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5 Feature-packed Shopping Carts

This is a guest post by James Adams. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

The shopping cart which you choose needs to have plenty of features. It needs to be scalable to your needs, offering many categories and products. Shopping cart software is great for providing your customers with a full virtual storefront. Here are five great shopping cart solutions.

1. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is feature packed, stuffed with everything from premium hosting to single-click reordering. This is one of the most fully customizable shopping cart applications on the market today. This program fully supports electronic goods for direct downloads, 12 shopping methods, more than 50 payment methods, affiliate programs, and more. You can truly automate your store with email notifications when your stock is running low, a newsletter, and a complete return system. The plans are fully scalable to the size of your business.

Pricing: $49.95 setup, plans starting at $24.95 per month for 100 products

2. Volusion
Volusion prides itself on the security features that it offers to customers. It offers 128-bit SSL security, complete disaster planning, and proactive protection against hackers. Volusion can be integrated with QuickBooks and Endicia. This software fully embraces affiliate programs with a 5 tier affiliate system, discounts and coupons. You can build a socially networked store with the Social Store Builder, so you can sell your products directly to customers on MySpace and Facebook. Everything within Volusion is customizable, including the product descriptions, keywords, and website.

Pricing: $49 setup, plans starting at $29 per month for 100 products

3. Fortune3
Fortune3 makes establishing a full store simple. You do not need to have a volume of HTML knowledge under your belt to capitalize on the features of this application. You can sell downloadable products, establish custom pricing and bulk discounts. Checkout and style templates are available. Modify your cart button styles and store design with the touch of a button. Fortune3 supports multiple sales tax options, shipping costs, and shipping calculation. There is automated SEO and an automated affiliate program. If you have any problems, this shopping cart offers unlimited email and telephone support as well as live chat.

Pricing: $39.95 setup, plans starting at $29.95 per month for 30 products, transaction fees starting at .95%

4. Shopify
Set up your shopping cart quickly and easily with Shopify. You can track your inventory, receive email notifications, and receive fully integrated fulfillment through Amazon. Shopify is a simple fully featured shopping cart program. Your administration screens are managed through a single panel and the interface is streamlined for easier use. Tailor discount programs and coupon codes to your specifications. The software is PCI compliant and built on constantly improving open-source software. Shopify does not handle money or ship your packages, but it does integrate with services that can perform those functions.

Pricing: Plans start at $24 per month for 100 products. Transaction fees starting at 2%

5. SunShop
With SunShop, you receive a full service shopping cart without the monthly fee. Set up your store in very little time using their installation wizard. SunShop offers a fully customizable storefront, newsletter support, email templates and website templates. There are unlimited categories and support for multiple product images and options. You can establish on-site promotions, upselling, affiliate programs and referral programs. With SunShop, you can checkout without having an account and receive live order tracking for all of your purchases. The software is fully compliant with all standard security protocols.

Pricing: $249.99 purchases a single license and 60 days of support

If you wish to establish an online store, it is essential to have shopping cart software which can suit your needs. The program you choose needs to grow with your business.

James Adams works at Cartridge Save, a top ink supplies specialist based in the UK.

How Green are ISPs?

This is a guest post by Bailey Digger. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

It’s an issue that’s as sensitive as the world that it seeks to protect – without a mass effort to create a greener planet and adopt environment friendly ways to live, we risk losing the only home we know. Future generations are in danger of struggling with life in a harsh world, a planet that is retaliating because of how horribly we have treated her through these centuries. So the more people follow green measures, the better for our planet. With the Internet, it’s easier to raise awareness and get people to start thinking about saving the earth before it’s too late, and it’s not surprising that ISPs are setting an example for the rest of the world. So how green are the green measures being taken by Internet Service Providers the world over?

