No matter if your website is a personal site with a few pages or a huge corporation website, having a good design is one of the most important things. It matters a lot to visitors and can make the difference between leaving a site or bookmarking it. Here are a few tips to help improve your design:

1. Pages should load fast. Most people will leave your site if it's not done loading in ten or 15 seconds. And even if you have a fast internet connection, not everyone does and 56k modems still exist.

2. Text should be easy to read. The text size should be big enough, and the background should not obscure your text. If you want to be safe, use black text on a white background. If you want more color, choose very carefully to make sure it's still easy to read.

3. Your website should be easy to navigate. Each link should be clearly identified as such and graphic navigation elements like buttons and tabs should be easy to read and use. You do not want people leaving because they could not figure out how your Flash menu works.

4. Your layout and design should be consistent. If you switch between styles too much, you will confuse your visitors. If the design is too different, people will believe that they are now on a different website since the layout changed.

5. Avoid music and sounds. Very few people like to have music forced on them while they navigate, especially if they are already listening to music or surfing at their job! If you really cannot do without music, turn it off by default and ask visitors to start it themselves.

6. Design for browser compatibility. Many people do not use Internet Explorer on Windows. Make sure your site is at least viewable in Mozilla Firefox and Opera (if possible, you could even try testing on a Mac). Sites that target markets like technology should be more careful, since readers are more likely to use the newest browsers and gadgets like PDAs.

7. Design for all screen resolutions. You may like to surf in 1240×1080 with your new screen, but some people still use 800×600, or even 640×768! A site that looks perfect in high resolution may turn out to be impossible to view correctly in 800×600.

And, if you have a doubt, test, test and test! You can also ask your family and friends for help. Being less familiar with the website, they can help find a lot of things you overlooked.

Many amateur web designers marvel at the skills of other designers without realizing that there are some simple tricks for creating great looking web sites.

HTML is not a friendly language for laying out text and graphics. The advent of Cascading Style Sheets improved this, but a simple solution to the problem of layout is to use tables without borders. Within HTML, this can be done by adding the attribute BORDER="0" to the TABLE tag. However, most HTML editors, such as Dreamweaver and FrontPage, allow you to set the border to 0 as one of the properties of the table.

Perhaps the biggest problem newcomers face is in finding appropriate images that look good. In many cases, images are found using a simple Google image search. More often that not, these images will be under copyright and using them risks potential legal action. One way around this is to purchase royalty-free images on CD / DVD or directly from the Web. Of course, you need to be careful to check the license agreement. For example, the images may only be royalty-free for non-commercial uses. Another solution is to take your own images using a digital camera (or scanning in your own photos). Again, to minimize the risk of legal action you should obtain permission from people shown in the photos before placing them on the web.

Even after locating or creating images, a good design may still be difficult given the 'blocky' nature of the photos that are typically in a rectangular shape. This leads to the major tip for improving your web site design. If using stock photos, look for 'photo-objects' rather than photos. These are photos which have had the background removed. Where the background should be is actually transparent, which means you can put the photo-objects on any background.

When using your own images, you can easily create photo-objects by using a 'green screen' behind the subject you are photographing. You can load the image into any piece of imaging software that has a magic wand tool. Then simply click on a section of the green screen and press delete to remove the background.

There is nothing 'magical' about a green screen. Any piece of material that has a consistent color and is fairly flat will do. Green or blue work best because these are very different from skin tones that won't disappear when you use the magic wand. (Of course, if they are wearing green clothes these may suddenly become transparent).

Backgrounds can be removed using a magic wand tool (and eraser for fine details) from photos with a normal background, but expect to take many steps and more time. Even if you can't remove the background you can add some spice to your images with simple steps such as adding a drop shadow or adding a frame like a photograph.

With these simple steps you should be able to develop web sites that look far more professional.

You have decided to put up a new website. Congratulations! Now the work begins. Within this article, are some items you will want to consider as your website comes to life.

A webmaster would recommend that you have a domain name that brings in at least one good keyword about your website. The webmaster will help you with suggestions to get a good domain name.

