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So, it’s time for a digital camera huh? Well, buying one can be more than a little difficult. What types of features should you look for? Well, this guide will tell you that plus get you a little more familiar with what these cameras are capable of.

Megapixels
When it comes to megapixels, the more the better. I recommend a minimum of 2, but 3 or 4 is great. We did a test to see if a camera with 2.3 megapixels (actually 1.92 - 1600 x 1200) could produce a good quality 8×10.

Turns out it can, if you have the right paper and printer. We used HP Premium Plus photo paper with an HP 970 series printer and made a fantastic 8 x 10. Remember, I was a professional photographer before I got into computing, so I know a good print when I see it :-)

The resolution at 8×10 (we had to crop in to make the picture proportional to 8×10) was only 150 DPI. Most printers would not make a real good 8×10 at that resolution, but this one did. So, if you want to be sure you can get good 8 x 10s, you may want to go with a 3 megapixel camera or better (that gives you around 200 DPI at 8×10 size, still not quite the optimum 300 DPI, but it looks good with the right printer).

Optical vs Digital Zoom
You’ve probably noticed that most digital cameras have both a specification for digital and optical zoom. Pay the most attention to the optical zoom.

The optical zoom magnifies (zooms in) using glass. The digital zoom basically crops out the edge of the picture to make the subject appear closer, causing you to lose resolution or to get an interpolated resolution (i.e. the camera adds pixels). Neither of which help image quality.

Finally, make sure you get enough (optical) zoom. A 2x zoom isn’t going to do much for you. A 3x is the average you’ll find in most digital cameras will probably be good for most uses. More on lenses later.

Connection
How does the camera connect to your computer? If you have a USB port in your computer, you’ll want a camera that can connect via USB as opposed to a slow serial connection.

On the other hand, if your computer doesn’t have a USB port, is there a serial connector available for the camera you’re looking at? If so, is it a special order and how long does it take to get it?

Storage
What does the camera use to store images with? If it uses a memory stick, make sure you consider buying additional sticks when you get your camera.

Some cameras use a 3.5 inch disk for storage. Be careful of these!
Although it may sound like a good idea, a 3 megapixel camera at high resolution produces a 1 meg file (compressed!). That’s only 1 picture per disk.

Here’s a few more things to look out for when trying to make your digital camera purchase.

Picture Formats
When you’re trying to decide on which digital camera to get, check and see how many different picture formats it supports.

You want something that can produce both uncompressed (usually TIFF) and compressed (usually JPEG) images. I personally use the high quality JPEG setting on my camera for most of my shooting. TIFFs are just too big and the difference in quality is not ascertainable by mere mortals.

You also want to be able to shoot at a lower resolution than the camera’s maximum. That way, If you’re running short on memory, you can squeeze a few more shots on your memory stick.

Auxiliary Lens / Flash
This was a biggie for me. While a 3x zoom may work for the “average” user, I needed something that allowed me to do some wide angle work as well as have a good telephoto lens.

So, the camera I purchased a few months back was a Nikon Coolpix 990 (note that this isn’t the only camera that can accept lenses). It has auxiliary lenses that screw into the filter ring on the front of the lens. I now have an ultra-wide fisheye lens plus a nice telephoto.

In addition to lenses, I wanted a good flash. The flash that is built into most of these cameras gives you a top range of 15-20 feet - at best. I wanted a camera that could take a powerful auxiliary flash (again, the Nikon isn’t the only camera that fits this requirement, but I liked it better than the rest). If you need more reach than the small built in flash can deliver, then make sure you can attach an external flash to any camera you consider.

As an added bonus, if you get a camera that can take an external flash, you can place that flash on a bracket and eliminate red-eye.

Flash Distance
Speaking of flashes, make sure you check the distance the built in flash is good for. You don’t want a camera with a wimpy flash that only travels a few feet (well, unless you can get an external flash for it as described above).

Battery Type
This may not sound important, but it is. Anyone who owns a digital camera can tell you they eat batteries the way a sumo wrestler eats at a buffet.

