The Importance of Long Term Planning for Your New Website

There’s few things quite as exciting as launching your brand new website. You’ve got everything in place, you’ve run all your tests, and now you can’t wait to set it out into the world and wait for all those visitors to flock by in their droves.

The day comes, you upload the last of your files and there you have it, your very own website, live on the Internet. Thrilled with the results, you tell everybody you can about the site. Your friends and family hear about it through texts, phone calls and even around the dinner table, your colleagues and clients receive an enthusiastic email, and your social media followers are urged to check it out.

Many of them do. They swing by, take a look around and tell you how great it is. Then they leave again. Sure, some may come back on occasion, but after that first visit, most have already seen everything they want to see and have no real reason to visit again.

Weeks go by. Weeks turn into months, and soon that sparkling new website you launched with such gusto now languishes in some dusky corner of the Internet, unloved, uncared for, and neglected.

What a waste of time and resources, right?

Not really. With a bit of long-term planning, you stand a much better chance of keeping that initial momentum running strong long after launch.

Fresh content

Nothing works quite as well at keeping your visitors coming back to your website like a frequent stream of fresh content. After all, why would they return time and time again to see the same old thing they saw last time?

Updating your website with a regular stream of new material such as blog posts, articles, or even photo galleries and videos gives those visitors a reason to return. They liked what you posted last time, so when they see you’ve posted something new, chances are they’ll like that too and want to check it out.

Fresh content also has the added advantage of helping with your Search Engine Optimisation. The more quality material you post on your site, the more favourably those major search engines are going to look on your site, and the further up those search results you soar.

Cheap hosting

When you first set out to create your website, it’s all too tempting to get drawn into those bargain deals offered by cheap web hosting companies, though again, here’s where a little long term planning can really come in handy. Some of the best web hosting deals are in fact some of the cheapest so it's always best to look at the options by using sites like this.

Those deals usually only last for a single year term. After that, you’ll be asked to pay the full price, or at least something close to it.

To make sure you can still afford to keep your website live after that first year, look into how much its going to cost you once the honeymoon period is over, and set that aside in your budget.

Marketing plan

That initial influx of traffic that comes when you tell everybody about your new website is great, but once that early hype dies down, how are you going to continue to attract new visitors to your site?

We’ve already talked about the importance of adding new content to hit those search engines and keep your existing audience returning, but to increase that audience base, you’re going to need to do a little bit of marketing.

This is neither as complicated nor as costly as it sounds. With a bit of planning and forethought, you could create compelling social media campaigns, set up a newsletter or even reach out through offline media to draw attention to your new site and ensure you keep the momentum up long after you launch.

Signup Begins For Google Fiber in Austin

Finally the wait is over for the residents of Austin, and now they can get the gigabit-speed connectivity, which is 100 times faster than other the speed of other of ISPs provides. 

Now residents of South and Southeast Austin can sign up for high-speed Internet service Google Fiber, Google Fiber representatives said. Before some days Google Fiber has unveiled its Downtown “Fiber Space” and payment plan options. In an official event company announced the launch of Google Fiber, a gigabit-speed service for the residents of Austin, Texas. As per Mark Strama, Google Fiber Head, “As we all know that the greater speed can bring the tons of opportunities for the city as well as for country, perhaps at this time we can’t even predict those opportunities”.

Earlier in April 2013, Google was announced the launch of Fiber into Austin, and residents have been eager to start using the service ever since, but due to some reasons its take too long. David Anthony, a Technical program manager, stated that “We have three stages before the launch of Google Fiber and they are planning, permitting, and construction”. The more he added that Google Fiber service is now ready for the south and southeast portions of the city as here we got the permits earlier to build the infrastructure.

Google Fiber plan for residents of South and Southeast Austin: 

In normal plan all the Google Fiber customers have to pay the $70 a month and then they will have the download and upload speeds up to 1 Gbps in an addition of 1 TB of cloud storage across Google Drive, Google+ photos and Gmail. For premium service customers need to pay the $ 130 per month and they will get the TV plan with over 150 channels including HD channels and they will be able to record up-to eight shows simultaneously as package offers. In both plans customers need to pay the $ 300 as construction fee with a commitment of one-year. Whenever, the speed is limited to only1 Mbps upload speeds and 5 Mbps download speed. Google Fiber is also available for professional organizations where small business owners need to pay the $100 a month for the plan which will include super-fast Internet speed with a 1 static IP in $ 20 a month or 5 static IPs in $ 30 a month.