You also need to select the purpose of the website. This is crucial. You need to know if the website will be to drive leads to build a customer list, whether you want people to fill out a form to give you information on their situation if you are offering real estate information, for example, or if you are just looking to get information about you and your firm out to the public. Do you want to use your website more as a savings of time to send out reports to people that request information? Do you want to portray an image of a modern fast paced type of company or do you want to portray an image of a down home southern charming retail store? Do you want to direct them to a phone line for more information or an autoresponder or maybe sign up for an ezine? Depending on the needs of the person behind the website, the webmaster can get a better idea how to make the overall look and feel of the website, so try to be clear on what you want your website to accomplish.

You might also show the webmaster colors you like and get their thoughts as to the colors that move the visitor to certain actions. For instance, certain shades of green portray a soothing feeling while red jumps out at you and makes you want to take action. Use bold colors sparingly.

The webmaster can also help you in regards to the layout of the website, guiding the visitor through the website by various links and graphics. Also, realize that sometimes more words are not more effective. A visitor will spend only a short amount of time viewing your website unless you have effective headlines and subtitles. If you have ideas you want to use, let your webmaster know this before he starts to make the "bones" of the website.

Another good thing to think about is the buttons and what they will say. In other words, how many do you really need to get your website point across and what type of links would you need created to accomplish that point? Changing text is easier than changing buttons for a webmaster, so try to have some idea what you want. Do not start out thinking you will have a 5-8 page website and then add six more buttons. This can lead to six more pages and you can expect a price increase on the website design. Most webmasters are pretty lenient, but do have to charge for extra time and effort above the original price quote.

If you have any graphics you want to use, gather them up and have them available from the beginning for the webmaster. He will also have graphics that he will add to make the website more interesting. You will want to keep large graphics to a minimum. The webmaster can resize them but note that clarity and sharpness may be reduced. Most good webmasters can help tremendously in this realm of making the images fit your pages if the pictures you provide are clear and crisp.

If you have the music clips or audio clips that you want to use, be prepared to provide them for the webmaster. He will require music clips in mp3 format most likely. He will also check various browsers to make sure the clips are good quality in all browser settings.

Provide the webmaster with all your contact information and any comments he can use for the "About Us" page. That would be items relative to your business and awards you may have won, goals of your company, little bits of personal information about the partners or owners, how long the business has been viable or how long you have been in this sort of business, how long online, things like that help a visitor to know you better and feel more comfortable doing business with you. That should be the goal.

Templates have their place in the web design process. Allow the webmaster to provide choices and pick out two or three templates that would work for you. Most good webmasters like to use pure html, but some also will use the Front Page format or Dreamweaver. The only reason for templates, in my mind, is to get more of an idea what the customer wants his website to look like. When the idea is presented by several templates, then possibly designing a website based on those ideas, is more effective. Do not count out a webmaster that uses templates, but also, do not count out a webmaster that takes template ideas and redesigns them to fit your needs. Either will work and makes perfect sense depending on the time and effort that is going to be involved in creation of your new website.

Bottom line is consider your webmaster an extension of your business. It will be up to you to market your business, but having a good website should be a collaboration of effort between you and the webmaster. Your website can come alive with sound, graphics, and colors. The clearer you can be on what you desire, the more the webmaster has to work with and will be able to satisfy you more thoroughly. Most people are amazed at what webmasters can do with just simple outlines of ideas!

Most webmasters want to make their customers happy and will spend the time to work with you to make sure your website is pleasing. Give them the courtesy of being reasonable in your desires and needs and the website creation experience will be a positive situation for everyone.

Are you involved in fundraising for nonprofits or are you a small business manager who sees a business opportunity in helping a nonprofit organization? You researched your cause and have volunteered to help your local community organization? As a solo business owner you may have a home based business and you have determined that helping out is a good way to meet the community and give back. With that decision, you are now helping and yet you would like to be efficient as possible. As an office automation specialist I propose you look at your internet, office, voice and customer relationship (IOVC) tools that you use in your normal business and apply them to your nonprofit work.

