Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category

Choosing a Website Design Firm

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

Web design firms offer a variety of services that can make the difference in an average website and one that is above average. With so many online businesses flooding the market, the difference in a website that just shows information and goods and services and one that does so in an engaging, highly professional way can be the difference in sales dollars.

A successful web design firm is one that offers internet strategy, website design and web development. They should also be willing to listen to your ideas and represent them on your website in a way that is unique to your company. A web site design firm that is willing to partner with you during the entire process is one that will produce the best results for both you and your customer.

When considering a web site designer it is important to look for one that best suits your needs, and is available to speak with personally. Because the process can be lengthy it is important to not only feel comfortable with the firm you pick, but also be sure they offer all the services you need for your business. With so many options available, it is crucial that the firm you choose be able to create and manage your website in a way that creates a positive experience for your customer.

While some web design firms offer basic options, such as setting up your website and customizing it for you, others offer many more services such as logo design, and business management. Once you know what type of online business you want, and what type of goods and services you would like to provide, choosing a web design firm is the next step.

Once you have narrowed down your search to the firms that offer what you need, it is extremely important to check their portfolio and all of their references. Their portfolio will give you an idea of what websites they have done in the past and how they appeal to you. A good design firm will be more than happy to give you their portfolio and answer any questions you may have about them.

The web design firm that is right for you is one that listens to your ideas, offers the services you need and implements them in a way that is both highly professional but also engaging and informative for your customer. Since your web site is a true representation of your company, you want it as closely matched to your ideals and vision as possible.

Since this type of business is highly competitive, it is important to get several different quotes from several companies. This will help keep everyone on the same page and everyone bidding equally. Also, remember to choose one that offers many options and has a large skill set. As your company grows you want to make sure that the firm you have chosen to handle the demands of your business now and in the future. You may need an option available to you in the future that you cannot foresee now. A good web design firm will foresee that for you.

Ray Subs works with 7 Strategy as a public relations consultant, more information about 7 Strategy can be found at http://www.7strategy.com

Dreamhost Coupon For Discounted Web Hosting

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

Reliable web host is a very crucial aspect of your online business success. Having a low quality web server means that your website going to go down many times during the day, and that will cause profit reduction. No one afford to lose money because of a web server problem. In addition, search engines may not drive traffic to your website if the search engines crawlers find that your website is not available. These search engines do not want to send traffic to websites that are not up, they care about their users satisfaction.

When you choose a web host, you should consider many factors before you decide to buy a web hosting plan. These factors include monthly price, uptime, supported web frameworks (php, perl, ruby on rails, etc), supported databases, and customer service availability (24/7 or not). Certainly, everyone would pay less for hosting, and at the same time, a high quality service is needed. Web host quality is really hard to determine since most web hosts claim that they have 99.99% availability. Once you try the web host, you may find 98% availability and sometimes lower than that. As such, the experience is needed to judge on a web host quality.

After reading many online web hosting reviews, and doing intensive online research about web hosting companies, we found a great web host that we can recommend. This web host is Dreamhost. They offer very affordable plans with unlimited disk space, and bandwidth. What people liked in Dreamhost is their coupons, they offer coupons that gives up to $97 discount on yearly plan. For example, If you use the coupon “ARTICLEMAX”, you will get entire year of Dreamhost hosting and one domain registration for $22, this is like $1.8 per month! Domain registration alone costs $8, so you are paying $14 for entire year of Dreamhost shared web hosting plan.

Dreamhost has very nice customer service. They always help me in setting up word-press, and other software. They also reply to my questions very fast. In addition, they offer you the choice to have phone calls with their customer service operators if you really need urgent help, but this is paid and expensive service.

They have great WEB 2.0 control panel that make all your website needs easy. Their control panel allows you to do all DNS work in very easy way. If you ever tried to do DNS related work for your domain using the command line, you would know how hard and painful it is. Their control panel allows you to install any open source product like word-press, Joomla, etc in one click only! You can also can manage your databases, version control systems, domain registration, domain transfer, feedback and support. It is quite nice to be able to do all this work from the same control panel. Many web hosting reviews websites reported that Dreamhost control panel is way better than cpanel.

Finally, Dreamhost is really a Dream web host for most organizations and web masters. As such, trying Dreamhost is a smart idea, specially when you use their coupon to get entire year web hosting for $22 only.

