The blog to end all blogs

Lockout for Halo 3

2008-03-25T15:59:00.000-07:00

Straight from Bungie.net :

Last week we revealed the second map from the Legendary Map pack (due April 15th), Avalanche. That map is a reimagination of Halo: Combat Evolved map Sidewinder. This week, we're showing the final map from the Legendary Map Pack, Blackout. As its name suggests, Blackout is a remake of the Halo 2 classic Lockout, a cold series of interconnected platforms and walkways. Where Avalanche was retuned, reworked and massaged into something both familiar and unfamiliar, Blackout is a remake in a pretty strict sense of the word.

Producer Allen Murray, Designer Dan Miller and artists Paul Russel and Blake Low answered a handful of questions about Blackout. But who are we kidding, you just want to see the screenshots anyway (keep checking the Gallery as the hi-res versions will be there shortly).

What did each of you do on Blackout?

Allen Murray: I am the Producer for all of the Halo 3 DLC, which means I helped plan which maps were going to be made, when we’d ship them and who was working on them and generally kept them on track. So I was one of the guys early on who said we need to remake Lockout and then managed the process to make it happen. I didn’t actually ‘make’ any of it, but Luke is taking pity on me and included me in the interview process. Thanks, Luke. Also, if any of you have any issues with other DLC maps, you can talk to me directly. My email address is frankie@bungie.com.

Paul Russel: I was the primary environment artist for blackout from concept to completion. I also invented the grommet.

Dan Miller: Designing odds and ends, I kept stewardship over the level and fixed bugs. There wasn't really a whole lot to do design-wise after the weapons and gametypes were placed. We tried to keep it as close to Halo 2 as possible and let the community Forge it up how they wish.

Blake Low: I was responsible for adding all the little details to the level that made the area seem functional. Things like power boxes, wires, pipes and more.

What’s the fictional setting for Blackout this time? Its predecessor, Lockout, was set on a Forerunner installation.

PR: The setting is a UNSC Antarctic weather station with the completely arbitrary and stupid number z/41, it means nothing. Until the fans write some fictional significance into it and we eventually have to reverse engineer it into our canon. Thanks a lot, fans.

Venezuela is very nice this time of year.

BL: Its predecessor, Lockout, was set on a Forerunner installation. This time around we thought it would be cool to see what a human version of this same map would look like. So we created the fiction of it being a human weather station in the middle of frozen nowhere.

AM: It’s a UNSC research station set in the Arctic, and I am pretty sure that this is also where all of the R&D on military grade Otter Pop rations took place. Early on I thought it was going to be an oil derrick, but that changed over time. We have some cool racks of glacier core samples, Doppler radar and other pieces of research gear strewn about, which makes for a nice touch – and when you look up to see them make sure you notice the beautiful Aurora Borealis in the sky. There were other, more outlandish settings done in the concept phase, but we’ll keep those secret as you never know when we’ll dig into that bag and pull it out for a future project.

How was the setting for Blackout determined?

PR: Since I got lumped with the 'Forerunner Guy' label and sixty percent of the environments I've built have been Forerunner, I've made a bold pronouncement to never do Forerunner again. That's why it's a human weather station. I wish there were a more interesting story than that.

AM: From my perspective the determination was an organic process based on the direction that Paul just started taking it. He had a really solid idea and it was easy for the other artists to understand it and help make it awesome. We also set the time to be the middle of the night, so it’s dark, but the full moon and ambient light from the facility make the map visible enough that it plays just like Lockout. And that took a lot of tweaking – there were weeks when the map was just too damn dark to do anything, or too light that everything looked washed out and you lost the cool midnight setting. In the end Paul and his cohorts found a really great balance to the aesthetic.

In addition to the aesthetic changes, how has the map changed functionally? It’s a strict port, but there are differences, detail them:

PR: There's equipment now, which changes the dynamic quite a bit, I hear. The original model was a chaotic mess to work in, so I rebuilt it from scratch, keeping only the buildings, which I also promptly gutted and rebuilt. As a result it's probably completely different and you'll all hate it, me and Bungie as a result. Mission accomplished.

Kidding, you'll love it. The kids love Lockout, it's bigger than the Beatles, but with more grenades.

DM: Mainly equipment. We tried our best to keep the weapon layout, gametypes and spawns as accurate as we could to Halo 2. There are a couple of jumps that are easier in this version, but that wasn't by design- they just kind of fell out of how we made this level.

AM: Most of the jumps, even the crazy ones from Halo 2, are there. However a few are tweaked or removed and there is one spot that was altered that makes it less easy to lock down a specific quadrant of the map. Also, the small platforms next to the air vent are at slightly different elevations.

What’s changed between Halo 2 and Halo 3 that affected the remake process?

PR: Equipment, field of view tweaks, higher resolution, widescreen, Forge and I, Paul Freakin' Russel, am the primary artist. El Dios bendice Venezuela!

DM: I would guess the main change would be that jumping has changed and it made certain jumps easier to make. I wonder if the Assault Rifle's influence also changed how the level plays vs the smg. I think the level plays a little more mid-range because of the Assault rifle.

AM: The general pacing in MP changed between Halo 2 and 3, and the sandbox changed drastically, so that affects all remakes, but for Blackout specifically we wanted to keep things as close as possible to what was built in Halo 2. That means that the biggest changes come from actually gameplay as the way weapons and equipment interact on the map make a game on Blackout so much more different than a Halo 2 game on Lockout.

How is equipment placed on Blackout?

DM: We've decided to go with a 'less is more' attitude with Blackout after some playing around with a bunch of different placements, we've settled on one regenerator, one bubble shield and one power drain.

AM: With such verticality to the map and the narrows spaces, the Bubble Shield is terribly effective for just shutting down certain lines of sight. It’s also fun to toss a Power Drain onto the helipad while everyone is fighting in the middle and just clean up.

What gametypes work best on Blackout?

PR: I don't know. I loathe playing video games.

DM: I enjoy assault, KOTH and team slayer on Blackout.

BL: King of the hill in the red room of death :)

AM: For me, this is just a straight up Slayer map, FFA or Team. The objective games are fun, but this is all about short to mid-range combat and the Assault Rifle is perfect as a starting weapon on this map.

What’s some stuff we don’t know about Blackout’s creation? What was the toughest part to “get right?”

PR: This is the first time I believe we've tried a full-blown nighttime multiplayer map. Originally I wanted it to take place on the back of a giant llama. I'm still bitter about this.

Maintaining some of the little things that expert players liked to exploit. Those are all gone, now, your pets are dead, go home and cry.

Kidding, we did our best to keep it all in.

I have to go now; I have a busy schedule as I am also the President of Venezuela. Vaya con queso!

BL: Making an environment look cold and unbearable is always a challenge.

AM: We almost didn’t do it because we already have Guardian, which was similar and ‘inspired by’ Lockout. But when I started up the DLC project we gathered a ton of data from the community, looked at the most played maps on Live and did some very unscientific polls on Bungie.Net and other community websites and Lockout was leaps and bounds ahead of every other map in terms of games played and the public demand. It also fits a need in our overall map portfolio to help round out the small maps that are available in Halo 3 and was a great artistic exercise.

The toughest part of making it was trying to be as faithful to the original as possible while also accommodating the inherent gameplay changes between Halo 2 and 3. The second toughest was getting Paul and the gang to fix their bugs on time and making sure lightmaps weren’t screwed all of the time.

Call of Duty glitch contest - Win cash!!!

2008-03-23T18:30:00.000-07:00

Se7ensins.com is hosting a video contest which has been extended to all games for CASH!!!!

Here are the current entries:

Scar:

Ht117:

dragonz2444:

Venomous Fire (me):

David5534:

XboxFocus.com

2008-03-22T13:41:00.001-07:00

http://www.xboxfocus.com/

This site has great gaming news, great articles, and a nice forum, go check it out!

FREE PANCAKES!!!!

2008-02-07T22:29:00.000-08:00

National Pancake Day is February 12th. Starts from 7am to 10pm. IHOP is giving away a short stack of buttermilk pancakes for free! All they ask is for a small donation to Children's miracle Network or other charities.

For more details visit here: IHOP National Pancake Day - February 12, 2008

Standing up for your rights as an employee

2008-02-05T13:53:00.000-08:00

Indeed, the employer has ownership of capital, stocks and other important assets of a business, but without the employees, these capital, stocks and assets would not be turned into new consumer goods or products.

Unless an employer is handling a relatively small business, wherein he or she also has a share in the important aspects of the production or services, it is the employees who has a major contributing factor in doubling, even multiplying the capital and turn it into profits.

Thus, the employee has an inherent right to demand the implementation of particular legal protections from his/her employer. These rights may depend on the capacity of the employer, the state that governs the workplace and the employee's profession in the business.

Here are several examples of basic employees' rights:

- right to be protected from discrimination because of race, nationality, skin color, origin, gender, religious beliefs, pregnancy, age, and disability (in some cases, also involves, marital status and sexual orientation)

- right to work in a place free of harassment

- right to receive minimum wages, overtime payment for work exceeding 40 hours in a week or eight hours in a day.

- right to humane conditions at work and safe and secure workplace

- right to avail leave in case of sickness or to care for a loved one's serious illness or after the birth or adoption of a child

These are among the basic employee rights that must be implemented in every workplace, whether big or small, labor-intensive or not.

However if you think that one or more of these legal rights are being violated by your employer, then you must learn to assert these rights. Not standing up to resolve conditions, which trample your rights as workers, would easily make an employer be more confident in implementing other policies violating employee rights and unfair labor practices.

Here are several ways in handling a conflict to assert your employees' rights with your employer.

• Talking with your employer – having an intelligent and reasonable discussion with your employer can be a big step in resolving the wrongs you think are occurring. Companies usually would want to stay on the boundaries of the law and as much as possible, avoid any legal complications.

Tips on presenting your concerns:

- Research and know your rights in the workplace. This will help you in presenting your agenda with your employer, confidently and clearly.

- It helps to stick to the significant facts of the matter and not stray on trivial issues. Before the set meeting, write down the problems you are encountering and the recommendations you think is effective in order to resolve them.

Let someone look up your lists in order to offer more objective and concrete overview of the things you have listed.

- Do not divulge on emotional outbursts and unfounded accusations since it would not help you in getting your agenda across

- Make sure to come up with certain agreements on the next events to happen regarding the case you presented.

• Following up your initial discussion – check out the progress of your initial agreements during the first meeting and set up another meeting as soon as possible to discuss them.

• Documenting the problem – if talking it out with the employer or representative did not help to resolve your problems or concerns, and your employment status seem to be deteriorating then start documenting your case.

Collate important things that you think would help your claims.

• Do not forget deadlines of legal nature – be sure to know the deadlines of legal actions that is connected with your particular case. Once you have filed a claim or lawsuit, remember all the important dates and deadlines by constantly keeping in touch with your employment lawyer and / or paralegal advocate.

Know more about your employee rights and benefits through the LA employment lawyers of Los Angeles Lawyers website.

Age discrimination: what to do

2008-02-05T13:51:00.002-08:00

Employment discrimination based on age is a reality in the workplace. Hence, workers and employees with the age of 40 and above are protected against discrimination under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. The law says that an employer may not fire, refuse to hire, and treat you differently than other employees because of your age.

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act applies to the following:
• Workers and applicants aged 40 and over

• The ADEA applies to employers with 20 or more employees.

• This includes local and state governments and the federal government. It also includes employment agencies and labor unions.

• It excludes independent contractors or elected officials. It does not usually cover police and fire workers, certain federal employees in air traffic control or law enforcement, or certain highly paid executives. While persons in these positions could be retired on a mandatory basis, they cannot be denied a promotion or training base on age.

• There are exceptions to the ADEA when age is a necessary part of a job. For example, an employer can hire a young person to play the role of a 12-year-old in a play. Most states have anti-age discrimination laws that apply to employers with fewer than 20 employees.

Here are some of the instances where age discrimination is committed:

• The employer wanted a younger-looking person to do the job so you were not hired.
• You were not allowed to take training courses and got a low mark on the evaluation.
• You were fired to give way to other younger workers or applicants who are paid less.
• The employer gave you an undeserved evaluation and used this record to justify firing or demoting you.
• The employer turned down your promotion, and instead hired someone who is younger

What to Do

If you feel like you are being discriminated in your workplace, talk to your employer immediately to see if you can resolve the matter. Otherwise, if the situation goes out of hand, you will have to file a case with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to seek redress.

To file a charge, you will have to abide by the strict time requirements of the agency. You must file your charge within 180 days after the alleged act of discrimination. You have to gather evidence yourself and file them personally. Litigation will also take a great deal of time, money and effort.

Who Can Help You

For better results, an employment lawyer specializing in age discrimination cases can help you address the issue. His skills, knowledge, and experience in his area of law practice can give you a better chance of seeking justice that you deserved.

Know more information about what to do in case of age discrimination with the help of an age discrimination attorney

How to ease out after being fired

2008-02-05T13:51:00.001-08:00

If you think you have been fired illegally from work, you may file a wrongful termination claim against your former employers. To do this, you may have to hire a lawyer who has the skills and resources to pursue your claim.

When does termination become “wrongful”?

In legal terms, wrongful termination happens when an employer fires an employee for illegal reasons, which include:

• In violation of federal and state anti-discrimination law
• As a form of sexual harassment
• In violation of oral and written employment agreements
• In violation of labor laws, including collective bargaining laws
• In retaliation for the employee’s having filed a complaint against his employer

These violations entail statutory penalties and could result in the payment of damages to you based on computed lost wages and other expenses. Some violations may also result in punitive damages against the company.

How to Improve Your Position

Recovering from the loss of a job is difficult. The following steps may help you improve your position after being fired:

• Do not think negatively or badly about your employer.
• Consult an employment lawyer for advice and representation.
• Review your employment contract and the provisions of the agreement.
• Know the reasons and causes of your termination.
• Request to view your personal file.
• Try to request and negotiate for severance package.
• Confirm agreements of your termination and severance in writing.
• Turn-over company property and follow post-employment procedures.

If you decide to negotiate for a severance package, instead of pursuing legal claims, the following advice may help and further relieve you of burden:

• Receive the news of your termination calmly.
• Take time to think about the offer from your employer.
• Confirm the employer’s terms in writing.
• Negotiate for the continued dental and medical coverage while you are receiving your severance pay.
• Try to stay on the payroll as long as long as possible.
• Ensure that the severance package is not contingent on new employment.

