The Information Gateway

Flexinet Unlimited Layanan Baru Telkom Flexi Buat Internetan Sepuasnya

noreply@blogger.com (sikumbang) — Fri, 2 Oct 2009 10:02:00 +0700

Ada berita nih dari telkom flexi (bagi yg belum tahu khususnya) internet sepuasnya hanya dengan 2500 sehari atau 15rb seminggu atau 75rb sebulan atau 900rb setahun atau kurang lebih 9 juta rupiah per sepuluh tahun (andaikata tarifnya tetap).

Sekarang makin banyak aja nih pilihan murah buat berinternetan, namanya juga paket murah ya jangan terlalu berharap kecepatan akses internetnya seperti kecepatan akses internet di luar negeri yang begitu menekan tombol enter maka halaman web langsung kebuka.

Tapi semoga aja dengan makin banyaknya pemain internet murah kualitas jadi bisa ditingkatkan mengingat persaingan juga mau ngga mau akan menjadi ketat. Yang jadi masalah biasanya adalah infrastruktur internetnya dan yang murah-murah biasanya disukai banyak orang dan pengguna semakin membludak sedangkan kapasitas jaringan ngga mencukupi.

Ini dia beritanya sumber kompas.com

JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com — Telkom melalui layanan fixed wireless access TELKOMFlexi meluncurkan layanan internet yang diklaim paling murah. Layanan yang disebut FlexiNet Unlimited tersebut memungkinkan pelanggan Flexi mengakses internet sepuasnya, hanya dengan Rp 2.500 per hari atau hanya Rp 15.000 untuk seminggu.

“FlexiNet Unlimited diluncurkan untuk melengkapi layanan internet Telkom yang sudah ada, seperti Speedy, Astinet, TelkomNet Instan, dan Flash dari Telkomsel,” kata Vice President Public and Marketing Communication Telkom Eddy Kurnia dalam rilis persnya, Selasa (18/8).

FlexiNet Unlimited ditujukan bagi mereka yang membutuhkan layanan mobile data karena, selain harga yang sangat murah, juga dapat dipakai di seluruh kota di Indonesia yang terdapat fasilitas datanya.

Tarif FlexiNet Unlimited sangat murah di kelasnya, yaitu untuk Flexi Trendy Rp 2.500 per hari dan Rp 15.000 per minggu tanpa batasan kuota dengan kecepatan 153 kbps. “Bahkan untuk pelanggan pascabayar (Classy) tarifnya lebih murah lagi, yakni Rp 2.250 per hari dan Rp 13.500 per hari (belum termasuk PPN),” ungkap Eddy Kurnia.

Nomor Flexi yang bisa dipakai untuk akses FlexiNet Unlimited ini bisa nomor lama atau nomor baru, baik prabayar maupun pascabayar, dengan menggunakan modem CDMA atau ponsel CDMA yang telah memiliki fasilitas akses internet.

Untuk memudahkan mengakses FlexiNet Unlimited, Telkom juga menyediakan Paket Modem Merdeka seharga Rp 399.000 yang dipaketkan bersama kartu Perdana Flexi Dahsyat. FlexiNet Unlimited cocok untuk akses Facebook, e-mail, chatting maupun keperluan internet lainnya.

Cara menggunakan FlexiNet Unlimited sangat mudah, tidak perlu ke mana-mana. Pelanggan cukup SMS ke nomor 2525 ketik REG(spasi)HARIAN atau REG(spasi)MINGGUAN dari ponsel pelanggan yang kemudian secara otomatis akan diperpanjang secara harian atau mingguan. Untuk berhenti berlangganan, cukup SMS ke 2525 ketik: STOP.

Untuk yang udah pakai ditunggu komennya karena saya sendiri belum make (karena udah pake inet milik indosat ama telkomsel) jadi males mo coba2 lagi dan kabel data juga udah ga tahu kemana, plus modem cdma juga udah saya kasih ke temen (karena dulu trauma lemotnya inet cdma)

Koneksi 3.5G/HSDPA Im3/Mentari Hanya di Lock Sampai 256 kbps

noreply@blogger.com (sikumbang) — Fri, 2 Oct 2009 10:01:00 +0700

Awalnya sempet baca-baca di beberapa blog katanya menggunakan im3/mentari bisa tembus kecepatan hsdpa (3.5G) dan akhirnya sayapun tertarik untuk mencoba.

Kemaren pas keluar akhirnya beli kartu perdana im3 yang harganya 10ribu isi pulsa 5rb. Dan saya baru sempet mencobanya tadi sore. Buka bungkus kartu im3, masukin ke modem, kemudian saya pilih settingan yang berbasis durasi.

Bagi yang belum tahu ini adalah setting modem saya:

Username : indosat@durasi
password : indosat@durasi
Apn (access point name) : indosatgprs (saya coba menggunakan indosat3g ga bisa konek).

Modem yang saya gunakan adalah Sierra Wireless yang firmwarenya sudah saya upgrade sendiri hingga support 7.2Mbps (modemnya doank yg support koneksinya belom ). Modem ini udah saya gunakan kurang lebih 2 tahunan dan belum pernah bermasalah sampai sekarang.

Saat sudah berhasil terkoneksi, sayapun melakukan speed test karena penasaran apa benar koneksi pake im3 bisa 1-3Mbps. Dan kebetulan pula hari ini speedtest.net ga bisa digunakan karena mengalami masalah dan saya hanya mengandalkan software meter di kompie aja.