Make sure the camera can run on regular (or rechargeable) “AA” type batteries. You don’t want a camera that eats through expensive lithium batteries every 10 shots or so.

One thing to remember about digital cameras, they do eat through batteries. I recommend getting some Nickel Metal Hydride rechargeable for it. I have some for mine and they have saved me a fortune.

Final Notes
Choosing a digital camera isn’t easy. There’s a huge selection out there and only you can determine which features you need.

For instance, if you shoot wildlife photos, a small 3x zoom probably isn’t going to cut it (unless you can attach auxiliary lenses to it). If you shoot lots of close-ups, make sure the camera has some sort of macro capability. If you shoot big group photos indoors, an external flash may be necessary.

My advice is to make a list of things you want to be able to do with the camera then go to somewhere that can help you make a good purchase decision.

Finally, buy the BEST camera you can possibly afford. Or wait until the price drops on one with the type of features you want.

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Ever wondered just what that enigmatic name means?

Gaming and multimedia applications are some of the most satisfying programs you can get for your PC, but getting them to run properly isn’t always as easy as it could be. First, the PC architecture was never designed as a gaming platform. Second, the wide-ranging nature of the PC means that one person’s machine can be different from another. While games consoles all contain the same hardware, PCs don’t: the massive range of difference can make gaming a headache.

To alleviate as much of the pain as possible, Microsoft needed to introduce a common standard which all games and multimedia applications could follow – a common interface between the OS and whatever hardware is installed in the PC, if you like. This common interface is DirectX, something which can be the source of much confusion.

DirectX is an interface designed to make certain programming tasks much easier, for both the game developer and the rest of us who just want to sit down and play the latest blockbuster. Before we can explain what DirectX is and how it works though, we need a little history lesson.

DirectX history
Any game needs to perform certain tasks again and again. It needs to watch for your input from mouse, joystick or keyboard, and it needs to be able to display screen images and play sounds or music. That’s pretty much any game at the most simplistic level.

Imagine how incredibly complex this was for programmers developing on the early pre-Windows PC architecture, then. Each programmer needed to develop their own way of reading the keyboard or detecting whether a joystick was even attached, let alone being used to play the game. Specific routines were needed even to display the simplest of images on the screen or play a simple sound.

Essentially, the game programmers were talking directly to your PC’s hardware at a fundamental level. When Microsoft introduced Windows, it was imperative for the stability and success of the PC platform that things were made easier for both the developer and the player. After all, who would bother writing games for a machine when they had to reinvent the wheel every time they began work on a new game? Microsoft’s idea was simple: stop programmers talking directly to the hardware, and build a common toolkit which they could use instead. DirectX was born.

How it works
At the most basic level, DirectX is an interface between the hardware in your PC and Windows itself, part of the Windows API or Application Programming Interface. Let’s look at a practical example. When a game developer wants to play a sound file, it’s simply a case of using the correct library function. When the game runs, this calls the DirectX API, which in turn plays the sound file. The developer doesn’t need to know what type of sound card he’s dealing with, what it’s capable of, or how to talk to it. Microsoft has provided DirectX, and the sound card manufacturer has provided a DirectX-capable driver. He asks for the sound to be played, and it is – whichever machine it runs on.

From our point of view as gamers, DirectX also makes things incredibly easy – at least in theory. You install a new sound card in place of your old one, and it comes with a DirectX driver. Next time you play your favourite game you can still hear sounds and music, and you haven’t had to make any complex configuration changes.

Originally, DirectX began life as a simple toolkit: early hardware was limited and only the most basic graphical functions were required. As hardware and software has evolved in complexity, so has DirectX. It’s now much more than a graphical toolkit, and the term has come to encompass a massive selection of routines which deal with all sorts of hardware communication. For example, the DirectInput routines can deal with all sorts of input devices, from simple two-button mice to complex flight joysticks. Other parts include DirectSound for audio devices and DirectPlay provides a toolkit for online or multiplayer gaming.

