How To Choose Your Dome Tent

There are some important factors that have to be taken into consideration before buying any type of tents, such as the number of people who will be using it, how and where it will be used and the price. This applies to all tent styles including dome tents.

The dome tent has become one of the most popular tent styles today, which is available in a wide range of designs, shapes and sizes. Some of them may be regular dome shaped while others can be made up of several domes, but all dome tents use a geometrical design in their poles to hold the tent up, and rather than the firmness of the frame itself, the sturdiness of a dome tent depends on the structural integrity of the fabric, poles, ropes, and pegs combined.

In dome tents, poles, which are generally made of flexible materials such as carbon fiber, overlap each other to form an equal or almost equal geometric shape. This greatly determines the shape of the floor and the tent itself. For example, a dome tent with three poles would have a hexagonal shaped floor while a dome tent with four poles would have an octagonal shaped floor. Hence, this design method enables the dome tent to be a strong self-supporting structure which is aerodynamic and stable. So, no stakes or lines are required under normal circumstances.

Before buying a dome tent or any type of tents, keep in mind what time of year you are going to need it, how easy is it to set up, how well would it protect you from bad weather, and if size and weight is relative to the outdoor activity.

Main advantages of dome tents include:
1. Since they have a large number of corners, they can resist wind and all types of precipitation effectively. So they are really great for backpackers and canoeists.

2. Corners which cannot be used for sleeping can conveniently provide extra storage for gears.

3. Dome tents are generally much lighter in weight than the equivalent size frame tent.

4. They give greater amount of head room than conventional ridge tents.

5. They can be easily installed or set up, and dismantled.

The fabric used for the body of the dome tent is usually nylon, and the average weight is approximately two and one-half to seven and one-half pounds. The Rain Fly is usually UV-resistant and can be used as a tarp or its own tent when basic, ultra-light shelter is desired. Dome tents can cost from $70 to $600, and may also come with porch extensions, and in larger sizes that can accommodate up to ten people.

Dome tents can be classified under 3-season type of tents – those that work well for all but the harshest cold weather condition. However, dome tents also do have a few disadvantages:

1. The geometric design can limit ventilation.

2. There tends to be less usable space inside the tent.

3. Moisture tends to gather at the top of the dome.

These shortcomings may create some problems when using a dome tent but it is still the number one choice for most backpackers, mountaineers, campers, and hikers etc. 

Affiliate Content, Duplicate Content And The Crucial Differences Between Them; Er, There Are None...

Going by word on the Search Engine news group, alt.internet.search-engines, it's looking like Google is getting better at spotting and demoting affiliate content. It could well be that because the same text content is repeated over and over on
every affiliate site that carries it it gets demoted by Google purely for being duplicate content. I see this as being a problem, a growing problem, for every affiliate merchant and client using a data feed to power the pages. While the templates folk use may well vary in detail due to individuals customising them to their taste, essentially they're all variants on the same theme and of course they all contain the same few lines of text content in the same order.
Repetition of this kind shouldn't be too hard to identify and either ignore or remove from the listings or do whatever with which may well mean in the future that the idea of affiliate sites as we now have them is simply no longer practical.

My crystal gifts site is powered by a feed from GoCollect.com using a Cusimano script. I've personalised the templates so if you know me you'll recognise the standard BB layout of the individual product pages. Visually, therefore, it isn't like any of the other sites using the same feed. It still has the same text content, though. Inputting a sample into Google produces "about 584" results, all of which, or the majority of which we must suspect as I'm not going to go through them all to check it absolutely, are built around the same feed. The problem here for both affiliates and for affiliate merchants and for Google is, what's the point in having them at all? If there's one site that has them,
namely, the original, where's the point in Google having the rest of them in the index? They all sell the same product for the same price, so why bother to index them? At the moment, it's the battle of the SEO's. Why should someone buy product A from my site as opposed to anyone else's? The answer would be, because when they search for product they find my site before they find any of the others, and there are ways of promoting sites with which we are all familiar here. But this can't really last. The world only really needs just the one web site for these custom-made products and speciality items, and that's the one from the original manufacturers. All the rest essentially constitute duplicate content and we know what happens to that, it gets filtered out.

