Professional Photography

First of all becoming a working professional photographer has to do with one main element; Becoming recognized in the field. People don\'t only buy your art; they also buy your credentials. In a sense, their buying what you represent. Often those things you represent will be of intrinsic value to your customers. Such as with whom you\'ve worked in the past, where you\'ve been published, how long have you been a photographer, where have you traveled to do work and so on?
Secondly you will also want to get as much education under your belt as possible. Throughout your education as a photographer you should also be taking as many photographs as possible to help build your portfolio. You will need to ensure your photography portfolio stands above the rest by paying extra special attending to detail. Look at the book itself, the paper it\'s printed on, the font of descriptions, your borders, your themes, picture sizes, colors, layout and so on. Do not simply fill a scrap book or photo album with photographs. Once finished, you should be able to walk away from your portfolio and be impressed with your own work, which is not easy task for many photographers, as most of them are their own worst critics.
Further you should also start looking around for assistant or internship work. Often this work doesn\'t pay well but still it will help you learn more about the industry and art. You should try and work under the most respected photographers you can find. By doing this you are adding to your credentials without knowing it. You only want to surround yourself with the best and present your best side all the times.
Moreover you will also need to have a strong sense of business acumen. If you are planning on being like the 50% of other photographers who are self employed, you\'ll need to make sure you have a good sense of networking skills, pricing, public relations knowledge and on top of that have a strong sense of creativity and imagination. Being an artist and a business person will be no small feat. It will have you on your toes at all times.

Lastly, you\'ll want to narrow your professional interest to one or two main fields. For example you may want to work with press and other media, or you may be interested in photojournalism. Others may be interested in scientific or sports photography. Whatever your interest is, make sure you find the best people in that particular industry and study them. Model your success after theirs.

Remember, nothing worth while comes easy. There will be times when you think \"what am I doing?\". Stick with it and there will be a payoff at the end of the tunnel. There will be a ray of light in the end of the day. Most importantly, enjoy your whole journey. The success at the end wouldn\'t be as welcome if there wasn\'t the struggle at the beginning.
With best wishes from www.microglobe.co.uk

By Mr. Amin.
FRom : Free Content Articles.

Understanding the Components of a Home Network

Home networks are becoming more common. People want to be able to share a single broadband Internet connection to several computers in the house. There are many different devices that you can use to make up your home network. If you have never heard network terminology device names like router, hub, etc may seem confusing.

The purpose of most of these devices are to control how the network passes around information. This information is sent in the form of "packets". I will refer to the term packet several times in this article. It simply means the data that the network is transporting. I will now explain the purpose of the major components of a home network.

What is a Hub

A hub is a device that has several Ethernet ports on the back of the device. One of these ports will likely be labeled “Uplink”. This port allows you to connect multiple hubs together, if you run out of ports on your hub. If you do not have an uplink port on your hub, the hub can not be easily extended if you run out of ports.

A hub is a device that attaches multiple computers on an Ethernet network. If you have a number different computers that you want to connect together, you could connect each to the hub. Any packet that is sent out by any computer on the network will immediately be transmitted to the other computers. Each computer will determine if the packet was really intended for it, and filter out packets that were intended for other computers.

You really should not use a hub in a modern home network. You should always use a switch in place of a hub. Switches will be discussed in the next section.

What is a Switch

A switch is a device that has several Ethernet ports on the back of the device. One of these ports will likely be labeled “Uplink”. This port allows you to connect multiple switches together, if you run out of ports on your switch. If you do not have an uplink port on your switch, the switch can not be easily extended if you run out of ports.

A switch serves the same function as a hub. It allows you to connect multiple computers together, so that they can exchange packets. However, a switch is much more efficient than a hub. A switch will only send Ethernet packets to the computer that the packet was intended for. Because of this you should always use a switch in place of a hub.

What is a Router

A router is a device that has several Ethernet ports on the back of the device. One of the connectors will be labeled WAN. You should connect the WAN port to the Ethernet connection on a broadband source, such as a cable or DSL modem. The other ports on the router can be connected other computers or switches/hubs that will share the WAN connection.

Routers allow you to share your broadband connection with multiple computers in your house. Rather than connecting your computer directly into your cable or DSL modem you connect the router to the cable or DSL modem. Now any computer that you connect to the router will have access to the Internet.

If you run out of ports on your router you can always connect an additional switch to the router. To connect a switch to a router simply connect the switch’s "uplink" port to one of the routers Ethernet ports. Of course, don’t connect to the router’s WAN port. The WAN port should only be connected to something such as a cable or DSL router.

