Blogs are online journals in which people write about things - whether it be the ramblings of their life or tutorials to help others along. The word ‘blog’ comes from the word ‘weblog’, and has many words which derive from it; these words being: blogger and blogging. The word blogger is the name given to the author of the blog, and blogging the name given to the process of writing to a blog; the world blog can also refer to the process of writing to a blog. Blogs have been becoming more popular over the last 2 years, and as of July 2007 there are around 70 million active blogs on the internet. If you are looking to start your own blog, there is no time better than now to do so.

To start your own blog, there are certain factors which you need to work out before you start anything, there are:

• What you are going to blog about.
• Your intended target audience.
• The name of your blog.
• Whether you are going to use a free or paid blogging service.
• If you are going to pay for a hosting service: what blog software you are going to use.

What You Are Going to Blog About

The most important factor to consider when starting your own blog is what you are going to blog about; this is because the content of the blog will determine how successful it is: if you write about personal stuff then your blog is not going to gain much traffic, as the only visitors will probably only be friends or family; if you write posts which will help others out in any way then they are most likely to recommend your blog to others which means that it will gradually gain traffic.

Identifying Your Intended Target Audience

Once you have worked out what you are going to blog about, you need to work out who is most likely to visit your blog, and why; this is important because when you come to promoting your blog, you want to make sure that you are promoting it to the right group of people. This also plays a huge part in the amount of visitors that you receive; if it’s only family and friends visiting your blog then the amount of traffic that you receieve won’t be a huge amount, however, if people are finding and visiting your blog from web searches then they are most likely to be returning visitors, and will recommend your blog to others.

The Name of Your Blog

You can name your blog anything you want, you can even name it after yourself. However, most blog names are normally linked to the blog’s subject in some way or another. The name of your blog must be simple to say, and easy to remember; simple names are more likely to stick in people’s heads which means that if people can remember the name and address of your blog then they will most likely recommend it to others.

Using a Free or Paid Service

There are many different services which you could use to host your blog. You could use a free service which gives you a sub of their main domain name; the main downside of free blog hosting services is that they normally fill your blog with unwanted adverts. The following is a list of free blog hosting services which you can use to help get you started:

• http://www.blogger.com/ - Blogger is Google’s free blog hosting service. It is one of the most popular in the world. The adverts that they place are rather discrete and blend in with the chosen design. The address given is normally ‘blogname.blogspot.com’.
• http://www.cjb.net/ - CJB.net run a free blog hosting service along with a range of other free services. Adverts placed by them aren’t that discrete and don’t blend in with the blog. The url provided is normally ‘http://blogs.cjb.net/blogname’.
• http://www.wordpress.com/ - Witth Wordpress.com you can create your own instance of the popular open source WordPress blog system, but hosted on their servers. The url provided is normally ‘blogname.wordpress.com’.

If you are not tempted to use a free blog hosting service, then you buy a cheap web hosting package with a web host along with a domain. With paid blog/hosting services you have full control of your blog and don’t have forced advertisements displayed. You can then install one of the following free blog software packages:

• http://www.wordpress.org/ - Wordpress is the world’s most popular open source blog system.
• http://www.b2evolution.net/ - B2Evolution is another piece of popular blog software. It is different from Wordpress in the way that you are able to create multiple blogs within one installation.
• http://www.mephistoblog.com/ - Mephisto is a relatively new piece of open source blog software. It is different from both Wordpress and B2Evo since it was written in the up and coming RoR scripting language.

E-mail forwarding is the most effective way to recieve email address sent to multiple addresses without creating multiple POP3 e-mail accounts. The most common redirects are webmaster@yourdomain.com,sales@yourdomain.com,support@yourdomain.com,                     info@yourdomain.com etc. You can use your control panel features to create redirect for these or other addresses and send all the mails to addresses delivered to POP3 accounts of your choice. This is an most easy way to send emails to several members of your company which avoids hassle of creating and monitoring multiple accounts in yur email client.

Autoresponders is a method of automatically replying to an email with information. Using autoresponder with a redirect would allow you to capture rmail adress of the person requesting information. You can also use CGI email form in combination with an auto responder and a redirect to capture more detailed information about the requestor.

E-mail forwarding and autoresponders can be of great help if configured correctly. However, a small mistake in configuration may result in problems affecting all mail delivery associated with your account. Read the manuals before using this features.