Setting up a wireless LAN at home to share computing resources is becoming more and more popular. Wireless LAN manufacturers have simplified the process of setting up a wireless LAN to just a few quick and easy steps. However, like any computer hardware, wireless LAN can work for months or years and then all of a sudden, it stops working. Before you call in the professionals to check your wireless LAN, here are a few simple things you can do to troubleshoot the wireless LAN yourself.

1. First of all, save your work and restart your computer. If you have access to the wireless LAN router and broadband modem, restart them as well. This simple technique has a surprisingly high success rate.

2. If this technique fails, the second thing is to check for loose connections. If you have a USB or PCMCIA wireless LAN card, ensure that it is seated firmly in the slot. If you have an internal PCI wireless LAN card, you will need to open the computer casing to check the connection.

3. If a loose connection isn't the cause of failure, the next thing to try is check Windows' My Network Places. Are there any new network icons that appear there? Sometimes, your wireless LAN card may detect another network nearby that has a stronger signal and connect to the new network instead. If My Network Places showed any unfamiliar network name, simply remove it. Then double click on your own network name to re-establish the connection.

4. If there is no new network nearby, you can try to bring your computer right next to your wireless LAN router. If this works, then it is likely to be a case of interference. You should think carefully what has changed recently in your house. Maybe you have added a new cordless phone or other equipment that use radio waves. Try switching them off one at a time to determine the source of interference.

5. If you can't determine any source of interference, you can now try resetting the wireless LAN router to its original factory setting. You can login to the router's control panel using a web browser and look for the option that allows you to restore the settings to the factory defaults.

If none of these techniques worked, it is likely that there is a hardware failure in your network. You need to unplug each piece of hardware in your wireless LAN in turn to figure out where the failure is. Once you identify the source, call the manufacturer and report the fault. In the event you are unable to isolate the source of failure, call the manufacturer and seek their advice. They should be able to advise you on how to troubleshoot your network further. Just remember to stay polite and be patient.

These days it's hard to not notice… they're everywhere - Cell Phones. If you don't have one, then surely you know someone who does own one, and uses it quite often. Sometimes described as "cellular-hell", it's worth a look into the blast-from-the-past that you can experience with the latest cellular features.

There are many providers: Sprint, Verizon, and Cricket… to name a few. Many different minute-plans, ring tones, wallpaper options, and other downloads. However, the most nostalgic of it all are the games.

Yes… Oh Yes, we have games. We have Pac-Man, Frogger, Centipede, Trivial Pursuit, Uno, Ms. PacMan, Paper Boy, Galaga, Dig Dug, Monopoly, Yahtzee, Connect Four, Clue, Casino Games, Deal or No Deal, Mahjong, Solitaire, and the Classic Tetris! The memories of first playing these classics can bring back feelings long forgotten… a much simpler time. A time where the importance of the night was simply to Enjoy!

Do you remember what it was like to try and reach the "end" of Pac-Man? Do you know the thrill of reaching level 99 in Tetris? What about the sweating bullets produced from an aggressive game of Frogger? Have you experienced countless hours 'lapping the track' of Monopoly?

These memories of long-ago can be yours! You can re-live the good ole days with the use of a simple cellular phone. The good times of the past are held in the palm of your hand. Most easily, this can be seen in the oh-so-classic game of Solitaire. Solitaire has always been available to anyone with a deck of cards and some free time to kill. Well, now, you can have Solitaire plus so much more.

Let’s wrap this up with a simple quiz:

1. How many streets have you ridden down in Paperboy, and actually hit the target of the paper into the mailbox?

2. Have you tested Pac-Man versus Ms. Pac Man to see who really is the "Best"?

3. How many hours have you spent with your friends and family proving to each other that you are the undisputed "Master" of Connect Four?

4. How many Levels does Tetris have?

5. How long does it take before you've solved Clue?

6. What has been your quickest game of Solitaire - win and lose?

Are you ready to Re-Live the adventures, using the cellular phone that fits in the palm of your hand?

Are you ready to join? The Internet shopping bandwagon, that is. Shopping online has become increasingly popular over the last few years, with new and improved safety measures, specialty shops and giant retailers like Overstock.com; all designed to entice shoppers.