Signup deadline for Google Fiber: 

All the five regions in Austin have different deadlines to sign up for Google Fiber as; the region of Bluebonnet has the deadline of January 19, 2015, but in closer look at Bluebonnet shows the split into smaller portions and each portion need to get the certain number of sign-ups to get the Google Fiber connectivity. On the other hand region of Onion Creek have the deadline of July 16, 2014 to sign up for Google Fiber, however in all 28 regions no none have met the sign-up goal yet.

The other cities for who will get the Google Fiber connectivity are Provo, Utah and Kansas City, but the people might have to wait for some more time, as the Sign-ups process for the 2 counties in Kansas City is expected to open in 2015.

Everything That You Need to Know About Snapping

Marketing and sales plays a major role in a business to get it flourish. Snapchat is one that application that has become popular among the teens within short period of time. You must be amazed by couple of facts about the Snapchat that,

• It was founded in 2011, as a class project at the Stanford University. 
• Over 20 million snaps were sent per day in October 2012. 
• In the mid year of 2013 that is around in the month of June, over 200 million snaps were sent per day.
• Today in the present time around 400 million snaps are sent per day. This is around 1,750 percent in just a year.

Teenagers response to snapchat’s leaked images

Secretly several thousands of snapchat images and videos were hacked by the third party applications but the recent news confirms that the hacked images and videos have been released by the third party online sites after reserving them for long period of time. The most shocking part of the news is that total of over 90,000 personal snapchat pictures and 9,000 snapchat videos of the teenagers have been leaked online. The users of the snapchat were mostly aged between 13 and 17; news is confirmed by the officials.

But can the snapchat alone be questioned for this negligence? Another app that is being investigated is the Snapsave. Snapsave is an android application that allows users to save their snapchat pictures and videos.

The snapsave application

When the representative of snapchat Georgie Casey was questioned about the leaking or snapping of the pictures, he replied, “Our application has nothing to do with it and we have never logged usernames or password and neither the snapchat runs on a cloud setup.”

Another popular app which came into limelight was Snapsaved which is similar to that of snapsave. Snapsaved impersonated the original app which allows the users to save their pictures permanently. This snapping scam has not only affected the common people but its impact has also affected several Hollywood celebrities like Rhianna, Kate Upton, Jennifer Lawrence, and Kim Kardashian. The nude pictures of these popular celebrities were also leaked.

Many users have downloaded the leaked images claiming that the images downloaded by them were not searchable unlike any other images from viralpop.com. Several cases and objections have been logged against the app but the app is constantly declining the responsibility for the snapping of the leaked pictures issuing a statement snapchatters were victimized by their usage of the third party apps to save the pictures, a practice that we prohibited in our terms and conditions of use.”

The popularity of the snapchat among the teenagers can be easily revealed by a fact that universal studio’s production movie; Ouija’s 19 sec promotional trailer was launched in the snapchat as Universal Studio’s have been collaborated with the snapchat. According to the news the movie Ouija got massive opening, topping the charts and made over $20 million in its first week and 75 percent of its visitors were under the age of 25 years and 61 percent of the visitors were female.

3-D-Printing Bio-Electronic Parts

Print Functioning Circuitry from Semiconductors

With 3D printer making a prototype or spare part out of metal or polymer, researchers at Princeton University have taken a step in expanding the technology’s capabilities by creating a way in print functioning electronic circuitry out of semiconductors as well as other materials.

They are also trying ways of combining electronics with biocompatible materials and even living tissues that can pave the way for new implants. According to Michael McAlpine, assistant professor at Princeton states that with cartridges that are full of semiconductor `inks’, it can be possible to print circuits of all types of tasks and to demonstrate it, the researcher printed a light emitting diode within a contact lens.

The display circuitry and processors in computers do not have the provision to 3-D printing since they need several complex components fabricated on the nanoscale though it could be utilised in making medical devices or implants incorporating electronics.

 For instance, researchers could print a scaffold for growing nerve tissue according to McAlpine and suggests that if they could print LEDs with circuits within the scaffold, the light could stimulate the nerves where the electronics could be used to interface with prosthetic arm

3-D Printing – Bio-Electronic Ear

McAlpine had used 3-D printing last year, to make a `bio-electronic’ ear which was made from living cells together with supportive matrix of gooey hydrogel and had conductive ink which was made from a suspension of silver nanoparticles that formed an electrical coil and could receive radio signals.