Some routers come with additional features installed. Most routers also include a firewall. Firewalls are discussed in the next section. Some routers will also include a wireless access point (WAP). The WAP allows you to use wireless devices, such as wireless laptops, with the Internet.

What is a Firewall

A firewall controls traffic flow between your network and the Internet. A firewall can be either hardware or software. Windows XP SP2 or higher includes a software firewall. A hardware firewall is included with most routers.

A firewall is a very good idea. It can protect you from inbound virus attempts. By inbound virus attempt I mean other computers that will connect to your computer and attempt to infect your computer. You do not want to run a computer directly connected to the Internet, without a firewall. There are just too many other computers out there that can connect and infect you without you even noticing.

What is a Network Attached Storage (NAS)

A network attached storage device is s device that allows a hard drive to be shared across the network. This hard drive is NOT attached to any of your computers. It is simply made available by the NAS. This can be a convent way to add a hard drive that can be accessed by several computers on your network. The other common way to add a network hard drive is to simply share a folder on one of your computers. However, with the NAS, you do not need to keep one of your computers on at all times.

There are two types of NAS commonly available. The first type comes with a build in hard drive. The second accepts a USB or Firewire external hard drive. The advantage to using a USB or Firewire hard drive is that you can upgrade the hard drive if it ever were to become too small.

What is a Print Server

Just like you can buy a device to allow you to share a hard drive, you can do the same with a printer. A print server connects directly to your printer. Your printer is then shared to all of your computers on the network. This is convent because you do not need to leave the printer hooked to a computer, which must be turned on to print.

Conclusions

As you can see there are many different components. Perhaps the final component that I have yet to mention is the cable. These components are connected together with CAT5 Ethernet cable.

You are now ready to pick out the components for your home network!

Jeff Heaton is author, consultant and college instructor. Jeff maintains the "Heaton Research" website that contains many Java tutorials and other computer programming information.

by: Jeff Heaton

I Lost It ! Simple Guide To Recovering Corrupted Images And Files

WinUndelete
http://www.deprice.com/winundelete.htm

WinUndelete™ is an easy to use undelete software utility to recover deleted files from hard drives, floppy disks, zip drives, USB external flash drives, digital camera cards, and more. Its unique and exclusive SmartScan technology completes those impossible recovery tasks that other software cannot touch - SmartScan quickly locates and restores deleted files. WinUndelete works with Microsoft Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 and can recover data from both FAT and NTFS file systems.

Filerecovery Professional
http://www.deprice.com/filerecoveryprofessional.htm

FILERECOVERY Professional can detect drives even if they are not visible in explorer. The full directory structure of the drive is displayed (Even on NTFS Drives where it is recoverable) and the built in search feature makes finding files much easier. The Recovery Wizard allows even novice users to successfully recover lost data. Supports Hard Drives, RAIDS, Most Removable Media, SmartMedia, CompactFlash, Memory Sticks and Micro Drives.

BadCopy Pro
http://www.deprice.com/badcopypro.htm

BadCopy Pro is a leading data recovery software for floppy disks, CD-ROMs, CD-R/Ws, digital media, zip disks, and other storage media. BadCopy Pro can effectively recover and rescue corrupted or lost data from damaged, unreadable, or defective disks. The software supports all kinds of damage situations and all file types.

Recover My Files
http://www.deprice.com/recovermyfiles.htm

Recover My Files Data Recovery Software will bring back files emptied from the Recycle Bin, from a formatted disk, lost due to a system crash or virus infection, and will even recover temporary files for documents never even saved. Recovery takes 4 simple steps, no technical skill is required. Recover My Files Data Recovery Software will recover documents that undelete programs won't find! It searches every sector of your hard drive to recognize deleted files by their internal format. You may be surprised what deleted documents are lurking on your hard disk without your knowledge. The demo includes a FREE Preview which allows you to see deleted files before you decide to buy.

Recover My Photos
http://www.deprice.com/recovermyphotos.htm

Recover My Photos is a powerful data recovery program to recover deleted photos including JPEG, NEF, TIFF, BMP, MOV, MPEG and WAV. Works on Smart Media, Compact Flash, Memory Sticks, hard drives, floppy disks, Zip disks, USB drives. With Recover My Photos you can recover your precious photos even after your digital camera media has been formatted.

By: John Deprice.

It's All In The Planning - Surviving Disaster

ITS ALL IN THE PLANNING - PREPARING FOR THE UNTHINKABLE

* Make it clear who needs to do what, and who takes responsibility for what.

* Appoint deputies for key roles.

* Use checklists that people can follow easily.

* Include clear, direct instructions for the crucial first hour after an incident.