Saya lihat dan perhatikan kok speed im3 sama dengan speed im2 unlimited yaitu mentok di 32kB/s ga bisa lebih. 32kB/s kurang lebih sama dengan 256kbps. Akhirnya tanya sana sini (sialnya lagi) ga ada yang tahu, setelah internet gratis 100 menit habis dan ketemulah jawabannya klo (at least sampai hari ini) ternyata kartu im3 dan mentari speednya sudah dilock dari pabrikan hanya sampai kecepatan 3g ga bisa lebih.

Jadi meskipun memakai kartu im3/mentari dan di area hsdpa maka jaringan yg kepake ya tetep 3G bukan hsdpa. Kecuali menggunakan kartu im2 classic yang menurut saya pribadi tarifnya masih mahal minta ampun per hari ini saya lihat tarifnya adalah Rp 150.000 untuk bisa mengunduh data 300mb.

Dengan kecepatan antara 1-3.6Mb/s ngga sampai 1 jam quota 300mb sudah habis klo digunakan untuk youtube-an. Banyak juga yang bilang fastnet bagus sayang saat ini belom nyampe daerah saya hanya jakarta dan surabaya aja.

Penasaran juga buat coba evdonya smart (denger2 sih bulan depan udah beroperasi).

Sierra Wireless AirCard 875

noreply@blogger.com (sikumbang) — Wed, 5 Nov 2008 09:17:00 +0700

Sierra Wireless AirCard 875 menghubungkan PC dan Mac seri lama ke jaringan HSDPA dari berbagai jaringan seluler berkecepatan tinggi yang saat ini berlomba-lomba menyediakan layanan tersebut. Meskipun demikian, peruntukan kartu jaringan nirkabel ini tentu utamanya untuk mendukung kebutuhan koneksi internet dengan mobilitas tinggi. Kemanapun dan dimanapun pemakai laptop berada, ia dapat menikmati internet selama di area tersebut mendapatkan sinyal yang cukup dari penyedia jaringan HSDPA yang digunakan.

Desain

AirCard 875 secara desain cukup baik. Dengan kombinasai warna hitam dan oranye yang merupakan ‘titipan’ Cingular karena AirCard 875 memang bekerja sama dan Cingular dan oleh karena itu terdapat logo Cingular pada bagian permukaan. Lampu LED berwarna biru mengindikasi kondisi aktif kartu tersebut, informsi 2G EDGE dan 3G HSDPA yang aktif, juga informasi jangkauan jelajah yang tersedia.

Setup

Sierra AirCard 875 tidak memerlukan proses instalasi yang rumit. Anda hanya perlu memasangnya pada laptop Anda, kemudian jalankan Connection Manager Software yang disertakan. Sama sekali tidak ada kesulitan pada pemakaian pertama.

Kinerja

Spesifikasi HSDPA saat ini memungkinkan kecepatan sebesar 3,6Mbps downstream dan 384Kbps upstream. Cukup kencang meskipun pada kenyataannya nanti tentu kecepatan ini tergantung load jaringan pada saat itu.

Ketika membandingkan AirCard 875 dengan AirCard 875U USB dan Option GT Max HSDPA pada Windows XP dan Vista, kami menemukan kinerja AirCard 875 menunjukkan kecepatan yang sangat baik. Hanya saja, data rates AirCard 875 sedikit lebih lambat dibanding 2 lainnya. Pada ujicoba perbandingan ketiga kartu modem wireless yang kami lakukan, kecepatan download yang ditunjukkan AirCard 875 rata-rata sebesar 878 Kbps dengan kecepatan puncak 1,51 Mbps, sementara kecepatan upload sebesar 284 Kbps.

Pada kedua modem lainnya, kecepatan download rata-rata berkisar pada angka 350 Kbps. Latency pada kedua kartu pembanding juga sangat mirip. Sehingga dapat dikatakan kinerja kedua modem tersebut hampir sama. Namun demikian, salah satu dari 2 modem tersebut mengalahkan AirCard 875 pada 30 ujicoba download dari 36 ujicoba yang dilakukan. Untuk hal ini, AirCard 875 menunjukkan tingkat penerimaan yang kurang lebih sama dengan AirCard 875U USB.

AirCard 875 beroperasi pada frekwensi 850, 1800, 1900 dan 2100 MHz. Dengan jangkauan tersebut AirCard 875 dapat digunakan diseluruh dunia. Ketika tidak dapat menemukan sinyal HSDPA, AirCard 875 tetap berusaha menyediakan koneksi internet dengan memanfaatkan jaringan EDGE. Jika kondisi berubah seperti itu, kami menyarankan Anda untuk menghubungkannya ke ponsel ketimbang laptop karena menggunakan jaringan EDGE pada laptop terkadang menimbulkan speaker pada laptop mengeluarkan suara mendengung yang muncul secara periodik. Mengingat semua operator penyedia jaringan HSDPA saat ini berlomba-lomba menggaet lebih banyak pelanggan, kualitas yang ditawarkan juga makin baik sehingga dapat dikatakan hilangnya sinyal HSDPA yang menyebabkan sinyal beralih ke EDGE sangat jarang terjadi.

Dengan mempertimbangkan luasnya frekwensi yang didukung, kami memutuskan untuk memilih AirCard 875 dan mencobanya pada saat melakukan kunjungan ke Barcelona. Tanpa melakukan konfigurasi ulang, kami mendapatkan kecepatan diatas 300 Kbps dengan kecepatan puncak sebesar 650 Kbps. Tidak secepat pada saat menggunakannya di rumah, tetapi kami tetap mendapatkan sinyal HSDPA dengan baik.