Web hosting sphere is a new web hosting reviews website, we will offer web hosting ratings and reviews. Also, we offer Dreamhost coupon and various Dreamhost promo codes for other webmaster to help them to find affordable web hosting.

Personal Review About Offline Browser

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

Are you limited to use Internet on schedule or on rate? Do you remember the days of dial-up connections, when to save money, you’d try and save and download as many pages as possible for reading later? Now with the advent of broadband, those days are thankfully gone for most people. But there are occasions when you might want to save a whole website for offline reading or to do a backup. If that’s your case, then you should have a powerful and handy offline browser. Here I will commend some excellent and applied offline browsers to you. They are: SurfOffline, A1 Website Download, BackStreet Browser, BlackWidow and Offline Commander. Follow me and there must have a suited one for you!

SurfOffline is a fast and convenient offline browser with easy navigation and simple interface. Capable of downloading up to 100 files simultaneously, this application can save a website to our hard drive completely or partially in just minutes. Another important feature is a wizard like interface that enables the users to quickly set up downloading rules. Importantly, the program supports HTTP, SSL(HTTPS), FTP, proxy servers, CSS, Macromedia Flash and JavaScript parsing.

A1 Website Download enables us to download and archive entire websites for offline browsing or storage. The downloaded site(s) can be browsed without the need for an internet connection and can be placed on a CD/DVD or USB drive. The program supports website logins and cookies and automatically stores dynamic pages as static .html files. We can set a variety of filters and options that allows us to determine how links are followed and which pages to download. Other features include support for frames, redirects, multi-threaded operation, link conversion and more. Unlike most website download tools, this website downloader program will copy websites to our disk, and not store websites using a proprietary database format. As all links get corrected to relative file paths, we can copy and take the downloaded websites with us anywhere, and later view them offline in any browser.

BackStreet Browser is a free, powerful offline browser. A high-speed, multi-threading website download and viewing program. By making multiple simultaneous server requests, BackStreet Browser can quickly download entire website or part of a site including HTML, graphics, Java Applets, sound and other user definable files, and saves all the files in our hard drive, either in their native format, or as a compressed ZIP file and view offline. After downloading, all links within the website are reconstructed creating a complete hard drive copy of the site that we can view at our own pace without being connected to the Internet. Additionally, BackStreet Browser provides the option of duplicating the original directory structure of a site making it easy to download and transfer a site to another server. In the event we lose our Internet connection while downloading a site, the Resume Session allows us to pick up a session where we left off after reestablishing our Internet connection. If we wish to update a previously downloaded site, the Update Session feature allows us to revisit a site using new search parameters to make sure we have the most current files. In addition to the embedded quick-view browser window in the main program screen, we can launch our default browser for viewing any downloaded projects. The quick-view browser window also supports browsing zipped website, so that we don’t need to unzip the files to view.

BlackWidow is a multi-function internet utility and a great webmaster tool. It is a web site downloader, download internet manager, site mapping tool, a site ripper, a site mirroring tool, a website scanner, an offline browser and a download manager. We can use it to scan a site and create a complete profile of the site’s structure, files, external links and even link errors. Then use it to download part or entire web site to our computer, with its structure and files intact, to use as a site mirror or to be converted by BlackWidow into a locally linked site for offline browsing and long-term reference. Or use it to scan for and download any selection of files: from JPG to CGI to HTM to MIME types, from small to large files, in part of a site or in a group of sites. The Net Spy feature can monitor all our web activity and build a structure of everything we visit on every web site. This feature is especially useful to find hidden links to files or to spot redirections to other URLs.

Offline Commander lets us create local copies of entire Web sites, browse Web sites offline, organize our Web research, quickly save selected web pages to offline collections. All saved pages and sites are stored and indexed in a local SQL database and can be searched in depth (also via custom SQL query). The saved pages and sites can be browsed just as if they were online, complete with all images, links, and dynamic content, embedded objects etc. We can specify the depth and what type of files to download, also specify URL patterns to match and more. Offline Commander has a tabbed browser interface and provides a drop box that we can use to quickly save pages from within Internet Explorer or any other browser.