Thereafter his group worked to expand 3-D printing to semiconducting materials which enables a printed device to process incoming sounds. Semiconductors seem to be the key ingredient of information processing circuits which can be used to detect as well as emit light.

McAlphine’s team, to broaden the 3-D printing palette, built its own printer and several of them in the market presently, are only designed to print plastic The bionic ear, for example had features on the millimetre scale. In order to make LEDs they had to go to the micrometre sale.

Quantum dots were taken to make the LED by the Princeton researcher, semiconducting nanoparticles which emitted bright light in response to electrical current. Besides this, two types of metal were also used to make electrical leads and contacts for the device together with polymers and silicone matrix in order to hold it together.

3-D Printing - Various Development 

While printing with so many inks, the challenge was that they bled into each other and hence the researchers had to ensure to suspend each material in a solvent which would not mix with either of them. His team had made a cube of eight green and orange LEDs which were stacked 2 x 2 x 2 and printed the LEDs on contact lens after they were scanned in order to make the shape of the printed devices matching to the curvature of the lens surface.

McAlpines’ team are not the only ones working in expanding the possibilities of 3-D printing. Chemical engineer, Michael Dickey from North Carolina State University in Raleigh who was not involved with McAlpines’ work, states that `most 3-D printing is like a glorified hot glue gun just printing polymers.

His group developed a liquid metal which can be printed into stretchable, self-healing wires while a professor of biologically inspired engineering at Harvard, Jennifer Lewis has developed 3-D printing for tissue engineering on combining various cell types in complex patterns including blood vessels.

Sony Malware May Be Linked To Other Damaging Attacks

Identification of Technical Evidence at Sony Corp’s Hollywood Studio

Researchers of Cyber security have identified what according to them is technical evidence linking massive breach at Sony Corp’s Hollywood studio with the attacks in South Korea and the Middle East. Kaspersky Lab, a Moscow based security software maker stated that it has uncovered evidence that all the three campaigns could have been launched by one group or it could have been facilitated by an individual organisation who are well versed in working with destructive malware.

Cyber attackers had damaged thousands of computers at Saudi Arabia’s national oil company as well as Qatar’s RasGas with virus known as Shamoon in 2012, which is one of the most destructive campaigns till date and Iran has been blamed by the U.S. officials.

A year ago, over 30,000 PCs were affected at South Korean banks as well as broadcasting companies by similar attack that cyber security researchers were of the belief that it was launched from North Korea. Kurt Baumgartner, Kaspersky researcher informed Reuters that there are `unusually striking similarities’ which are related to the malicious software and techniques in both the campaigns and the Sony attack on Nov. 24 in which a malware was dubbed `Destover’, was used.

Perpetrator Access to Confidential Information 

The attack had crippled the computer systems giving the perpetrator access to confidential employee information which also included the executive salaries. The attack is said to have used a so called wiper virus which can erase data and has the capabilities of bringing down networks with thousands of computers thereby preventing companies in conducting their business.Similarities were described by Baumgartner in depth in a technical blog which was published recently on Kaspersky’s website.

He stated in an interview that `it could be a single actor or it could be that there are trainers or individuals who float across groups’. According to him he states that the evidence indicate that the hackers from North Korea were the cause of the attack on Sony though it is unclear whether they work directly for the government.

Several of the cyber security researchers are not in agreement with Kaspersky’s interpretation of the technical evidence. Symantec Corp. a California based company had stated in a blog post that it also sees similarities between the attacks against Sony and the Shamoon campaign and attributes it to being copied stating that there does not seem to be any evidence that the same group is behind both attacks.

Critical Infrastructure At Risk

Chertoff co-founder and executive chairman of The Chertoff Group, which is a global security consultancy based in Washington commented in an interview that `either for political or economic reasons at some point, sophisticated actors are going to be more willing to use destructive malware.

He adds further that Sony attack shows that critical infrastructure is at risk and the potential for cyber weapons to be deployed continues to increase. Cyber security companies fear for more destructive attacks in the forthcoming months.

Chief executive officer, Ron Gula, for Tenable Network Security Inc., which is based in Columbia, Maryland comments, `if attacks like those against Sony continue against other U.S. companies, 2015 could be a year of disrupted services’.