* Include a list of things that do not need to be considered until after the first hour.

* Agree how often you will check your plan to ensure it is always a “living document”. Update it to reflect changes in personnel and in the risks you may face.

* A good plan will be simple without being simplistic. You can’t plan in detail for every event. Remember that people need to be able to react quickly in an emergency; there will be no time to read lots of detail.

* Plan for worst-case scenarios. If your plan covers how to get back in business if a flood destroys your building, it will also work if just one floor is flooded.

FIVE STEPS TO GET ROUND DISRUPTION

Step 1 Analyse your Business

Step 2 Assess the Risks

Step 3 Develop your Strategy

Step 4 Develop your Plan

Step 5 Rehearse your Plan

People to contact who can give you advice:
Archival Record Management plc: info@armplc.com
AXA Insurance:axa4business.co.uk
Norwich Union: nu-riskservices.co.uk
The Federation of Small Businesses: contact local branch
Institute of Directors: 020 7766 8766

By Terry Cohen.

SHOULD YOU UPGRADE YOUR HARDWARE PC ?

What if you found that your computer is out of date? You probably want to upgrade your computer since you have no choice to do so. Your works depend on your hardware computer upgrade. That’s how you going to have a good result.

But before you make any further step, try to learn about your computer. Search all options and ask for advice. Only after this you can go and buy a new component. It’s also useful to check if you really need an upgrade.

Sure, it’s not funny if you keep your old computer but you still loose data when you do your works. Its just a matter of time before you experience a hard drive problem when you still using your old computer. You dont want to loose your data, right? Of course most people only think of backing up their data after they experience a problem. Don't set yourself up for a data loss disaster. Check what hardware you need for your computer.

If you have problem with your hard disk, such as crash when you do your work, better you have it renewed. Most people upgrade their hard disk to increase the size so that they can use it for games, movies and playing a lot of music. A 20 GB hard drive is sufficient to keep new office and internet applications, and all your files and data. A medium sized hard drive would be around 40 GB and the maximum would be around 60 – 80 GB.

You can choose which perfect for your work. Of course the price is also depending on the capacity of your hard disk. If you are a gamer, you may want to have high capacity hard disk such as that 60-80 GB. But if you just used it for your writing, a 20 GB is more than enough.

Another hardware you may need to upgrade is the RAM or Random Access Memory. This memory keeps data that is being worked on now and may or may not be transferred to the hard drive that represents the long-term memory of the computer. Current processors can perform an enormous number of operations per second. Almost all computer have 64 MB RAM and often 128 MB. If you want to run newer applications on your PC then you must upgrade to 128/256 MB RAM. A lot of people who upgrade from 98 to Win 2000 discover that their computers lock up very often. This is because they don't have enough RAM.

So, those are only some part of hardware you might want to upgrade. There are others such as motherboard, CPU or port which you can upgrade. Your action depend on your need.

by Tony C. Gevano.
from: www.cleanarticles.com

The Battle of the Browsers - The History and the Future of Internet Browsers

With Internet Explorer 8 now available, can Microsoft hope to retain market dominance over fierce open source rivals such as Mozilla's Firefox or the feature packed Opera web browser. Can history give us a clue to what the future of web browsers/browsing might hold? How did Netscape Navigator go from having a dominant 89.36% market share of all web browsers in 1996 and yet only 3.76% by mid 1999?

Let us take a journey that will begin long before even the intellectual conception of Internet Explorer, that will glance at its long defeated rivals, examine the current browsers available and will end with a prediction of what the future of browsing will offer us – and which browser(s) will still be around to offer it.

People often think that Internet Explorer has been the dominant web browser since the golden age of the internet began. Well for a very long time now it has indeed been the most popular browser and at times been almost totally unrivalled. This was mainly a result of it being packaged free with Microsoft Windows, in what some would later call a brutal monopolisation attempt by Microsoft. The last few years however have heralded the arrival of new, possibly superior browsers. Mozilla's Firefox has been particularly successful at chipping away at Explorers market dominance. So where did it all begin, and why were Microsoft ever allowed to have a hundred percent market dominance?

Origins

The truth is they never did have total dominance, but at times they have come very close. Microsoft actually entered the Browser Battle quite late on. Infact a man named Neil Larson is credited to be one of the originators of internet browsers, when in 1977 he created a program – The TRS-80 - that allowed browsing between “sites” via hypertext jumps. This was a DOS program and the basis of much to come. Slowly other browsers powered by DOS and inspired by the TRS 80 were developed. Unfortunately they were often constricted by the limitations of the still fairly young internet itself.