In a word, SurfOffline, A1 Website Download and Offline Commander provide most basal functions for downloading entire website. SurfOffline has an easy navigation and simple interface. Offline Commander has a tabbed browser interface and provides a drop box. Even beginners can use them expediently and fleetly. Unlike most website download tools, A1 Website Download will copy websites to disk, and not store websites using a proprietary database format. So as all links get corrected to relative file paths, we can copy and take the downloaded websites with us anywhere. BackStreet Browser is a multi-threading website download and viewing program. It provides an Update Session feature allows us to revisit a site using new search parameters to make sure we have the most current files. BlackWidow is a multi-function internet utility and a great webmaster tool. It’s Net Spy feature can monitor all our web activity and build a structure of everything we visit on every web site. What are you waiting for? Download a favorite offline browser now!

Software Reviews & Downloads | Offline Browser

How to Choose and Register a Successful Domain Name

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

As a business seeking to expand by creating a website and selling goods and services online, it is critical for your rapid success on the Internet that you choose, buy and register an excellent domain name.

Domain names are names assigned to represent, identify and distinguish your website space from that of others. Domain names are unique and consist of a name you choose and an extension such as .com, .org etc. depending on what kind of firm you wish to represent. or which location you are based in.

Getting a domain name itself is quite simple, you simply access one of thousands or domain name registrars or web site hosting firms on the Internet, do a search to confirm that the name you want to use has not already been used by someone else, pay your money and register it, usually for just few dollars.

That is the easy part. The harder part is choosing a good domain name in the first place. Your natural tendency could be to choose one that reflects your company name. Another might be to choose the wackiest, zaniest name you can think of so your company can stand out.

This is okay if you are a large company, or have a lot of money to invest in marketing and promotions. If however, like most small businesses building their websites on the Internet, you have a limited budget, you may want to consider carefully choosing a domain name that reflects a very narrow niche of products you wish to market i.e. you may need to very precisely and selectively target your market. A good website name should provide a good description of what services of goods your website offers.

The Internet is a huge marketplace, but conversely there is also huge competition on the Internet for the top positions in the search engines.

Most people carrying out a search on the Internet never get past the first few pages before giving up or changing their search terms to find something more.

If, for example you plan to sell Doll’s Houses - and you type the term “doll’s houses” on Google (the World’s biggest and most popular search engine) - you will get back more than 5 million results. In essence you are competing with more than 5 million competitors for the top few positions in Google.

So is there any hope for small business website builders? Yes, there is, because firstly Google does not rank websites, but individual website pages so even if your home page is not highly ranked, other pages on your website can get top ranking for similar topics.

Secondly, you have the opportunity to beat your opposition because you can specialise and therefore reduce the competition. This is where your choice of domain name comes in.

Normally search engines match the terms people are searching for to similar words (known as keywords) on your website to determine how relevant your website is to their searches.

However, in addition to this, the major search engines also match the relevance of your domain name to the keywords - hence in that search we just did for dolls houses - the dollshouse domain comes up first. But if you sell dolls houses, you can make your website domain more specific than that. What kind of dolls houses do you sell? Which niche in your industry do you cater to?

It is better for you to choose a more descriptive domain name, which has the effect of both limiting your target market and reducing competition. You might think it is a bad thing to reduce your target market, but this is not actually so. You might decide to call your site woodendollshouses, giantdollshouses, miniaturedollshouses etc.

Someone looking for a giant dolls house is highly unlikely to also be looking for a miniature dolls house, so targeting a more specific audience will lead to you receiving traffic that is far more interested in your sites content rather than getting visitors who pay a visit to your website and leave quickly (bounce) because your site is not relevant to their needs.

There are other factors one can optimise, so the most specific name may not always come first. But making your domain name relevant to your main topic and specialising it so that is becomes the most relevant to capture a niche is an important way to get noticed on the Internet and build your website traffic.

Fortunately, it is not all guess work to determine exactly which keywords people are actually using for searches in your particular realm. There are both free and paid for tools that will help you find which keywords people are searching for, how popular the terms are and even how many searches are being done for these keywords.

You can easily find the best keywords to base your domain name on. Since your domain name is the one thing about your website you can’t change without having to start all over again, make sure you get hold of one of these tools and do some good research before you even consider buying your domain. Then you will find it much easier to get your website to rise to the top ranks of the search engines and profit from increased website traffic.

Small Business Website Builders and London Website Builders WebITLondon help small businesses and SME’s build online success through website builders, website design, traffic building and website optimisation (SEO). Visit us for free SEO, traffic and website building resources.