Legal Help

An employer is not required to give severance package to a dismissed employee unless expressed in the employment contract or the employees’ manual. However, an employee may negotiate a severance package in exchange for a promise to waive legal claims against his employer.

In this case, you will need the help of an attorney who can explain your options and which option to take. An employment lawyer who specializes in wrongful termination cases can help you fight for your right to severance pay, damages, or unemployment compensation. His skills and experience will increase your chances of compensation for your illegal termination.

Become more informed about how to react after a wrongful termination with the help of wrongful termination attorneys

Steps to Filing a minimum wage claim

2008-02-05T13:50:00.001-08:00

All employers are required by state and federal laws to provide the minimum wage to its workers and employees. If an employer would not comply, an employee may file a complaint with the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (the Labor Commissioner’s office) or file a lawsuit in court against the employer to recover for lost wages.

If the claim is made, the government representative will do the following tasks:

• Meet with the employer
• Access the payroll records
• Talk with the employees
• Assess any possible violations

Enforcement and Sanctions

Under the law, the Department of Labor will require the employer to compensate the worker for back pay. The department also has the power to:

• Fine employers who do not comply with the law
• Prosecute non-complying employers
• Make erring employers pay attorney’s fees
• Make employers pay “liquidated damages”

Many states have their own wage collection statutes that provide for back wages, attorney’s fees, and statutory damages. These laws vary significantly from state to state.
These are the steps to take to obtain your minimum wage claim:

1. Submit claim to the labor commissioner’s office - After your claim is completed and filed, a Deputy Labor Commissioner will determine, based upon the circumstances of the claim and information presented how best to proceed. Initial action taken regarding the claim can be referral to a conference or hearing, or dismissal of the claim.

2. Conference - The purpose of the conference is to determine the validity of the claim, and to see if the claim can be resolved without a hearing. If the claim is not resolved at the conference, the next step usually is to refer the matter to a hearing or dismiss it for lack of evidence.

3. Decision - After the hearing, an order, decision, or award (ODA) of the Labor commissioner will be served on both parties.

Either party may appeal the ODA to a civil court of competent jurisdiction. The court will set the matter for trial, with each party having the opportunity to present evidence and witnesses. The evidence and testimony presented at the Labor Commissioner’s hearing will not be the basis for the court’s decision. In the case of an appeal by the employer, DLSE may represent an employee who is financially unable to afford counsel in the court proceeding.

In pursuing a minimum wage claim, it is best to have the services of an employment lawyer who specializes in minimum wage claims. His skills and experience in handling cases in his area of specialization would improve your chances of success.

Get to know more about filing claims for minimum wage with the help of employment attorney services claims.

What to do after being fired

2008-02-05T13:48:00.000-08:00

If you have been fired from your job for no apparent reason, a wrongful termination attorney might be able to help you get your claims. An attorney can help you assess the situation and decide which options to take. You can take either a severance package or a wrongful termination claim, depending on your situation.

If taking a severance package is your choice, here are a few tips before getting into the negotiations:

• Stay calm after your termination

• Think over offers from your employer

• Confirm about your employer’s terms in writing

• Insist on being terminated, not resigned

• Keep on the payroll as long as possible

• Negotiate for continued medical coverage despite receiving severance pay

• Ensure that severance package is not contingent on new employment

An employer has no obligation to give severance package to employees. However, if you are in a position to negotiate for a severance package, try asking for other benefits like:

• Health insurance benefits

• Unemployment compensation

• Outplacement services

• Reference

Here are important negotiating points in order to obtain a better severance package:

• Request for a lump sum payment of your severance, not in installments

• Avoid accepting the employer’s first offer and negotiate further.

• Try to negotiate for a four week’s severance

• If you have relocated, try to obtain relocation allowance.

• Discuss accrued overtime, sick leave and vacation pay.

• If you were fired without notice, ask for two additional week salary for the lack of notice.

• If payments are due, insist that you be paid immediately, and do not waive expected benefits.

Other benefits may also be available to you as a former employee.

You may inquire about the following benefits:

• Bonus – If you are entitled to receive a bonus at the end of the year, ask for it now. If the employer refuses to pay, insist that your termination has deprived you of the chance to receive it.

• Pension and Profit-Sharing Benefits – Be aware of all plans, funds and programs that may have been established in your behalf. Ask about the details of these benefits. Ask your lawyer about your benefit rights if you have just been fired before the vesting of a pension or stock options.

After you have negotiated for your severance package and you feel satisfied with your other options and benefits, you can now decide on whether to accept the company’s final offer or ask your lawyer to obtain additional compensation.

Legal Issues

There are legal issues involved if you have been terminated. Is your termination lawful or illegal? What are the possible causes of your termination? What are the conditions you signed before being employed? Are you still eligible to receive certain benefits? What are the options available to you now?

If you believe you have been unjustly terminated from your job, it is best to take up the matter with a lawyer. An employment lawyer who has the skills and experience in handling wrongful termination cases can improve your chances of getting the rightful claim after unjustly losing a job.

For more information about things to do in case of wrongful termination, consult with wrongful termination attorneys services

What is disability?

2008-02-05T13:47:00.000-08:00

People with disability enjoy protection from discrimination at work under the Americans with Disability Act. This federal law applies to companies who employ fifteen or more people for a minimum period of at least 20 weeks.

Under its provisions, employers cannot discriminate against qualified persons with disability in:

• Hiring
• Application process
• Promotion
• Pay and benefits
• Discharge and termination
• Other conditions of employment

People with disability are also entitled to the following rights:

• Medical examinations and inquiries

Employers may not ask job applicants about the existence, nature, or severity of a disability. Applicants may only be asked about their ability to perform specific job functions.

A job offer may be conditioned based on the results of a medical examination, but only if the examination is required for all entering employees in similar jobs. Medical examinations of employees must be job related and consistent with the employer's business needs.

• Drug and Alcohol Abuse

Employees and applicants currently into the illegal use of drugs are not covered by the ADA when an employer acts because of such use.

Employers may hold illegal drug users and alcoholics to the same performance standards as other employees.

It is also unlawful to retaliate against an individual for opposing employment practices that discriminate based on disability or for filing a discrimination charge, testifying, or giving statements in any way in an investigation, proceeding, or litigation under the ADA.

Legal Definition of Disability

Disability as defined by ADA applies to persons who are thought to have a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits major life activity including walking, talking, seeing, and learning.

A person with disability enjoys certain reasonable work accommodations which every employer should imposed and comply with. Some of these accommodations are:

• Restructuring of work to allow a disable worker to perform his job
• Giving the employee additional medical leave
• Assigning the employee to a vacant or light-duty position
• Installing special equipment to help disabled employee
• Changing or modifying work schedule to accommodate the employee
• Providing the employee with an interpreter or a qualified reader
• Making existing facilities readily accessible or usable by disabled persons

To encourage the practice of helping people with disability, the government offers federal tax discount or tax incentives to both employer and the disabled employee. This step is also done to promote the accessibility of public accommodations.

Legal Remedy Against disability discrimination

If you believe you have been discriminated about because of your disability, you can have your lawyer file a discrimination suit against the offending party at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

As a legal requirement, the discrimination charge must be filed within 180 days of the alleged discrimination. You have only 300 days within which you can the charge based on state or local law.

To help you pursue your case against an individual or an employer, it necessary to hire the services of an employment lawyer who specializes in disability discrimination cases. His skills and experience can help you win your case against disability discrimination at the work place.

For more information about how a Disability law firm can help you, seek out Attorney Services

Lawyers and Lawsuits

2008-02-05T13:46:00.000-08:00

Sooner or later you will need the services of a lawyer and/or may be involved with a lawsuit. When that happens you need to understand more about the legal process, types of lawyers and legal jurisdiction to ensure that you obtain the best legal representation available. There are many different types of lawyers just like there are many different types of doctors. Legal matters can be serious and having the right type of lawyer can greatly influence the results that you obtain.

Some lawyers are general practitioners, and can handle routine and non-specialized legal matters. Other lawyers are more specialized and may work in only one or a handful of areas. A specialist has a deeper level of knowledge of the legal statues and case law within their area of specialty. You will usually pay a higher per hour fee to a specialized lawyer, but their expertise will often increase their efficiency and effectiveness. Whether you need a specialist will depend upon you facts and circumstances.

Legal Jurisdiction

In order to practice law, a lawyer needs to pass the bar exam and meet other state licensing requirements. Most lawyers are licensed to practice law in 1 or 2 states. This means that you will need to find a lawyer that is licensed in the state that has jurisdiction over you legal issue. This may or may not be an issue depending upon the law firm that you normally use. Small lawyers are usually licensed in 1 or 2 states. Larger law firms, who have partners licensed in multiple states or nationally may be able to practice law in any state. This is one advantage of using a large law firm. They usually have different departments specializing in different areas of law and have jurisdiction in more states. This means that one law firm can manage all of your legal issues.

Laws and legal rights are determined by the legal rules and regulations as well prior state legal cases. Since the rules and case history varies from state to state, your legal rights can vary significantly depending upon which state has jurisdiction. State licensing requirements ensure that you obtain proper legal counsel based upon the laws of that particular state. A lawyer licensed in New Jersey, may be very effective in his state but completely ineffective to represent you under California law. Legal jurisdiction rules are designed to safe-guard the interests of the consumer and also increase efficiency in the court system.

Types of Law

You only need to look at the yellow page ads to realize that there are numerous types of lawyers and areas of law. In non-routine legal matters, you will want to use a specialized lawyer to ensure that you obtain the highest quality of legal advice. Below are some common types of specialized lawyers:

1) mesothelioma lawyers;
2) divorce lawyers;
3) motor vehicle accident lawyers;
4) immigration lawyers;
5) family lawyers;
6) accident and personal injury lawyers;
7) asbestos lawyers;
8) business and corporate lawyers;
9) bankruptcy lawyers; and
10) employment lawyers.

Upon reviewing the list, it’s obvious that these areas of law are all very different. Divorce law and immigration law are two completely different fields and knowledge of one area will be useless to the other. If you were getting a divorce you would not want an immigration lawyer to represent you. Before hiring any attorney, make sure you know their areas of speciality and their background. Unfortunately, some general lawyers may not admit that they are not the best person to represent your interests in a particular matter.

How to tell its over - For women

2008-02-03T20:10:00.001-08:00

Yes ladies, it’s that time of year. Your loser guys are scrambling around turning in their lose change, squeezing their friends for cash, and opening new credit cards, all in an attempt to buy some flowers and a few dollar store items to pass off as serviceable Valentine’s Day gifts. Don’t worry, after that nag-fest you gave him last year for the hand picked flowers and dollar-menu yogurt parfaits he’s bound to do better this year. Don’t expect too much though. After all, this is the guy who reused the “sorry about your loss” card with some words crossed out for your mother’s 50th birthday. So give this list a quick run-through, and decide if it’s even worth putting stock into your man anymore. Maybe it’s better to cut your losses and run…

5) He invites your mother over for dinner.

Three months ago she was a total bitch, now she’s “sweet” and a “good-listener.” Maybe he has just turned it around, maybe he is becoming a better man, or maybe it has something to do with the tummy tuck and boob job your mom had after divorcing your dad. Sure, you love your mom, and you love the fact that he doesn’t complain about her coming over anymore. But it’s not so cool having mom over when she’s in the hot tub with your fiancée… while you were at work. Don’t worry, mom would never do anything to hurt you; although there was your prom date that she kept complementing for having a nice inseam.

4) He claims he got gyped at the drugstore.

Stranger things have happened right? Who are you to argue with this man, he loves you! When he says his 36-pack of Trojan Ultra Ribbed was mispackaged to have 23 condoms you shouldn’t judge him. A good girlfriend wouldn’t ask why his cell phone was off earlier, why he’s had a late lunch at the office three times this week, or why his ex blushed when you bumped into her last week. Of course not! Forget the fact that you’ve never used this brand of condoms, lie down and enjoy his 3 minutes of gyrations. You don’t deserve much better anyways- besides, you’ve been sleeping with his best friend for 3 months.

3) You have to ask him for sex.

Wow! Houston we have a problem! Since when does a woman have to ask for sex? Statistically speaking, men think about sex more than… well to compare it to anything else would honestly be an injustice to the amount of times we think about it every day. Let’s just say it’s a hell of a lot. So why is it that you have to ask him? Well, I could recap all of point number 4, or I could just say that your friend who called you last week lonely because she hadn’t been with a guy in 7 weeks isn’t so lonely anymore. Oh wait- your boyfriend didn’t give you that message? That is so weird!

2) You are at a nice restaurant, and it’s not a holiday, no one has died, and he hasn’t forgotten a birthday.

This guy is guilty as sin! Don’t think for a second this man is ready to get married, this isn’t one of “those” dinners. He probably ran your mother over with your car, got drunk and called your boss, or possibly threw your cat out your apartment window. Don’t panic though, just order the most overly expensive things you can before you explain to him it’s over, but not before you tell the waiter that drinks at the bar are on him while he’s busy in the restroom. Sure, you’ll feel bad if he gets down on one knee in a little bit, but at least you’ll have a funny story to tell your girlfriends next weekend at the singles bar.

1) He says anal feels more “right” for him…

Hey, some guys just love anal; there is nothing wrong with that. But when your man tells you that normal sex is “weird for him,” you should probably re-evaluate the past few months. Maybe it was believable that he was just taking pictures to track his progress for his workouts when you found him in his underwear with Vance. You never expected to find him half naked with another man when you surprised him at home during your lunch break, and come to think of it, is it really believable that Billy needed to play racquetball until 4 a.m. last week? While role-playing was your idea, you most likely had a different idea than his suggestions of wrestlers that fall in love, football players in full pads, or his latest favorite, Skipper and Gilligan.

So there you have it, five sure signs that your relationship is going down the tubes. No one ever said ending this thing was going to be easy, but have some dignity ladies. He may say hurtful things, he may even punch a hole in the wall, but all things said and done you’ve come out on top. Valentine's Day is approaching and you can be the first girl getting hit on by guys who were similarly broken up with by other woman who read this article! It’s the cycle of life, except all that weird shit about plants, animals, and photosynthesis. With any luck this guy won’t use your razor to shave his back hair, wear socks to bed, or sleep with your mom. Even if he does, you can always pull out this list and remind yourself that the grass is always greener on the other side.

How to spoof an xbox 360 drive

2008-02-03T15:00:00.000-08:00

Source: http://www.se7ensins.com/forums/hardware-customizations/82304-replace-spoof-xbox-360-dvd-drive.html

Introduction
I just recently had a few 360 dvdrom drives that had died and I needed to learn how to spoof the firmware, drive keys etc etc onto the new replacement drives that I had purchased so here's a tutorial i worked on.