In fact, VeriSign (the leading provider of security for web sites on the Internet) suggests e-commerce data from the holiday season in 2004 totaled 8.8 billion dollars in online purchases (based on an analysis of online sales volume processed through VeriSign payment services, which comprises more than 35% of North America's e-commerce and represents in excess of 120,000 online retailers).

Additionally, e-commerce transactions are estimated to be close to 168 billion dollars for the year 2005. In fact, in the year 2010 it is projected online sales could top the 315 billion dollar mark (Forrester Research 2005). One may ask, why such an increase?

Many factors can explain such increases. Improved security measures, ease of use and convenience are just a few of these factors. Let's explore these factors.

Security Measures- Despite all the fears of identity theft, online transactions account for less than 4% of identity theft. There are numerous software programs available (some for free) that the user can download to protect themselves from viruses and spyware. Worried about spyware? Download a free spyware program at www.safer-networking.com (called SpyBot Search & Destroy). Additionally, look for the locked padlock in the toolbar and make sure the http changes to https in your browser. The "s" indicates that the web site is a secure site and adheres to the industry standard for security values Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). Therefore, your personal information is encrypted and stays private during transmission over the Internet. Always delete sensitive information when exiting any website and do not give your credit card number to anyone requesting it in an email (phishing scams). Follow these simple steps a safe online shopping experience.

Ease of use- We have all seen the banner advertisements, just click on them and they take you to the web site advertised. Email advertising is growing in popularity as well and includes a link to click on to take the user to the site after they read the text ad. There are some unique and catchy names of web sites that are easy to remember. Have a favorite web site or shopping site? Just bookmark it and add it to your collection of favorites!

Convenience- Ever wait in long lines during the holiday season? What a time saver online shopping has become! No lines to wait in, no parking hassles, no traffic, no gas expense, no crowds and your merchandise can be shipped right to your door! Or, if you prefer, you can have your purchases gift wrapped and delivered to another address. All you do is sit at your computer with your shopping list and get done in a few hours what may taken you several days and trips to the mall to accomplish!

There are many more advantages to shopping online (we have just covered a few) as well as some disadvantages, but carefully weighed out; the smart shopper will discover a happy medium between the two and e-commerce will continue to grow and be a force in the economy for years to come.

There’s a mind-boggling amount of cell phone plans and services available these days. Cell phone ads promising bigger, bolder and better features blare at us every day. The question then becomes, “Which plan is right for me?” In this article, I’ll give you tips on what to look for in a plan, what to ask your service provider and how to avoid common mistakes that new subscribers often make!

First, ask yourself “What do I want in a plan?” Finding the right cellular plan is just a matter of deciding what, when, where and how you plan to use your phone:

- Will you be using it only for emergencies, or to chat with friends or family often?

- Will you make most of your calls during the day, evening, or on weekends?

- Will your calls be coming from your local area, or will you phone while traveling?

- What is your monthly budget for telephone services?

Getting the Most Minutes for your Money

Cell phone plans often come with a pre-allotted set of minutes per month (which may or may not correspond with an actual “minute” of time depending on factors such as where you are when you make the call, calling a long distance number and so on).

When you use up your minutes, you may be faced with paying an overage fee or paying a higher amount for the extra minutes. With many plans, the minutes you don’t use do not automatically roll over to the next month. So if you only used 30 minutes out of your 90 minute monthly allotment, you don’t get to keep the 60 minutes you didn’t use that month. You simply start over at 90 again.

Some other important differences to note in cell phone plans (as versus traditional telephone service) that you’ll want to keep in mind when comparison shopping include:

- You may find that your minutes are used up for both incoming and outgoing calls

- Calling a toll free number can cost you minutes

- The actual amount of time you’ve spent on a call is usually rounded up. So if you spent 3 minutes and 5 seconds on a call, you may find that 4 minutes have been used.

- The clock starts ticking on your minute usage the minute you press the “Call” or “Send” button, not the moment the other person picks up.