DirectX versions
The current version of DirectX at time of writing is DirectX 9.22.1284. This runs on all versions of Windows from Windows 98 up to and including Windows Server 2003 along with every revision in between. It doesn’t run on Windows 95 though: if you have a machine with Windows 95 installed, you’re stuck with the older and less capable 8.0a. Windows NT 4 also requires a specific version – in this case, it’s DirectX 3.0a.

With so many versions of DirectX available over the years, it becomes difficult to keep track of which version you need. In all but the most rare cases, all versions of DirectX are backwardly compatible – games which say they require DirectX 7 will happily run with more recent versions, but not with older copies. Many current titles explicitly state that they require DirectX 9, and won’t run without the latest version installed. This is because they make use of new features introduced with this version, although it has been known for lazy developers to specify the very latest version as a requirement when the game in question doesn’t use any of the new enhancements. Generally speaking though, if a title is version locked like this, you will need to upgrade before you can play. Improvements to the core DirectX code mean you may even see improvements in many titles when you upgrade to the latest build of DirectX. Downloading and installing DirectX need not be complex, either.

Upgrading DirectX
All available versions of Windows come with DirectX in one form or another as a core system component which cannot be removed, so you should always have at least a basic implementation of the system installed on your PC. However, many new games require the very latest version before they work properly, or even at all.

Generally, the best place to install the latest version of DirectX from is the dedicated section of the Microsoft Web site, which is found at www.microsoft.com/windows/directx. As we went to press, the most recent build available for general download was DirectX 9.22.1284. You can download either a simple installer which will in turn download the components your system requires as it installs, or download the complete distribution package in one go for later offline installation.

Another good source for DirectX is games themselves. If a game requires a specific version, it’ll be on the installation CD and may even be installed automatically by the game’s installer itself. You won’t find it on magazine cover discs though, thanks to Microsoft’s licensing terms.

Diagnosing problems

Diagnosing problems with a DirectX installation can be problematic, especially if you don’t know which one of the many components is causing your newly purchased game to fall over. Thankfully, Microsoft provides a useful utility called the DirectX Diagnostic Tool, although this isn’t made obvious. You won’t find this tool in the Start Menu with any version of Windows, and each tends to install it in a different place.

The easiest way to use it is to open the Start Menu’s Run dialog, type in dxdiag and then click OK. When the application first loads, it takes a few seconds to interrogate your DirectX installation and find any problems. First, the DirectX Files tab displays version information on each one of the files your installation uses. The Notes section at the bottom is worth checking, as missing or corrupted files will be flagged here.

The tabs marked Display, Sound, Music, Input and Network all relate to specific areas of DirectX, and all but the Input tab provide tools to test the correct functioning on your hardware. Finally, the More Help tab provides a useful way to start the DirectX Troubleshooter, Microsoft’s simple linear problem solving tool for many common DirectX issues.

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Ndisuio.sys, a very mysterious system file is present in Windows XP and Vista and is a driver for wireless things such as wi-fi and bluetooth. However, there have been many issues with this file downloading immense amounts of data and perhaps causing activity that is “big brother”ish.

The fact that hardly any information on this file downloading data is available by Microsoft makes things quite suspicious about it. It has even been noted that it looked as if it was transferring data to major companies like Comcast, Road Runner, Time Warner, BTC and Verizon.

The good news is, it turns out this file duplicates data that is sent/received, so wherever you go, it will also transfer the data to that file but it does not leave the computer/network so it’s not spyware. So it’s not as much of a big brother situation then it looks like. It simply performs internal communication tasks and stands for NDIS user I/O, hence, NDISUIO. NDISUIO is also used as a driver by many developers as it makes certain wireless network tasks easier such as implementing it for 802.11x connections. Some firewalls also use it as it can get the data in order to filter it.

But duplicating this data can hog resources for no reason, so disabling it is the best thing to do. The data rate of this file’s received data is huge, so that indicates that the data transfer is not over the Internet, but locally. So it’s just a duplicate of network activity but because it’s local everything transfers faster but uses more resources then casual internet usage as there’s more data involved at a given time span of 1 second, for example.