For the tutorial i will be replacing a broken Hitachi 0047 drive with a Hitachi 0046 drive and updating the firmware, keys and spoofing it to match the original drive. You can use this tutorial as a base for replacing/spoofing just about any drive. I hope this helps you all out and explains in more detail to help you not brick your drives.

Required Items
- Original/Broken 360 DVD Drive -OR- Firmware backup (Hitachi)
- Replacement 360 DVD Drive (Hitachi or Samsung)
- Slax (Hitachi 78 and above only)
- Firmware Toolbox 4.5

Let's get started

1. Original/Broken 360 DVD Drive:

Please Note:
If you already have a backup of the original/broken Xbox 360 Drive firmware please proceed to Step 2.

1.1. Connect the "Original/Broken Hitachi DVD drive" to your pc via SATA connection.

1.2. Place the dvdrom drive into MODE B with SLAX or the CrossWire Trick (Hitachi 78 and above only support SLAX Method).

Please Note:
Once you have the drive in MODE B you will notice it will take 3 presses on the eject buton to close the drive.

1.3. With the Original/Broken drive now in MODE B restart your PC and make sure that the new drive has been identified by Windows. Once the new hardware has been found and installed it will be shown in the my computer/explorer area on your pc as a additional dvd-rom drive.

1.4. Insert a DVD Movie or an XBOX/XBOX 360 game into the "Original/Broken Hitachi DVD drive". Even if the laser is nearly dead it may read a dvd-r movie just fine so try it.

1.5. Open Firmware Toolbox 4.5

1.6. Choose 'Tools -> Direct Drive Dump (GDR ONLY)

1.7 On the next screen choose 'RAW DUMP' and save the file as "original.bin". If you have problems with 'RAW DUMP' try 'CLASSIC DUMP'.

eg. c:/xbox360/hitachi0047/606HG324277-may2006/original.bin

Make sure you can identify the backup firmware in future by placing it in a directory that matches the serial number which is located on the sticker of the dvdrom drive. This will make it much easier to identify in the future.

2. Replacement Xbox 360 DVD Drive

2.1. Connect the "Replacement Hitachi DVD drive" to your pc via SATA connection.

2.2. Place the dvdrom drive into MODE B with SLAX or the CrossWire Trick (Hitachi 78 and above only support SLAX Method).

Please Note:
Once you have the drive in MODE B you will notice it will take 3 presses on the eject buton to close the drive.

2.3. With the replacement drive now in MODE B restart your PC and make sure that the new drive has been identified by Windows. Once the new hardware has been found and installed it will be shown in the my computer/explorer area on your pc as a additional dvd-rom drive.

2.4. Insert a DVD Movie or an XBOX/XBOX 360 game into the "Replacement Hitachi DVD drive".

2.5. Open Firmware Toolbox 4.5

2.6. Choose 'Tools -> Direct Drive Dump (GDR ONLY)

2.7 On the next screen choose 'RAW DUMP' and save the file as "original.bin". If you have problems with 'RAW DUMP' try 'CLASSIC DUMP'.

eg. c:/xbox360/hitachi0046/606HG324240-may2006/original.bin

Make sure you can identify the backup firmware in future by placing it in a directory that matches the serial number which is located on the sticker of the dvdrom drive. This will make it much easier to identify in the future.

2.8 When the firmware is backed up it will ask you if you want to open it. Choose "yes".

2.9. Now select "Tools->Spoof Firmware" from the Firmware Toolbox 4.5 menus.

2.10. Choose the version that you would like the fw to report back as. Leave all other options as they are.

Please note:
- Spoofing a drive as itself has the effect of UNSPOOFING it

2.11. Now Click "APPLY SPOOF"

2.12. Choose "Tools->Smart Hack Patcher", a window warning will appear, choose OK.

2.13. Choose the output file name, we suggest calling it "final.bin" and save it at the same location as the original. The ruleset option should be automatically selected for you so leave it alone.

eg. c:/xbox360/hitachi0046/606HG324240-may2006/final.bin

2.14 Push the "Generate File" button, if everything goes fine the file will be generated almost instantly

2.15 Once the file has been generated it will ask you if you want to open it. Choose "Yes".

2.16 The Main Window will show the generated file (final.bin). You will notice that the spoofed information is shown in bold.

3. Original/Broken Firmware Key
3.1. Open the old original/broken dvd drive firmware which you backed up in step 1. Choose the Browse for file button "..." to load the original/broken dvdrive firmware.

3.2 With the old broken dvd drive firmware now loaded you will notice the "Key Information @" area in the center of the 360 Firmware Toolbox application.

3.3 Highlight the entire key and copy it by right clicking your mouse and selecting copy or press Ctrl + C so we can paste it into our new replacement drive.

3.4. Open the replacement dvd drive firmware named "final.bin" which you created in step 2. Choose the Browse for file button "..." to load the firmware.

3.5 Paste the Key into the "Key Information

3.6. Click on "Replace Key" and it will update the firmware with the new key you have just pasted.

4. Check Firmware Differences
4.1. Before flashing the drive i always suggest re-opening the old firmware from step 1. Then open the final.bin firmware you just created in step 3 and make sure keys and other information match just to be safe.

If your happy that your keys etc match then move onto flashing the drive.

5. Flashing the Replacement Drive
5.1. Choose "Tools->Direct Drive Flash->Differential Flash Patch".

5.2. Make sure the Hitachi drive you want to flash is selected

5.3. Click the "Read Drive and Detect Differences" button, after a few seconds the sectors list below the button should be populated.

5.4. It will now ask you if you would like to keep the keys from the drive.. Choose 'No'.

5.5. Click the "Start Flashing" button and choose the flash mode.. I suggest using the 0047 flasher for 47 drives etc etc..

5.6. After a few seconds the flashing is complete.

How to update your Xbox dashboard

2008-02-03T14:57:00.000-08:00

Source: http://www.se7ensins.com/forums/softmod/5484-microsoft-dashboard-details-softmodding.html

To make your job easier the Softmod Installer, it is recommended that you use the latest version of Xbox Dashboard which is available (1.00.5960.01). This is how you would check your Xboxâ€™s Dashboard version.

1) Click on the Settings button on your Xbox Dash, press A.

2) Scroll down to the System Info at the bottom of the next menu, press A.

The System Info screen will give you all the information you need to know about your Xbox console including your kernel version and dashboard version.

3) In the system info it will display your Dashboard versions This is a screenshot of something similar to what you will want to see.

The section highlighted in red shows you what your Dashboard version is. If the Xbox is not showing this version, then you will need to update it.

How to Update your Dash
1. Find a game, anything from Halo 2 until now, and put it in.
2. Make sure your Xbox is not linked to your network (remove your network cable from the back of the Xbox if you have one)
3. When the main menu loads, scroll down to XBOX LIVE, click it.
4. This will take you to your MS dash and update it for you.

Written by Nknave for the SID 4.0 Manual and modifed by AzzidReign

How to Softmod with Krayzie's Ndure Installer 1.1.1

2008-02-03T14:56:00.000-08:00

source: http://www.se7ensins.com/forums/softmod/20179-softmod-krayzie-s-ndure-installer-1-1-1-a.html

Learn how to softmod your Xbox using Krazyies Softmod Installer. This softmod installer allows you to access LIVE and create new gamertags while keeping your Xbox softmodded.

How to Softmod Your Xbox With Krayzie Ndure Installer
Written by AzzidReign

Requirements:

Newest Microsoft Dashboard: Click Here for more details and possible update procedures. You can aquire the newest Microsoft Dashboard by either going on Xbox Live and getting the updates or getting the Halo 2 Expansion disc and installing the update.

Action Replay:

Buy it HERE!

Must own 1 of these 3 games:

Xbox LIVE! Gamertag: Must have a gamertag on your Xbox before you softmod. If you do not, you will have to use the Extras folder that comes with the installer. View tutorial here

Krayzie's Softmod Installer Files:
Splinter Cell NTSC
Splinter Cell Pal
007 - AUF
Mech Assault 1
Having troubles downloading from Rapidshare.com? Check out this tutorial: http://www.se7ensins.com/forums/misc...apidshare.html

NOTE: When you are done downloading, make sure to unrar/unpack the files. NEVER UNPACK THE UDATA WHEN YOU SEE IT.

Getting your gamesaves on your Memory Unit (MU)
1. Install the software that came with your Action Replay (will be referred as AR from now on). If you are confused at what this means, a disc comes with AR, put that in and install it.

2. Plug in your AR USB adapter into your USB port on your computer. Make sure your memory card is in the adapter now.

3. Bring up the AR program. It should look like this (the pictures below show SID installer but it's the same concept, it just won't say SID for the file):

4. Navigate to your Krayzie Ndure Installer folder and in that folder, go to the save folder (for Splinter Cell, there is 2 saves folders) and drag the udata (remember to drag BOTH udata's for SC if thats the game you are using) to the Memory Card (MC) slot on your AR software. It should look like this:

5. Once you have both files on your MC, remove it from the AR adapter and bring it over to your Xbox. Plug it into your controller and boot up your Xbox without a game in the drive.

6. Transfer the files onto your hard drive (hdd). To do this go to the "Memory" screen from the main standard MS Dashboard. When you get into the memory menu, click on the memory card (by pressing left on the D-Pad) and select it by pressing A. When you get into your memory card and find the file, you might have to press the right button on your D-Pad to select the file and then choose copy. Do this for BOTH files or else the installation will not work/start.

Krayzie Softmod 1.1 Tutorial
IMPORTANT!!!!

The 007 version needs to be loaded a certain way in order to get the save working otherwise it will just boot to a black
screen. When you get to the load game screen DONT'T select load game but start a new one. Then when you reached the actual
game (after the cutscene), hit the start button and select quit game, Then go back to the load game screen and this time
select "load game".

Step 1: Now that the files have been transfered to the Xbox, put the game in that you are going to use to softmod with (Splinter Cell, Mechassault, 007:AUF). Each game is different when it comes to how to load linux. Here's the break down:

Splinter Cell: Go to Start Game, click LINUX, and you wont see any check points, but still press A for the Check Points twice. Then the installer should load up. Pics of the process:

Mechassault: Go to Campaign, click Run Linux and that should load the installer. Mechassualt is known to be harder to get the installer loading since it requires a certain edition. Please be sure that when you have 'Run Linux' highlighted, the files description is as follows:
Controls: Normal
Difficulty: Regular
Current Level: Going Down Hard
If that does not show up, then you will have to get a different version or get Splinter Cell or 007.
Pics of the process:

007: Go to Load Mission, then select the Xbox Hard Disk option and that should load the installer. Pics of the process:

NOTE: If it loads a black/blank screen, this means that your MU (memory unit) is corrupting the files. People have been able to fix this by using a different MU to transfer the gamesaves.

Step 2: Click 1st Backup EEPROM
-- Click Yes or OK for the next 2 windows then a new screen will come up and click BACKUP EEPROM

Step 3: I suggest going to SETTINGS at the bottom, get your IP and FTP to your Xbox (view this tutorial to FTP). Once you are in your Xbox, navigate to your EEPROM backup and transfer it to your computer.

Step 4: OPTIONAL: If you don’t have FTP access, then click COPY EEPROM TO MU. This will back up your EEPROM to your memory card (MU = MEMORY UNIT).

Step 5: Click Basic Installation

Step 6: PERSONAL PREFERENCE: I suggest using UNLEASHX (UX) for this step since its more user friendly for beginners. Once you become more advanced, I suggest moving over to EvolutionX (EvoX) since you can customize it more.

Step 7: After choosing one of the dashboards stated above, you will get a message asking to PROCEED. Please, if you didn’t verify your current MS Dashboard BEFORE you started this softmod process, please restart your Xbox and check to see what your dashboard is. If you know for sure its MS 5960, the proceed.

Step 8: It’s going to go through screens, read them to know what is going on and keep proceeding. All that’s going on is the installer is checking to make sure it can move it without running into errors. Once everything is present, it will begin softmodding your Xbox.

Step 9: Once it is done modifying your Xbox, you will get a message saying to turn off your Xbox or press OK. Press OK. Once it is shut off, press the EJECT button to get your game out.

Step 10: You will get a screen that says PRESS A. Press it. Read the message that comes up and click ok.

Step 11: Once it is done making the Shadow C, you will be a completion message. Read each message that comes up after you click OK.

Your Xbox will then restart and you now have a MODIFIED XBOX! Congrats!

Update to Krayzies 1.1.1
Krayzie Ndure Installer 1.1.1 Update <---DOWNLOAD
Unpack that file after you've downloaded it.

Getting The Files Ready
1. In your Krayzie 1.1 folder, you should find an EXTRAS folder. Open it up.
2. Open your Krayzie 1.1.1 update folder.
3. Choose the game you used (SC = Splinter Cell, MA = Mech Assault, 007 = 007 AUF)
4. Copy the contents from your 1.1.1 folder to the EXTRAS folder and overwrite the config.xml. Make sure it overwrites it. If it doesn't, delete the config.xml in the EXTRAS and then transfer over the config.xml from the 1.1.1 folder.
5. FTP to your Extras folder in E:\Apps\
Time to UPGRADE!
1. Go back to your Xbox and restart it.
2. Go to APPS in your modded dashboard and go to Krayzie Extras. All passcodes are button sequence: AYBX
3. Click Update to 1.1.1

Get On Xbox LIVE! (2 ways: coldboot and dual boot)
First, make sure that you have your network settings setup right. Usually people are on an automatic IP, so change your IP setting to DHCP (aka automatic IP). You can find this setting in your MODDED DASH, go to settings, and look for a network setting, in there you will see a setting for your IP.

There are 2 ways for you to get on Xbox LIVE! The first and highly recommended way is to cold boot:

1. Put your game disc in the Drive.
2. Turn your Xbox off
3. Press the power button to turn your Xbox on while the game is still in the drive

This should make it so you do not boot to your modified bios therefore allowing you to get on Xbox LIVE!

The second way is to set up a dual boot system. Do not do this if you are wanting to do the part of the tutorial to enable yourself to create gamertags.

Dual Boot (XBL Compatible)
1. Reload your linux installer (go back into your game to load it)
2. Select Multiboot
3. Choose ‘Dual Retail’.
Now, when you want to go on Live, press the Eject (larger) button. When the dash loads, check to see if the LED is green. If it’s green, you are good to go. Put the game in and you can now play on live.