Most cellular service providers have a special phone number or web site address where you can login to check the number of minutes you have remaining each month. Keep in mind though, depending on how often the accounts or web site is updated, the numbers may not always be current.

Long Distance, Dropped Calls and Roaming – Oh My!

When choosing a wireless plan, keep in mind where you’ll be using your phone most often. Some service providers have nationwide coverage, while others target a specific “home area”. If you make or receive a call outside of this area, you’re “Roaming”, and your minutes may run out faster or you may face an extra charge. Know the boundaries of your calling area – you could be charged for long distance and roaming on top of the minutes that are spent during the call!

If you have a set of numbers that you dial frequently (such as friends, family, doctors and so on), ask the wireless provider if the cell phone plan you’re interested in will work in those locations without accruing long distance or roaming charges.

What To Ask Your Service Provider

If you’ve got a handful of good plans you’re considering, these questions may help narrow down the field of choices:

- Can I use my minutes anytime? Can they be used during “peak times” or am I charged more during those hours? (peak times usually occur on weekends). When do “peak hours” start and end?

- How much extra am I charged if I go over my monthly allotment of minutes?

- How much will I be charged for long distance and/or roaming? (Some nationwide carriers do not charge for these services unless you call out of the country)

- What is your cancellation policy? What happens if I cancel early? Will I be charged a cancellation fee after my plan has been activated?

- Can I make any changes to my plan (such as increasing or decreasing the number of minutes) after my service has been activated?

- What other features are included on my plan? (such as voice mail, caller ID) and if not included, how much would they cost to add to my service?

Remember, get all of these answers in writing. That way, if you suddenly find a $100 Early Cancellation charge on your bill, and you have a written document that states that there is no early cancellation fee, you’ll have an easier time of disputing the charge.

If you have several plans you’d like to try out, ask the service provider if there is a grace period where you can cancel your service without being charged (or being charged only a small amount) if the service doesn’t meet your expectations. Chances are, many wireless providers will be eager and happy to help you compare plans. Just remember to read the fine print before you sign!

Holidays or not, online shopping is fast becoming the main shopping choice for many people. People prefer online stores for their shopping needs over the brick-and-mortar stores for a variety of reasons - discounted price, quick price comparisons, unavailability of desired items in the retail stores, 24 hours shopping convenience, etc. Whatever the reason is, before you jump into the online shopping bandwagon, you must consider a few things to avoid frustration and monetary loss.

Before you pull out your credit card to buy an item at an unbelievably reduced price, think about the reasons why the merchant is throwing out his profits. Maybe it is a total scam and they want your credit card number to rip you off. Stay with the big online shopping sites. Sites that are publicly traded or reputable private companies do not spam your email inbox with unsolicited advertisements. If you find a shopping site, advertised in a spam e-mail, that sells $100 software for $10, you can bet that it is a scammer's site.

Ask your friends about their experiences with online shopping sites to select sites that are worthy of your hard earned money. Another approach is to use a search engine like Google to search for items you plan to purchase. When you use Google to search for an item, you will get advertised and non-advertised sites offering your items at different prices. Check out a few sites before you decide to make a purchase.

Many sites like bizrate.com or nexttag.com offers price comparisons, reviews, and shopping site ratings. Use these sites to read reviews and to do a price comparisons. Sites like techbargains.com publishes information on latest bargains, coupons, and discounts offered by various online shopping sites. Monitoring this type of sites provides opportunities to get great bargains. One comparison shopping site, buysafeshopping.com, provides information on qualified shopping sites that have gone through a screening process for merchant's identity, online sales experience, and the ability to deliver purchased items.

If you have to shop with an unknown online merchant, check for their telephone number at their Web site. Contact someone at the merchant's physical location and talk to them. Ask them about their privacy and refund policy. If you cannot find a phone number or the phone number goes to a voice mail, instead to a live person, go shopping somewhere else. There are dozens, if not hundreds, good online merchants for any items you want to buy.

