August 08, 2008
Detroit internet access
I arrived today in Detroit to do my last little bit of research here at the university and I have got a lot to do before classes start up again in the fall. I am here to do some independent
music therapy research with a couple of guys that I met at a conference last year. We are doing this all as a part of a much bigger focusing mission to try and eventually, when I graduate, start up some kind of a mind-body health clinic in this area. They are two guys that really know the area quite well and so I am basically just here to do some observations and to get trained by them on using this machine they use for distressing called The Life-Vessel. While I am here I will be subletting a bedroom in the city with high-speed Detroit internet access and a shared kitchen until I have to go back. I haven't met the residents because right now I am in a café sending out emails to all of the people who need to know that I have arrived. Until my ride gets here I will write a little bit about what kinds of research I have been doing.
The research that I doing is all part of the major that I have created around the mind-body connection and the many different aspects of what we all know as consciousness. I hope to, as I said, eventually set up a clinic where we use these types of machines and therapies in conjunction with close observation in order to try to make connections about various aspects of our physical circumstance. My fascination with the body and the effectiveness of alternative styles of healing has led me to really want to get to the bottom of the question of our consciousness. It is really exciting to find myself here, so far from home and school, trying my best to make that dream a reality in any way that I can. This is the way that my vision of the future seems to really be flowing and I think that I will get to see all of my dreams realized short of actually answering that question because I don't know if there is an answer.
Posted by juliusp at 12:46 PM
Detroit phone service
I just got back in to town a week ago and today my internet finally got hooked up again so I need to vent a little bit. I have not had a very good summer so far at all. I left town here a day after I finished my last final and went to visit my parents for a little while back home. Then from there I had to fly to Detroit to go to an internship that my father got me which he said would look great on an internship and I don't disagree. The job was an amazing experience in business and taught me a great deal about the inner workings of a financial institution. It was outside of the workplace that I had some big problems. TO give some frame, finding cheap Detroit phone service seemed to be the easiest part of my whole summer so far.
The problems really began right after I got off the plane. I waited in the terminal for about two hours talking to people and walking miles of steps to find that my luggage had been lost somewhere. The said they would let me know when they found it and so I gave them my cell phone number to reach me. I left the airport and went to my place, which was super tiny, and I just tried to sleep for the night. The next morning I got up and went to check my cell phone far any messages from the airline and realized that I had forgotten my phone in the taxi. I never did get it back. So now I have no phone and no clothes so I had to go out and buy some nice clothes with the little money I had and then go to work. As I said the work was great but after a week of working I was really sort of bored when I went home. I am not usually the kind of person who likes having free time because it just makes me feel like I am not doing something to better myself.
Now that I am back in town I have plenty of things to do here and I am grateful for the experience. Though I still haven't gotten my bags back I am really glad I had that experience and now that I have three weeks to recover before class starts again.
Posted by juliusp at 12:29 PM
August 07, 2008
search marketing
Business executives are more often than ever hopping online to find the things that they need. Being that this method takes less time, it is a common practice among the top business executives in the world. Having a good online marketing campaign is extremely important for this reason. A recent poll amongst top executives shows that:
* 67% of C-level executives say the Internet is their most important source of business information.
* Senior executives research competitors and industry trends online daily.
Of the C-level executives polled the following results were tallied:
* 54 percent conduct online researches
* 34 percent say they go to the Web first to find information on a product or service
* 86 percent use search engines
Among search engines it is no surprise that business to business (B2B) searches are more often preformed on Google than on any other engine. Executives actually have a higher preference for using Google than even the average consumer.
For the average company this means that online marketing strategies must be geared toward attracting the business executives from other companies. Going about this is pretty simple.
First, understand how executives search. Do some search query (keyword) analysis. In general, executives are interested in broad, strategic topics, and tend to focus on information such as industry research, market trends, competitive insights, new capabilities, and future predictions.