1. Many of them are adapting to solar power which is a source of renewable energy – we’re already hearing claims of data centers being 100 percent solar powered.
2. Data centers and ISPs are also investing in servers and other equipment that are energy efficient and which use less than half the energy needed by and generate less than half the heat emitted by traditional equipment.
3. There are a few ISPs who are also tapping wind energy to become 100 percent wind powered data centers.
4. Others are focusing on the carbon footprint they leave behind and are conscious about how they use energy; they are committed to recycling and reusing energy and resources and also reducing wastage of water and power.
5. Some ISPs promise to plant one tree for every customer who signs up with them. So they’re not only growing their business, they’re also growing trees. Besides, they encourage their clients to become aware of and contribute to the green movement.
6. A few ISPs take their social responsibilities very seriously and work towards improving the way their community fosters the environment.
7. Some even follow the policy of using only public transport to and from work because they don’t want to increase pollution by using their own cars.

Besides these conventional ways to foster a greener planet, ISPs are also working with wireless service providers to clean up the mobile Internet and make the environment greener. They’re working on technology that will stop spam, fraud, and viruses and other malware, and which will also prevent the origination and spread of bad information. With more and more people taking to the air waves with 3G and EDGE, ISPs have moved their ant-spam and ant-malware technology to the mobile Web in the hope of making it a cleaner place.

By-line:
This guest post is contributed by Bailey Digger, she writes on the topic of web design degree. She welcomes your comments at her email id: baileydigger189(@)gmail(.)com.

9 Weird Facts About Printer Ink

This is a guest post by James Adams. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Most homes have an inkjet printer or laserjet printer to print the family photos, papers for school, or even book drafts. As a result, millions upon millions of consumable cartridges are created, many of which end up in the garbage heap. Here are some quick facts about the cartridges that you use every single day.

1. In the UK alone, more than 30 million inkjet cartridges are dumped each year into landfills. This is the equivalent weight of 18 blue whales. If placed end to end, unrecycled cartridges could circle the Earth.

2. There are specialty markets which you can purchase edible inkjet ink for your printer. In fact, there is a restaurant in Chicago which uses edible ink and paper to print out its delicious sushi entrees. The chef, Homaro Cantu, prints out delightful concoctions using a Canon i560 inkjet printer.

3. Nearly a gallon of oil goes into the production of one laser cartridge. Several ounces of oil go into the creation of an inkjet cartridge. Less oil in energy is used when a laser printer cartridge is remanufactured, though very few cartridges are reused, remanufactured, or recycled.

4. Water makes up at least 50% of an inkjet ink cartridge. The other ingredients to the cartridges are pigments and chemicals which keep the ink from evaporating. This ink is precisely manufactured to make sure that the ink doesn’t evaporate, bugs don’t enter the ink, the cartridge itself is durable, and will not corrode.

5. In the US, it is estimated that over 375 million inkjet cartridges are disposed of every year. The weight of these cartridges is equivalent to over 112,000 Volkswagen Beetles or 67,000 Ford Explorers. Purchasing remanufactured cartridges saves you oil as well as around 3.5 pounds of waste. We currently recycle only around 25% of the inkjet cartridges that are used.

6. Cartridge manufacturers inflate the prices of their inkjet cartridges. They will use the tactic of selling the inkjet printers themselves for at or below cost so they can sell their proprietary inkjet cartridges for a significant profit. This is in contrast to laser printer manufacturers, who will sell their laser printers for high prices, knowing that consumables will not be bought as often.

7. The retail cost of ink itself costs more than most liquids on the planet, including oil, liquor, milk, and space shuttle fuel. The HP 20 black ink cartridge has 28 ml of ink and costs an average of $40 per cartridge. In order to get a liter of ink, one must have around 36 ink cartridges. The cost of a single liter of HP ink is $1,440.

8. Lexmark has a single-use policy written on its cartridges. The company won a lawsuit in 2005 which allows it to prosecute individuals for refilling their cartridges. Those cartridges which aren’t labeled with the single-use markings have to be returned to the company for refilling.

