Here are certain easy and simple tools on your Mac and PC that can assist you in your web publishing endeavors. Pay attention and you may not need those swanky design soft wares out there. Said tools and a little programming know-how can save you some moolah.

Note Pad
This is the infamous default Windows text editor which is available on most Windows systems by clicking the Start button, then Program, and then Accessories. Its icon is a little blue notebook.

Note Tab Light
This can be a Note Pad substitute, but it can also be a very versatile text manipulation tool. It’s freeware and downloadable in many sites – such as the official one . It’s also very easy to use too.

Simple Text
This one is for Mac users as it is the default text editor of the Mac. Another option is the TextWrangler. Like the Note Tab light, it’s more powerful, versatile, and not to mention, free!

Although the probability of coming up with original material in the web is a little tough, what with the continuous appearance of hundreds if not thousands of niche blogs and websites out there, nothing beats original content. Original and quality content will attract a lot of traffic to a particular website, and more so if the content is continually updated. By maintaining quality and consistency of your posts, visitors can not help but return. It won’t be long before the number of visitors will grow.

Ahh… a term that many competitive professional bloggers love. SEO or short for search engine optimization, is a process that enables the number of visitors to a particular website to increase. This is done by making the site rank high in search engines’ search results. The higher the rank of a certain website is, the more probable it is to be visited by users. I’m sure that many internet users agree that we only browse the websites that appear in the first few pages of search engine results. So what SEO does is to ensure the accessibility of a site to a search engine.

GlobalSpec (www.globalspec.com), the leading specialized search engine, information resource and e-publishing company for the engineering, industrial and technical communities, today announced the launch of a specialized Web site for advertising agencies with clients in the industrial sector.

Located at www.globalspec.com/mediakit, this resource is designed to help business-to-business advertising agencies and media buyers effectively integrate online media into their clients’ marketing plans. Tools and features include a complete library of information-rich market research and media resources available for immediate download, including industry trends & research, white papers and GlobalSpec’s e-newsletter designed for professionals interested in the latest news, trends and research impacting business-to-business marketing.

Smart’s Publishing, publisher of client newsletters for insurance agents and brokers, introduced its interactive newsletter delivery system at the Benefits Selling Called DART. The system sends agents’ and brokers’ client newsletters in an email-optimized format. The DART system will then indicate which messages bounced and why, helping users eliminate cold prospects and maintain their lists. When DART users call on their clients, they will know what products and services to discuss, thanks to DART’s tracking and feedback features.

When agents and brokers sign up for the DART program, they receive their own password-protected account that they can access at any time. DART also stores information from past mailings, so users can compare results they get from different lists or different newsletters.

Spyware, a computer software installed secretly on a personal computer to intercept or take partial control over the user’s computer handling without the user’s informed consent, does not normally reproduce on its own. That is its difference from other viruses and worms. It secretly surreptitiously monitors the user’s interaction with the computer but monitoring is not just its function. Spyware programs can gather personal information like the user’s internet surfing habit, visited sites and moreover, can interfere with user control in such a way that it can redirect Web browser activities and can install additional software. It can allow harmful viruses to be accessed and can even change your computer settings.

SQL injection, a technique that utilizes and exploits security vulnerability taking place in the database layer of an application, usually occurs when you trust user input. Vulnerabilities may result from a computer virus, weak passwords, software bugs or other script code injection that violates the integrity of the system. The vulnerability exists when user input is filtered improperly for string literal escape characters embedded in SQL statements or if user input is not strongly typed resulting to be unexpectedly executed. It is an instance of a more general class of vulnerabilities that can happen every time a scripting or programming language is embedded inside another

When you write for the web, just write what you really want to say. Go directly to the idea you are presenting. Do not assume that you and the readers share the same wavelength that when you make analogies, they will be able to grasp your point. Web readers scan what they read and if they don’t get your point the first time then they won’t be interested to go further. Avoid making fun of other people because this will backfire on you, making you look bad. Making fun of yourself is a great comic relief but doing it to other people would appear like you’re bad mouthing them.

Most Web users only glance over pages, they do not read word-for-word so to get their attention, design your document to stand out and be noticeable. Highlight as many items as you can: boldface rendering, colored backgrounds, and hyperlinks. Refrain from highlighting whole sentences as this diminishes the interest it generate, instead, highlight only the words that differentiate the paragraphs. Use bullets or numbered lists to draw attention to essential points. An inverted pyramid style would grab more attention than the regular format. Reading the conclusion would pick the interest of the reader to find out what led to it.

The two are some of the most prominent open-source Content management Systems (CMS) around and many argue on which one is better when it comes to overall performance. Drupal has garnered a lot of the web development market with many years of experience in the industry. Joomla has a somewhat newer fan base having less but overall they have a gap that is so little to differentiate. The major differences lie in the way Drupal is very easily scalable for dynamic organizations who may have frequent need for expansion. It allows better distribution but while it leads more in the enterprise arena, Joomla is easier to handle for non-geeks or people with less experience in web development. Read the rest of this entry »