Second, B2B marketers must make sure that your company is visible when these types of searches are conducted.
Third, make sure your search marketing is targeting the specific audience you desire and that your message is relevant. Does your search listing—paid or organic—include strategic information and a compelling call to action that would appeal to an executive?
Having these ideas in mind when beginning your online marketing campaign will help you make the most of your advertising dollars. Audience specific online marketing will produce the results you want much more quickly than just throwing out a whole bunch of random ads will. Gearing advertising directly at your target audience will give you the benefits you want, and will get you more bang for your advertising buck!
Posted by juliusp at 01:04 PM
June 22, 2008
search engine optimization
My father recently wanted more exposure for his business and decided to go onto one of these sites that allow you to buy a domain name and build your own website real cheap. He did a really nice layout and the pages looked great. Then I guess he thought that was all he needed to do, so he kept checking his web site, but no one was looking. He didn’t understand after weeks of having his site up why he was still not getting any traffic and that’s when he called me. I told him I wasn’t really sure why he wasn’t getting any exposure, but that I would talk to a friend I have that runs an online business and see what he did. His business was booming.
When I called him, he informed me about SEO Services and PPC Management Services, and I said you better back up you are losing me. Apparently, what he was trying to tell me was that these company’s give your site the exposure it needs and draw the traffic into your site. He told me that without hiring one of the companies to provide these services then your site will always stay hidden. He said that SEO which means search engine optimization is an important process of improving the amount and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site. He also told me about PPC Management which means pay per click management. This is an advertising model used on search engines and content websites and blogs, where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser's website. Advertisers bid on keywords they predict their target audience will use as search terms when they are looking for a product or service. When a user types a keyword query matching the advertiser's keyword list, or views a page with relevant content, the advertiser's ad may be shown. Again, this is just another important way to gain attention on the web.
My friend told me, and then I told my father, the only way to really get your website rolling is to hire one of these companies asap. He said the sooner you get it rolling the better the results will be. I gave my father the information and he called the reputable company that my friend has been using for years and they assured him his business will be picking up soon.
Posted by juliusp at 10:46 AM
June 16, 2008
security audit
With new technologies come new challenges. This has been true of many different new inventions in the past. Take, for example, the automobile. Once car production was more stabilized and became affordable for the majority of the population, a host of new issues cropped up. Some were directly related to automobiles, such as improved engine designs, safety features, and vehicle types. Others were subsidiary consequences of a population that was more mobile than any other generation in history: interstate freeways, traffic systems, new zoning systems that started to create urban sprawl, and the classic American road trip with a camper.
Nowadays, we take certain things for granted, such as seat belts and air bags. But this was not always the case. It took many years of testing and the unfortunate, but necessary impetus of traffic accidents to push for automobile safety standards.
With the advent of the internet, the same is becoming true of websites. The websites of the 1990s are slow, plain, and uninteresting compared to the flashy sites of today. Even today’s websites are much more lively than ones only several years ago thanks to new technologies such as AJAX, which is a combination of snappy new programming tools that help make websites more interactive and creative. But as with the automobile, internet innovation brings with it security risks.
This is why it’s so important to conduct a regular security audit to check for loopholes in your website and detect parts that are vulnerable to hackers. You could use a web application scanner that will make sure that website access points open to the public, like online shopping carts and comment pages, are secure from hackers who want to do much more than buy a product or leave a comment. The same goes for AJAX. AJAX application security is just as crucial, since hackers can turn this wonderful technology into unlawful gain.
A security audit could be a good habit for a website owner to have. It’s sort of like a yearly physical exam for your website, to check for weak points where hackers can gain access to your website details, as well as information of your users or clients. A web application scanner could be especially useful for those vulnerable pages that use touchy info such as credit card information. And with your flashy AJAX use for your website, you should also have AJAX application security to make sure that this great new technology doesn’t become a Trojan horse to your website.