9. There is a computer chip in each inkjet cartridge which informs the printer of the levels of toner within. Since manufacturers stand to win when cartridges are empty, there is the inclination to prematurely signal the depletion of a cartridge. There are a few especially annoying printers which will not print black and white when only a single color has been depleted.

Inkjet printer ink is one of the most valuable liquids on the planet, yet it is used at an alarming rate. Laser printer cartridges are almost as expensive, if one considers the resources which go into the production of a single cartridge. Whether in the UK or the US, recycling inkjet and laser printer cartridges is important.

James Adams is a regular contributor of guest articles to blogs around the web. He works for Cartridge Save, a popular supplier of printer ink based in the UK.

8 Best WordPress Caching Plugins

This is a guest post by Kip. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Slow page loads cause visitors to leave your site and go somewhere else, leaving you without sales and without subscribers. Slow page loads can also prompt Google to downgrade your page rank, causing you even more lost revenue. WordPress pages can be slow because of the large number of files and database calls the system must process while the visitor waits to see it. By saving these dynamic pages as static HTML after they are viewed, subsequent page views are served much faster. Fortunately, adding caching to WordPress is as easy as adding a couple files to your server. Here are the 8 best WordPress caching plugins you can use to make your Web site more responsive and profitable.

1. WP-Cache is one of the first WordPress cache solutions ever to be created. With this plugin installed, WordPress can serve up hundreds more pages per second. This reduced server load accommodates hundreds or even thousands more visitors to your blog without any noticeable performance degradation. Although this is not the fastest cache plugin, it remains one of the most popular.

2. WP Super Cache uses three methods to cache data (Mod_Rewrite, PHP, and Legacy Caching) to make your content display quickly to your visitors even when your server is under a heavy load. With its recommended settings, WP_Super Cache will compress pages and cache PHP code while serving original pages to known users. The makers of the plug-in say that 99% of your visitors will see static pages, suggesting that search engines and visitors will all have a good experience on your site.

3. DB Cache is a WordPress plugin that professes to speed WordPress beyond traditional HTML caching to make it the fastest cache solution that is available. With DB Cache installed your WordPress cache takes less space and your server deals with a lighter load than with other cache plugins.

4. WP Widget Cache will cache WordPress widgets to make your blog go even faster than it does with a page cache only This is especially important for bloggers who have an above average number of widgets in use. Since widgets are found on most pages, this plugin can speed up every page (including unpopular pages) so users and search engines will have positive feelings about your blog.

5. Hyper Cache is a WordPress cache pluigin designed for installations on minimal hosting providers. This is important because the average low resource Web host doesn’t have the space and the horsepower to support a full blown hosting solution. This plugin serves cached pages without any database access and minimizes cached storage space to so that even low-end packages can host speedy WordPress blogs.

6. DB Cache Reloaded is a WordPress cache plugin that branched off of the original DB Cache after the original author didn’t promptly update the plugin for newer WordPress versions. This cache will work with the most recent versions of WordPress.

7. 1 Blog Cacher is an ultra lightweight cache that is gaining in popularity even though virtually all of its configuration options are set in a single PHP file. This is an HTML cache, meaning that dynamic pages are saved as HTML for future visitors. Because of its low profile, this plugin caches only GET requests on the server. The plugin also supports the ability to define the length of time before pages expire.

8. W3 Total Cache Is billed as one of the most robust caching plugins available. It offers impressive speed gains “out of box” with plenty of options to tweak it for your particular preferences. Several options for caching for pages and databases, minifying, and content delivery networks makes this an attractive option for experienced bloggers.

Try one or more of the 8 best WordPress caching plugins listed here to improve your page loading speeds. Your effort will be rewarded with more satisfied customers, better search engine ranking, and a bigger bottom line.

Kip is a tech writer for BroadbandCompare.com.au, an Australian website where you can compare broadband plans and deals from the best broadband providers.