Create Xbox LIVE! gamertags
1. Go to Apps
2. Go to Krayzie Extras
3. Go to Dual Boot
4. Choose Dual Boot LiveDash

Now when you hit your EJECT button to turn your Xbox on, that should lead you to your Live dash which should give you the option to create new gamertags.

Please click the "Thanks" button and "+rep" if this tutorial helped you out.

Other Useful Tutorials/Links:
How to FTP
FTP to your Halo 2 Maps
How to Mod Halo 2 for Beginners
How to Burn Games
Emulator Downloads
Emulator AutoInstaller

©AzzidReign at http://www.se7ensins.com/

Website Customization: What can we do?

2008-02-03T12:19:00.001-08:00

Nowadays, in this trendy world, people get very uptight when they do not look entirely presentable. This would also be the case in web designing.

Every individual would definitely want their website to look good, if not, to the best they can. Here are a few things we could look out for when wanting to create a professional looking webpage.

Color Schemes and Themes.

When designing, always choose matching colors. An example of a matching color would be to have a dark background, with visible words and designs. With the dark theme, try not to mix too many bright colors into the design. What we should NEVER do, is to mix two very different colors, such as purple and yellow. Now, of course, it would depend on the purpose of the website, but those two colors are too striking for one who wants it to look more professional.

Themes must always suit the company or rather, the organization / etc. If the website was made to cater for a food company, it would be wise to stick to that particular category, rather than to revert to a different theme, such as machinery.

Fonts should be used in regard to the formality of the website. A simple sans-serif font would suffice in most cases. Exceptional cases such as design and art groups might want to use fanciful designs and fonts. Of course, that’s only if you know what you’re doing.

Finally, we must always try to think of our visitors, see the way they see. The resolutions and file sizes of the pictures must not be too large in terms of size. This is to allow maximum compatibility and cater our visitor’s needs.

So, planning is something we should always do, before attempting something.

The Key to Better Websites - Design

2008-02-03T12:18:00.002-08:00

Introduction

Importance of the latter :

Design, design, design. To put the wonders of a good design into perspective, imagine a when we are purchasing a T-Shirt. First of all, what do we look at? The design of the T-Shirt, of course. Well most people do, other than the material factor. But let’s assume the all other factors are constant, wouldn’t the design or looks, become the key aspect then?

2 ) Design

Putting oneself in another individual’s shoes, as usual. Here are another two situations.

Situation A : A website with good design and breathtaking graphics. (Good color schemes with matching theme), pictures. (Optimum resolutions and relevant) and proper fonts and word sizes.

Situation B : A website inversely equipped with hideous graphics and pictures in terms of resolution, quality and relevancy. (Red pictures with a bright green background) Fonts used were not matching albeit too fanciful. (Too small, artsy font-types)

Situation A, visitors that enter the website are immediately awestruck by the design and artwork. The well placed pictures and designs will somewhat symbolizes the positive nature of the company/website. As we know, most people DO judge by impression.

As for Situation B, the shabby environment due to severe lack of creativity and badly taken pictures wouldn’t exactly help in attracting visitors. Fonts that were hard to be read, let alone comprehended, and mismatching themes in terms of color, isn’t exactly welcoming, is it?

Analysis: Now, the main idea here is to always plan your websites, try to get other individuals for feedback and perspectives. Each mindset might differ, but at least you will get room for improvement. Don’t get me wrong, even a plain website with proper design would generate plenty of positive implications, but the key idea here is to at least maintain an impressionable website.

The Key to Better Websites - Navigation

2008-02-03T12:18:00.001-08:00

Introduction

Importance of the latter :

One of the primary implications of a well-organized / good website, is to keep your visitors in the website. A website is definitely created for a purpose, unless intended for personal use, which is the minority. For example, a portfolio website would want to be visited and it’s content viewed. For companies and internet businesses, your website certainly aims to provide product information, to make sales, or somewhat similar. However, most individuals undoubtly prefer visually captivating designs, so on and so forth. It is undeniable that this causes no harm, but one must put himself/herself in other people’s shoes, as to understand how a visitor to the website might think, do and react.

1 ) Navigation

As I said, a web designer has to learn how to think the way your visitors think.

Situation A : Website with good navigation ( 2-3 hyperlinks to target page ), well planned in terms of placement, and design.

Situation B : Website with poor navigation ( takes forever for the visitor to reach his/her target page ), hard-to-read navigation fonts and poor placement of the navigation buttons/bar.

In Situation A, a visitor will always want to be able to access his/her target page. For example, the individual comes across your website, and is interested in the product sold, but wants to find more information. He/she finds the navigation with no trouble, and enters the particular product information page.

As for Situation B, a visitor stumbles into the website, and would also like to find out more information about the product. Unfortunately, due to bad placement and fanciful font-types, the visitor takes forever, or even fails to find the navigation bar. Even when he/she does so, links to the product information are nowhere to be found, (example : home > about > products > product image > etc…[a few more clicks] > product information ).

Analysis : In both situations, wouldn’t a website with characteristics similar to the Situation A be more rewarding ergo better?

Should I Create a Website? Do I Need One?

2008-02-03T12:17:00.002-08:00

People always want to follow the latest thing, be it in fashion, sports, that kind of thing. Websites have become a necessity to almost everyone. Companies, businesses, individuals, even young adults have created personal websites with their respective purposes, be it for profit, or for entertainment.

What one must consider, however, before creating a website, are the factors in which must be put to thought before doing so, such as the cost, maintenance, use, web host and so forth.

Firstly, associating with the cost, we must always try to find an affordable host, not spending too much, nor too little. A cheap host does not exactly symbolize a credible reliability rating, but we must always look for value for money deals. Also, regarding the efficiency and server/web host reliability, there are many cases of web hosts not providing the service they had assured other people, some had even shut down and were nowhere to be seen. Keep this note in mind, as if you would like a long-lasting website, this would be the first thing to look for.

Next, would hiring a professional be affordable? Is it the best option? For simple websites, we could always pick up the coding, or even use programs, as it is relatively simple. However, when it comes to more complex coding, and when you want it to do a tad more than just providing information, hiring help in doing so would be the best way. Not only in terms of design, but security is also a key factor in assuring a quality website. If the website also acts as a portal for businesses, security would definitely be the issue here.

So, having considered the things to do before building a website, do we actually NEED one? If creating one would boost sales or promote positive implications to oneself, then by all means, go ahead and do what’s best. Yet again, planning is the key to success, in everything we do.

Is It Easy to Create our own Website? What is HTML?

2008-02-03T12:17:00.001-08:00

Creating a website is not so much a feat, if we compare it to the education of other technical skills. Most people tend to give up and pack their bags as soon as they hear the word “programming” and “technical”. They think it`s too much of a hassle to actually learn a whole computer “language”. HTML, the most basic computer language in building websites, is actually pretty simple to understand, as long as we have the interest in learning new things.

What is HTML?

HTML is the acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. For learning purposes, just think of it as a language that the computer understands. For example, as humans, we were taught different languages; i.e. HTML as a language, is mostly and specifically used to create a website. The web browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, will then decipher and interpret the code or rather, language(HTML), and display it in a way we can understand it, just like in a basic webpage.

Coding.

Coding the HTML language might be a bit tough for some people, so we can actually purchase programmes, such as Macromedia Dreamweaver, or even Microsoft Frontpage. These programmes are solely created to help individuals in designing professional webpages/websites.

Furthermore, one could also gain access to online web-builders, website builders that are inbuilt and can be directly controlled from the net. There are many different and specific builders online.

Books and magazines contain guides that can help in offering tutorials and ways to put up our own websites. Even online tutorials are credible, as in the modern world, information technology is the best and most cost efficient way in retaining knowledge, especially in this particular field.

So, you could start and build one right away. If you enjoy coding, it might even become a favourable past-time.

Why you should use graphic templates

2008-02-03T12:16:00.000-08:00

When it comes to graphics, most Internet marketers shy away from using graphic templates whether it's ebook covers, website layouts or promotional banners because they firmly believe that by using graphic templates, they are tarnishing their own business. They want to own a unique identity and hence will always find a professional graphic designer to do the job. Well, you're in for a big surprise!

When you purchase a graphic template, you will be able to customize it to an extent or even build a totally new design based on it! What's the point of using the template then, you say? Well, it serves as a source of inspiration and ideas for a totally new design. You can't derive anything from a blank canvas, right?

On top of that, you are actually saving a lot of precious time that you can otherwise spend on more important matters like developing new products or market your products. When you buy a pre-made template, you only need to edit a thing or two to give it an identity of your own, and that gives you more time and flexibility to work on other stuff.

Okay, let's say you argue that hiring a designer to do the job is equally fast. That may be true but don't forget, hiring a professional designer to do a custom design for you will cost you a lot of money. Unless you need a totally unique identity that you are aiming to establish firmly in your niche market, you don't need to get a designer to design it for you.

Not all graphic templates are suitable, so you have to be careful when choosing one. Consider quality over the price, and you're on your way to creating a positive image for your business while saving more time for more productive chores!

Why Hire A Designer?

2008-02-03T11:38:00.003-08:00

A lot of online business owners start with no money. They have to do everything themselves -- the preparation of a product, the development of a marketing strategy, the actual building of a website to cater to their product's marketing needs. As their business expands over time, they will find that their simple "homemade" site might not be enough to cover everything, and they will have to take a day or two away to simply dedicate that to the website expansion.

Sounds familiar? Chances are, you're someone who started everything with no money too, so you're pretty skeptical when it comes to giving away your money in exchange for something that you could have done yourself. However, there is a lot more to hiring a designer than just finishing up a job that you don't want to do.

When you hire a web designer to do your job for you, you are doing more than just handing over the "dirty job" to someone else. In fact, by paying a little money, you can let the designer worry about the little annoyances that always evade the main picture and only come haunting when you're halfway through the job. That way, you will be more focused and have more time to spend on your actual business strategy.

On the other hand, the designers you hire a professionals so they are good at what they do. By outsourcing your web design jobs to them, you won't have to worry when problems surface because you can always get them to fix it for you. Again, they will be able to pin point the problem and fix it faster than you probably will be able to.

Also, the work you pay for will turn out more professional than what you can achieve because the designers have been doing it longer than you have. After all, they do it for a living so they have to be good!

So, remember to not just work your business, but grow your business too!

Who Is Your Audience?

2008-02-03T11:38:00.001-08:00

Understanding the type of people who visit your site is a very important task because you can use that information to enhance your site to suit them. As a result, you will gain more loyal returning visitors that come back again and again for more.

What is the age level and what kind of knowledge does your audience have? A layman might linger around a general site on gardening, but a professional botanist might turn his nose at the very same site. Similarly, a regular person will leave a site filled with astronomy abstracts but a well educated university graduate will find that site interesting.

Take your audience's emotional state into consideration when building your site. If a very irritated visitor searches for a solution and comes across your site, you will want to make sure you offer the solution right up front and sell or promote your product to him second. In this way, the visitor will put his trust in you for offering the solution to his problems and is more likely to buy your product when you offer it to him after that.

When you design the layout for your site, you have to take into account the characteristics of your audience. Are they old or young people? Are they looking for trends or are they just looking for information served without any icing on the cake? For example, introducing a new, exciting game with a simple, straightforward black text against white background page will definitely turn prospects away. Make sure your design suits your site's general theme.

Try to sprinkle colloquial language in your sites sparingly where you see fit and you will create a sense that your audience is on common ground with you. This in turn builds a trusting relationship between you and your audience, which will come in useful should you want to market a product to your audience.

When Is the Right Time to Redesign?

2008-02-03T11:37:00.002-08:00

If you run a website, chances are you often wonder whether it is the right time to do a total redesign of the layout of your website. Here are some points to consider:

Are you thinking of a redesign just for the sake of it? If you answered yes to that question, it is not yet the right time to do a redesign. Remember, a design serves a specific purpose. If you are not sure whether to do an overhaul of your site, keep in mind that your current design might have a specific purpose that you might not know about. You will lose that function if you do a redesign.

On the other hand, if your website has had the same website design since 1990, perhaps it is high time to do a redesign. The last thing you would ever want to happen to your site is when visitors leave your site without taking a look at your content just because the design is old fashioned. If this is your case, here are some points to ponder before doing a redesign.

Redesigning your website is like performing plastic surgery on it. Your website loses its current identity (for the better or worse) and your regular visitors might not recognise your new design at first glance. You risk losing them just because they thought they landed on the wrong page. Hence, it is very important that you retain a characteristic feature from your old layout. Perhaps it is the logo of your site; perhaps it is the same text style for the title for your site.

To play it safe, put a poll on your site to let your visitors do the talking. If they think it is necessary for the website to have a fresh look, give it to them!

Web Design Elements You Should Avoid Having on Your Site

2008-02-03T11:37:00.001-08:00

As a web designer, you should design your websites to give your visitors the greatest ease of use, the best impression and most important of all a welcoming experience. It doesn't matter if you had the greatest product in the whole world -- if your website is poorly done you won't be able to sell even one copy of it because visitors will be driven off your website by the lousy design.

When I'm talking about a "good design", I'm not only talking about a good graphical design. A professional web design will be able to point out that there are many components which contribute to a good website design -- accessibility design, interface or layout design, user experience design and of course the most straightforward, which is graphic design.

Hence, I have highlighted some features of the worst web designs I've come across. Hopefully, you will be able to compare that against your own site as a checklist and if anything on your site fits the criteria, you should know it's high time to take serious action!

1) Background music

Unless you are running a site which promotes a band, a CD or anything related to music, I would really advise you to stay away from putting looping background music onto your site. It might sound pleasant to you at first, but imagine if you ran a big site with hundreds of pages and everytime a visitor browses to another page on your site, the background music starts playing again. If I were your visitor, I'd just turn off my speakers or leave your site. Moreover, they just add to the visitors burden when viewing your site -- users on dial up connections will have to wait longer just to view your site as it is meant to be viewed.

2) Extra large/small text size

As I said, there is more to web design than purely graphics -- user accessibility is one big part of it too! You should design the text on your site to be legible and reasonably sized to enable your visitors to read it without straining their eyes. No matter how good the content of your website or your sales copy is, if it's illegible you won't be selling anything!

3) Popup windows

Popup windows are so blatantly used to display advertisements that in my mind, 90% of popup windows are not worth my attention so I just close them on instinct everytime each one manages to pass through my popup blocker (yes, I do have one like many users out there!) and, well, pops up on my screen. Imagine if you had a very important message to convey and you put it in a popup window that gets killed most of the time it appears on a visitor's screen. Your website loses its function immediately!

