Gadzooki

Tools and Technologies for Startup Businesses

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Not all who set up businesses succeed in what they do. Some fail because of their lack of a concrete plan while the others start out without the necessary tools to run their business efficiently.

Any entrepreneur starting a new business should be prepared well. In this age of the internet, it pays to be able to utilize the technologies and tools available to you. Many are free to use while some require a certain fee.

Website

For those who don’t want to be left behind, creating a website is essential today. This is the tool that will establish your internet presence and make people across the globe more aware of your products or services.

In line with this, you must choose a content management system (CMS) platform that will be easy to manage on the backend. WordPress and Joomla are the most widely used platforms these days. If you have the time and no budget to hire a technical person, do learn the ways to update the backend yourself.

Hosting

Along with the website, you need to get the services of a reliable hosting company. You need to pay for this to ensure that people can easily search your business and your site is up and running all the time. Make sure that technical support is also provided round the clock.

Analytics

This tool is free to use and is powerful in helping you keep track of your website traffic. Entrepreneurs need to monitor the statistics in order to come up with new ways to attract visitors to their website and eventually convert them into buyers. Google analytics is the most popular tool being used today.

Point of sale

A point of sale (POS) software is a requirement particularly if you’re into selling goods including digital products. This tool will help you process payments and issue receipts to every purchaser to legitimize your transactions. An advantage of using the POS today is you have the capability of gathering customer data and do a short survey through this software. This feature will help you better understand your target market and find ways to meet their needs.

Social media

This part should never be taken for granted. Social media is very powerful and you need to be on them to be able to interact with your target market. For startups, Facebook and Twitter are strongly recommended. Eventually when you have established your business, you can get on the other sites such as LinkedIn, YouTube, Google Plus and Pinterest.

About the guest author:

Teresa Te is a business blogger who has been writing recently about the evolving retail technologies such as the sage retail ideal for various enterprises.

NTT Strengthens Data Center Security in Northern Europe

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Corporations all over the world increasingly realize the essential role that data centers play in their business.  With technology being central to day to day operations, this is really not at all surprising.  One of the major players in the global data center service sector is NTT Communications.  This company is well known all over the world due to the scale of its operations.  Services range from telecommunications to IT solutions to management solutions – and more.

In the early part of August, NTT Communications announced that their acquisition of a European company, Secode AB.  This company has established a name for itself in northern Europe in particular.  Secode AB specializes in the area of managed-security and security-consulting services.  It provides these services to financial institutions – both in the public and private sectors – in Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.  With this development, Secode AB will continue to offer its services – with a plus.

The resources of NTT Communications will now be behind Secode AB, which has become a totally owned subsidiary.  More so, the subsidiary will be able to expand its operations as it will now be absorbed by other NTT-owned centers in other parts of the world, namely, Japan, Germany, Singapore, and the US. Some of the services that will continue to be offered are:

  • Intrusion detection
  • Intrusion prevention
  • Log management
  • Vulnerability analysis
  • Data-loss prevention
  • Anti-virus
  • Anti-spam
  • Managed VPN/firewall
  • Mobile security.

With this acquisition, the real winners are the entities that will be benefiting from the combined forces of NTT Communications and Secode AB.  The end result?  Much better data center security for everyone involved.

Badware: from floppies to webhosts

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spyware

Everyone who owns a computer or uses one hates malware, spyware and adware. Industries have been built around these three types of rouge software in an effort to combat them, which is meant from stealing financial information to just creating a nuisance for some. Either way, these kind of software has been scorned by users the world over since the first virus was made famous.

However, the evolution of computer technologies has led to many changes. The internet in particular has been one of the most influential technologies to have facilitated rapid changes and progress in the world of computers and how we humans use them today.

From this, sprang the terms and technologies themselves called ‘Web 2.0’, ‘new media’, ‘social media’, ‘blogging’ etc. However, the nasty software and technologies have evolved as well and continues to make their presence felt by causing lots and lots of troubles for us netizens.

Back in the age of Web 1.0 and below, these malwares, adwares and spywares were distributed through old-school ways of sharing data; via floppy drives and disks. Alas, the old floppy has to give way to USB drives and flash disks and various types of storage media. This however was quickly lapsed by the internet as more and more users went online for nearly everything computing needs they have; commerce, meeting new friends, finding and actually having jobs, influencing the world through their content etc.

This meant that in one way or another, a user has created a ‘website’ or ‘web page’ to suit their needs. From simple static pages to forums to their social networking profile pages to their blogs, I remember the great Mike Abundo summarizing this whole new trend in one clever sentence; “If you’re not on Google, you do not exist.”

Unfortunately for us, almost all the nasty software we so scorn today are also getting to us via the web, and they do that through our beloved websites. Serviced by hackers, malicious coders hack their way in websites left wide open or with lack-luster protection and plant their nasty seeds of bad software or “badware” springing to life when unsuspecting users visit that seemingly-safe and innocent site.

This is made worse by user who still use web browsers that are simply riddled with so many security holes Sponge Bob and Swiss cheese would hide in shame. (ehem! IE ehem!) This situation has unintentionally put all the burden on the common netizen who must go through the laborious process of regularly updating their firewalls, anti-virus software, anti-spyware, basically anti-badware, applying patches here and there.

This one-sided solution has allowed some one else to have a ticket to just sit back, enjoy the profits and eventually slack off. Web masters listen up. Help your visitors and loyal fans by brushing up on your website security, weed out potentially troublesome scripts, patch up security holes, implement more effective security measures and follow some web standards while you’re all at it.

This is Web 2.0 anyways so things will work better if both sides of the fence are working side by side to combat badware and make the internet a safer and cleaner place to be. Don’t take this lightly though, more and more sites are being infected and hijacked every day. The sadder fact is, some of the biggest hosting companies host most of the infected and troublesome sites.

StopBadware.org, the consumer protection initiative developed to combat badware, today released comprehensive data detailing the five companies that host the largest number of websites listed in its Badware Website Clearinghouse. These five companies combined host a large number of websites that have been identified as distributing malicious software to Internet users.

StopBadware.org analyzed 49,296 sites – sites submitted by trusted third parties to the StopBadware.org Badware Website Clearinghouse – and identified the following web hosting companies with the largest number of infected sites residing on their servers:

    • iPowerWeb, Inc., (10,834)
      Layered Technologies, (2,513)
      ThePlanet.com Internet Services, Inc, (2,056)
      Internap Network Services, (1,437)
      CHINANET Guangdong province network, (786)

    • This is a wake up call to all webmasters and webhosts big and small. Clean up, wise up and live true to your by-lines of providing quality web services 24/7. We do this, we make the web a safer place to be.

    How to Run A Green Web Hosting Company

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    Lately I’ve had a lot of problems with one of my hosting companies, Dreamhost. The service is just about the worst you can possibly have, the server load is miserable, the downtime is deplorable. It’s all got me thinking about how web hosting could be so much better.

    It seems to me Web hosting is a black hole of money. All of us webmasters who run websites from small busines owners to big companies need reliable hosting. How could we utilize reliable hosting and also make a social difference in the world.

    1) Use a reseller account from a Green Hosting Company
    2) Utilize the overhead profits give back to third world countries
    3) Encourage hosting clients to publicize their green host, that helps out on social causes
    4) Provide better service than the other guys

    Commentary:
    Running a server company can be mind blowing, but being a reseller isnt as bad as you might think especially if you limit your services to mostly blogs. Plus its a great way to make a difference in the world and spend more time working at home. Besides who wants to think about how much energy their website is sucking down after getting TechCrunched or making it to the front page of Digg.