At the online checkout counter, you have to use a credit card to pay. When you use your credit card, make sure that your credit card and personal information are sent using encryption to avoid someone intercepting your information for unauthorized use. To check for encryption, look for https in the URL. It is perfectly safe if the site has http in its URL for all pages except the order page - the page where you enter your credit card and other personal information like address, etc. Even if a site is encrypted, it can still be a scammer's site. Look out for tale-tell signs like numbers at the beginning of the URL. Avoid public computers at cafes, airports, etc. for your purchases. The danger is that hackers can install key-loggers to log your key presses before they are encrypted.

Always use a credit card to pay for your online purchases. Most credit cards have online purchase protection. If something goes wrong, you can always call your credit card company and dispute the charge. You do not have to pay for your disputed charges till the dispute is resolved. Federal laws limit your liability to $50 in charges should someone uses your card fraudulently. Never use a debit card. Debit cards pull money from your bank account as soon as the transaction is made. If you are ripped off, it may take months before you get your money back, if you ever see it again.

Despite all the cautionary warnings, online shopping is safer than shopping offline. You do not have to take a shower, dress up, drive and mingle with other shoppers and touch anything in the store for online shopping. How safe can it be? If you are careful, you can guard yourself against identity and credit card thefts by following safety tips discussed above. When you are using a credit card in an offline venue, there is a person, such as the sales person, who processes the transaction and this person can also see your private information. In online transactions, the middle man is eliminated. If you do your research, watch for signs of fraud and only use credit cards for your purchases, online shopping provides more benefits over offline shopping.

gMail, Google's free web-based email service, is perhaps one of the most advanced email services available today. In addition to offering over 2.6 Gigabytes of storage (and growing), Gmail includes some handy unique features that make online communication fast, easy, and convenient.

1) Labels
With typical email services, organizing your email means creating folders and putting messages in them. The trouble with this system is that it allows you to file each email in only one folder.

Gmail's label system, on the other hand, allows you to organize your email according to descriptors. You create your own descriptive labels and apply as many of them as you like to each message. So, for example, if you received an email from your friend Susan about places to visit in Europe, you might create one label for "Susan", another label for "vacations", and apply them both to the message. You could then later find the message by visiting either of the labels.

2) Stars
Gmail's "starring" system is essentially a preset label that allows you to mark important messages with a star. Stars can be applied while your reading a message or from the inbox view. One a message is starred, it can later be easily retrieved by visiting the "starred" category.

3) Chat
If you have friends with Gmail accounts, their status will be displayed in your contacts list showing you whether or not they're online. And if they are, you can click on their name and chat with them directly from within your web browser. No longer is there any need to download instant messaging software. Gmail will even save your chat sessions in your email account so you can go back and read them later.

4) Gmail Notifier
Gmail Notifier is a small piece of free software that alerts you whenever you receive a new email message by displaying an icon in your system tray. If you're a Firefox user, there's also a browser-based Gmail Notifier Add-on alternative to Google's application.

5) Send mail as…
As the name implies, the "send mail as" feature allows you to send messages from your Gmail account using other email addresses. For example, if you have a hotmail address such as xyz@hotmail.com, you can send mail from your Gmail account but have it appear as though you sent it from your hotmail address.

6) Get mail from other accounts
As long as your email accounts support POP, you can use Gmail to fetch and read email from up to five other email accounts using Mail Fetcher.

Tip: Combine Mail Fetcher with the "send mail as" feature and you can manage all your email accounts from one location.

Tip: If your other email accounts don't support POP, or if you have more than 5 other accounts, you can still manage all your email accounts entirely from within Gmail. Here's how it's done. Simply set up each of your other email accounts to forward your messages to your Gmail address. And you can still use the "send mail as" feature to appear to send your messages from the other addresses.

7) Twitter
If you're a Twitterer, Gmail makes it easy to do your daily twittering. You can add Twitter as a Gmail contact. Twitter will appear "online" in your contact list. You can then send instant messages from within Gmail to Twitter and have your messages automatically posted to your Twitter page. You can even set up Twitter to remind you via Gmail chat at an interval you specify to post to your Twitter page.

Gmail is indeed one of the most advanced email services available today. A Gmail account allows you to easily conduct, manage, organize, and find all of your online communication from a single location. And of course, as with almost everything "Google," it's free.