In concluding this article, let me remind you that as a webmaster your job is to make sure your website does what it's meant to do effectively. Don't let some minor mistakes stop your site from functioning optimally!

Ways To Improve Sales Through Your Website

2008-02-03T11:36:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has been marketing online knows that the lifeblood of a business is the traffic of a site. More visitors equal more sales. However, here are some ways that you can tweak your sites with to improve sales without the need to get more visitors.

The first method is to weave in your personal touch in your sales message. Nobody wants to be sold to by a total stranger, but many people will buy what their close friends recommend to them. If you can convince your audience that you are a personal friend who has their best interest at heart, they will be convinced to buy your products. Remember to speak to an individual in your salesletter, not to your whole audience.

The second method is to publish testimonials and comments from your customers. A good idea would be to publish both good and bad comments; that way prospects will be really convinced that these testimonials are real. When prospects see testimonials on your website, they will have the confidence to buy from you because human beings follow the herd mentality; when others have bought and proven it authentic, they will jump on the bandwagon and buy too.

Use visual representations for the problems and solutions that your product offers. Not everyone will read your text copy from the head to the tail, but most people will pay attention to images on your website.

Offer quality bonuses to accompany the product. When you offer bonuses that complement your product, your prospects will feel it's a very good deal and it would be stupid to miss it. Be sure to state the monetary value of your bonuses so that people will be even more compelled to grab your good bargain.

Lastly, ask for the sale! Many people entice their prospects with the benefits of their product, sell to them with stories of how it has solved many problems, even offered killer bonuses but forget to ask for the sale. Give a clear instruction on how to buy your product (e.g. "click the button to buy now!").

The importance of good design

2008-02-03T11:28:00.000-08:00

Your website is the hub of your online business; it is the virtual representation of your company whether your company exists physically or not. When you are doing business online, people cannot see you physically like how they could if they were dealing with an offline company. Hence, people do judge you by your covers. This is where a good design comes in.

Imagine if you are running an offline company. Would you allow your salespersons to be dressed in shabby or casual clothes when they are dealing with your customers? By making your staff wear professionally, you are telling your customers that you do care about quality. This works simply because first impressions matter.

Similarly, the same case is with your website. If your website is put together shabbily and looks like a 5 minute "quick fix", you are literally shouting to your visitors that you are not professional and you do not care for quality.

On the opposite, if you have a totally professional looking website layout, you are giving your visitors the perception that you have given meticulous attention to every detail and you care about professionalism. You are organised, focused and you really mean business.

On the other hand, you should also have anything related to your company well designed. From business cards to letterheads to promotional brochures, every little bit matters. This is because as you grow your business, these items become the face of your business. Once again, think of the "salesperson dressed shabbily" anology, and you will get my point.

Search Engine-Friendly pages

2008-02-03T11:27:00.002-08:00

There is no point in building a website unless there are visitors coming in. A major source of traffic for most sites on the Internet is search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista and so on. Hence, by designing a search engine friendly site, you will be able to rank easily in search engines and obtain more visitors.

Major search engines use programs called crawlers or robots to index websites to list on their search result pages. They follow links to a page, reads the content of the page and record it in their own database, pulling up the listing as people search for it.

If you want to make your site indexed easily, you should avoid using frames on your website. Frames will only confuse search engine robots and they might even abandon your site because of that. Moreover, frames make it difficult for users to bookmark a specific page on your site without using long, complicated scripts.

Do not present important information in Flash movies or in images. Search engine robots can only read text on your source code so if you present important words in Flash movies and images rather than textual form, your search engine ranking will be affected dramatically.

Use meta tags accordingly on each and every page of your site so that search engine robots know at first glance what that particular page is about and whether or not to index it. By using meta tags, you are making the search engine robot's job easier so they will crawl and index your site more frequently.

Stop using wrong HTML tags like to style your page. Use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) instead because they are more effective and efficient. By using CSS, you can eliminate redundant HTML tags and make your pages much lighter and faster to load.

Reducing Load Time Through Image Optimization

2008-02-03T11:27:00.001-08:00

Even though more and more Internet users switch to broadband every year, a large portion of the web's population is still running on good old dialup connections. It is therefore unwise to count them out of the equation when you're designing your website, and a very major consideration we have to make for dialup users is the loading time of your website.

Generally, all the text on your website will be loaded in a very short time even on a dialup connection. The culprit of slow-loading sites is mainly large images on your website, and it is very important to strike a delicate balance between using just enough images to attract your users and not to bog down the overall loading time of your site.

You should also go to a greater length and optimize every image on your site to make sure it loads in the least time possible. What I really mean is to use image editing software to remove unnecessary information on your images, and thereby effectively reducing the file size of your image without affecting its appearance.

If you own Photoshop, it will be obvious to you that when you save an image as a JPEG file, a dialog box appears and lets you choose the "quality" of the JPEG image -- normally a setting of 8 to 10 is good enough as it will preserve the quality of your image while saving it at a small file size. If you do not have Photoshop, there are many free image compressors online that you can download and use to reduce your image's file size.

On the other hand, you can opt to save your images in PNG format to get the best quality at the least file size. You can also save your images in GIF format -- the image editing software clips away all the color information not used in your image, hence giving you the smallest file size possible. However, saving in GIF format will often compromise the appearance of your image, so make your choice wisely!

The Pros and Cons of a Flash Based Website

2008-02-03T11:26:00.003-08:00

Flash-based sites have been a craze since the past few years, and as Macromedia compiles more and more great features into Flash, we can only predict there will be more and more flash sites around the Internet. However, Flash based sites have been disputed to be bloated and unnecessary. Where exactly do we draw the line? Here's a simple breakdown.

The good:

Interactivity

Flash's Actionscript opens up a vast field of possibilities. Programmers and designers have used Flash to create interactve features ranging from very lively feedback forms to attractive Flash-based games. This whole new level of interactivity will always leave visitors coming back for more.

A standardized site

With Flash, you do not have to worry about cross-browser compatibility. No more woes over how a certain css code displays differently in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. When you position your site elements in Flash, they will always appear as they are as long as the user has Flash Player installed.

Better expression through animation

In Flash, one can make use of its animating features to convey a message in a much more efficient and effective way. Flash is a lightweight option for animation because it is vector based (and hence smaller file sizes) as opposed to real "movie files" that are raster based and hence much larger in size.

The bad and the ugly:

The Flash player

People have to download the Flash player in advance before they can view Flash movies, so by using Flash your visitor range will decrease considerably because not everyone will be willing to download the Flash player just to view your site. You'll also have to put in additional work in redirecting the user to the Flash download page if he or she doesn't have the player installed.

Site optimization

If your content was presented in Flash, most search engines wouldn't be able to index your content. Hence, you will not be able to rank well in search engines and there will be less traffic heading to your site.

Loading time

Users have to wait longer than usual to load Flash content compared to regular text and images, and some visitors might just lose their patience and click the Back button. The longer your Flash takes to load, the more you risk losing visitors.

The best way to go is to use Flash only when you absolutely need the interactivity and motion that comes with it. Otherwise, use a mixture of Flash and HTML or use pure text if your site is purely to present simple textual and graphical information.

Mistakes to avoid on your web template

2008-02-03T11:26:00.001-08:00

Website templates are very affordable and they save you a lot of effort and time when you want to create a new layout for your website. However, a lot of people make mistakes in the process of choosing and using a web template and end up with something that was unlike the image they had in mind. Here are some guidelines to help you avoid those mistakes.

The first obvious mistake you should be aware of is using a template that is very popular. If many people use the same template, your website will not appear unique at all and your credibility as a solid, different website will be tarnished. In other words, you will appear generic just like your next-door neighbours.

To whole point of using a web template is to save time and effort. You just change the title and appropriate details and you're done. The biggest mistake one makes is to customize the template beyond recognisation. While that may be good in the sense that you're creating a unique graphic, you're defying the very purpose of using a web template -- saving time and effort.

However, on the opposite side, if a template you purchase is suitable but some changes must be made to suit your site's theme, then you will have to take some time to make the changes. For example, you can find a very nice template that suits your hobby site except the original designer has put an image of stamps in the header. You can find images of garden plants and spades to replace the stamps for your gardening hobby site. However, do only make the necessary changes and don't redesign the whole template.

In some circumstances, some people simply make the wrong choice of templates. This is a very subjective issue but you have to be careful in selecting templates to suit your audience. Do not choose templates just because they are pretty, choose them because they serve your purpose.

Make it easy to buy from your site

2008-02-03T11:25:00.001-08:00

Convincing your prospects to purchase from you is a hard job, but have you ever thought that you're making the process twice as difficult for both parties if your prospects are convinced but don't know how to buy from you? No matter how good you are at convincing your prospects, they won't buy if they find the process cumbersome.

First, you will want to check that people can find your order form easily and hassle-free. You can write a clear, concise paragraph to direct your prospects to your order form so that you can minimize the chances of them getting lost. You can also reduce the chances of losing prospects by putting a prominent link to your order page from every other page on your site.

Also, do you offer multiple payment options? Some people may feel comfortable paying via Paypal, some may only want to pay with their credit card and others might want to send a cheque. The more options you offer, the better your chances of covering your prospects' desired payment method. After all, it wouldn't make any sense to sell hard to a prospect only to find that they won't be able to pay you when they want to.

On the other hand, you will want to prove that you are a credible merchant. Is your order form secured using encryption technology? You would want to look into SSL for this. You can also offer a money back guarantee so that people will feel confident about buying from you. How about after sales support? Who do they contact when they have problems after purchasing?

Alternatively, you can add customer testimonials, your contact information, address, and so on to boost your prospects' confidence. Make them feel safe about buying something from you, a total stranger to them on the other end of the Internet.

As a conclusion, it would be very pitiful if you sold hard and sold well to a prospect and something goes wrong when he or she is ready to pay. Eliminate any chances of that to maximize your profits!

Building your mailing list with downloads

2008-02-03T11:24:00.002-08:00

A mailing list is the lifeblood of your online business. The old adage "the money is in the list" cannot be true enough -- if you had a targeted list of prospects to contact each time you have a new product, you will be able to save a lot of effort by marketing it to your existing list of targeted prospects.

You can actually build up a targeted list of prospects that are interested in your products by offering a relevant download on your website. For example, let's take a look at a very good example -- apple.com. When you download the free iTunes and Quicktime software from their site, they will ask you to fill in an optional name and email form so that they can send you offers on songs that you can purchase via -- guess where -- iTunes!

In reality, you do not need to offer such a "heavyweight" download such as a full-feature software like iTunes. You can attract prospects equally well with some quality freebies such as a simple report, a free wallpaper, and so on. The important thing is that your download offers enough value for the prospect to be willing to give away his/her own email address to get it.

However, slapping together a simple download and putting a link on your website won't be enough to attract qualified prospects. You will have to do some homework in order for your lead-generating mechanism to work well for you.

First of all, you must place your download form prominently on your website. Preferably, dedicate a page to it and link to that page from every other page of your website. That way, there is no way your visitors cannot find the download page, and when they do, you'll get some of them converted into your prospects!

Also, you have to put a little effort into promoting your download. Explain and elaborate on the values of the download, and why your visitors should download it. You might think why would anyone want to pass on a freebie, but most of your visitors would be too lazy to take the effort to download it because most of their downloads just sit on the harddisk collecting virtual dust. It is hence important to show your visitors why they should download your freebie.

Improving the usability of you website

2008-02-03T11:24:00.001-08:00

No matter how brilliant your website design is, if it is hard to reach the content of your site then your site is as useful as an empty shell. Here are some tips to improve the usability of your website to ensure it serves its functions optimally.

The first method is to make sure the typography of your content is suitable. If you have large blocks of text, make sure to use CSS to space out the lines accordingly. The longer a single line of text is, the greater the line-height of each line should be. Also, make sure the font size of your text is big enough to read easily. Some sites have 10-pixel-tall text in Verdana font; while that may look neat and tidy, you have to really strain your eyes to read the actual text.

Make it easy for visitors to find content that they want on your site. If you have thousands of articles on your site and a certain visitor wants to find one single article from that pile, you have to provide a feasible means to enable visitors to do that without hassle. Be it an SQL-driven database search engine or just a glossary or index of articles that you have, providing such a feature will make sure your visitors can use your site with ease.

Ensure that your site loads fast if you do not want to lose visitors. Most internet users will leave a website if it doesn't load completely within 15 seconds, so make sure the crème de la crème of your website is delivered to the visitors as soon as possible to retain their attention.

Last of all, test each and every link on your site before it goes online. There is nothing more effective in tarnishing your professional image than broken links, so be very careful about that.

The imortance of a sitemap

2008-02-03T11:23:00.000-08:00

A sitemap is often considered redundant in the process of building a website, and that is indeed the fact if you made a sitemap for the sake of having one. By highlighting the importance of having a well constructed sitemap, you will be able to tailor your own sitemap to suit your own needs.

1) Navigation purposes

A sitemap literally acts as a map of your site. If your visitors browses your site and gets lost between the thousands of pages on your site, they can always refer to your sitemap to see where they are, and navigate through your pages with the utmost ease.

2) Conveying your site's theme

When your visitors load up your sitemap, they will get the gist of your site within a very short amount of time. There is no need to get the "big picture" of your site by reading through each page, and by doing that you will be saving your visitors' time.

3) Site optimization purposes

When you create a sitemap, you are actually creating a single page which contains links to every single page on your site. Imagine what happens when search engine robots hit this page -- they will follow the links on the sitemap and naturally every single page of your site gets indexed by search engines! It is also for this purpose that a link to the sitemap has to be placed prominently on the front page of your website.

4) Organization and relevance

A sitemap enables you to have a complete bird's eye view of your site structure, and whenever you need to add new content or new sections, you will be able to take the existing hierarchy into consideration just by glancing at the sitemap. As a result, you will have a perfectly organized site with everything sorted according to their relevance.

From the above reasons, it is most important to implement a sitemap for website projects with a considerable size. Through this way, you will be able to keep your website easily accesible and neatly organized for everyone.

How to have websites built FOR you the cheap way

2008-02-03T11:22:00.000-08:00

Normally, if you want to have professional designers custom build your site, you must be prepared to dish out at least a few hundred dollars. All this can change if you know where to find the best deals, the best designs for the lowest price. Here's a rough guide:

First, you must understand that it is a rip off to get companies to design websites for you. Have you ever seen those advertisements in newspaper classified ad sections that offer a 5-page website at $500? These companies are established companies with physical locations, therefore they have to increase the amount they charge to pay off some overheads: office rent, designer's wages, advertising costs and so on.