To disable this file, go to the control panel, administration tools, services, Wireless Zero Configuration, double click and disable it. This file is probably required to run if you use any linksys wireless devices.

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If you have ever wondered how you can earn just a bit of extra cash, you might want to consider online auctions. Everyone has heard of EBay these days and hundreds of people are earning a decent living just selling items on auctions like it.

There is no reason why you can’t be earning as well through online auctions. All you need is a product or two to get started with and you are in business! Your first auctions items can come from your own attic or garage.

Look around your house and see if there is anything that you don’t use anymore that you could get a few bucks for. A digital camera is invaluable in online auctions. In order to maximize your bids, you need to have a photo of the object you are trying to sell. People like to know what they are getting. So take at least one shot of the item in its best light and put that up with your listing.

It really pays to shop around. While EBay is the biggest and best known auctions site, it is far from the only one. Big and powerful also means expensive, as many sellers have noticed in recent months. The prices to list your item have gone up drastically since the beginning of the popular auctions site, while other websites offering the same services will still let you post for free. Check out if the websites charge you for selling and how much. That will help you make your final decision. You could also try posting auctions on several different sites and see how they turn out.

When you have reached a conclusion as to which websites are best for your purposes, you will probably have run out of items to sell from your own home. Now it is time to start looking for more sources. There are several ways to go about this.

Garage sales, yard sales and the like are good places to find great items that just need a cleaning in order to sell well on auctions sites. However, it takes time to travel from one garage sale to the next and unless you really enjoy it, the hunt is not worth it. You will spend more time traveling, buying and cleaning than you will be paid. As they say, “time is money”!

Another option is to buy wholesale. There are dropshippers all over the world who will happily give you photos that you can post on your auctions site and when you get paid, you pay the dropshipper and give them the address of the buyer so they can send the item. The big disadvantage here, although you save time, is that dropshippers sometimes run out of things and you have no control over when an item goes out. If things go wrong, it is not your fault, but you’ll end up paying!

You could also buy several items packaged together from one auction, separate them and resell on an individual basis. This is probably the best way to go if you want to have full control and earn well.

It really is possible to earn with online auctions, you just have to know what you are doing. So get started today and start learning!

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Have you used articles to promote your website yet? If not, article marketing is an extremely valuable and often overlooked area of promotion that you should look into. It is possibly one of the easiest and cheapest manners to draw attention to your business as well as create backlinks.

To get started in article marketing, all you need are some writing skills or the ability to hire someone who has them. Choose topics that relate to your business and write short, but useful articles on them. For example, if you have a website that sells diapers, you could write articles on the advantages of disposable or cloth diapers, how to prevent diaper rash, etc. The articles need to be between 400-600 words long and should offer valuable tidbits and information.

Use relevant keywords in your article marketing documents so the search engines can pick them up easily. The title and first and last paragraph should contain the most important keywords relating to the story. If you utilize valuable keywords, that is ones that are often searched for, you will also gain the interest of webmasters and ezine publishers.

Now for the promotion part, the resource box. This handy little bio at the end of your article is where you are allowed to talk about yourself and your business. Keep it short, most resource boxes can only contain 3-5 lines, but that is more than enough to add what you need to. You should have one line about yourself as the author, a line or two about your business and a link to your website. That is really all you need.

So, how does article marketing help you draw traffic to your site? Well, you can give these handy, informative little articles away for free so that webmasters and anyone else looking for free content can come and copy your article, resource box and all, for use in other places. Each and every time someone uses your article on their website or blog or in an ezine, you are getting free publicity. And that is the basis of article marketing.

For widespread article marketing you can submit your articles to free article directories like Ezine Articles or other similar websites. There, webmasters and other free content-seekers will browse through the articles and pick up the ones they like and can use. The conditions of use require them to include your name as author and your bio box in every single copy of the article. This is article marketing at its finest! A decent writer can whip off a few articles in an hour and they will continue to produce backlinks and promote your product for years!