Kesimpulan

Sierra AirCard 875 merupakan pilihan yang baik untuk koneksi internet berkecapatan tinggi pada laptop. Meskipun pada AirCard 875U USB Anda akan menemukan tambahan fleksbilitas karena port yang digunakan adalah USB, AirCard 875 justru tidak akan merepotkan Anda dengan rutinitas pasang-copot pada saat sebelum dan setelah penggunaan karena Anda hanya perlu memasang AirCard 875 sekali saja pada slot PCMCIA dan tidak perlu melepasnya lagi, mengingat saat ini hampir tidak ada piranti lain yang menggunakan slot PCMCIA. Lain halnya dengan port USB yang sangat sibuk melayani berbagai berbagai piranti. (ella)

Detail Specifications :

Features
- Wireless data at speeds up to 3.6 Mbps on HSDPA capable networks
- High performance antenna in rugged housing
- Simultaneous voice (voip) and data capabilities
- Supports HSDPA and UMTS on the 2100, 1900, 850 Mhz band
- Supported by Sierra Wireless developer tools for third party user interface and applications
SIM Compatibility GSM
System Requirements
- Type II PC Card Slot
- 300 MHz Processor
- 256MB RAM
- Internet Explorer 5.5 or later
- 40MB Available Hard Disk Space
OS Compatibility Windows® Vista, XP, 2000
Others Includes:
- AirCard 875 LaptopConnect Card
- Connectivity Software
- Quick Start Guide

Laptop OLPC Debatkan Linux dan Windows

noreply@blogger.com (sikumbang) — Wed, 5 Nov 2008 09:07:00 +0700

Wacana One Laptop Per Children (OLPC) mengubah penggunaan sistem operasi open source Linux ke sistem operasi Microsoft Windows XP dalam XO laptop akhirnya menjadi debat terbuka. Perdebatan meningkat tajam menyusul mundurnya Walter Bender, presiden dari software dan content OLPC yang tidak sepakat dengan rencana modifikasi itu.

OLPC yang meluncurkan XO laptops memang pada awalnya menggunakan Linux sebagai sistem operasi default-nya yang akan diberikan kepada sejumlah negara yang dianggap pertumbuhan TI-nya masih rendah.

Chairman OLPC Nicholas Negroponte meminta agar komunitas open source untuk tidak saling menyalahkan dalam perubahan OLPC, dan beralih ke sistem operasi Windows. Para pengembang menanggapi dengan "dingin" permintaan Negroponte itu dengan mengatakan sang chairman tidak menghargai pengembangan sebuah interface Sugar pada Linux.

"Sugar ini masih jauh dari sempurna, dan mereka mulai mempertimbangkan sistem operasi Windows sebagai penggantinya," ujar Negroponte yang dikutip ComputerWorld, Jumat (25/4/2008).

OLPC yang merupakan lembaga nonprofit memang tengah melakukan diskusi dengan Microsoft mengenai kemungkinan dilakukannya instalasi dual booting untuk XO laptop, Linux dan Windows

Tips Merawat Baterai Laptop/Notebook

noreply@blogger.com (sikumbang) — Wed, 5 Nov 2008 09:02:00 +0700

Notebook kini kerap menjadi piranti pilihan banyak orang untuk membantu berbagai aktifitas sehari-hari. Meskipun demikian, ternyata tak semua pemilik ataupun pengguna notebook tahu bagaimana memperlakukan notebook dan baterainya dengan baik dan benar.

Komisi Keamanan Produk Konsumer Amerika telah mencatat setidaknya tak kurang dari 47 kasus notebook yang berasap atau terbakar, sejak Januari 2001 hingga Agustus 2006.

Berikut tips untuk merawat baterai laptop supaya lebih awet:

- Jangan gunakan baterai dan charger notebook yang tidak kompatibel. Jika tidak yakin dengan kompatibilitas baterai pengganti ataupun charger yang digunakan, hubungi bagian layanan dari produsen notebook terkait.

- Baterai notebook dapat menjadi panas dalam pemakaian normal sekalipun. Jangan gunakan notebook sambil diletakkan di pangkuan Anda.

- Ketika menggunakan notebook, hindari meletakkan notebook pada permukaan yang lunak / lembut, semisal pada sofa, tempat tidur atau karpet. Sebab permukaan seperti itu akan menghambat aliran udara di bagian bawah notebook dan dapat menimbulkan overheating.

- Cegah terjadinya kontak pada dudukan baterai yang longgar dengan berbagai jenis obyek terbuat dari metal, seperti penjepit kertas, koin tipis, dan sebagainya.

- Baterai notebook, termasuk notebook itu sendiri tentunya, jangan sampai terjadi tekanan yang berlebihan yang diakibatkan karena terjatuh, terbentur, terhimpit ataupun tertumpuk oleh benda berat di atasnya. Hal tersebut akan mengakibatkan sirkuit di dalam baterai menjadi rentan terjadi hubungan arus pendek (korslet) yang kemudian mengakibatkan overheating.

- Jangan letakkan notebook di aera yang dapat menjadi sangat panas, semisal di bawah terik matahari ataupun di dalam mobil yang diparkir cukup lama di tempat terbuka saat siang hari.

- Menjadi basah atau terkena air, adalah hal yang harus dihindari dari notebook ataupun baterainya. Meskipun nantinya akan mengering dan dapat berfungsi normal, sirkuit di dalam notebook ataupun baterai secara perlahan akan berkarat dan membuat rentan keselamatan penggunanya.

- Pastikan Anda memahami cara menggunakan, menyimpan dan men-charge baterai dan notebook yang telah tertulis di dalam buku manual.

