When It Comes To Security, Apple's Got You Covered.

If data and internet security is an issue for you and your computer, the new Leopard OS X operating system from Apple is sure to help you sleep nights

Parental Controls

As the parent of an 11 year old, I dread the internet and any unfettered access my children may enjoy. Porn, violence, creeps and predators all pose hazards to our children. The new parental controls in the Leopard operating system are robust and comprehensive, allowing you to place time limits on your child's usage, to block broadly filtered and/or specific Adult or other sites, to limit the programs your child can use and even to log email and chat messages for parents to monitor. They're available in System Preferences under Parental Control.

User Accounts and Filevault passwords

For any government worker, medical practitioner, business person or researcher, it's imperative that one protect one's data from prying eyes. Apple's user account setup can effectively give varying levels of security depending on your specific needs. The user accounts and keychain passwords can keep your data relatively safe when sharing a computer with others in a home or office environment. Users with particularly sensitive data can store their entire home folder in an encrypted disk image using Filevault, or you can just as easily encrypt specific files.

The EfI Firmware password is a feature that can protect your entire computer from being booted with an external disk if that computer should fall into the wrong hands.

Just another reason, you should'a bought a Mac.

Tax Incentives For Your Computer Upgrade

In our recent Federal budget, the Harper government has offered a tax incentive to all businesses to upgrade their computer systems. A 100% deduction is in place from Jan 27 '09 to Feb 1st 2011 for the purchase of all computer hardware and software packages, which means that that RAM and hard-drive upgrade you've been looking forward to can now practically pay for itself when you figure in the speed and storage benefits combined with the tax savings. Splurging on that new Airport Extreme base station, OS upgrade, Time Machine and Mobile Me account, all the while fully and seamlessly integrating your Apple technology into your home and worklife has never been so easy and appealing.

Web Advertising Rising While Newspapers Fail

According to research firm eMarketer, Internet advertising will grow this year while traditional media such as newspapers, magazines and television continue to fall. US spending stands to reach a total of over $23 billion this year with yearly increases of over 10%. Cost effectiveness and accountablity are some of the reasons cited for the steady increases while claims that net advertising is recession proof are also heartening in these apparently bleak economic times.

Paid search ads through Google, Yahoo and smaller engines and directories will make up nearly half of that spending while banner and classified ads will comprise nearly 35% of the total. Video advertising also stands to grow by almost 50% per year.

Linking Strategies For Traffic and Robots

To achieve any level of traffic to your website, you need to develop a series of inbound links from relevant sites and dedicated web directories. The links themselves will drive a certain amount of traffic to your site, depending on how busy that site is, but the true value of that inbound link will be in the 'link popularity' your site will achieve. Google robots and other search engines will view these links and rank your site higher in its database because of the perceived popularity of your site.

It's important to choose relevant links to your site and not just random link farms whose generality and lack of relevance can actually hurt your site. The best way to find relevant and well-weighted directories and link sites is to do a google search within your niche. For example, for a vancouver island tourism site, google 'vancouver island tourism directory'. For an Ottawa tattoo studio, search for 'Ottawa search engine' and 'Tattoo link directory'. The top hits listed are the sites you want to be affiliated with, for their Google relevance will transfer itself to your site.

There was a time when most link and web directories offered free linking, but sadly those days are gone. Most of the most important directories these days charge for listings, anywhere from $30.00 to $250.00 per year. Do some research and find the best opportunities for your particular niche with the best return on investment.

Linking is important. Don't ingore it.