Author: Trevor Johnson

More and more things involve us using passwords. And with the ever increasing power of computers, it's getting ever easier to crack this layer of protection. Computers don't care how complex the password is, they'll just keep chipping away until they get the answer. So how can you create a password that is easy for you to remember but difficult for a hacker to crack?

Let's take a step back here…

Something like the 4 digit PIN number that keeps your ATM card safe is stupidly easy to crack. By definition, there are less than ten thousand combinations and a computer could crack that without breaking a sweat. The only thing that keeps your money safe is that the banks limit the amount of attempts that can be made before the card is swallowed by the ATM machine.

Online passwords aren't usually treated in quite the same way. Some sites and software programs will lock out a user after a certain number of attempts. Others will just think (if that's the right word) that there's nothing unusual about a few thousand attempts being made on your password.

Whatever happens, the more complicated you make your password, the less likely it is to be cracked by either a computer program or a hacker.

Where to begin

Start by making sure that your password isn't blindingly obvious.

You'd be amazed at the number of people who use "password" or something like "123456" as their protection. Both those are just plain dumb to protect anything significant.

Don't use common words as your password either. Most programs will start their password cracking with what is known as a dictionary attack. As the name suggests, this just goes through a complete dictionary of words from start to finish in the hope that you'll have used one of those words as your password.

So throw away the easily memorable stuff and you're past the first hurdle.

Mix up the case

A dictionary attack on your password takes a fairly short period of time. Computers enjoy running through a list and testing every possible combination.

But if each word can be a mixture of upper and lower case letters, things take a lot longer.

For a simple 3 letter word like "and", the computer hacker would have to try:

and, And, ANd, AND, aNd, aND

That gets a lot more complicated as the password gets longer.

Throw in some numbers

If you want to make this easy, swap things like the letter "o" for a zero and the letter "l" for the number 1.

Of course, that runs the risk of the hacker doing the same swap but if you mix this in with upper and lower case, you've just exponentially increased the difficulty of cracking even a short password.

Use "special characters"

Now the trickiness of your password gets even more complicated.

Special characters are anything else the program accepting the password will let you use.

They could be a hyphen or underscore. Or they could be weirder like a dollar or euro currency symbol.

Throw in even just one of these characters and make your password a decent length – maybe a mixed case name plus a few numbers and a special character or two – and you've got a password that is worthy of the name so long as you don't resort to sticking it on a Post It note next to your screen.

That said, it's easy to recover things like a lost PDF password due to the relatively short password length.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/security-articles/how-to-create-passwords-that-arent-easy-to-crack-5123776.html

You may have heard of the term “cloud computing,” and wondering what it is.  “Cloud” computing or computing online is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the internet. Most common is Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) like the applications offered by Google (Google Apps), Microsoft (Office Web Apps), and Zoho.com.  The name “cloud computing” was inspired by the cloud symbol that's often used to represent the internet in flow chart diagrams.

With cloud computing, productivity and business programs (word processing, email, spreadsheets, databases, web design, and more) that you want to use are offered over the internet by a service provider. e.g. Google, Microsoft, Zoho, etc.  You do not have to buy any of the applications or install any software onto your computer.  This can be a huge cost savings and having all programs located in one central location can be a great time saver.

Working online to create your personal and business documents may take a little getting used to but after using the apps for just a short while you’ll begin see the benefits.  For example, using Google Apps, I created this article with Google Docs while being able to answer e-mails and perform other online tasks simultaneously.

Google Apps has many great features including Google Sites which allows you to create a professional website absolutely free of charge–including the hosting.  We use Google Sites for the ASPA Membership Screen Printing Association Directory.  Google Sites has an vast number of features. There is no sensible reason for not having a website when a great (and free) application like it is being offered.

Another cloud computing site, Zoho.com offers similar features to Google Apps including the ability to create a Wikisite for colloborating with others who can provide and edit content on the site.  Like Google Apps, Zoho is free (for personal use).

Lastly for those folks who are fans of Microsoft, there is Office Web Apps.  It has been coupled with Microsoft’s Sky Drive (very useful for storing large files) and incorporates the use of Microsoft’s popular Office program.

There are many reasons to consider using cloud computing for your individual or small business needs.  Cloud computing is most likely going to continue to expand into areas like graphics editing and other useful applications.  As long time users, we highly recommend cloud computing.