Sumber: Febrio E.P

Terminal Services Gateway and Resulting Internet Communication in Windows Server 2008

noreply@blogger.com (sikumbang) — Mon, 8 Sep 2008 11:10:00 +0700

In This Section

Benefits and Purposes of Terminal Services Gateway

Examples of Security-Related Features in Terminal Services Gateway

Procedure for Viewing or Changing Group Policy Settings that Affect TS Gateway in Windows Server 2008

Additional References

This section provides overview information about Terminal Services Gateway and information about some Group Policy settings that affect Terminal Services Gateway. The section also provides suggestions for other sources of information about Terminal Services Gateway (TS Gateway), to help you balance your organization’s requirements for communication across the Internet with your organization’s requirements for protection of networked assets. However, it is beyond the scope of this white paper to describe all aspects of maintaining appropriate levels of security in an organization running servers that use Terminal Services Gateway to support remote users who are communicating across the Internet.

Benefits and Purposes of Terminal Services Gateway

TS Gateway is a role service that enables authorized remote users to connect to resources on an internal corporate or private network, from any Internet-connected device that can run the Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) client. The network resources can be terminal servers, terminal servers running RemoteAppTM programs, or computers with Remote Desktop enabled.

TS Gateway uses the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) over Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) to establish an encrypted connection between remote users on the Internet and the internal network resources on which their productivity applications run.

TS Gateway enables remote users to connect to internal network resources over the Internet, by using an encrypted connection, without needing to configure virtual private network (VPN) connections.

For more information about TS Gateway, see Additional References, later in this section.

Examples of Security-Related Features in Terminal Services Gateway

TS Gateway includes a variety of settings and features related to security, some of which are described in the following list. For additional information about security-related improvements in TS Gateway, see Additional References later in this topic.

TS Gateway provides a comprehensive security configuration model that enables you to control access to specific internal network resources.
TS Gateway provides a point-to-point RDP connection, rather than allowing remote users access to all internal network resources.
TS Gateway enables most remote users to connect to internal network resources that are hosted behind firewalls in private networks and across network address translators (NATs). With TS Gateway, you do not need to perform additional configuration for the TS Gateway server or clients for this scenario.
Prior to this release of Windows Server, security measures prevented remote users from connecting to internal network resources across firewalls and NATs. This is because port 3389, the port used for RDP connections, is typically blocked for network security purposes at the firewalls. TS Gateway transmits RDP traffic to port 443 instead, by using an HTTP Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) tunnel. Because most corporations open port 443 to enable Internet connectivity, TS Gateway takes advantage of this network design to provide remote access connectivity across multiple firewalls.
The TS Gateway Manager snap-in console enables you to configure authorization policies to define conditions that must be met for remote users to connect to internal network resources. For example, you can specify:
- Who can connect to network resources (in other words, the user groups who can connect).
- What network resources (computer groups) users can connect to.
- Whether client computers must be members of Active Directory security groups.
- Whether device and disk redirection is allowed.
- Whether clients need to use smart card authentication or password authentication, or whether they can use either method.

You can configure TS Gateway servers and Terminal Services clients to use Network Access Protection (NAP) to further enhance security. NAP is a health policy creation, enforcement, and remediation technology that is included in Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008. With NAP, system administrators can enforce health requirements, which can include software requirements, security update requirements, required computer configurations, and other settings.

Note
Computers running Windows Server 2008 cannot be used as NAP clients when TS Gateway enforces NAP. Only computers running Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista can be used as NAP clients when TS Gateway enforces NAP.

For information about how to configure TS Gateway to use NAP for health policy enforcement for Terminal Services clients that connect to TS Gateway servers, see topics about deploying TS Gateway on the Microsoft Web site at:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=106400

You can use TS Gateway server with Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server to enhance security. In this scenario, you can host TS Gateway servers in a private network rather than a perimeter network (also known as a DMZ, demilitarized zone, and screened subnet), and host ISA Server in the perimeter network. The SSL connection between the Terminal Services client and ISA Server can be terminated at the ISA Server, which is Internet-facing.
For information about how to configure ISA Server as an SSL termination device for TS Gateway server scenarios, , see topics about deploying TS Gateway on the Microsoft Web site at:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=106400
The TS Gateway Manager snap-in console provides tools to help you monitor TS Gateway connection status, health, and events. By using TS Gateway Manager, you can specify events (such as unsuccessful connection attempts to the TS Gateway server) that you want to monitor for auditing purposes.

Procedure for Viewing or Changing Group Policy Settings that Affect TS Gateway in Windows Server 2008

The following procedure tells how to view or change Group Policy settings that affect TS Gateway in Windows Server 2008.

To View or Change Group Policy Settings that Affect TS Gateway

As needed, see Appendix B: Resources for Learning About Group Policy for Windows Server 2008, and then edit an appropriate Group Policy object (GPO).
Expand User Configuration, expand Policies (if present), expand Administrative Templates, expand Windows Components, expand Terminal Services, and then click TS Gateway.
In the details pane, double-click each setting that you want to view or change. If you want more information about a setting, double-click the setting and then click the Explain tab.
For all of these settings, if you select Enabled, you can then select or clear a check box labeled Allow users to change this setting. The settings are as follows:
- Set TS Gateway authentication method
- Enable connection through TS Gateway
- Set TS Gateway server address

Additional References

Information about what's new in TS Gateway on the Microsoft Web site at:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=106399
Information about deploying TS Gateway on the Microsoft Web site at:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=106400
Web page for Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008 on the TechNet Web site at:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=106087
Terminal Services Licensing and Resulting Internet Communication in Windows Server 2008
Terminal Services Web Access and Resulting Internet Communication in Windows Server 2008

New Task Yahoo Masseger 9.0 Beta

noreply@blogger.com (sikumbang) — Mon, 8 Sep 2008 10:44:00 +0700

I don’t know when this update happened but when I try to chat with my friend I’ve got this kind of chat box of my Yahoo Messenger 9.0 Beta. I have some personal profile on my Yahoo, suddenly I found it inside the new task of Yahoo Messenger 9.0 Beta and I can choose on of them to chat with.
I used to chat with someone but when I try to make a chat with my other profile I should sign out first from my Yahoo Messenger and Log in again with my other profiles.
This facility very useful when you have several profiles in your yahoo account. Great application Yahoo Messenger and I’m waiting this Yahoo Messenger 9.0 Beta will released.