For more specialized article marketing, you might consider offering articles exclusively to one or two websites that fit your theme. Simply write a brief email with the article included, explaining that you would like to offer use of your article, along with a link to your site for free. If you are only offering this opportunity to one website, mention that it is a unique offer and the webmaster will be more likely to take you up on it.

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If you are like hundreds of thousands of people around the world, you are looking for a good way to earn money online. Everyone looking into online business opportunities comes across affiliate programs at some point or another, but only a few actually rise to the level where they are earning decent money, the majority quit before getting to that point.

Affiliate programs are like any other business; they require patience and hard work in order to make it work. Far too often, it is promoted as the ideal way to earn instant cash, which is just not true. In order to earn in affiliate programs, you need to plan for at least a year of low to nothing earnings. Perhaps you will actually earn more, but don’t go into this opportunity expecting to get rich overnight. That being said, you can certainly improve your chances with a few tips.

Build yourself a trustworthy reputation. There are hundreds of other people out there promoting the same affiliate programs links for products and services. People know what an affiliate programs link looks like and will go out of their way to not give you a commission if they think you are only in it for the money. So, to stand out from everyone else, you need to build yourself a reputation.

The best way to go about doing this is to establish a presence in your niche area. This can be anything you choose. Internet marketing is generally not a good idea, since that is the first niche most people head for. Let’s say you decide to focus on herb gardening. Instead of starting up a website to sell a variety of affiliate programs products, start off by writing a blog and offering good, quality information . . . for free!

That’s right, free. You might think this is a bit counter-productive, but remember that you are not going for the fast buck; you want people to keep giving you money and recommending their friends to give you money as well. When they see that you are not only doing this for the money, but to genuinely help people, readers will begin to send more people your way.

Once you have established your reputation as a guru or high quality information provider in your chosen area, you are ready to start monetizing. This could take up to six months to really get people to trust you, so be prepared. Then you can begin to recommend tried and true products that you think would help your readers. Don’t be afraid to throw in non-affiliate programs links as well, to keep things clean. The worst thing a blogger or webmaster can do is to switch from being helpful and free to suddenly trying to make money fast, at the expense of fans.

By following these steps and taking care not to fool your clients, you can make a living at affiliate programs. It is a good way to earn money while doing something you love and providing useful information to others.

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Your website is where your business resides — it’s like the headquarter of an offline company. Hence, it is important to practise good design principles to make sure your site reaches out to the maximum number of visitors and sells to as many people as possible.

Make sure you have clear directions on the navigation of your website. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to navigate around your website without confusion.

Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimize them using image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size.

Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If a paragraph is too long, you should split it into seperate paragraphs so that the text blocks will not be too big. This is important because a block of text that is too large will deter visitors from reading your content.

Make sure your website complies to web standards at www.w3.org and make sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose out on a lot of prospective visitors.

Avoid using scripting languages on your site unless it is absolutely necessary. Use scripting languages to handle or manipulate data, not to create visual effects on your website. Heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and even crash some browsers. Also, scripts are not supported across all browsers, so some visitors might miss important information because of that.

Use CSS to style your page content because they save alot of work by styling all elements on your website in one go.

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One of the first things I do when I begin implementing a site is to force the www (or no-www) in the domain name. Why would I want to do this? For search engine optimization of course. For example, programimi.com redirects to www.programimi.com. What this means for Google is that it gets crawled as one site. Sites that link to programimi.com will add to the pagerank of www.programimi.com. Theoretically, this could double your Pagerank score (but not necessarily your Pagerank rating).

Anyway, here is the code to add to your .htaccess file to force www, but make sure mod_rewrite apache module is turned on:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(.*)\.programimi\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.programimi.com/$1 [R=301,L]

And here is the code to force no-www (in spirit of no-www.org):

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.programimi\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://programimi.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Of course, replace programimi.com above with your own domain name. To edit your .htaccess file you may need to enable view hidden files, or if the file doesn’t exist, you’ll have to create it yourself. The best way is to do it through an SSH connection to your server.