In 1988, Peter Scott and Earle Fogel created a simple, fast browser called Hytelnet, which by 1990 offered users instant logon and access to the online catalogues of over five thousand libraries around the world – an exhilarating taste of what the internet, and web browsers, would soon be able to offer.

In 1989 the original World Wide Web was born. Using a NeXTcube computer, Tim Berners-Lee created a web browser that would change how people used the internet forever. He called his browser the WorldWideWeb(http://www., which is still likely to sound familiar to internet users today. It was a windowed browser capable of displaying simple style sheet, capable of editing sites and able to download and open any file type supported by the NeXTcube.

In 1993 the first popular graphical browser was released. Its name was Mosaic and it was created by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina. Mosaic could be run on both Unix, and very importantly, on the highly popular Microsoft Windows operating system (incidentally it could also be used on Amiga and Apple computers). It was the first browser on Windows that could display graphics/pictures on a page where there was also textual content. It is often cited as being responsible for triggering the internet boom due to it making the internet bearable for the masses. (It should be noted that the web browser Cello was the first browser to be used on Windows – but it was non graphical and made very little impact compared to Mosaic).

The Browser Wars - Netscape Navigator versus Internet Explorer

Mosaic's decline began almost as soon as Netscape Navigator was released (1994). Netscape Navigator was a browser created by Marc Andreessen, one of the men behind Mosaic and co-founder of Netscape Communications Corporation. Netscape was unrivalled in terms of features and usability at the time. For example, one major change from previous browsers was that it allowed surfers to see parts of a website before the whole site was downloaded. This meant that people did not have to wait for minutes simply to see if the site they were loading was the actual one the were after, whilst also allowing them to read information on the site as the rest of it downloaded. By 1996 Netscape had almost 90% market dominance, as shown below.

Market Share Comparisons of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer from 1996 to 1998

....................Netscape.......IE
October 1998..........64%.........32.2%
April 1998............70%.........22.7%
October 1997..........59.67%......15.13%
April 1997............81.13%......12.13%
October 1996..........80.45%......12.18%
April 1996............89.36%.......3.76%

In these two years Netscape clearly dominated the internet browser market, but a new browser named Internet Explorer was quickly gaining ground on it.

Microsoft released their own browser (ironically based on the earlier Mosaic browser which was created by one of the men now running Netscape), clearly worried about Netscape's dominance. It was not so much the worry that it would have a 100% market share of internet browsers on their Windows operating system, but more the worry that browsers would soon be capable of running all types programs on them. That would mean foregoing the need for an actual operating system, or at the most only a very basic one would be needed. This in turn would mean Netscape would soon be able to dictate terms to Microsoft, and Microsoft were not going to let that happen easily. Thus in August 1995, Internet Explorer was released.

By 1999 Internet explorer had captured an 89.03% market share, whilst Netscape was down to 10.47%. How could Internet Explorer make this much ground in just two years? Well this was down to two things really. The first, and by far the most important was that Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer in with every new copy of Windows, and as Windows was used by about 90% of the computer using population it clearly gave them a huge advantage. Internet Explorer had one other ace it held over Netscape – it was much better. Netscape Navigator was stagnant and had been for some time. The only new features it ever seemed to introduce were often perceived by the public as beneficial for Netscape's parent company rather than Netscape's user base. (i.e., features that would help it monopolise the market). Explorer, on the other hand, was given much attention by Microsoft. Regular updates and excellent usability plus a hundred million dollar investment would prove too much for Netscape Explorer.

2000 – 2005

These years were fairly quiet in the Battle of the Browsers. It seemed as if Internet Explorer had won the war and that nobody could even hope to compete with it. In 2002/2003 it had attained about 95% of the market share – about the time of IE 5/6. With over 1000 people working on it and millions of dollars being poured in, few people had the resources to compete. Then again, who wanted to compete? It was clearly a volatile market, and besides that everybody was content with Internet Explorer. Or were they? Some people saw faults with IE – security issues, incompatibility issues or simply bad programming. Not only that, it was being shoved down peoples throats. There was almost no competition to keep it in line or to turn to as an alternative. Something had to change. The only people with the ability and the power to compete with Microsoft took matters into their own hands.

Netscape was now supported by AOL. A few years prior, just after they had lost the Browser Wars to Microsoft, they had released the coding for Netscape into the public domain. This meant anybody could develop their own browser using the Netscape skeleton. And people did. Epiphany, Galeon and Camino, amongst others, were born out of Netscape's ashes. However the two most popular newcomers were called Mozilla and Firefox.