Who need a CRM Software

noreply@blogger.com (sikumbang) — Mon, 8 Sep 2008 10:35:00 +0700

Who need a large software, I believe majority company needed. According to my opinion, there are three models company that needed a Software. One, They has IT Department who develop all their software, the reason is this company complicated with many unique rules that doesn’t standard like many company or some International rules. Second, The company also has IT Department but they didn’t develop by them self but they bought a CRM Software for their lead management and the IT maintain. This company usually has a standard rules like many companies. And Three, The company doesn’t has IT Deparment so they really need a standard software and customer relationship management to maintain all their activities.

I’d like to explain my opinion about who need a CRM Software. A company need s software because they want to increasing their productivites and of course to earn more. With a software they can maintain their Production, Sales, Purchasing and also their finance, so they can make fast decission and make their company bigger and more. I think there many company with standard operation and needed CRM software, it’s a good oportunity too for you the software developer company to reach all those company who needed a standard software. But, even it’s so standard, there are always need a cusomizing inside the software. So, you must prepared for this condition too. I hope the company pick the perfect software and the software developer, build the best product and good Services.

Ten Tips For Increasing Traffic To Your Website

noreply@blogger.com (sikumbang) — Wed, 3 Sep 2008 13:55:00 +0700

You have a terrific looking website with great content, so now it's sitting out there on the web just waiting for people to find it. Here are ten top tips for getting the traffic to flow.

#1 – It's all about the keyword phrases

Many people get stuck on trying to fill their sites with keywords in order to attract search engines. This might work to a point, but individual keywords can become too competitive to attract much attention. Instead of individual words, come up with keyword phrases for your site. Keep them to about two or three words in length, and be sure they explain your business perfectly.

#2 – Put your keyword phrases in the right places

You get the most benefit from your keyword phrases when you put them in the right places. It's critical to place them in your page title, toward the top of your page content, and in the meta description. Other great places to put them include link addresses, alt tags, headers, and meta keywords.

#3 – Double check your page title tags

If your page title tags are incorrect, your site will show up as "unknown" or "untitled" in search engines. Double check that your page title tags are complete, accurate, and input correctly.

#4 – Content is king

You've heard it before, and we're going to say it again. Content is king when it comes to generating web site traffic, so make sure yours is focused and rich with your keyword phrases.

#5 – Beware of image maps and frames

A number of search engines do not work when your website has image maps and/or frames. If you must use image maps and frames, be aware that these sites will not be able to crawl very deeply into your site.

#6 – Text links are the best option

Search engines are much more likely to find text links in your website than other kinds of fancy menus. To make your text links even more noticeable, create a site map and include a link to the site map on every page of the website.

#7 – Exchange links with other websites

Many search engines, especially Google, pay a lot of attention to the number of sites with links to your site. Make the most of this by actively soliciting and offering to exchange links with other sites with content or information that's related to your site. Also, be sure your site has an easily accessible link resources page so that others can quickly and easily set up their links with you.

#8 – Keep your content updated and fresh

Websites with regularly updated content that's fresh and interesting not only attract the attention of web surfers, but they also attract the attention of many search engines. Some set up their crawlers so that the more often a page is changed, the more often it gets crawled and ranked higher up.

#9 – Target the most important search engines

You could go crazy trying to optimize your website for the hundreds of search engines out there, so it pays to target the ones that are most important. This of course includes the big hitters like Google and the like, but it also might include some of the smaller search engines as well. For instance, if your website caters to a particular niche audience and that niche audience typically uses a particular search engine, it makes sense to do whatever you can to achieve higher rankings with that preferred search engine.

#10 – Fork over the cash

Yes, it's true; the best way to get higher rankings with an increasing number of search engines is to pay for placement. You'll never come out ahead competing directly with the heavy hitters who have tons of money to spend, but if you're in a niche or specialized market with fewer competitors, it might be worthwhile to invest some money in search engine ranking.