Before Your Web Site Makeover Goes Live: A Checklist

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

The web designer shows you her final version of your long-in-the-making revamped site. You click around and can hardly believe how gorgeous and rich it is.

“Love it! Launch it!”

Oops, not so fast. Too many times I’ve seen that sentiment lead to frantic scrambling, even to disaster. Before making your revamped site live, use this checklist to make sure you’ve caught or prevented horrible new-site glitches.

1. Timing. Never, never launch your new web site on a holiday, weekend or even on a Friday. Why? Because chances are high you’ll discover something weirdly wrong with your shopping cart, images, blog or regular web pages, and the tech support you need will be closed down or just skeletally staffed. Likewise, make sure your web designer or developer will be on hand for the next day or two to quickly fix any problems that become evident.

2. Test on as many computers as you can, and request feedback with the site parked in a test location. A colleague of mine (whose experience inspired this article) replaced her old site with the new one, then asked for feedback on a discussion board. Several people reported pages looking peculiar in their browsers or receiving an obnoxious warning message instead of simply seeing the home page.

Too late, she learned she should have asked for this feedback before the site went public. What looked great and worked fine in her office had not-so-positive results in various browser and monitor combinations no one had tested the site on.

3. Match the new file names with the former ones. When your web site has been up and running for quite a while, visitors have bookmarked various pages of it or created links to your pages on their sites. You’d be foolish to sacrifice the benefit of those bookmarks and links by having all new files names and sending those looking for the old page names to an error page. Instead, as much as you can, make the new file names match the old ones and redirect any old pages lacking a corresponding new page to the nearest equivalent.

Designers and developers, focused on creating a new site for you, don’t usually take care of this unless you ask them to. I often run across this foolish oversight when updating one of my reports that has a lot of links in it, discovering article links that go to a dead link rather than to the article that was given a new URL during a site makeover.

4. For SEO purposes, keep page titles the same. Experts in search engine optimization advise that if your site was getting good traffic from search engines prior to your makeover, keep your old page titles as much as possible. (The page title is the text that shows up in the upper left corner of the browser.) To search engines, a new page title can cause the built-up search engine ranking for the page to get lost.

5. Hunt down and eliminate boilerplate copy. If your designer or developer used a template (and if so, they’ll rarely tell you they did), the template may have pre-written text on extra pages that unexpectedly become visible to your visitors. The testing described in step #2 above usually flushes out these blunders so you can purge them from the site. Unless the new site is gargantuan, you can also hunt down the unwanted content by viewing all the pages one by one from your file manager program.

6. Run a sample order and subscription signup from the new site. If possible, test the ordering and list signup procedures from your test location before making the new site live. Sometimes the “thank you” messages don’t show up properly or orders just don’t go through correctly after a makeover. If you can’t check this from the test location, run these checks as soon as possible after making the new site live and be prepared to fix the glitches immediately. Having a non-functioning site up even for an hour can lose you sales!

7. Delete all the old pages from the server. Do this just before uploading the new site if you can, or after uploading the new site hunt for and delete any former pages that were not replaced by new ones. Otherwise, you’ll be startled later by a visitor finding pages you thought had been superseded.

8. Immediately after uploading the new site, recheck all the links and pages. Start from the home page and first systematically follow all the links in your navigation system, then follow all the links on pages that contain many links, like an index of articles or your newsletter archive. As you do this, keep your eyes peeled for any missing images. Fix any problems you notice.

9. And last, for the next four or five days, monitor all the errors that show up in your web logs. This alerts you to images that visitors aren’t seeing, pages that aren’t linked to correctly, pages that are taking too long to load for some of your visitors and other problems. Fix any remaining glitches and bask in the praise for your well-done, nicely functioning makeover!

Marcia Yudkin is author of Web Site Marketing Makeover: Improve Your Message and Turn Visitors into Buyers and other books on marketing. A Webby Awards reviewer since 2001, she performs site reviews for business owners and managers who want objective feedback: http://www.yudkin.com/sitereview.htm

How to Avoid Getting Ripped Off by Your Web Designer

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

OK, you’ve heard, read, and been told by folks that having a website is a great way to reach a global audience. You even know some folks who do a substantial business entirely on the internet. You don’t want to be left behind, so you decide to have your own website. But let me warn you – there are several things that you need to do, learn, understand and research before you jump in, unless you have money to burn. If not, let’s get started right away.