So, to counter this problem, you could substitute your own text for the original, and you could take your own photographs of the product. Not a problem for a small site, however, many have tens of thousands of pages. How is anyone going to re-write that lot? Obviously any lone affiliate can't begin to, so the idea of affiliate sites as we now have them, I think, must inevitably give way to niche sites where the affiliate presents a small range of items in an individual style that will appeal to certain of the buying public. The idea would be to create a brand of presentation that clients would get to be familiar with and feel comfortable with. If you look at the items on my crystal gifts site they're all photographed out of context. In your home they are unlikely to be suspended in mid-air against a white background, which is how they're presented in the data feed and thus on my site. I'm suggesting taking pictures of items as they might actually appear in situ, do a little mock-up of a down-lit corner table and snap that from a typical viewing angle, or have an item on a coffee-table against a background of muted lights, featuring an expansive sofa, giving a feel of general relaxed easy-living. This, by comparison with simply outputting the existing data from the feed, would cost a bundle, but it just might might be the only real way forward for niche affiliates. You know what that would result in? Quality sites. The kind Google professes to like.
Meanwhile, though, I suspect people who've built one multiple-product affiliate site, and seen it do well and are now busily engaged in building more and more multiple-product sites on the basis that they'll all do well too, are in for multiple disappointments. I'm trying to go niche in general with my affiliate sites and I've picked on crystal and glass gift items to work with as I can break then down into categories and maximise the potential of each category. What I've got then, in effect, is a legion of niche sites all interconnecting.

For choice, now that I understand more of the industry than I did when I began with affiliate sites, I'd really like a site that does watches and jewellery, these are the items that people are happiest buying from the web, research has
suggested, but I don't know a good feed other than Amazon and I've stayed away from getting too involved with Amazon as it has the high profile it does and will inevitably attract the greatest number of affiliates and so likely will be penalised in the earlier days of any affiliate purge. From what I'm hearing, this purge has already begun. 

Blue chip stocks - not a poker game

Investing in conservative blue chip stocks may not have the allure of a hot high-tech investment, but it can be highly rewarding nonetheless, as good quality stocks have outperformed other investment classes over the long term.

Historically, investing in stocks has generated a return, over time, of between 11 and 15 percent annually depending how aggressive you are. Stocks outperform other investments since they incur more risk. Stock investors are at the bottom of the corporate "food chain." First, companies have to pay their employees and suppliers. Then they pay their bondholders. After this come the preferred shareholders. Companies have an obligation to pay all these stakeholders first, and if there is money leftover it is paid to the stockholders through dividends or retained earnings. Sometimes there is a lot of money left over for stockholders, and in other cases there isn't. Thus, investing in stocks is risky because investors never know exactly what they are going to receive for their investment.

What are the attractions of blue chip stocks? 1. Great long-term rates of return.

2. Unlike mutual funds, another relatively safe, long term investment category, there are no ongoing fees.

3. You become a owner of a company.

So much for the benefits - what about the risks? 1. Some investors can't tolerate both the risk associated with investing in the stock market and the risk associated with investing in one company. Not all blue chips are created equal.

2. If you don't have the time and skill to identify a good quality company at a fair price don't invest directly. Rather, you should consider a good mutual fund.

Selecting a blue chip company is only part of the battle - determining the appropriate price is the other. Theoretically, the value of a stock is the present value of all future cash flows discounted at the appropriate discount rate. However, like most theoretical answers, this doesn't fully explain reality. In reality supply and demand for a stock sets the stock's daily price, and demand for a stock will increase or decrease depending of the outlook for a company. Thus, stock prices are driven by investor expectations for a company, the more favorable the expectations the better the stock price. In short, the stock market is a voting machine and much of the time it is voting based on investors' fear or greed, not on their rational assessments of value. Stock prices can swing widely in the short-term but they eventually converge to their intrinsic value over the long-term.

Investors should look at good companies with great expectations that are not yet imbedded in the price of a stock.

How To Protect Your Identity Online

Surfing the Internet is a daily occurrence for an increasing number of people these days, as technology expands and online services continue to grow. Many people go online to carry out banking transactions, shop, check e-mail, and catch up on news. That's why it's more important than ever to protect your identity while surfing the web. As identity theft becomes more prevalent, it's necessary for everyone to be extra vigilant in protecting personal information – before it gets into the wrong hands.

Every time you go online and conduct some type of transaction, whether it is monetary or an exchange of information, you put your identity at risk. Unfortunately, criminals use the Internet too, making use of the technology to perpetrate identity theft. This type of cyber-criminal gathers personal information online and either sells it to others for profit, or uses it to his/her own purpose.

Luckily, there are many things you can do to stay one step ahead of these "bandits" and keep your identity as safe as possible. The Internet landscape is always changing, so you need to keep on top of things if you want to remain as safe as possible.

The first thing you need to do is learn how to avoid phishing scams. Phishers use fake e-mails and websites to pretend they are actual, trustworthy companies and institutions, such as banks and insurance companies. When people receive a fake e-mail or are directed to a counterfeit website, they are tricked into revealing passwords, credit card numbers, and other such information. Be warned: the criminals are good at what they do, so you must be very careful when dealing with e-mails from your bank or other organization. The key thing to remember is that real institutions never ask you to verify personal information online – be cautious and contact the sender directly, over the phone, to authenticate the request and, if necessary, provide any information they might actually require.