Therefore, it would be wise to find freelance designers who work from home. These people are often working from home so they do not have a high operation cost like that of a company. On the other hand, they will be able to design images with quality similar to those of designers from big companies, so it's a "no-brainer" choice.

However, choose freelancers with care. The best way to do this would be to go to elance.com. There, you can post the abstract of your project and get thousands of freelancers to bid on your project, so you will surely get the best deal. On top of that, you will be able to choose the designers based on their experience, past transactions and ratings, so your value for money is secured.

Another route you can take is to design your website yourself. Think about it, if you only need 5 simple pages to present some simple information, why waste hundreds of dollars for it? Just spend a little time to sit down and do it yourself. You'll be able to design your own sites even if you do not know a single line of HTML code with the help of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) programs such as Microsoft Frontpage, Macromedia Dreamweaver and so on.

Good Web design practices

2008-02-03T11:21:00.002-08:00

Your website is where your business resides -- it's like the headquarter of an offline company. Hence, it is important to practise good design principles to make sure your site reaches out to the maximum number of visitors and sells to as many people as possible.

Make sure you have clear directions on the navigation of your website. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to navigate around your website without confusion.

Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimize them using image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size.

Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If a paragraph is too long, you should split it into seperate paragraphs so that the text blocks will not be too big. This is important because a block of text that is too large will deter visitors from reading your content.

Make sure your website complies to web standards at www.w3.org and make sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose out on a lot of prospective visitors.

Avoid using scripting languages on your site unless it is absolutely necessary. Use scripting languages to handle or manipulate data, not to create visual effects on your website. Heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and even crash some browsers. Also, scripts are not supported across all browsers, so some visitors might miss important information because of that.

Use CSS to style your page content because they save alot of work by styling all elements on your website in one go.

Generating revenue with good planning

2008-02-03T11:21:00.001-08:00

For anything to work well, care must be taken to make firm, workable plans to execute it and the same goes for website designs. With a well thought out website design, you will be able to create a site that generates multiple streams of revenue for you. In fact, may websites turn into online wasteland because they are not well planned and do not get a single visitor. Gradually, the webmaster will not be motivated to update it anymore and it turns into wasted cyberspace.

The crucial point of planning your site is optimizing it for revenue if you want to gain any income from the site. Divide your site into major blocks, ordered by themes, and start building new pages and subsections in those blocks. For example, you might have a "food" section, an "accomodation" section and an "entertainment" section for a tourism site. You can then write and publish relevant articles in the respective sections to attract a stream of traffic that comes looking for further information.

When you have a broader, better-defined scope of themes for your website, you can sell space on your pages to people interested in advertising on your page. You can also earn from programs like Google's Adsense and Yahoo! Search Marketing if people surf to those themed pages and click on the ads. For this very reason, the advertisement blocks on your pages need to be relevant to the content, so a themed page fits that criteria perfectly.

As Internet becomes more widespread, advertising on the Internet will bear more results than on magazines or offline media. Hence, start tapping in on this lucrative stream of profit right away!

Ways to keep visitors coming back to your site

2008-02-03T11:20:00.002-08:00

A lot of successful websites depend on returning visitors to account for a major part of their traffic. Returning visitors are easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a site, the more trust they have in that site. The credibility issue just melts away. Hence, keep your visitors coming back to your site with the following methods:

1) Start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox

When you start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox, you are providing your visitors a place to voice their opinions and interact with their peers -- all of them are visitors of your site. As conversations build up, a sense of community will also follow and your visitors will come back to your site almost religiously every day.

2) Start a web log (blog)

Keep an online journal, or more commonly known as a blog, on your site and keep it updated with latest news about yourself. Human beings are curious creatures and they will keep their eyes glued to the monitor if you post fresh news frequently. You will also build up your credibility as you are proving to them that there is also a real life person behind the website.

3) Carry out polls or surveys

Polls and surveys are other forms of interaction that you should definitely consider adding to your site. They provide a quick way for visitors to voice their opinions and to get involved in your website. Be sure to publish polls or surveys that are strongly relevant to the target market of your website to keep them interested to find out about the results.

4) Hold puzzles, quizzes and games

Just imagine how many office workers procrastinate at work every day, and you will be able to gauge how many people will keep visiting your site if you provide a very interesting or addicting way of entertainment. You can also hold competitions to award the high score winner to keep people trying continuously to earn the prize.

5) Update frequently with fresh content

Update your site frequently with fresh content so that every time your visitors come back, they will have something to read on your site. This is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting returning visitors, but this is also the least carried out one because of the laziness of webmasters. No one will want to browse a site that looks the same over ten years, so keep your site updated with fresh bites!

5 Important Rules in Website Design

2008-02-03T11:20:00.001-08:00

When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter". In fact, they are just that -- pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the "back" button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion means "abandon ship"!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it -- volume or muting controls would work fine.

How to avoid impulse spending

2008-02-03T11:19:00.000-08:00

Avoiding Impulse Spending

Answer these questions truthfully:

1.) Does your spouse or partner complain that you spend too much money?

2.) Are you surprised each month when your credit card bill arrives at how much more you charged than you thought you had?

3.) Do you have more shoes and clothes in your closet than you could ever possibly wear?

4.) Do you own every new gadget before it has time to collect dust on a retailer’s shelf?

5.) Do you buy things you didn’t know you wanted until you saw them on display in a store?

If you answered “yes” to any two of the above questions, you are an impulse spender and indulge yourself in retail therapy.

This is not a good thing. It will prevent you from saving for the important things like a house, a new car, a vacation or retirement. You must set some financial goals and resist spending money on items that really don’t matter in the long run.

Impulse spending will not only put a strain on your finances but your relationships, as well. To overcome the problem, the first thing to do is learn to separate your needs from your wants.

Advertisers blitz us hawking their products at us 24/7. The trick is to give yourself a cooling-off period before you buy anything that you have not planned for.

When you go shopping, make a list and take only enough cash to pay for what you have planned to buy. Leave your credit cards at home.

If you see something you think you really need, give yourself two weeks to decide if it is really something you need or something you can easily do without. By following this simple solution, you will mend your financial fences and your relationships.

The high cost of saving water

2008-02-03T11:15:00.000-08:00

For years the message drummed into Bud Harris, 78, and his grandson David Moreira, 27, was conserve, conserve.

And conserve they did, along with thousands of others across the GTA, watering their lawn less, replacing old toilets and installing water-efficient showerheads.

"We are trying to be economical and trying to do it to preserve the Earth as well," said Moreira, a locksmith who lives with his retired grandfather in a 1950s-era subdivision in Mississauga.

They've done all the right things, he says, 70 per cent for economic reasons and 30 per cent for environmental reasons.

But that win-win sentiment belies an inconvenient truth – one that came out in a recent unguarded comment from Durham Region's works czar, Cliff Curtis. Asked about declining water consumption, he told the Star:

"Conservation is killing us."

Realizing what he'd just said, Curtis smiled broadly and quickly added that there were, of course, a thousand reasons to conserve.

But one thing is certain: Conservation is putting cash-strapped municipalities in a bit of a pickle.

Tougher post-Walkerton regulations, growing communities and a rising backlog of crumbling pipes needing to be fixed are driving up costs even while diligent consumers are lowering their consumption and the size of their bills.

Toronto alone is facing about $800 million worth of repair and replacement work, since half of the city's water mains and 30 per cent of its sewer pipes are more than 50 years old. But last year, total revenue was only $604 million.

Other regions are hurting, too.

Peel Region treasurer Dan Labrecque estimates his region has lost $7 million to so-called "revenue or billable flows shortfall." The need to make up for that lost money accounts for nearly half of Peel's proposed 16 per cent water rate hike (expected to be phased in at 12.5 per cent).

"A number of factors are contributing to this, including the success of our water consumption (reduction) efforts," said Labrecque. "We've pointed it out to council saying, here's the trend, we don't know if it's a sustainable trend, or whether it's an adjustment because of changes, the Al Gore movie and all that kind of stuff."

Individual efforts are an obvious part of the change in consumption. For example, Peel's water use didn't increase last summer even though it was one of the driest on record; people took the message to heart and watered their lawns less.

That's been augmented by changes in the building code requiring more efficient equipment in new homes, and by programs that subsidize replacements in older homes.

Last year, homeowners in Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon installed some 7,103 subsidized low-flush toilets, compared with just 204 two years earlier.

The trend is the same everywhere.

Last year, Torontonians consumed 374 cubic million metres of water, a huge drop from the 424 million cubic metres that poured from the city's taps in 1988.

A staff report attributes the decline to "an underlying systematic trend towards lower consumption, partly due to greater promotion and awareness of water efficiency initiatives," plus the loss of some major industrial consumers and price sensitivity.

Toronto's 9.4 per cent hike in the water rate – expected to be repeated annually for some years to come – reflects a trend across the GTA. Blended water and wastewater rates are rising everywhere as consumption continues to drop: 6.5 per cent in Halton, 9.5 per cent in Durham, 11.6 per cent in Markham and 9 per cent in Peel.

On the plus side for conservation is the possibility that municipalities could save significantly if existing infrastructure, including the water plants, last longer – or if building new ones can be postponed. Also, less water use means less energy is needed to treat and pump water and wastewater – meaning savings on the power bill and fewer greenhouse emissions.

But in the short term, municipalities are forced to look for other solutions, including revising the water rate structure to reflect that, while conservation is good, there's a price to be paid for it.

"If we want to promote conservation, should our billing practices reflect that?" wonders Labrecque, reflecting the direction he's getting from politicians.

"Fixed levies might be part of the new structure," Labrecque said, adding that there would have to be clear direction from the political side to go that route.

Other ideas floated by politicians and water staff include charging bottled-water producers more for using municipal water; creating block rates; and – taking a leaf from the hydro sector – charging higher rates for people who use more water at peak times.

"It's ironic," chuckled Mississauga Councillor George Carlson, chair of the city's environment committee, speaking of the success of the water-conservation message. The payoff for cleaning up our act may be that we end up paying more.

Canadians, according to the Canadian Environmental Law Association, are among the most wasteful water users in the world, at more than 300 litres per person per day – second only to the United States. The fact that our water comes so cheap has a lot to with that. And it's a message that's starting to get through.

"It seems to me we haven't been paying what we should be paying for water over the years," Mississauga Councillor Pat Mullin mused at a recent regional council meeting.

Locally, when conservation promotion is done as vigorously as it has been in Peel, retrofitting homes can have a dramatic effect.

Johann Manente, Peel's point person in the effort, pointed out that in the region's 30 public housing apartment buildings, almost 4,000 units have been retrofitted for water conservation.

The savings per unit were about 360 litres per day – the equivalent of running the tap on full for 25 minutes.

Depending on your point of view, that project alone saved – or cost – the regional treasury almost $550,900.

Manente said the region's ultimate goal is to reduce water consumption by up to 10 per cent in the next seven years.

Labrecque said what's needed next is a more detailed engineering analysis of how Peel Region's million-plus residents and 70,000 businesses are using water, to get a better handle on the trend.

"I've identified it as a positive – people are using less," he said. "How much less is very complicated.

"The alternative is to tell them to use more water so we can get more money," he said with a big smile. "But that's not our goal."

RealPlayer Gets Slapped with "Badware" Label

2008-02-03T11:13:00.001-08:00

StopBadware claims RealPlayer 10.5 fails to "accurately and completely disclose the fact that it installs advertising software on" a user's computer. It also claims RealPlayer 11 is badware because it "does not disclose the fact that it installs Rhapsody Player Engine software, and fails to remove this software when RealPlayer is uninstalled."

Ryan Luckin, spokesperson for RealNetworks, insists that both versions of RealPlayer are not badware, but acknowledges mistakes and user misconceptions exist in both products. He says changes will be made to both version of RealPlayer in response to the StopBadware.org classification. "Neither versions of RealPlayer put users at risk. They aren't malware or install third-party programs on your PC," Luckin says.

According to StopBadware.org's definition of badware it is "malicious software that tracks your moves online and feeds that information back to shady marketing groups so that they can ambush you with targeted ads."

According to Luckin in RealPlayer 10.5 StopBadware.org takes issue with the Message Center feature that pops up messages from the system tray. Messages typically displayed are ones that advertise available RealNetworks' content to listen to or watch and the availability of software updates to the program itself. The Message Center feature is on by default when RealPlayer 10.5 is installed. Luckin says future version of RealPlayer will prompt the user first to activate Message Center. Luckin says the feature shouldn't be considered advertising because no third-party ads are displayed in Message Center alerts.

The issue with RealPlayer 11 is when you uninstall the program it doesn't completely remove all aspects of the program - namely the software (Rhapsody Player Engine software) to view content encoded using the Rhapsody format. Luckin concedes StopBadware.com's point and acknowledges the Rhapsody ActiveX control is left behind when un-installing RealPlayer 11.

Luckin says RealNetworks now agrees with StopBadware.org that all aspects of the program should be removed. "That was a mistake, and we are going to correct it," Luckin says. He was unable to say when and how RealNetworks would change the un-install behavior of RealPlayer 11.

StopBadware.org is a nonprofit consumer organization that is sponsored by Google, Lenovo, PayPal, VeriSign, and Sun Microsystems. Earlier this month RealNetworks faced allegations by security experts its RealPlayer software had a critical flaw and left users vulnerable to hackers.

Why Google will remain king of the internet

2008-02-03T11:11:00.000-08:00

The verb “googling” has become synonymous with Internet searches, a fact that speaks to Google’s dominance. But don’t expect the verb “msn-yahooing” to become part of the lexicon anytime soon.

Even with the $44.6 billion bid by Microsoft Corp. to buy Yahoo Inc., the combined company would be unable to knock Google Inc. off its web search and web advertising throne, industry watchers say.

“It’s going to be awfully hard to take two complex companies that are trailing, put them together to beat a company that has the tremendous momentum of Google,” says Bob Monroe, associate teaching professor in information technology and computer science at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, PA.

How to lose 7.2 BILLION dollars

2008-02-03T11:09:00.000-08:00

PARIS -- In the early afternoon of Saturday, Jan. 19, Jérôme Kerviel was on a weekend break by the sea when he got a call on his mobile phone from his boss at Société Générale.

"We need some explanations," said a manager of Delta One, a lowly trading unit that handled humdrum, low-risk trades, according to people familiar with the conversation.

Mr. Kerviel, who was in Deauville, a fashionable seaside resort famed for its horse races and palatial casino, was told to get back to the office in Paris. He caught a train for a three-hour journey to Société Générale's headquarters.