Mozilla was originally an open sourced project aimed to improve the Netscape browser. Eventually it was released as Netscape Navigator 7 and then 8. Later it was released as Mozilla 1.0.

Mozilla was almost an early version on another open source browser, Firefox. With it being an open source the public were able to contribute to it - adding in what features it needed, the programming it required and the support it deserved. The problems people saw in Internet Explorer were being fixed by members of the open sourced browser community via Firefox. For instance, the many security issues IE 6 had were almost entirely fixed in the very first release of Firefox. Microsoft had another fight on their hands.

2005 – Present

Firefox was the browser that grew and grew in these years. Every year capturing an even larger market share percentage than before. More user friendly than most of its rivals along with high security levels and arguably more intelligent programming helped its popularity. With such a large programming community behind it, updates have always been regular and add on programs/features are often released. It prides itself on being the peoples browser. It currently has a 28.38% market share.

Apple computers have had their own browser since the mid 1990's – Safari - complete with its own problems, such as (until recently) the inability to run Java scripts. However most Apple users seemed happy with it and a version capable of running on Windows has been released. It has had no major competitor on Apple Macs, and as such has largely been out of the Browser Wars. It currently holds a 2.54% market share and is slowly increasing.

Internet Explorer's market share has dropped from over 90% to around 75%, and is falling. It will be interesting to see what Microsoft will attempt to regain such a high market share.

Opera currently holds 1.07%.

Mozilla itself only has a 0.6% market share these days.

The Future of Web Browsing

Web browsers come and go. It is the nature of technology (if such a term can be used), to supplant inferior software in very short periods of time. It is almost impossible for a single company to stay ahead of the competition for long. Microsoft have the advantage of being able to release IE with any Windows using PC. That covers over 90% of the market. They also have the advantage of unprecedented resources. They can compete how they wish for as long as they wish. So there is no counting IE out of the future of web browsing.

Safari is in a similar position, being easily the most popular Mac web browser. Its long term survival is dependant upon Apple and the sale of their computers.

These are the only two browsers that are almost guaranteed another five years of life, at least. Firefox may seem like another candidate, but the public is fickle, and one bad release, or if it seriously lags behind the new Internet Explorer 8 for long, could easily see its popularity quickly descend into virtual oblivion.

However, it seems likely community driven browsers, such as Mozilla and Firefox, will be the only types of browser capable of competing with the wealthy internet arm of Microsoft in the near future.

As for web browsing itself, will it change any time soon? Well it already has for some online communities. For example, if you want to buy clothes you could try entering an online 'world' creating an online virtual You to go from 'shop to shop' with, looking at products and trying/buying what you see. Some 'worlds' allow you to recreate yourself accurately including weight and height and then try on things apparel such as jeans to give you an idea of how you would look in that particular item.

Will 'worlds' like this destroy normal web browsers such as IE ? - It seems unlikely. Traditional web browsers provide such freedom and ease of access that it is hard to see any other alternative taking over. However they are part of the new, 'thinking out of the box' wave of alternatives that some people will find attractive, and really who knows what the future will bring.



About The Author

Nicholas C Smith is the project manager at Breakfrom Limited, who specialise in affordable ecommerce solutions and general web design knowledge and advice.

For more information and advice visit http://www.breakfrom.com



By Nicholas C Smith.

COMPUTER DATA BACKUP - DATA BACKUP SOLUTION WILL GIVE YOU A PEACE OF MIND.

Imagine that you have been working on a file for the entire day and there was a power surge that caused your computer to 'black out'. It would have been a frustrating experience for us as we had put in a lot of time and effort into it. I am sure that many of us would have experienced data loss in some form or another and have learnt to be wiser to backup our data to avoid any form of data loss.

Have you ever thought of a worst case scenario where a fire broke up and destroy your computer or where your laptop got stolen? Should that happen, the first thing that comes into your mind is the thousands of dollars that you spend on your computer or laptop and you would feel very upset about it. However, when you thought for a second moment, you started to realize that what is really valuable are the amount of data that you have built up over the years in it. Though hardware can always be replaced, even at no cost to you if you have insurance, but lost data is gone forever.

Lost data such as the thousands of mp3 and movies that you have downloaded from the Internet, thousands of digital photographs that are impossible to replace are lost in an instant. This form of data loss hits home especially hard when the laptop holds the lifeblood to your business. Imagine all your business contacts documents and contracts that you have painfully built up over the years would be vanished just like that. Your business would be wipe out overnight.

Do not wait for the worst to happen before you start to consider about data backup solution. Having a data backup solution will give you a peace of mind as you know that your data is in safe hand.

You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included. A courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated.

by Justin Koh.