Configuration errors that encounter include:

a.Incorrect “default” redirect
The first entry in e-mail forward list should be “default” followed by the primary account login (e.g., yourdomain@yourdomain.com).

b. Incorrect naming
Redirects and autoresponders must not share the same name as a POP3 user or a maillist.

Hey, one more update for broadband users:

Error 1024 on Windows Vista:

1) Go to ‘Start’.

2) ‘Run’ >> ‘msconfig’.

3) Click on ‘Sartup’ on the tabs along the top.
4) Then under ‘Command’ try to find: C:\Program Files\Speedtouch\……

5) To make sure that it is ‘Speedtouch’, check that it says ‘Speedtouch’ and that it has a blue tick next to it.
6) Untick the blue tick from the box. Make sure the right one is selected or else this could harm your PC.

7) Then click on ‘Apply’ and then ‘Close’.

Restart your PC and wallah, no more error 1024!

9) Again do not try this if you are not sure about it as it can harm the computer.

In Vista, System Restore is set to delete restore points after roughly 136 years … yeah, let that sink…

Normally Windows uses up to 15 percent of a drive’s available space to save restore points. In XP, the option to change this figure was configurable from the ‘System Restore’ tab of the ‘System Properties’ dialog box. But sadly, this option is no longer offered in Vista.

But you can do so as follows :

Open regedit and go to
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\
SystemRestore\Cfg Double-click the DiskPercent.
The default is f (in hexadecimal) which is 15 in decimal. For making it say 10% type ‘a’
Now again, how frequently you’d like to have your SystemRestore points auto-created can also b configured as follows :
Open regedit and go to
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\SystemRestore
You can change the value RPGlobalInterval from its default setting of 86,400 seconds (24 hours) to, say, 43200 (a8c0) if u want it created every 12 hrs.

As and how your new restore points get created, the older ones get deleted due to the available space constraint.
Otherwise by default, in Vista, System Restore is set to delete restore points after roughly 4,294,967,295 seconds or 136 years, which was a mere 90 days in XP! The idea apparently, is to delete them only when absolutely necessary due to space constraint!!! But err…136 years !!!
But if you’d like to, you can also change this interval too. Change the value of RPLifeInterval in the same key; a setting of 7,776,000 seconds (or 76a700 in hexadecimal) is equivalent to 90 days.
To create System Restore Points on the fly, try System Restore Point Creator. Using this utility, you can create System Restore Points in one click. Works on Vista! To change the frequency of the System Restore Points formation, without using the Registry Editor, you can download CSRF Utility.

Inspired from :- http://www.winvistaclub.com/t2.html

You are bound to get these error once in a while, major reasons for this error:

Your account is suspended.

You have the wrong username and password.

Your dialer has gone corrupt.

How to get this error to go away:

1) Check the username and password you are typing in the dialer.

2) Check which number the dialer is dialing, it should be ‘0,38′.

3) Recreate the dialer. Steps to recreate dialer:

a) Go to ‘Start’ >> ‘Control Panel’ >> ‘Network Connections’ >> on the left hand side you have the option ‘Create a New Connection’.

b) Follow the steps as: click on ‘Next’ >> ‘Connect to Internet’ >> ‘Setup Connection Manually’ >> ‘Connect Using Dialup Modem’ >> ‘ISDN Channel’ >> type: Tiscali as ISP provider >> dialup number as ‘0,38′ >> then enter your username and password >> click ‘Finish’.

4) Try to connect. Ths should work If your acount is not suspended. If no, call the tech Support or better, billing to confrim whether your account is suspended or not.

You are bound to get this error if you are using a ADSL modem and your BB (BroadBand Signal) does not reach your premises. To confirm this, the ADSL light on the modem will be flashing or completely off.

The necessary steps that you need to perform before you call the Tech Support:

1) Reinstall the Modem.

2) Swap the filters.

3) Check that you are not using a extension cable. It’s advisable to use a RJ11 Cable, however it should not be more than 10m long.

4) Also try and remove the ADSL cable from the modem and then plug it back in again.

5) Also try and connect to the main BT socket, as the connection is the strongest there.

6) If nothing works, call tech support and ask them to perfom a woosh test or line test, and let the tech support agent know all the troubleshooting that you have performed.