Today, two weeks after Mr. Kerviel's beach break was cut short, a picture is starting to come together of the junior trader who, undetected, caused the largest single trading hit in banking history. Previously unreleased details of the transaction that first brought him down, along with interviews with bank executives, prosecutors and Mr. Kerviel's own lawyers, reveal a man who knew the risks but thought he could beat them -- and whose undoing has exposed the frictions within one of France's proudest and most elite banks.

Calling in a Doctor

Mr. Kerviel arrived at the bank around 7 p.m. on the night of Jan. 19. He was marched into the offices of Jean-Pierre Mustier, a former paratrooper and academic whiz with a buzz-cut who heads Société Générale's investment-banking division.

At the beginning, Mr. Kerviel was questioned about a single trade that had been discovered the evening before and aroused concern: a transaction with a German brokerage house that had seemingly lost the bank €1.5 billion ($2.22 billion). He gave little away at first. "He's a very silent man," said a senior official. "It was a lengthy process."

As the meeting dragged on into the night, Mr. Kerviel eventually admitted that the German trade was fake, according to bank officials. Worse, it was just one of numerous fictitious transactions booked by Mr. Kerviel to mask a mass of real and highly risky deals. Mr. Mustier and fellow executives grilled Mr. Kerviel until three in the morning.

Stress levels rose to the point that, fearful Mr. Kerviel might crack under the strain, they called in a doctor. After monitoring the trader's condition, the doctor said he could go home for a few hours sleep and then return in the morning, according to people familiar with the meeting.

By Sunday, Société Générale was forced to confront a shocking truth: Mr. Kerviel -- a junior trader paid a modest annual base salary of around $70,000 -- had gambled more than the bank's entire worth in high-risk bets. Some €50 billion was on the table -- and the roulette wheel was about to start spinning again with the opening of markets on Monday morning.

Mr. Mustier entrusted one of his best traders with the task of unwinding the bets. The result, by the time the information was released to the public on Jan. 24, was a loss of $7.2 billion -- the largest single trading hit in banking history.

The disclosure shook world markets and has led French bank BNP Paribas SA to begin considering a bid for Société Générale. The bid could include French bank Credit Agricole SA.

Numerous accounts from those involved, including Mr. Kerviel's own testimony, suggest that at the root of the debacle was an unstable mix of forces: the frustrated ambitions of a striving provincial and the hubris of his managers.

Each tended to disdain the other. Mr. Kerviel admits to openly flouting the rules imposed by his superiors. Bank executives, meanwhile, say they missed a series of warnings, both internal and from outside, about the risks Mr. Kerviel was taking.

The trader, in his testimony to investigators, scoffs at the bank for missing an elementary sign that something was wrong: he only took four days of holiday last year. "It is one of the first rules of internal controls: a trader who doesn't take holidays is a trader who doesn't want his books to be seen by others," he said.

Runaway Ambitions

Mr. Kerviel, the son of a hairdresser and metal worker raised in a small town in Brittany, occupied one of the lowest perches in derivatives trading at the bank. But he yearned to prove that he could match and even exceed better educated and more highly valued colleagues. At one point last year, said a lawyer involved in the case, Mr. Kerviel asked for a bonus of between €600,000 and €1 million -- far beyond what a trader at his level would normally receive.

Mr. Kerviel was well aware of his lot at the bank. "But this did not dampen my ambitions," he said during questioning by police last weekend, according to a partial transcript.

He thought he had a special flair': Prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin, left, on Mr. Kerviel

While Mr. Kerviel burned with a sense of his own worth, Société Générale paid little attention to him or other nuts-and-bolts traders on Delta One and focused instead on nurturing so-called "quants," traders with advanced academic degrees who used complex mathematical models to make money for the bank.

For many years, this approach paid off. Société Générale earned a reputation as a world-class center of sophisticated derivative trading. Its prestige seeped into popular culture: In the 1999 movie "Rogue Trader," a film chronicling the collapse of Barings Bank, Société Générale is mentioned as the rising trading power.

The quants, many of them Ph.D.s in mathematics or astrophysics, mostly came from elite French colleges, as did Mr. Mustier, the head of investment banking and a graduate of two of France's most selective engineering schools. Mr. Kerviel, in contrast, went to second-tier colleges in Nantes and Lyon, where he studied to become a back-office controller.

Even when confronted with the first evidence of the audacity and scale of Mr. Kerviel's misdeeds, "we didn't think it was possible," said a senior Société Générale executive. "I kept thinking: Who is this guy?"

Société Générale, a bank that traces its roots to Napoleon III in 1864, has staked its modern future in part on its mastery of its highly-complex, mathematics-driven equity-derivatives trading business. It is a big money-spinner and powerful marketing tool for the bank.

In the fall of 2005, Mr. Mustier and a lieutenant gave a presentation of the business at the bank's mirrored-glass, multitower headquarters in Paris. The title of the pitch: "Well-armed to outperform the industry."

'Bingo, 500,000 Euros'

At the same presentation, executives played up the computer systems and staff the bank used to ward off risk. The bank's equity-derivatives unit hadn't had any "major incident" in 15 years, they said.

Only a few months earlier, Mr. Kerviel had joined this very division of the bank. His unit, Delta One, was the lowest rung on the ladder. Trading required little of the mathematical sophistication used by Société Générale's big-time derivatives traders, the "quants."

Reuters

Mr. Kerviel had dual tasks. The first was selling packaged investment products with lofty names such as "Everest" or "Kilimanjaro."

His other job consisted of betting on whether European stock markets would rise or fall. The roughly 20 traders on the Delta One desk were supposed to offset each bet that a stock index would rise with another bet in the opposite direction in order to keep risk at minimum levels. The difference between the parallel bets would generate either a profit or a loss.

Even though he was low in the pecking order, Mr. Kerviel believed he had the talent to excel and was determined to prove it.

"He thought he had a special flair, a capacity to sniff out market trends," said Jean-Claude Marin, the Paris prosecutor involved in the case.

Within months of joining Delta One, Mr. Kerviel began putting his chips all in one direction, rather than hedging bets as he was supposed to do.

For example, in the summer of 2005, he bet on a market tumble. Soon after, a group of Islamic suicide bombers attacked the London transport system. This sent European markets into a dive and Mr. Kerviel's fortunes soared. "Bingo, 500,000 euros," Mr. Kerviel said, recalling the episode during his testimony to investigators. He said he was "both proud and surprised by the results," and this made him want to continue. "There's a snowball effect."

Mr. Kerviel's jubilation fed what Mr. Marin, the prosecutor, last week described as "an addiction."

For the next 18 months, Mr. Kerviel kept breaking the rules, but within modest margins, according to both the trader's testimony and Société Générale officials.

He knew how to avoid detection, having started his career at the bank in 2000 in the back-office, or so-called "mine," where hundreds of clerks process and monitor transactions of their better-paid trading colleagues.

Early Missteps

By January 2007, Mr. Kerviel was making bolder bets -- and getting away with it even when he lost money.

He wagered, for example, that the German share index DAX would fall. Instead, the index increased from 6596.92 to 6789.11 that month, leaving him in the hole. But, he told prosecutors, the loss went unnoticed by his managers because during that period of the year "there is no cross-checking control within SocGen."

Jean Veil, a lawyer for Société Générale, says the bank had rigorous controls throughout. Bank officials say they couldn't detect Mr. Kerviel's gains or losses because he masked them with fake trades, creating the illusion that all his positions were hedged.

By February 2007, the markets dipped slightly, and Mr. Kerviel was able to trade his way from a large loss to a gain of €28 million. He told prosecutors that he was "proud and satisfied" by this change of fortune.

By early spring 2007, however, the subprime-mortgage market in the U.S. put Mr. Kerviel and many other investors and traders around the world on a roller-coaster.

In his testimony, Mr. Kerviel says that he began to read up on the subprime woes in the U.S. He noticed that many experts believed the subprime problems wouldn't halt the markets' upward trend. He decided to bet that it would.

Initially, he was wrong. Between March and July, the market rose, exposing him to a large potential loss. Société Générale said that at one point during this period Mr. Kerviel had an unhedged exposure worth €30 billion, with a net loss of €2.2 billion.

In early April 2007, according to Mr. Kerviel's testimony, a Delta One manager received an email from Société Générale's back office warning of a problem and confronted him about it. "I was told to sort it out," Mr. Kerviel said. Société Générale says that on such occasions Mr. Kervial would often produce fake emails to calm concerns.

But by July, the market dropped, reversing Mr. Kerviel's losses. Suddenly Mr. Kerviel found himself with a €500 million gain.

This created another problem: how to tell his bosses. He had outsmarted the market but couldn't boast about it because it would reveal that he had been wagering way beyond what he was supposed to and hiding the bets with fake trades.

"I found myself very intimidated by these 500 million euros and, above all, by not knowing how I would let people know about it," Mr. Kerviel said.

Mr. Kerviel claims that the bank's security systems often sounded the alarm, but he would easily deflect inquiries. But at a modern glass building on the western outskirts of Frankfurt, Mr. Kerviel's trades were getting noticed.

A Close Call

On Nov. 7, the Trading Surveillance Office at Eurex, the derivatives exchange run by German exchange group Deutsche Börse, sent an email to Société Générale to find out why Mr. Kerviel was sending a massive volume of trades through the German futures exchange, Société Générale officials said.

The bank's back office forwarded the email from Eurex to Mr. Kerviel, who skirted the request for details by saying he didn't want to reveal his trading strategies to competitors, according to Société Générale's lawyer.

Eurex sent a second email, saying it needed a better explanation. In the end, Mr. Kerviel managed to provide a response that convinced his bank and Eurex that there was nothing untoward.

By the end of December, Mr. Kerviel's books had a gain of €1.4 billion -- all of which was hidden from the view of his supervisors.

By now, keeping all his trades hidden required constant juggling and vigilance. He needed to regularly delete and re-enter his fake trades in order to avoid being detected. Mr. Kerviel continued skipping holidays. In one instance, he told managers that he was in no mood to take time off because it would remind him of his recently deceased father, according to Société Générale officials.

In January of this year, as markets churned, Mr. Kerviel was scrambling to conceal the €1.4 billion gain in his book.

On Jan. 3, the trader confected a series of fictitious transactions to mask the gain. He booked a trade in the name of a German brokerage house.

The move triggered an alarm bell within Société Générale's systems, requiring the bank's back office to check the credit worthiness of the brokerage.

Caught

When asked for details, Mr. Kerviel tried a last gambit: He said he had made a mistake naming the brokerage and that actually the transaction was with a more respected bank, Deutsche Bank, according to a Société Générale lawyer.

The back office began a series of checks. Mr. Kerviel kept trading. By the evening of Friday, Jan. 18, previous gains had evaporated. Mr. Kerviel was sitting on a hole of around €1.5 billion.

Having weathered previous close calls, Mr. Kerviel figured he could fix the problem at the start of trading the following Monday, according to his testimony. He went to the beach in Deauville.

But that night, the risk-management system he had fooled so many times picked up on his position. Checks revealed that Deutsche Bank hadn't recently traded with Mr. Kerviel. Mr. Mustier, the head of investment banking, got a call late Friday to tell him this.

The following morning, Mr. Mustier and other executives gathered to dig into Mr. Kerviel's books. The trader got a call on his mobile phone summoning him back to Paris from the seaside.

Grilled late into the night at Société Générale's headquarters, Mr. Kerviel acknowledged that the trade with Deutsche Bank never existed and then revealed far more disturbing news: his books contained genuine trades that exposed the bank to a €50 billion risk. A fire warden on duty on Saturday night recalls seeing Mr. Kerviel leave. "He was not looking so good," the guard said.

A week later, Mr. Kerviel turned himself into police. After two days of questioning, investigators asked Mr. Kerviel: "Are you a gambler?

"No," the trader replied. "I shoot pool."

Man weighs almost 400 pounds and walks almost 1/2 of it off

2008-02-03T10:59:00.000-08:00

After losing 192 pounds, Phill Novak, 41, says he feels there's nothing he can't do

He wasn't happy with his weight and neither were his doctors. In addition to taking medication for high blood pressure and cholesterol -- his physician warned him that he was on track to become a diabetic.

Reality hit in January 2006 at a Pittsburgh Steelers game. Novak had gone to smoke a cigarette.

"We were walking back up to our seats, and I started getting winded," says Novak. "I didn't feel right, I started sweating. I didn't think I would make it back up. My heart [was] beating a million times a minute; I thought I was having a heart attack."

Novak stood against a cold wall for 20 minutes to catch his breath. Fortunately, he wasn't having a heart attack but he was so frightened that thoughts of his family began to race through his mind.

"A lot of things went through my head, about saying goodbye to my kids," says Novak choking back his tears. "I told my friend, 'This is it, I'm not going to live like this no more.' "

Novak, who was approaching his 40th birthday, made it through the football game. As he ate two double-cheeseburgers and a milkshake, he began to think about the limitations of obesity and how it was keeping him from living a full life.

Novak said the extra weight kept him from riding bikes with his kids. He dreaded doing anything physical like mowing the grass, shoveling snow or just moving -- period. Novak says even sleeping became difficult.

"When I was big, I could only sleep one way ... so I could support my belly," says Novak. "My back always hurt ... I could barely sleep and I remember always being tired."

The next day, Novak devised his own game plan and started his weight-loss journey.

He began simply by walking -- one mile a day and eating a low-carbohydrate diet of 15-30 grams a day.

"I walked off my first 100 pounds," he says. "Walked it off, an hour a day. I lost 100 pounds in seven months."

Novak continued to lose weight and as he built up his endurance he started jogging. Even though he had never belonged to a gym, he wanted to incorporate strength training. But the first time he went to the gym, he was intimidated by the loud music and weight lifters. He says he quickly "scampered" out and tried a few other places until he finally found a club where he felt comfortable. Video Watch more on how Phill Novak got motivated to lose weight. »

Two years later, Novak has lost a total of 192 pounds. Today, he runs 30 to 40 miles a week, works out two to three hours a day, does yoga in the morning and squeezes in a push-up whenever he gets a chance at work.

Now maintaining his weight at 195 pounds, Novak says he's made a lifestyle change and rarely takes a day off from exercise.

Still, he doesn't take all of the credit for his weight loss. Novak says he couldn't have done it without the support of his family -- which he thanks for allowing him to be selfish.

"I am so proud of myself ... for the first time in my life," beams Novak. "Besides my kids, [this is] the first time I'm proud of myself."