21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic

noreply@blogger.com (sikumbang) — Wed, 3 Sep 2008 13:43:00 +0700

A considerable portion of my consulting time has recently revolved around the optmization of corporate blogs (or the addition of blogs to revamped sites). As usual, I find a pattern emerging in the strategies that need attention and the pitfalls that must be avoided. So, rather than charging $400 an hour to give advice on the subject, I thought it would be valuable to share many of the most common pieces of advice here on the blog (business part of Rand fights with open source Rand, but loses, as usual).
Choose the Right Blog Software (or Custom Build)
The right blog CMS makes a big difference. If you want to set yourself apart, I recommend creating a custom blog solution - one that can be completely customized to your users. In most cases, WordPress, Blogger, MovableType or Typepad will suffice, but building from scratch allows you to be very creative with functionality and formatting. The best CMS is something that's easy for the writer(s) to use and brings together the features that allow the blog to flourish. Think about how you want comments, archiving, sub-pages, categorization, multiple feeds and user accounts to operate in order to narrow down your choices. OpenSourceCMS is a very good tool to help you select a software if you go that route.
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Host Your Blog Directly on Your Domain
Hosting your blog on a different domain from your primary site is one of the worst mistakes you can make. A blog on your domain can attract links, attention, publicity, trust and search rankings - by keeping the blog on a separate domain, you shoot yourself in the foot. From worst to best, your options are - Hosted (on a solution like Blogspot or Wordpress), on a unique domain (at least you can 301 it in the future), on a subdomain (these can be treated as unique from the primary domain by the engines) and as a sub-section of the primary domain (in a subfolder or page - this is the best solution).
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Write Title Tags with Two Audiences in Mind
First and foremost, you're writing a title tag for the people who will visit your site or have a subscription to your feed. Title tags that are short, snappy, on-topic and catchy are imperative. You also want to think about search engines when you title your posts, since the engines can help to drive traffic to your blog. A great way to do this is to write the post and the title first, then run a few searches at Overture, WordTracker & KeywordDiscovery to see if there is a phrasing or ordering that can better help you to target "searched for" terms.
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Participate at Related Forums & Blogs
Whatever industry or niche you're in, there are bloggers, forums and an online community that's already active. Depending on the specificity of your focus, you may need to think one or two levels broader than your own content to find a large community, but with the size of the participatory web today, even the highly specialized content areas receive attention. A great way to find out who these people are is to use Technorati to conduct searches, then sort by number of links (authority). Del.icio.us tags are also very useful in this process, as are straight searches at the engines (Ask.com's blog search in particular is of very good quality).
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Tag Your Content
Technorati is the first place that you should be tagging posts. I actually recommend having the tags right on your page, pointing to the Technorati searches that you're targeting. There are other good places to ping - del.icio.us and Flickr being the two most obvious (the only other one is Blogmarks, which is much smaller). Tagging content can also be valuable to help give you a "bump" towards getting traffic from big sites like Reddit, Digg & StumbleUpon (which requires that you download the toolbar, but trust me - it's worth it). You DO NOT want to submit every post to these sites, but that one out of twenty (see tactic #18) is worth your while.
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Launch Without Comments (and Add Them Later)
There's something sad about a blog with 0 comments on every post. It feels dead, empty and unpopular. Luckily, there's an easy solution - don't offer the ability to post comments on the blog and no one will know that you only get 20 uniques a day. Once you're upwards of 100 RSS subscribers and/or 750 unique visitors per day, you can open up the comments and see light activity. Comments are often how tech-savvy new visitors judge the popularity of a site (and thus, its worth), so play to your strengths and keep your obscurity private.
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Don't Jump on the Bandwagon
Some memes are worthy of being talked about by every blogger in the space, but most aren't. Just because there's huge news in your industry or niche DOES NOT mean you need to be covering it, or even mentioning it (though it can be valuable to link to it as an aside, just to integrate a shared experience into your unique content). Many of the best blogs online DO talk about the big trends - this is because they're already popular, established and are counted on to be a source of news for the community. If you're launching a new blog, you need to show people in your space that you can offer something unique, different and valuable - not just the same story from your point of view. This is less important in spaces where there are very few bloggers and little online coverage and much more in spaces that are overwhelmed with blogs (like search, or anything else tech-related).
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Link Intelligently
When you link out in your blog posts, use convention where applicable and creativity when warranted, but be aware of how the links you serve are part of the content you provide. Not every issue you discuss or site you mention needs a link, but there's a fine line between overlinking and underlinking. The best advice I can give is to think of the post from the standpoint of a relatively uninformed reader. If you mention Wikipedia, everyone is familar and no link is required. If you mention a specific page at Wikipedia, a link is necessary and important. Also, be aware that quoting other bloggers or online sources (or even discussing their ideas) without linking to them is considered bad etitquette and can earn you scorn that could cost you links from those sources in the future. It's almost always better to be over-generous with links than under-generous. And link condoms? Only use them when you're linking to something you find truly distasteful or have serious apprehension about.
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Invite Guest Bloggers
Asking a well known personality in your niche to contribute a short blog on their subject of expertise is a great way to grow the value and reach of your blog. You not only flatter the person by acknowedging their celebrity, you nearly guarantee yourself a link or at least an association with a brand that can earn you readers. Just be sure that you really are getting a quality post from someone that's as close to universally popular and admired as possible (unless you want to start playing the drama linkbait game, which I personally abhor). If you're already somewhat popular, it can often be valuable to look outside your space and bring in guest authors who have a very unique angle or subject matter to help spice up your focus. One note about guest bloggers - make sure they agree to have their work edited by you before it's posted. A disagreement on this subject after the fact can have negative ramifications.
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Eschew Advertising (Until You're Popular)
I hate AdSense on blogs. Usually, I ignore it, but I also cast a sharp eye towards the quality of the posts and professionalism of the content when I see AdSense. That's not to say that contextual advertising can't work well in some blogs, but it needs to be well integrated into the design and layout to help defer criticism. Don't get me wrong - it's unfair to judge a blog by its cover (or, in this case, its ads), but spend a lot of time surfing blogs and you'll have the same impression - low quality blogs run AdSense and many high quality ones don't. I always recommend that whether personal or professional, you wait until your blog has achieved a level of success before you start advertising. Ads, whether they're sponsorships, banners, contextual or other, tend to have a direct, negative impact on the number of readers who subscribe, add to favorites and link - you definitely don't want that limitation while you're still trying to get established.