Dina Giolitto is a New-Jersey based Copywriting Consultant with nine years' industry experience. Her current focus is web content and web marketing for a multitude of products and services although the bulk of her experience lies in retail for big-name companies like Toys"R"Us. Visit http://www.wordfeeder.com for rates and samples. Source: http://www.PopularArticles.com/article3772.html

There was once a time when you would buy electronic devices and expect them to last for decades. When people bought a television or a radio, these items would last them forever. But times have changed, and a lot of people will now go so far as to replace their electronic devices every single year.

But in reality doing this is not an option for most of us, so we will want to get as much use as possible out of items such as computers. We really will want to get value for our money, because after all they are not cheap. It is very hard to put an exact figure on the life expectancy for a computer; it depends on so many factors.

On average, a computer will last for about three to five years, but there are many people who will have their computer for longer than this. How well the computer is looked after and the amount of use that it gets will determine how long it lasts. There are many people who don't bother to look after their computer at all, and these computers very rarely last longer than one year. If you want to get more than five years out of your computer then you are going to have to learn how to take care of it.

This means not only giving the keyboard and screen the occasional wipe with a cloth, but do a thorough clean. Make sure that you clear out your hard drive every so often by getting rid of any programs that you are not using, and you should also run a defrag every now and then. A good anti-virus software program is another way to ensure that you get longer life out of it, so make sure you buy one. There are also other practical things you can do like not having fluids anywhere near your computer – especially if you are a bit of a caffeine addict.

More Information: Moby Memory are one of the world's best suppliers of memory cards, phone accessories and memory accessories Source: http://www.PopularArticles.com/article304415.html

The Firefox browser has exploded on the scene. At the time of this writing there have been 23 million downloads of this innovative competitor to Internet Explorer. Minor drawbacks aside, most who use it, love it–myself included. One stand out feature is the customizable search bar that's built into the Firefox menu bar. As a long time AOL user I had 10 hot keys set up for sites I visited all the time. With Firefox, all I did was set the search bar up with those very same links. Suddenly what seemed like a reason to mourn the loss of AOL vanished.

Then there's tabbed browsing. This is a new way to use a browser as you can access more than one page in a single browser window. Which makes it easy to switch back and forth among multiple web pages. Makes for a great time saver. But a big benefit is the ability to install little applications that perform specific tasks. In the FireFox world these are called "extensions". 

If you're like me you'll find extensions are sorta like potato chips “ you just can't have just one. So let me share my 7 favorites. I believe they will save you time or effort while enhancing your FireFox experience.

Favorite Extension #1: Auto copy Auto copy is a killer keystroke saver. You'll never Ctrl-C again. Simply highlight the desired text on the web page with your mouse and it's instantly copied to the clipboard. Jump over to whatever application you want to paste that text into, paste it and you're done.

Favorite Extension #2: ScrapBook How many times have you book marked a site only to return and find it changed? Or worse it's vanished? That makes the ScrapBook extension the web researcher's indispensable friend. It lets you take a snapshot of any page. Or you can grab just a chunk it. ScrapBook keeps such snapshots organized and even lets you add comments if you like.

Favorite Extension #3: TinyURL Creator How often do you want to sent a friend a URL only to discover it's a mile long? Like this one for instance? http://www.google.com/search?as_q=&num=50&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=%22john+gergye%22&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=imagesWouldn%E2%80%99t%20it%20be%20easier%20to%20send%20something%20like%20this:%20http://tinyurl.com/427gg? Good news. There's a handy extension that will cut any unwieldy URL it down to size using TinyURL. Even better it will also inventory those you've created in case you want to use any of them again.

Favorite Extension #4: Popup Blocking Okay, so this technically isn't an extension. It's more of a killer built in feature that will stop pop ups dead in their tracks. I mean there's nothing like seeing this message "Firefox prevented this site from opening a pop up window" to give you a warm glow inside.

Favorite Extension #5: Google Pagerank Want to know the Google PageRank of a page? Sadly, the Google Toolbar only runs in Internet Explorer. But never fear. If you like to eyeball PR, say to check out potential link partners, the Google Pagerank Status extension displays pagerank. Even better it's also in numeric form so you don't have to mouse over to see the PR.

Favorite Extension #6 LoremIpsum Content Generator Whenever you need some quick content to check a web page layout this is your tool. You can tell it to create so many characters, words or paragraphs. Giving you a variety of "Latin-like" content in the blink of an eye.

Favorite Extension #7: Copy URL Instead of copying a snippet from a page and then going back and grabbing the URL, you can do it all with one tool. Copy URL. Another addictive research tool.