7 Tips for Researching a New Business

This is a guest post by James Adams. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

New businesses need care, loving, and attention to grow. Before you set up shop, you need to research the market and examine the trends. Discover the relevance and importance of your idea before investing your life’s savings. Here are ten tips for researching that new business.

1. Planning: Before you open the doors to your new business, have a plan for success in place. What is your exit strategy? Are you planning on running the business forever, or are you planning to sell your built company to a competitor? Do you intend to keep your business small? Would you rather grow your business to gigantic proportions? What defines your company’s success? Do you want to quickly divorce yourself from the sales process and establish a new business?

2. Define your business idea: What are the key features of your business? What products and services does it offer? Focus on the specifics of the idea. If you want to sell information products, what kinds of information products do you sell? How do you plan to make money off of this idea? Many businesses fail because they do not adequately distill the idea into a salable product. Are you a warehouse of information products, or do you have something exclusive to your business? State your idea as succinctly as possible.

3. Talk with friends and family: Many underestimate the value of friends and family in the formulation of a business plan. They might not be part of your industry, but they can offer unique insights which are related to their own experiences. What do they suggest? After hearing about your new business, would they buy your company’s products and services? Where can you change your ideas? A different set of eyes can be extremely fruitful for the direction of your new business.

4. Who are your clients?: After you have fully defined your company’s products, decide your target demographic. What kinds of clients do you want? Are you selling to individuals or businesses? It is easy to say that you want to sell your product to the planet, but not everybody needs what you are selling. Does your business cater to recent graduates? Soccer moms? Are your products and services geared toward a market which was heretofore untapped? If you have a manufacturing business, in what stores would you expect to see your products?

5. Look at the competition: Now that you have defined what you are selling and to whom you are selling, you need to find out who is already providing that product to the market. A quick search will yield the results you desire. When listing the companies which sell your product, think about the factors which make you different from them. Examine their products and pricing structure. What kinds of guarantees are offered? Identify your primary and secondary competition for each of your products.

6. Discover your unique selling proposition: What factors set you apart from the competition? Are you offering the same services for a cheaper price? Do you give your customers a better warranty? Instead of one pricing plan, are you going to offer several? If you invented the red widget, use that as your selling point. If you are selling services, what benefits are available? Some companies pride themselves on offering the most of a product. Others thrive on scarcity. Still others attempt to be the cheapest within the field. If you are the best rather than the cheapest, what is that unique thing which makes you the best?

7. Demand for your product: Is your product being talked about in publications? Are you bringing a new innovation to the industry? Is the market saturated with suppliers of your product? Look at Google Trends to find out about the latest and greatest in your arena. What is on the minds of your potential customers? This will help you pinpoint your marketing strategies.

The success of your business depends on the strength of your research. What sets you apart from the other suppliers? How do you define your own success? What steps do you plan to take? Your business flourishes when you have a concrete plan of attack.

This post was contributed by James Adams who works at a leading office supplies shop offering in office furniture for businesses. His favourite topic is productivity and how it affects profitability.

Use Mobile Phone as a Webcam

This is a guest post by Keith Palmer. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

If you want to use your camera phone as a web camera, I assume that you are advanced enough to follow below instructions.

Webcams themselves can be expensive, at least for a high quality one, and wireless webcams can be even more expensive (not to mention rare). Most of us already own several cameras and don’t really want to invest more for a webcam. If you have a cameraphone running WindowsMobile 6.x, Symbian, or Java (I’ve used a new Nokia c6), as well as a Bluetooth enabled computer or laptop, and you can use some nifty software to turn your phone into a wireless webcam.

You can download the PC software at sourceforge, and the phone software here. Install both pieces of software on their respective hardware, and then pair your phone with your computer over the Bluetooth connection. You will need to make sure that both are set to be publically visible, and that you know the password for both Bluetooth connections (if applicable).