First of all, you need to decide what you really want and expect from your website. When I say want, I mean everything – A to Z. How do you want your website to look aesthetically? How do you want your navigation? Do you want a static site or a dynamic one? How frequently do you want it updated? Will you write the content yourself or will you seek the services of a copy writer? (warning: if you copy content off some other website you are doing copyright infringement and may receive a DCMA complaint and even get sued). Always plan your website content keeping the focus on your customer. What does your customer seek before arriving at your website? It is advisable to visit a few websites, especially your competitors and see how they have their websites done. This will give you pointers and help you take directions.

Once you know what you expect from your website, start inviting web design and development quotes from multiple sources, like recommendations from friends and associates, online sources like elance, yellow pages, etc. Also ask them what type of hosting plans will be required. Once you’ve taken sufficient quotes, do some research for hosting providers on Google; you will get several choices. I’ve found that AwareINDIA.net is one of the good ones who give excellent support. Their rates are also very economical (just a few cents to a few dollars a month depending on the plan you choose). You will also need to have some idea of search engine marketing (SEM) costs before you form a budget for web design. SEM is a great way to ensure free long term visitor traffic to your website. While SEM will not be required immediately, it makes sense to know if all expenses meet your budget, else you will require making some compromises. It is also advisable to let your SEM company work hand in hand with your designer, as your website also needs to be search engine optimized (SEO) so that SE robots can index your pages properly and rank them higher for your desired keywords and phrases.

It may interest you to know that there are several open source software available which can take care of your website needs. For example, OS commerce and Zen Cart are some great options if you plan to have a shopping cart system and ecommerce enable your website. If you want a discussion forum, PHPbb is one of the best used extensively. If you’re looking out for a Portal or CMS software, there are Joomla, Drupal, Mambo, Post Nuke, PHP Nuke, and many more. Some folks even use blog software to power their website which gives it an interactive edge. Popular blog software are wordpress, b2evolution and nucleus. The good news is, most of these software can be installed for free at the click of a button without requiring any technical skills, if your hosting provider supports fantastico (AwareINDIA.net does support it). In fact, you can even buy ready made templates specially designed for and compatible with these software. Some companies even make customized templates. It’s a good idea to research on these software and also discuss this with your programmer and weigh the options if it is viable or not. Building a system from scratch would be quite expensive, especially if you’re on a tight budget. In fact, just mentioning about fantastico and these open source software with your designer will immediately cause him to feel as if you’re very much aware of the market and he will certainly think twice before giving you an exorbitant quote!

Some hosting providers also provide a Do-It-Yourself website builder which is quite easy to use, eliminating the need for a web designer altogether. However, there are some limitations with such options. AwareINDIA.net does offer this option; in fact, you can even get a free trial and see if it suits your requirements. If you’re comfortable using Microsoft Word, you should be able to design your own website without much hassle.

If you do plan to use the services of a designer, make sure you have everything in black and white. Keep the terms and conditions of the contract crystal clear. This is good for both of you as it is binding. Use an escrow service if required – most online portals like elance have this option. If you wish to read more of my work, you can visit http://www.bharatbhasha.com/author.php/Nirjara%20Rustom – I’ve written several articles related to SEO, online success, marketing tips, email marketing, etc.

Nirjara Rustom moderates the Website Designing Tips Section of http://www.bharatbhasha.com at http://www.bharatbhasha.com/web_designing.php - a free informative resource.

Uncover Online Dating Deception With A Reverse Email Search

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

Have you tried online dating? It’s a great way to meet people. But who are you actually chatting with or exchanging emails with. You can find out with a reverse email search. Online dating is growing everyday. People get to browse personal ads and pick out a person they like in the same way they may browse an online store for shoes or a purse. You put in the size and shape and color you want and 100 potential dates pop up on your screen.

But who are these people? Are they being truthful in their profiles? Is it a recent pictures. Do they really earn what they claim? There are some major pitfalls and well none scams associated with online dating services:

1. Fantasy Role Playing.

Many times the cute blond coed you think you’re flirting with is really a man pretending to be a woman. The guy s getting his perverted sexual jollies at your expense.