All of these tiny apps can be downloaded from here: https://addons.update.mozilla.org/extensions Or if these 7 have whet you appetite for more, you can nose around there for other extensions to enhance your FireFox experience.

One other tip: To check your extensions go to Tools>Extensions There you'll see all extensions you've installed. Newly downloaded ones will typically display this message: "This item will be installed after you RESTART Firefox." Do so and you're set. Anyway, these extensions alone are seven reasons to love FireFox. At the risk of sounding like a shill, I can't urge you strongly enough to try it. I'm sure you'll like it.

Copyright 2008 John Gergye About The Author John Gergye is the author of "Street Smart Linking." To learn more about this 131 page, step by step link building guide visit http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/2-18-2005-65939.asp. Or test your search engine IQ by taking his SEO quiz and get the free special report:"Coming Out On Top."

Search engine optimization should always be considered long before your website structure, colors, layout, and overall site design. But, the majority of people usually get caught up “in the moment”… thinking of riches instead of “how” they’re going to attract more website visitors. This article is meant to get you back on track, and provide you with 5 winning search engine optimization tactics.

Identify Keywords

1. The single biggest mistake that most business owners make is trying to think of a “cool name” for their website, when they should have chosen a keyword-rich site name like ‘prevent-corporate-bankruptcy.com’ instead of SmithLawOffice.com’ (as an example). Your potential customers search for keyword phrases… not business names… unless you’re already a household name like Wal-Mart, eBay or Apple. Facing reality, many business owners gave up on websites ever helping their business a long time ago… usually because of a poor website name choice. And, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Simply, discover what terms people are searching for. Identify the “action” keywords and phrases that people are actually using when they are searching Google, Yahoo, MSN or any of the other major search engines. I highly recommend looking for keyword phrases that incorporate the following keywords: buy, want, need, order, download, etc. I’m sure you’re getting the idea now. Then, you need to purchase website names that are centered around the most popular keyword phrases. And, redirect these visitors to your current website. And, I promise that you can setup a website redirect in less than one minute… even if computers scare you. You just need to have access to your website hosting interface, with cPanel being the most popular choice.

Optimizing Your Web Page

2. After identifying a minimum of 10 keyword phrases, I recommend optimizing your current website pages ‘ title tags, meta tags, image “alt” tags. You need to start using these keywords within your webpage content in bold text, underlined text, and as text links. Do not overuse these keywords though. These keywords should only comprise 4-6% of each page. So, if you have 500 words on a webpage, limit your keyword usage to 20-30 words. Most of the major search engines index every word of your page and compare them to your title META description and META keywords. So, you should never hide or add non-related keywords to your webpages: like Anna Kournakova, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, etc. This is a “black hat” tactic and should never be used, unless your want your website to be permanently banned by the search engine directories.

Most of the major search engines don’t even consider the META keywords anymore, which is why the actual content of your webpages is becoming more and more important. Excessive repeating of keywords is considered as spamming, which will get your website penalized with a lower ranking. And, be sure mix your keywords in different combinations throughout the page and in your ALT tags, instead of using the same phrase over and over again.

Link Popularity

3. One of the most important factors to achieve a high ranking in the search engines is link popularity. The overall number of links to your web site is important, but the quality of the links are even more important. All the search engines are very fond of “on topic” links. Links from sites that contain your same keyword content and are focusing on the same topic as your site, are known as “on topic” links. Three of the best ways to get “on topic” quality backlinks are to comment on other industry-related blogs, make comments in industry-related forums, and to submit articles to article directories. Just make sure that you’re adding comments or articles to high page rank sites, avoiding low page rank sites.

Misspellings

4. Adding misspelled keywords within your META tags can also boost your website traffic, because many people are likely to misspell your keywords when browsing the search engine directories. As an example, here are several popular misspellings I found people making when they searched for a site submission service, as follows: “free search engine submision”, “sumit”, “subit”, “search egnine submission”, “submition”, and “saerchengines”.

Add Fresh Content

5. Adding fresh content to your website on a regular basis is another key factor that plays a critical role in your search engine rankings. Adding new content regularly gives your visitors a reason to come back. Search engine robots will also visit your website more often, once they notice that you update regularly. This is one of the main reasons why WordPress blogs are so popular right now. When visitors leave comments about blog posts you have made, the search engine bots see this as new content. And, it really helps your site rankings when a visitor makes a comment with a permalink back to their high pagerank site. This helps website owners save time, by allowing website visitors to create content for them.