Running the actual software and connecting it to your phone is pretty easy. Run the SmartCam software on both your computer and your phone. On the computer side, go to the Settings dialogue under the File menu, and then choose Bluetooth as the method of connection. On the cell phone, simply choose the computer from the list of visible devices (do make sure that your computer is visible as a Bluetooth device).

Assuming that everything above has been done properly, you should now see your phone as a webcam and be able to use it with video chat applications, as well as record and save video streams from it. This is really great because having the wireless feature makes it a lot more versatile than traditional webcams, and having the camera in a small, lightweight phone makes it easy to move around, and set up in different locations. Nowadays, more and more phones have video chat features built-in, but not all of them do, and so this is a great way to get around that limitation. Even though phone camera quality isn’t that great, webcams generally aren’t high quality, and don’t need to be, because of the limitations of most people’s bandwidth. The one thing about this kind of setup that might limit the quality is the Bluetooth connection, as it is not made for streaming large amounts of data. However this is a great way to add an extra feature to your phone, and it does work pretty well.

Keith Palmer is a student at technology science class. He writes tutorials and reviews for warious magazines and websites. At this point he writes tutorials for mobicity

You may not want to be the Internet police, but you need to be!

This is a guest post by Jesmond Darmanin. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Today’s Internet connected businesses must be concerned not only with threats originating from the Internet, but also threats that can manifest from their employees accessing the Internet both recreationally and as a part of their job. Employees can expose the company to threats from malware, and from litigation resulting from employees downloading copyrighted material or accessing inappropriate content. An acceptable use policy and a written information security policy are both critical, and great places to start, but more is required.

Packet filtering firewalls are very effective at blocking unsolicited inbound connections, but they can do very little to block malware downloaded by an internal client with Internet access. Nor can they recognise inappropriate content, or copyrighted material. Antivirus software can help protect against malware, but not against pornography or the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Internet monitoring software is another layer of defence that can help protect your network from threats of the technical variety, and your company from threats of the litigation variety.

Internet monitoring software can be run on appliances inline to your Internet connection, on a server acting as a proxy, out of band but in tandem with your firewall, or as an agent installed on your clients. The type of deployment you choose depends on your network architecture, how easily you can manage your clients, and whether or not you want the ability to protect machines when they are remote. Whatever the type of deployment, the purpose of Internet monitoring is to examine all internet activity and, protect against threats, and to enforce policy. Your acceptable use policy should define what is considered acceptable business use, address whether or not any recreational access to the Internet is acceptable, and clearly explain what is considered inappropriate use of the Internet.

Internet monitoring solutions can help protect your users from threats in several ways. Most combine several different methods. One popular approach is to maintain a list of websites by category that is regularly updated through a subscription service. Websites and ip addresses are sorted into categories that make it very easy for the administrator to select what types of sites should be permitted, and what types of sites should not be accessed. When the client makes a request, the traffic is compared against the lists and permitted or blocked based on policy. Another way these products can monitor Internet activity and protect against Internet threats is to examine file types requested; permitting html, text, and graphics, but blocking scripts, executable content, and media files that could contain copyrighted material. Many Internet monitoring software packages also offers anti-x capabilities; examining all files for malware, emails for suspect links, and traffic flows for known patterns related to backdoor programs and bot-nets.

Internet monitoring can, but does not necessarily have to, log all such activities. Whether you log access or not depends on many factors, including your privacy policies, your corporate policy regarding monitoring employee activities, and whether or not you wish to invest the time and storage necessary to review and archive these logs. Some companies expressly choose not to log; taking advantage of the protections offered by their Internet monitoring software without tasking personnel to monitor Internet activity. They get the benefits of policy enforcement without the efforts and potential HR overhead that goes along with investigating policy violations to determine whether the act was accidental or intentional. With this approach you can safely regulate Internet access without being branded as the Internet Police.

Whatever approach you take, monitoring Internet activity is a critical part of a defense in depth approach to securing your network. Look at your options, and select the approach that best fits in with your client base, your Information Security Policies, and your management’s philosophy.