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Go Beyond Text in Your Posts
Blogs that contain nothing but line after line of text are more difficult to read and less consistently interesting than those that offer images, interactive elements, the occassional multimedia content and some clever charts & graphs. Even if you're having a tough time with non-text content, think about how you can format the text using blockquotes, indentation, bulllet points, etc. to create a more visually appealing and digestable block of content.
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Cover Topics that Need Attention
In every niche, there are certain topics and questions that are frequently asked or pondered, but rarely have definitive answers. While this recommendation applies to nearly every content-based site, it's particularly easy to leverage with a blog. If everyone in the online Nascar forums is wondering about the components and cost of an average Nascar vehicle - give it to them. If the online stock trading industry is rife with questions about the best performing stocks after a terrorist threat, your path is clear. Spend the time and effort to research, document and deliver and you're virtually guaranteed link-worthy content that will attract new visitors and subscribers.
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Pay Attention to Your Analytics
Visitor tracking software can tell you which posts your audience likes best, which ones don't get viewed and how the search engines are delivering traffic. Use these clues to react and improve your strategies. Feedburner is great for RSS and I'm a personal fan of Indextools. Consider adding action tracking to your blog, so you can see what sources of traffic are bringing the best quality visitors (in terms of time spent on the site, # of page views, etc). I particularly like having the "register" link tagged for analytics so I can see what percentage of visitors from each source is interested enough to want to leave a comment or create an account.
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Use a Human Voice
Charisma is a valuable quality, both online and off. Through a blog, it's most often judged by the voice you present to your users. People like empathy, compassion, authority and honesty. Keep these in the forefront of your mind when writing and you'll be in a good position to succeed. It's also critical that you maintain a level of humility in your blogging and stick to your roots. When users start to feel that a blog is taking itself too seriously or losing the characteristics that made it unique, they start to seek new places for content. We've certainly made mistakes (even recently) that have cost us some fans - be cautious to control not only what you say, but how you say it. Lastly - if there's a hot button issue that has you posting emotionally, temper it by letting the post sit in draft mode for an hour or two, re-reading it and considering any revisions. With the advent of feeds, once you publish, there's no going back.
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Archive Effectively
The best archives are carefully organized into subjects and date ranges. For search traffic (particularly long tail terms), it can be best to offer the full content of every post in a category on the archive pages, but from a usability standpoint, just linking to each post is far better (possibly with a very short snippet). Balance these two issues and make the decision based on your goals. A last note on archiving - pagination in blogging can be harmful to search traffic, rather than beneficial (as you provide constantly changing, duplicate content pages). Pagination is great for users who scroll to the bottom and want to see more, though, so consider putting a "noindex" in the meta tag or in the robots.txt file to keep spiders where they belong - in the well-organized archive system.
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Implement Smart URLs
The best URL structure for blogs is, in my opinion, as short as possible while still containing enough information to make an educated guess about the content you'll find on the page. I don't like the 10 hyphen, lengthy blog titles that are the byproduct of many CMS plugins, but they are certainly better than any dynamic parameters in the URL. Yes - I know I'm not walking the talk here, and hopefully it's something we can fix in the near future. To those who say that one dynamic parameter in the URL doesn't hurt, I'd take issue - just re-writing a ?ID=450 to /450 has improved search traffic considerably on several blogs we've worked with.
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Reveal as Much as Possible
The blogosphere is in love with the idea of an open source world on the web. Sharing vast stores of what might ordinarily be considered private information is the rule, rather than the exception. If you can offer content that's usually private - trade secrets, pricing, contract issues, and even the occassional harmless rumor, your blog can benefit. Make a decision about what's off-limits and how far you can go and then push right up to that limit in order to see the best possible effects. Your community will reward you with links and traffic.
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Only One Post in Twenty Can Be Linkbait
Not every post is worthy of making it to the top of Digg, Del.icio.us/popular or even a mention at some other blogs in your space. Trying to over-market every post you write will result in pushback and ultimately lead to negative opinions about your efforts. The less popular your blog is, the harder it will be to build excitement around a post, but the process of linkbait has always been trial and error - build, test, refine and re-build. Keep creating great ideas and bolstering them with lots of solid, everyday content and you'll eventually be big enough to where one out of every 20-40 posts really does become linkbait.
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Make Effective Use of High Traffic Days
If you do have linkbait, whether by design or by accident, make sure to capitalize. When you hit the front page of Digg, Reddit, Boing Boing, or, on a smaller scale, attract a couple hundred visitors from a bigger blog or site in your space, you need to put your best foot forward. Make sure to follow up on a high traffic time period with 2-3 high quality posts that show off your skills as a writer, your depth of understanding and let visitors know that this is content they should be sticking around to see more of. Nothing kills the potential linkbait "bump" faster than a blog whose content doesn't update for 48 hours after they've received a huge influx of visitors.
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Create Expectations and Fulfill Them
When you're writing for your audience, your content focus, post timing and areas of interest will all become associated with your personal style. If you vary widely from that style, you risk alienating folks who've come to know you and rely on you for specific data. Thus, if you build a blog around the idea of being an analytical expert in your field, don't ignore the latest release of industry figures only to chat about an emotional issue - deliver what your readers expect of you and crunch the numbers. This applies equally well to post frequency - if your blog regularly churns out 2 posts a day, having two weeks with only 4 posts is going to have an adverse impact on traffic. That's not to say you can't take a vacation, but you need to schedule it wisely and be prepared to lose RSS subscribers and regulars. It's not fair, but it's the truth. We lose visitors every time I attend an SES conference and drop to one post every two days (note - guest bloggers and time-release posts can help here, too).
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Build a Brand
Possibly one of the most important aspects of all in blogging is brand-building. As Zefrank noted, to be a great brand, you need to be a brand that people want to associate themselves with and a brand that people feel they derive value from being a member. Exclusivity, insider jokes, emails with regulars, the occassional cat post and references to your previous experiences can be offputting for new readers, but they're solid gold for keeping your loyal base feeling good about their brand experience with you. Be careful to stick to your brand - once you have a definition that people like and are comfortable with, it's very hard to break that mold without severe repercussions. If you're building a new blog, or building a low-traffic one, I highly recommend writing down the goals of your brand and the attributes of its identity to help remind you as you write.