Novak says losing weight has boosted his confidence and made him realize that he can do anything he sets his mind to. He says people also treat him differently and no longer stare at him. In fact, he enjoys the fact that people, who haven't seen him in a while, recognize only his Pittsburgh accent.

When he looks back at pictures of himself at nearly 400 pounds, he says it's hard to believe he treated his body that way.

Would he ever go back to being heavy?

Quote:

"No way! Ain't going back there ... won't do it, can't do it," says Novak.
"I've never been happier in my life!"

GTAIV officially dated April 29

2008-02-03T10:55:00.001-08:00

Wow, the Devil May Cry and the official release date for Grand Theft Auto IV in the same day? What did we do to deserve this? After a delay in late 2007 and the months of speculation that followed, Take Two has finally pinned down the official release date for the game, April 29. We should note that this is the worldwide release date for GTAIV, so gamers the world over can officially start getting excited now. If you're not excited, then perhaps you should direct your attention to the flood of previews that swept the internet yesterday. Once you've reached the proper level of excitement, please read this post again and react accordingly.

Xbox Live packages get spiffy new look

2008-02-03T10:52:00.000-08:00

We love a good old fashioned retail package redesign, so when we spotted a 12 month Xbox Live subscription card sporting a new paint job, we just had to share.

Recently, we discovered new and redesigned 12 month subscription cards at our local Best Buy and, after doing a double take, we fell in love with the new spotted look. And the old designs weren't even that bad. Anyway, we hopped online to find some press shots of the newly redesigned packages and came across the gallery pictures below. We couldn't find pictures of the prettified subscription cards, but we did find pics of both 12 and 3 month Live starter bundles. The subscription cards' new design is very similar to these bundles and we expect the whole Xbox Live retail lineup to see prettier packaging within' the next few months.

Yes, we know, It's all cosmetic. But darned if we aren't suckers for updated packaging. So, without further need to wait, take a look at the new and improved packaging design for the 3 and 12 month Xbox Live bundles as we try to track down pics of the other retail offerings. Lovely, no?

Microsoft offers $44.6 Billion for Yahoo

2008-02-03T10:51:00.000-08:00

Microsoft just announced what has been rumored forever: a formal offer for Yahoo. Microsoft's proposal to Yahoo's board of directors represents $31 per share (a 62% premium over yesterday's closing price) or about $44.6 Billion. Steve Ballmer, CEO and big fan of developers, says, "We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market." Apparently, the deal was laid out in a letter sent by Ballmer to Yahoo's board just yesterday. Seriously. The letter confirms that the two giants have been discussing the topic since late 2006. It also appears to be a direct response to the Google threat as outlined in the following paragraph:

"Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo! can offer a credible alternative for consumers, advertisers, and publishers."

The deal, of course, rests with the two coming to a "merger agreement" and Microsoft (and Yahoo to a limited degree) having the time to conduct the required due diligence. Microsoft is ready to begin immediate discussions and have a draft merger agreement ready for consideration. So Yahoo, ball's in your court. The world is wondering... what will you do?

Vista SP1 due out Feb 15?

2008-02-03T10:50:00.000-08:00

Vista SP1 has already been previewed, gone through a Release Candidate cycle, and had a changelog released -- so all that's left is for Microsoft to hit us with it, right? Not so fast, Sparky -- according to various sources, you're still going to have wait three more weeks to get your hands on that hot SP1 action: circle February 15th on your Ballmer / Gates pinup calendar and start counting the days. Of course, Microsoft isn't confirming anything one way or another other than Q108, so don't get too excited, but after all we've been through together, we can't imagine the Redmond crew not giving us a (late) Valentine's Day present -- we're like, totally serious, right?

Superbowl predictions

2008-02-03T10:31:00.000-08:00

PHOENIX -- I admire a good underdog story as much as the next guy, and the one featuring the New York Giants is extremely compelling.

They've also written a pretty nice comeback story, turning red-hot at the absolute right time -- the beginning of the postseason.

I like Eli Manning's transformation from underachieving No. 1 overall pick to consistent elite performer. I like Tom Coughlin's transformation from ultra-rigid drill sergeant to a coach who can listen as well as he dictates.
Super Bowl XLII: Giants vs. Patriots
The game ...

» Inside Super Bowl XLII | Manly Blog | XLII facts
» Photos: Week's best | Radio row | Stadium | Scene

Super Bowl week ...

Saturday:
» Carucci: Why Patriots will win | Predictions
Friday:
» Blog from radio row | Lynch | Warner | K2
» Carucci: Manning silences critics | Sabol's Shot
Thursday:
» Carucci: Thunder and Lightning, Version 2.0
» Brandt: How the Giants, Pariots were built
» Super Debate: Hixon, or Faulk? | Rematch?
Wednesday:
» Respect between Brady, OL | Battle up front
» Miller: No experience needed | McDaniels speaks
Tuesday:
» Media Day coverage | Cool under pressure
» Kirwan: Scouting report | Pats game plan
Monday:
» Carucci: No mystery to Belichick | On winning
» Belichick's unlikey source for advice | Playbook
Sunday:
» Kirwan: First look at Super Bowl XLII | Preview
On NFL Network:
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But I don't like anything about the Giants as much as I like the New England Patriots' chances of being 19-0 after Super Bowl XLII.

The Pats had the look of an NFL champion back in August, when I (along with many others) picked them to hoist the Vince Lombardi Trophy for a fourth time. They've since developed the look of dominance that has put them in a position to make history and go down as the greatest team in the history of the league … and one of the greatest in the history of sports.

Here are five reasons why the Patriots will achieve perfection on Sunday:

1. Tom Brady will perform at his best. His much-discussed ankle injury, suffered in the AFC Championship Game, won't be a factor. It didn't even show up on the Patriots' injury report, and he practiced all week. Brady's struggles against San Diego in the AFC title game were an aberration. Against the Giants, we will see the Brady who won league MVP by throwing 50 touchdowns. On Sunday, he will attack the middle of the field with slot receiver Wes Welker and tight end Benjamin Watson. Welker and Watson are fast enough to split safeties Gibril Wilson and James Butler and help open up the perimeter for speedy wideouts Randy Moss and Donte' Stallworth, with one or both reaching the end zone.

2. The Pats will be able to run the ball effectively. The most under-appreciated aspect of the offense is their rushing attack, which ranked 13th in the NFL. Laurence Maroney has come on as a major force in the postseason. Maroney is particularly successful running up the middle, behind center Dan Koppen and guards Logan Mankins and Russ Hochstein. He should continue to have that sort of impact in the Super Bowl in order to help slow down the Giants' pass rush and give the Patriots' offense some balance.

3. Brady will effectively use play-action against the Giants' aggressive defensive front. He is one of the very best quarterbacks in the league at reading the blitz, and quickly checking to hot routes. The Patriots will spread the field with four- and five-receiver sets and let Brady locate mismatches. Most everything that the Pats do on offense begins with Brady using play-fakes and attacking with short and intermediate passes. The quicker he gets the ball out -- especially on sideline routes -- the better his chances of keeping the chains moving and getting into a rhythm. And he will be able to do exactly that on Sunday.

4. New England should do a good job of handling the Giants' impressive one-two rushing attack of powerful Brandon Jacobs and speedy Ahmad Bradshaw. The Patriots did an excellent job of shutting down Jacksonville's rushing attack, one of the best in the NFL, in their divisional-round victory over the Jaguars. The Pats' run-stopping ability begins with nose tackle Vince Wilfork using his considerable lower-body strength and leverage to clog the middle and force runners to bounce outside to Mike Vrabel and Adalius Thomas. New England's aging inside linebackers, 39-year-old Junior Seau and 34-year-old Tedy Bruschi, should be able to count on Wilfork to keep them free of blockers. The Giants will need at least two blockers to handle to Wilfork, and that should help provide freedom for ends Richard Seymour and Ty Warren, and the Pats' linebackers.

5. Once the Patriots have the Giants' running game under control, they will be able to confuse Eli Manning, or at least keep him off balance, by mixing up fronts and coverages. Although Manning has yet to throw an interception in the postseason, he should count on some pass-rushing configurations that he has never seen before and coverages that will cause him to hold the ball and/or take a sack, make a poor pass under duress, or entice him into making a bad pass.

Regardless of how they do it, a Patriots victory over the Giants will be the sort of achievement that can be admired for many, many years to come. That's because -- given the 35 seasons that have passed since the Miami Dolphins went 17-0 -- it will likely be many, many years before we see another perfect season in the NFL ... if we see another.

How to flash a BenQ Xbox 360

2008-02-03T10:22:00.000-08:00

How to tell what drive you have:
Remove your 360 faceplate, you should now see something similar to this.

Look at hole#3, you should see one of these three things:
Circuit board and red wire= Samsung

Black plastic divot = Hitachi

White wires and empty space = Benq THIS IS THE DRIVE THIS TUT IS FOR

On with the tut:

What you need:
1.A BenQ drive *duh!!!*
2.DosFlash
3.Your iXtreme Firmware files
4.PCI Sata card with VIA6421 chipset *you can find them off Ebay*
5.USB flash drive
6.HP boot disk maker -

Code:

http://www.zshare.net/download/458271232ede9e/

7.Windows 98 boot files

Code:

 http://www.zshare.net/download/4582738b99e128/

8.The tools to open your 360!!!

Alright, so you wanna flash you BenQ 360, but cant find any tutorials? Well guess what? HERES ONE!!!!

First step:
Make your USB boot disk using the HP boot program and the windows 98 files

You can also make a boot disk with a floppy disc, but it isn’t as reliable, so I wont go into it

Copy the contents from the DosFlash 16 folder into your root directory of the flash drive

Open your 360 using any available guides, or contact me and I will walk you through it if you want personalized help

Before you go any further, write down the port number for the first port of your Sata card, it will be the first port number in your device manager for it.

Power down your computer and connect the 360 drive to the first port on your sata card *On a PCI card this port is labeled 1 and is the one on the opposite end of the outside of the PCI slot*
Touch the metal cases of the 360 and computer to make sure it is grounded

Unplug all IDE and SATA cables from your computer other than the one going into your 360 to ensure you don’t accidentally flash another item

Connect your USB drive and then, Boot up your computer and go into the boot menu, and boot from the USB drive.
Make sure your 360 has the power supply plugged in but no other cables

When you get into dos it should look something like this:

Run the DosFlash command to read the original firmware

Quote:

DosFlash r (port #) 1 a0 1 4 c:\orig.bin 0

Note, you might need to use drive A, mine uses C, but the person who took the pictures needed A, just try C, and if that doesn’t write correctly, use A

Answer Y to the next question

Prop your 360 faceplate like it was on the 360, and turn on the 360 for 5 seconds, if it doesn’t begin reading, turn it off for 5 seconds, then turn it on and repeat until it reads the firmware, might take 5+ tries

Turn off computer and 360 and plug your IDE/Sata cables back in, and boot back into xp

Find the firmware file on your USB drive, it will be called *Orig.bin* Back it up, now back it up in a new folder, then back it up in anther folder, then upload it to rapidshare, then put it onto another computer…You get the idea? MAKE SURE YOU NEVER LOSE THAT FILE
Put one of your many Orig.bin files into you iXtreme folders, I prefer 12x just because on 8x or lower the drive will be quieter, but load times will be longer, and you may experience lag in some games due to the disc not reading fast enough. Now hit “Make firmware.bat” or a similar .bat file, this will make your firmware. You will now have a file called ix14.bin if you use iXtreme1.4 or 1.4.1, put it on your USB drive

Turn off your computer and get it set u for the 360 again *unplug IDE/Sata cables and hook 360 into the sata card, then boot off your USB drive again

Run the erase command for DosFlash,

Quote:

C:\>DosFlash e (port #) 1 a0 1 4 D8 0

Answer Y to the question, and then power the 360 on for 5 seconds, and if it doesn’t begin erasing turn it off, wait, and turn it back on, it should erase after like, 2-3 tried max

Shut down 360 and computer, and reboot computer into Dos again
Use the command to write your firmware

Quote:

C:\>DosFlash w (port #) 1 a0 1 4 a:\ix14.bin 0

Answer Y to the next question and turn on the 360, it should write on the first try, but shuldnt take more than 3 ever, if it does, shut off computer, check connections, and try again.

Shut down computer and 360
Disconnect 360 from computer and reconnect all original computer connections
Re-assemble computer and 360
Plug 360 into your TV and turn it on, insert a backup and enjoy

Where to get files not given links to in the top:
Firmware: Xbins
DosFlash: Xbins
Xbins downloader:

Code:

http://www.360mods.net/Downloads/details/id=29.html"

Need a cheap xbox opening kit? Go to radioshack, I got mine there, it’s a full on toolkil that has skinny screwdrivers for popping open the case clips and the torx screwdrivers to open almost any system lol, it’s the perfect toolkit and was only $12, about ½ the price of a 360 opening kit.

Credit:
·Tutorial: me
·Pictures: I don’t know, if you are the owner of the pictures, contact me and I will edit you in if you can prove to me they are yours

Drive pictures: Llamma.com

Why do i have blue eyes?

2008-02-03T10:20:00.000-08:00

Frank Sinatra, Stephen Hawking, Marie Curie and Stephen Fry all owe their blue eyes to a genetic mutation that likely occurred between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, researchers say.

Scientists believe they have tracked down the cause of the eye colour of all blue-eyed humans on the planet today.

“Originally, we all had brown eyes”, said Prof Hans Eiberg from the University of Copenhagen, who led the team.

Blue eye colour most likely originated from the near east area or northwest part of the Black Sea region, where the great agriculture migration to the northern part of Europe took place in the Neolithic periods about six–10,000 years ago.

“That is my best guess,” he said. “It could be the northern part of Afghanistan.”

The mutation affected a gene called OCA2 and “literally 'turned off' the ability to produce brown eyes”, he says.

OCA2 is involved in the production of melanin, the pigment that gives colour to hair, eyes and skin.

The mutation in the adjacent gene does not switch off the OCA gene entirely but limits its action, reducing the production of melanin in the iris of the eye – “diluting” brown eyes to blue.

If the OCA2 gene had been completely turned off, those who inherited this mutation would be without melanin in their hair, eyes or skin colour - albino.

For the study, Prof Eiberg’s team examined DNA in blue-eyed individuals in countries as diverse as Jordan, India, Denmark and Turkey.

His findings are the latest in a decade of genetic research, which began in 1996, when Prof Eiberg first implicated the OCA2 gene as being one of those responsible for eye colour.

“They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA. From this we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor,” said Prof Eiberg, who reports the work in the journal Human Genetics.

2008-02-03T10:16:00.000-08:00