This guest post was provided by Jesmond Darmanin on behalf of GFI Software Ltd. GFI is a leading software developer that provides a single source for network administrators to address their network security, content security and messaging needs. More information about GFI web filtering solution can be found at http://www.gfi.com/internet-monitoring-software

10 Most Useful Features of the Nikon DSLR D3000 Camera

This is a guest post by Roger Elmore. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Among good digital cameras, Nikon’s digital SLR D3000 is a great entry-level piece that is a popular upgrade option for those who want more than a cheap point-and-shoot can offer. So far the peskiest thing about it is that you don’t get live view. However, that’s not to say the D3000 doesn’t have some cool features. Here we will explore some of the features that make the D3000 one of the most versatile digital cameras available to those who are newly expanding their skills in photography.

1. Guide mode: Most individuals who purchase the D3000 are doing so to begin dabbling in high-end digital photography, and their primary intention is to take casual, high-quality photos. The great thing about the D3000 is that you can adjust the mode dial at the top of the camera to “Guide.” This mode is a great help to folks who aren’t sure what camera setting they need to use to get the results they’re wanting. Guide mode helps beginners learn how to use the more advanced features of the D3000, such as freezing motion and softening backgrounds.

2. 3-inch LCD screen: The D3000 features a 3-inch LCD screen monitor which helps you get a better visualization of the image you’re trying to capture. Compare this to Nikon’s older models, such as the D60, which features screens at 2.5 inches, or to a point-and-shoot, which often have very grainy screens. You can also adjust the brightness of your screen, which is handy.

3. 11-point auto-focus system: The cool thing about this feature on the D3000 is the autofocus (AF) system, which helps you capture fast-moving images, provided you’re using a lens that is compatible with the system. There are also 4 AF modes: one for still objects, one for moving objects, one that lets the camera decide, and one for 3-D tracking.

4. 10.2 megapixels: The D3000 is a major step up from a basic point-and-shoot because of how many megapixels (MP) it offers. While basic digital cameras only allow you 5 or 6 MP, the D3000 allows you a whopping 10.2 MP. While this many megapixels won’t really matter if you only plan to make small 4×6 prints, it matters a great deal if you want to blow up your images and have large prints made. 10.2 MP will allow the quality of your prints to remain consistent even if you blow up a print as large as 20×30 inches.

5. Compact size: The D3000 will definitely not weigh you down the camera body is both lightweight and compact, fitting easily and comfortably into your hand. This is a great feature for beginners who often get intimidated by chunky, complicated equipment.

6. In-camera photo editing: This feature will save you a little time if you like to edit and print your images at home. You can get the basic photo editing done beforehand using the D3000, which allows you to get rid of red eye, trim photos and use a soft filter. The cool thing is you won’t lose your original photo if you don’t want to the camera will save the edited copy of your photo separately. It’s not wow-your-socks-off amazing, but it’s definitely helpful.

7. Multiple Modes: I already elaborated on the guide mode, but the mode dial also has lots of other modes that help you take low-light shots, sports action photos, close-ups, portraits and landscape photos.

8. Fast, continuous shoot: The D3000 can capture 3 frames per second. This is useful if you find yourself about to capture an emerging moment that can be lost in a matter of seconds.

9. Active D-Lighting: The D3000 takes a teensy bit of time before the shot “takes” to improve contrasts in a picture if you use Active D-Lighting. This helps get rid of pesky shadows and overwhelming glares and gives images a more balanced look. You can turn it off if you don’t like it, because sometimes this feature messes up what you’re trying to do with photos.

10. Leaving in “noise”: The D3000 doesn’t get rid of “noise” random color speckles at higher sensitivities, e.g., long exposures, leaving the images free to keep fine detail instead of automatically reducing them. You can do a lot of cool long exposure shots for a low-end camera because the camera isn’t constantly correcting what you’re trying to do.

By-line:
This guest post is contributed by Roger Elmore.