2. Russian and Nigeria Scams. Many times you’ll get a response to your ad from a picture of a beautiful woman claiming to be visiting overseas. This is just the beginning of a scam to try to get you to mail them a plane ticket.

3. Damsel In Distress.

This email from a beautiful woman will describe horrible domestic abuse and will ultimately end with her asking you for money to escape her abusive partner. But there are far more sophisticated scams that may run on for weeks. They will flirt, profess their love and devotion. You can be chatting for weeks or months but you have a distinct feeling that something is wrong.

This is when you should do some investigation. There are many ways to check out a person if all you have is an email address. You can do a reverse email search to find out their real name address and phone number. Then you can run a back ground report to find out their marital and financial status. You can also do some Internet investigations to secret blogs and secret Myspace account. There are dating service searches and escort service searches to see if their email is associated with memberships on those sites.

The bottom line is that if you suspect something is wrong it probably is. If you have suspicions or feelings of uncertainty about an online relationship you should hire an investigator that can perform the types of investigations described in this article. But you need an investigator that has experience in tracing emails and online infidelity investigations. Do an online search using Google to find out if they are an expert in online investigations or email tracing.

Neck check out the pricing and turn around times for the results of the investigation. Are they competitive? Beware of companies that are too cheap and offer “instant” searches. This information can be inaccurate and old. Be aware that if you see a site offering “unlimited” searches for one low price it is probably going to be a scam.

No one should live with suspicions or feeling of uncertainty. Not when it’s so easy to find out the truth.

Ed Opperman , president of Opperman Investigations Inc is an expert in Internet Infidelity Investigations and Computer and Cell Phone Forensics. If you need help with an infidelity investigation visit www.emailrevealer.com

Internet Dating Deceptions and Reverse Email Search

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

If you have ever joined an online dating service and exchanged emails with potential dates, you probably wished there was a way to do a reverse email search to determine in they are who they say they are. Well now you can and even a whole lot more. In fact not only can you verify their information with a reverse email search you can also find out what other dating sites they belong to. What porn sites they visit, if they are a swinger and if they frequent escort services.

Amazing isn’t it. But that’s what you can uncover out on the information superhighway.

Online dating services are a great way to meet new people. You can search ads based on hair color,religion,height, weight or distance. You can chose an ad that appeals to you and make contact without fear of rejection. But Internet dating sites are also fertile hunting grounds for predators seeking out new victims. Con men, sexual deviates, drug users and those prone to violence all use online personal ads to lure in their unsuspecting targets.

There are some simple steps you can take to protect yourself so you can safely enjoy online dating services.

1. Never reveal your personal information to strangers. Until you check them out.

2. Do professional reverse email search to verify their information.Verify their real name address, phone number, place of employment.

3. Do a Dating Service Assessment to see which other dating sites they have memberships. Find out if they are on any strange or unusual fetish websites.

4. Do a full background check.

5. Loacte their secret email accounts, secret web sites, and social networking sites like Myspace.

With so many services at your disposal it would be awful to waste time with frogs leaving your prince lost in the crowd. With the right investigation services available on the Internet you can cut out the losers, perverts, criminals and abusers and focus on a winner. Someone that’s worth your time.

While we all agree its smarter to be safe than sorry and foolish to meet with strangers. We can also agree that it’s a waste of time dating losers or perverts. The only question is how to go about weeding out the undesirables?

On the Internet you can find services that can do a background report and a reverse email search. But when it comes to serious online investigations and dating service assessments you need a professional that is recognized as an exert in email tracing and Internet infidelity investigations.

Before you hire an investigator make sure to check them out. Google the company name to check if they are considered an expert in these services.

Last check out the pricing and turn around times for the results. Are they competitive? Beware of companies that are too cheap and offer “instant” searches. This information will almost always be inaccurate and out dated. Be leery if you see a site offering “unlimited” searches for one low price. If it looks too good to be true it usually is.

Ed Opperman , president of Opperman Investigations Inc is an expert in Cyber Stalking Investigations. If you need help with a Reverse Email Search visit www.emailrevealer.com

Threatening Emails - How To Respond

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

Have you received a threatening email? Or worse several threatening emails? How should you react?

First let’s go over what you should not do.

Do not reply. Do not threaten back.

Do not complain to their ISP and get their account closed. You’ll destroy evidence.

Now here’s what you should do.