Posted by juliusp at 07:36 PM
May 29, 2008
data recovery
Last month my life ended... Fortunately is was temporary...
Yeah yeah ok, something was wrong - but it's wasn't any of the usual suspects: I still had my girlfriend (at least I think I did), I hadn't been thrown off my course (yet), I'm still as good looking as ever (smile)...
The reason that life was not so good is due to my f**king laptop computer, or to be more specific - something inside it called a hard disk. I've got lots of cool stuff on my computer: movies, tunes, pictures, questionable web content.... and lots of boring stuff: coursework, more coursework... etc.
And how did this happen ? Well, I dropped my laptop off my desk onto a carpeted floor. When I picked it up the thing had frozen. So I rebooted, and it said the hard disk was not recognised. And this is how it has stayed ever since.
Ok, I may not be a techie but I had just realised how important the little flatish thing inside my laptop that says 'Seagate' was... and now I can't get to my files.
When something on your computer breaks (eg. a mouse or keyboard), you simply go and buy a new one. But when a hard disk breaks, simply buying a new one means you lose all the data that was on your old one.
So how do you get the data off ?? If the problem is not something simple, then the answer is that you require the services of a data recovery company: but make sure you get a good one.
Google data recovery and you'll get loads of companies - and the prices are odd: some charge $199, others will charge $1199... apparently for the same thing. So, I duely sent off my hard disk and $199. I then waited for my recovered data to arrive, which it didn't.
'What's the problem ?' I asked, 'Why can't you recover it ?'. I was told that the hard drive had a type of problem that they couldn't fix & recommended that I send it off to another (three times more expensive) data recovery RAID company that could recover the data. I asked for my hard disk to be returned. Two weeks later it arrived in a poorly packaged envelope. I then sent it to the recommended data recovery company.
A few days latter I got a call from them saying the data had been recovered successfully... Phew I thought, but what was the problem ? Something called 'bad media' - apparently down to the surface that holds the data being 'unstable'. I'm on shakey technical ground already so I'll leave it there. $799 later I have my files back, but I had to get a good company who knew what they were doing for it to happen... And the moral? Don't drop your laptop I guess.
Posted by juliusp at 07:26 PM
May 19, 2008
security cameras
Recently on a trip to a local Walmart my children kept pointing out to me all the little black bubbles on the ceiling. I feel like an idiot that I never really noticed them before. I was trying to explain to them that they were security cameras and that they were used to monitor people and make sure that they weren’t stealing. Well, my 12 year old started trying to find places that he could stand that the surveillance cameras could not see him. He would say mom look that camera can’t see me, and my daughter would quickly point out another camera that could. It was hard for me to believe, however, we literally discovered that there was no place in our local Walmart store that the security system could not see us, even in the parking lot.
Now I do realize that surveillance security is a necessary thing, but I kind of felt like a rat in a maze, when we realized that from the time we entered the Walmart parking lot until the time we left it was completely documented by Walmart. I know that Walmart is a hot spot for people to try and rip stuff off, but it was rather frightening to me the excessive amount of cameras in this place. If you think about it, maybe Orson Wells wasn’t so far off base, when he spoke of big brother watching us everywhere that we go. These days there are cameras at many traffic lights and all over the place. I realize that in this day of the sue happy people, that documentation is necessary, but we are now in a place, where everything we do is being watched. It is hard to believe that anyone can get away with anything with the way things are structured and yet somehow they can. Even the school buses our kids ride on have video surveillance to document any suspicious or illegal behaviors on the trips to and from school. Although, some documentation of these things is a necessary precaution, I am not sure that we are not trading our rights to privacy in order to protect us from the evil in our society.
I guess if I think about it, I would definitely would be glad for the complete camera surveillance at Walmart if my child were to go missing there. It could definitely provide information that could help the police and possibly lead to finding a missing child. With how many different cameras they have running in that store, how would they ever find the documented information that they need quickly?
Posted by juliusp at 08:34 PM