules used while transferring files from one computer to another computer of a network or Internet.

Gateway: A hardware or software that acts as a mediator between two distinct protocols and help in the transfer of information between diverse systems.

Hosting: A term used for storing and maintaining files, email or domains on a server that is connected with Internet.

Merchant Account: An online bank account required by a store to receive payments through electronic mediums like credit cards. It can be considered as a virtual bank account that receives electronic money.

Modem: Acronym for Modulator-Demodulator. It is hardware required to access Internet through a telephone line. Modem converts the format of information received from the telephone
line (Analog) into a computer friendly format (Digital) and vise-versa.

Network: Group of computers or devices connected with each other. A network is used to transfer data within the devices.

Order Tracking:The process of tracing the status of particular order placed by a customer in a web store.

Payment Gateway PCI Compliance: All online merchants processing, transmitting, or storing credit card data were required to act in accordance with the new Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard developed by the major credit card companies as a guideline to help organizations that process card payments prevent credit card fraud, hacking and various other security issues.

Payment Gateway: A computer system that acts as a mediator between a merchant account and online storefront. Payment gateway is used in authentication of credit card information and real-time charging from a credit card.

SaaS>: Software as a service (SaaS) is a latest software application delivery model where a software vendor builds up a software application and hosts and operates the application for use by its customers over the Internet. In the SaaS model customers pay not for holding the software itself but for using it.

Shipping Provider: An organization that provides the services of physically transporting the goods ordered on the Internet, to the address specified by a buyer.

Shopping Cart: Software required for building an online store and accept orders online.

SSL: Secure Socket Layer. It’s a protocol designed for secure transfer of Information over the Internet. It helps to maintain security, reliability and privacy of the information and ensures that the information is not tempered with while the transfer is taking place.

Website: A collection of files organized in a structure that can be read through a browser. The domain name given to a website is the unique identification of a website in the World Wide Web.

Website Traffic: The number of times a website is viewed by a unique visitor within a stipulated time.

WYSIWYG: “What You See is What You Get” is a feature of an editor. Such editors show the exact appearance of the desired output while you are creating the document or a web page.

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