Don’t Kill the Search Engine Crawlers

6. Avoid using flash intro pages where it says “Click Here to Enter Site”, because the search engines have a very difficult time indexing (seeing) anything beyond the intro page… unless you’ve submitted every webpage of your site to the search engine directories manually, which is very time consuming. Even if you use the alt attribute to specify alternate text for flash images, that text will not be anywhere near as important as real text on a main index page.

Provide Relevant Title Tags

7. Making your page titles simple, descriptive, relevant and “keyword rich” makes it easier for search engines to know what each page is about. Keyword rich titles help the search engine directories provide consumers with more relevant search results, helping them determine whether your website contains what they are trying to find. The title description is the most important element of your website design, after you have chosen your website domain name.

About The Author
Lee Kendrick has been featured by numerous magazines & article directories as a successful internet marketer, search engine optimization expert, and aspiring writer.

Visit http://get-more-website-traffic.com to discover the tools, tips & “white hat” tactics that Lee uses to dominate Google on a daily basis.

Many of my friends say that I am obsessed with techniques on how I can speed up my PC. Whether I'm doing some work with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe InDesign all running at the same time, or whether I'm playing Gears of War while World of Warcraft in windowed mode is minimized, I always want my PC to perform as fast as possible. Yes, I am a speed junkie. I easily get frustrated with the slightest hint of a load time. Hence, I am always on the lookout for ways to speed up my PC. Here are 5 such methods that I use to speed up my PC and to ensure that it will always run at optimum performance with very minimal hiccups. Speed Up My PC, Technique

No. 1: Download The Latest Drivers The physical components of your PC stay the same, unless you remove and replace them. But the software they run? They constantly change. The programs sold today will fall pale in comparison with the programs that will be made available next week.

The websites we visit will evolve based on the internet technology that will be introduced. And how are our systems supposed to cope up? When I want to speed up my PC, the first thing I do is to download the latest drivers for the physical components of my rig. Graphic card, motherboard, modem–you name it, I download it! I make sure that nothing but the latest driver is installed in my system. Speed Up My PC, Technique

No. 2: Keep Your Registry Squeaky Clean Does it take forever to boot up your system? Chances are, your registry is bogged down by useless leftover files from the programs you have installed, even if you have already uninstalled them. Whenever I want to speed up my PC, I open my favorite registry cleaner to scan my system for some redundant, and sometimes harmful, leftover files. Then I let it do its thing, deleting the non-essential files whenever it could. Reg cleaners really help speed up my PC, and there is no reason why they can't help you speed up yours. Speed Up My PC, Technique

No. 3: Your System May Have Been Infected By Spyware And/Or Adware Sometimes, slow boot up time and slow processing speed are caused by the infestation of spyware and/or adware in your system. Spyware and adware are forms of malware that surreptitiously find their way into your PC, often through the websites you visit or the email attachments you open. If I am infected by spyware and/or adware and I want to speed up my PC, I simply open my most trusted spyware remover "Search & Destroy," a free utility that is powerful enough to wipe out all the known spyware and adware variations today. Speed Up My PC, Technique

No. 4: Scan For Viruses And Kill Them Slow PCs may also be caused by viruses, the most popular of which are "Trojans," wicked programs that keep hammering our systems their evil deeds. There is only one way to determine the existence of a virus in your system, that is, by running a complete diagnostic scan using an anti-virus software. The best anti-virus software I can recommend is AVG, a free, open source program that is regularly updated with the latest virus descriptions which allows the program to run a really comprehensive examination of your system. Thereafter, the anti-virus program will eliminate the threat and I'd be able to speed up my PC with no hassle at all. Speed Up My PC, Technique

No. 5: Defragment Regularly One of the really under-appreciated features of a Windows-based PC is the Disk Defragmenter. Basically, the Disk Defragmenter will eliminate useless and redundant files in your entire system, not just your registry. I swear to God, defragmenting your disk is THE best way to speed up my PC. Defragmenting may take a couple of hours or more, but the end result is very much worth it. To access the Disk Defragmenter, go to START, then ALL PROGRAMS, then ACCESSORIES, then SYSTEM TOOLS, and voila!

You'd be able to speed up your PC as efficiently as I can speed up my PC!

About The Author Mehmet Onatli You can download a free trial of a http://www.registryheal.com/ from Mehmet's website. He shares some of his things he learned in his 10 years experience.