If you don’t have access to .htaccess, you could also accomplish the same thing through php with a simple script at the top of every page that will try to find www in the URL and redirect if found. Not the most elegant solution, but it does what it needs to do for those who can’t edit .htaccess for some reason.

if(!substr($_SERVER[’HTTP_HOST’], ‘www’)) //check if www exists in URL
{ header(’Location: http://www.programimi.com/’); //redirect to www.programimi.com
}

Or for those using wordpress, you could simply install a plugin that does all this for you! One example plugin is WWW-Redirect.

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When Google first introduced Adsense, it was a virtually unknown element. The few webmasters who began using it made a lot of money in those first few months. However, now Adsense is so common, you see it repeated various times on every webpage!

Have we become immune to the lure of Adsense? Some webmaster say yes, others claim that they are still earning well using Google’s system. It all boils down to how you use this tool.

Making Adsense blend into your page is supposed to be the best way to earn with it, but now webmasters are discovering that this might not be ideal. People are accustomed to clicking on electric blue links. We all do it and now that everyone is so web-savvy, they automatically look for blue links. So if your webpage features pink or green links, you should consider keeping Adsense links blue. The rest of the ad can match your theme, just make sure that people realize the links are clickable.

Placing ads where they can’t be missed is another technique that is not always used to the best effect. For example, an Adsense banner at the top of your page might make sense since it is the first thing people see, but you also have to take into account how jaded folks are. We see these banners everywhere. We came to your site for specific information and the banner is in the way!

Instead, why not try putting a block of text ads or a vertical banner to the right hand side of the page where it draws the eye but doesn’t stop the reader from getting the information they came to get.

Another useful place to put your Adsense ads is at the bottom of your page as well as in the middle of an article. If you do place a block in the middle of an article, make sure people know that the information continues below and don’t make the block too big. A line of text ads or a small box are all you need.

Placing ads at the end of your article is a good way to get clicks from people who want to know more on the topic. If you have a decent article, seeded with relevant keywords, you should have ads that your readers will find useful at the bottom of the page.

Having well-written content that contains around 5-10% keyword frequency is often the best way to make sure you have relevant ads. Having relevant ads is the key to getting clicks!

Make sure you don’t use any techniques that Google deems inappropriate or you will lose your account and that will be the end of all earnings! This includes clicking on your own Adsense or asking others to. It is not a good idea to try and cheat, since Google has eyes everywhere. One hint that you might not be playing by the rules and “Adios, Adsense!” So stick to real techniques instead!

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Normally, if you want to have professional designers custom build your site, you must be prepared to dish out at least a few hundred dollars. All this can change if you know where to find the best deals, the best designs for the lowest price. Here’s a rough guide:

First, you must understand that it is a rip off to get companies to design websites for you. Have you ever seen those advertisements in newspaper classified ad sections that offer a 5-page website at $500? These companies are established companies with physical locations, therefore they have to increase the amount they charge to pay off some overheads: office rent, designer’s wages, advertising costs and so on.

Therefore, it would be wise to find freelance designers who work from home. These people are often working from home so they do not have a high operation cost like that of a company. On the other hand, they will be able to design images with quality similar to those of designers from big companies, so it’s a “no-brainer” choice.

However, choose freelancers with care. The best way to do this would be to go to elance.com. There, you can post the abstract of your project and get thousands of freelancers to bid on your project, so you will surely get the best deal. On top of that, you will be able to choose the designers based on their experience, past transactions and ratings, so your value for money is secured.

Another route you can take is to design your website yourself. Think about it, if you only need 5 simple pages to present some simple information, why waste hundreds of dollars for it? Just spend a little time to sit down and do it yourself. You’ll be able to design your own sites even if you do not know a single line of HTML code with the help of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) programs such as Microsoft Frontpage, Macromedia Dreamweaver and so on.

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