Best of luck to all you bloggers out there. It's an increasingly crowded field to play in, but these strategies should help to give you an edge over the competition. As always, if you've got additions or disagreements, I'd love to hear them.

p.s. Note to self - starting long blog entries at 11:30pm is not conducive to a good night's sleep. At least Angela got kicked off Project Runway tonight.

How to Increase Traffic When Your Promotion Budget is Tiny

noreply@blogger.com (sikumbang) — Wed, 3 Sep 2008 13:40:00 +0700

Writing articles for your site and for the use of others, is a simple proven way low cost way to get more traffic.

Articles can be used for all subjects and just like newspapers and magazines, is a recognised way of sharing information.

Articles a low cost way of promotion but they do take time which can pay you back year after year for your efforts.

Most people tend to think that they can't write well. It's nothing more than sharing helpful information that you have learned. For example the idea of this article is to help format you thoughts and then the best way to format it best for users. So lets get started.

1. Firstly you need to choose who is your target market. Who is your article for and why would they find it helpful?

Example: "Home business websites who are looking for low cost traffic"

2. Choose the purpose of you article. Why are you writing it? How will you use it? This will help guide the content of it.

Example: "Provide an article for distribution, which other webmasters/ezine owners can use creating links back to my site, and subscribers to my ezine"

Always keep the purpose of the article in mind, which will help you keep on track with your content.

3. Article Subject -What are you going to write about? What subject? Use other articles you have seen or experiences you have had for ideas.

Example: Using articles for low cost online promotion

From the subject you have chosen you need to create a headline of sorts- some thing that makes people want to read it. Create curiosity and use emotion.

Example: How to turn words into free traffic for your site

4. Format Outline -This is when you decide the format of your article, just like you were taught at school.

a. Introduction - An outline of what you are going to discuss and why.

b. Main body - Points you are going to cover including any references to helpful sites or site involved in what you learnt

c. Conclusion - What resulted and how it worked or it didn't. What could you do differently next time.

d. Resource box - Normally a link to your site, information about your site, about you. Here is good article on resource boxes:

http://digitalawol.com/box

5. Checking - At this stage you should have the outline of an article. You need to get someone else to read it over, spell checking it, making sure the information flows well.

I also recommend leaving it overnight before using it. It gives you a chance to re think it.

6. Online formatting - If you intend to make your article available to ezine owners, then you need to make sure it is formatted correctly and easy for them to use. The standard accepted format is 65 Characters wide- in plain text.

Most people us Microsoft word for word processing so you will need to re-format by using a program such as Note Tab light http://www.notetab.com/ (no cost) which will format your article correctly.

One thing you will also need to do is ensure you only have paragraphs of 4-5 lines otherwise it creates a "mental block" for the reader, and becomes too hard to read online.

So now you have a formatted, helpful article ready for your use. The last thing you need to keep in mind is that you need to provide helpful, well-researched information. A full-page ad for your site will not do you any good and will get deleted quickly.

Try to write from your own experiences and it will come across as real and very readable.

My next article will cover getting the information out there and working for you.

You can get the next article by subscribing to our ezine. It will surprize you find out that there are places you should NOT post your article, as they may not help your business.

Need more visitors to your web site and no more BS? Paul Easton is the editor of Power Promotion Plus. Learn how to increase traffic on a budget. Signup now and get your 3 gifts:

1.Free Meta Tag Software -2.Unofficial Pop Up Windows Crash Course -3.Affiliate Marketing Plan Builder - A step by step guide to a successful affiliate marketing program.

http://www.CreateToolbar.com/

(This article is available for reprint simply by adding the above Bio and no changes are made to the article or its content)

Increasing Traffic and earn Money

noreply@blogger.com (sikumbang) — Wed, 3 Sep 2008 13:19:00 +0700

Anyone wants to make money with their own blog today. It usually starts with creating your own blog on Blogger.com and putting up some Adsense ads.

The real problem is that not everyone knows how to drive traffic to their blog to make it profitable.

I would like to give you some tips and tricks on how you can drive traffic to your blog and get it into search engines.

Once you create your blog using Blogger.com you should edit the template you selected for your theme. You will need to add description and keywords meta tags first.

To accomplish that simply click on your template tab in your main Blogger account and add the meta tags right below your title tag.

If you don’t know how to generate meta tags please visit: http://www.addme.com/meta.htm

Next, I would suggest you to get an account at feedburner.com to create your feed. Go to: http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/blogs

Optimize your feed at feedburner so it only displays about first 150 characters of each post. I do this to minimize the risk of duplicate content. So each time you make a post only a part of that post will be displayed on your feedburner page.

Next, link to your feedburner page from your blog to make it visible to search engine spiders and get it indexed. This will give you backlinks to each new post you make.

Now you should add some feed subscription buttons on your blog, so people can bookmark it and add it to their feed readers.

I found a great feed subscription button maker at: http://www.twistermc.com/shake/RSS-index.php

Simply fill out their form and generate the html code to place in your blog template code. I would insert it into your sidebar section of your blog.

Next, add your own blog to your personalized Google home page, My Yahoo, and My MSN. This will get the search engine spiders to revisit.

Create an account at Technorati and add your blog to your favorites.

You will now need a lot of backlinks which can be easily done by writing a few articles and tagging all your blog posts. Write an article that is relevant to your blog niche and submit it to major article directories for distribution. I would suggest using isnare.com

You could also write a press release using prwebdirect.com and use the paid option to get some decent exposure and lots of backlinks.

Make sure your blog is somehow optimized for search engine rankings. Add your main keywords in your blog title and description. If you decide to exchange links with other webmasters make sure to use anchor text in your links.

Now simply keep up with updating your blog frequently and you should start seeing some great results as far as traffic.

The real power of this process is in duplication. If you can duplicate this process many times over you could earn a substantial amount of money every month.

It would require you to hire people to post in your blogs which falls into another topic called outsourcing.