You should always take any kind of threat seriously. You should immediately print out the threat and save the email to a disc. Take this in person to your local police station and make a police report. Then follow up with the police. Ask to have an appointment with the detectives assigned to your case . Make sure you follow up.

Unfortunately many police departments will not take an email threat seriously. They will try to parse the wording of the threatening email and attempt to make light of the threat claiming it can be interpreted in different ways. They may just tell you to turn off the computer, change your email and ignore it.

But stil make the report and stay in touch with them. Checking up on the status of the investigation. Try and meet with them in person and put a face to the names on your report.

If they tell you they don’t have the resources to try to trace the email and identify the sender they are probably right. Unlike CSI on TV not many police departments have a full time computer crimes division and if they do they are probably overwhelmed with cases.

But don’t lose hope. You can hire a private investigator that has the time and resources to locate and identify the sender of the email threat. An investigator that specializes in email investigations has the experience in collecting and preserving the chain of custody of evidence you’ll need for court. Many times they will have contacts with local police and prosecutors and can act as your agent in dealing with the police and assist in getting your case the attention it deserves.

Email threats are serious business and should not go ignored. They are clearly sent from someone that does not understand normal social boundaries and they could easily escalate into a real life in person confrontation. The person making the threats will often target the victims family , friends and coworkers if he is not stopped.

If you decide to hire a professional investigator to handle this problem be sure to check him out first. Some state require Pis to be licensed and or bonded. Do an online internet search to see if the PI has done these types of investigations before. Do they have a good reputation or are there many complaints from unhappy customers?

Beware of software companies offering do it yourself “detective software”. These softwares are deceptive in claiming they can offer unlimited searches for a one time low fee. This is impossible as many of the searches they claim to provide are only available to licensed professionals.

If a deal sounds too good to be true you can be sure that it’s a scam and you should stay away.

Ed Opperman , president of Opperman Investigations Inc is an expert in Cyber Stalking Investigations. If you need help with a Reverse Email Search visit www.emailrevealer.com

The Stumbling Blocks of Paid Surveys

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

I’d like to provide a few samples of why paid surveys are a difficult way to make money. It’s not impossible, but the road is difficult and filled with stumbling blocks.

Stumbling Block # 1

You may not be dealing with an actual paid survey company. What I mean by that is that in many instances opportunists will find ways to funnel survey takers through a secondary business site that may not be directly affiliated with any actual survey company. The individual respondents will, in fact, take a survey, but the majority of any proceeds may likely go to the owners of the secondary site – not the survey taker. The respondent is usually awarded opportunities to win in raffle type drawings. This is usually promised by saying something like, “The more surveys you take the better your chances of winning”.

Some sites provide cyber cash that can be used to purchase items in their online shop. The choices may be limited and require a significant amount of surveys in order to receive the prize you are interested in.

Stumbling Block # 2

You won’t be paid immediately in most cases. Many survey companies create a payment threshold that must be met before they will release funds to you. If, for instance, you successfully complete one survey per week and are paid $1 per survey it will take more than 6 months in most cases to gain release of your earnings. Many survey takers will abandon their earnings rather than wait six months or more for a payday.

The funds placed in your online account will ultimately become the possession of the owners of the site you signed up for. It may not be so far from the truth that you are essentially giving money to those who develop these secondary sites.

Stumbling Block # 3

You might experience a slow down in survey offers. The closer you get to the amount needed to release funds the slower you may find offers coming in. If the sites can cause just enough frustration you will leave the funds behind.

Stumbling Block # 4

You might sign up believing you will always receive cash. Some paid survey collectives offer what they refer to as “Cash value”. Essentially this means the survey taker may not actually receive cash, but something that has cash value. However, this does not mean it will be personally valuable to the recipient. This could be gifts, discounts or even coupons.

Stumbling Block # 5

You’ve read a lot of information about Paid Surveys and it’s been mostly positive. You have to understand most of the press is either from those who have learned the connections for a first person association with actual survey companies or the information is from companies that have found ways to make money selling you on the idea of taking surveys. For the novice survey taker there is very little about the paid survey market to elicit a strongly favorable response.

Many companies have found ways to exploit the paid survey industry and have developed paid memberships for access to services that are free in almost every case. They have learned to ask members to take surveys for as little as twenty-five cents while receiving several dollars in some cases for providing the survey taker.

Paid surveys are a great idea that somehow got lost in the greed.

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