Because many phishers use spam e-mail as a way to obtain your personal passwords and information, install a good spam filter to keep out as much spam as possible. If you strain out most of the problem e-mails from the get-go, you won't have to worry about dealing with too many suspicious messages on your own. Also, avoid sending any sensitive information via e-mail or instant messengers. Scam artists are notorious for intercepting e-mails and IMs. Use common sense when dealing with e-mail as well. For instance, avoid opening e-mail or IM attachments that you deem suspicious. Only open files from someone if you know the sender and what they are sending you.

And NEVER send your social security number over the Internet. No one should be requesting it, but if you are asked for it, confirm who is requesting it and send it directly to that person.
Another great way to prevent ID theft is by password protecting all your computers, laptops, and PDAs. For each item, come up with a unique user name and password. The same rule should be followed when selecting passwords for any online activity. Why? If one password is discovered by an individual with ill intentions, and all your bank accounts, credit cards, and other private logins use the same password, he/she could gain access to everything. When selecting passwords, create them with letters, numbers, special characters, and make up nonsense character strings not found in the dictionary. These will be much more difficult to decipher by a potential scammer.

Keep the amount of personal data present on your computer to a minimum. In the event that your computer is hacked or your laptop is stolen, you will be much less prone to ID theft because you won't be giving the thief much to work with. Another good idea is to install a personal firewall program. Although systems such as Windows already contain a basic firewall program, setting up another program will ensure that your computer is hidden from hackers, stop intruders from reaching sensitive information, and let you control Internet traffic.

Purchase antivirus software and keep it updated. A high-quality virus protection package can help prevent and eliminate viruses, Trojan horses, and other dangerous items designed to steal your personal information. It will also scan e-mail and IM attachments for viruses.

In addition to antivirus software, be sure to equip your PC with the latest in anti-spyware protection. Although a great many of the spyware programs out there simply monitor your online actions for the purposes of marketing, some have been created for malicious reasons, including keystroke logging and, of course, identity theft.

One last tip: when you decide to update your computer and throw away or sell your old one, remember to remove all your data from the hard disk. Many people mistakenly believe that simply deleting files makes them disappear – but this is not the case. When you delete files they are still present on your hard drive, and have to be erased prior to handing the machine over to another person. Software known as wipe programs or shredders can be used to overwrite data with zeroes or random patterns making it completely unreadable.

It's well worth the effort to take the precautions necessary for keeping your personal information under lock and key. Trying to clean up the mess left behind by an identity thief can take years, and will cause you a headache or two. So take charge and protect your personal information, using common sense and a few good tech tools to keep the cyber-thieves at bay.

Can Web Service Companies Do Without 24x7 Dotcom-Monitor support?

 The background
Enterprises worldwide have embraced 'Web services' as the preferred middleware technology for integrating their Web-enabled, e-business applications. Hundreds of Web service sites offer very useful services that provide essential components for running B2B or B2C e-business applications. Many enterprises outsource items ranging from security services for their plants and offices to outsource packing and forwarding, or even cleaning services. Specialized Web service companies provide the latest exchange rates for any combination of the 100+ countries they cater to. Web service companies have hundreds of B2B or B2C e-commerce/e-business clients who need their services (on a 24x7 basis) for running their non-stop global businesses.

Some examples of Web services include:

* Providing access to FedEx tracking information by taking a tracking number and returning shipment status from FedEx
* Credit card maintenance and management
* Providing authentication
* Returning real-time flight information for flights in the air, given an airline code and flight number, using current information from online service.
* Calculating and providing postage requirements in any currency
* A monthly lease payment calculator service
* Sending text messages to mobile phones, when provided a list of countries and their international dialing codes
* Providing Internet time
* Retrieving news headlines from sites like CNN, CBS, or MSNmoney and supplying them to news portals
* Providing up-to-the-minute sports updates to various channels
* Offering Web site management system by providing 100+ functions
* … and many more!

Vital Issues involved in Web services business
As Web service companies integrate with hundreds of important B2B/B2C clients, they become vital components in hundreds of billions of dollars of international trade and e-commerce, manufacturing, and service business. Since a transaction cannot be completed without their service input, any disruption of service, delayed response, or system error could spell disaster and incalculable loss from deferred shipments, cancellations, and even business operations stoppage. Thus, it is imperative that Web services work correctly and efficiently every time.

Web service companies therefore must consistently perform within acceptable framework. There is little margin for error. That is why Web service companies typically have SLA agreements signed with clients for proper functional and performance delivery. Any deviations could mean attracting censure, penalties, or both.

What must be done to prevent exposure?
Clearly, automatic and constant monitoring of the functionality and performance of a Web service site is necessary. This website monitoring should not only check that correct functionality is delivered, but also, how efficiently it is being delivered. If the turnaround time is consistently beyond the SLA norms, it must be recorded and the service company notified of the anomalies, so that the company can examine inside and outside of their firewall to rectify the situation.

Dotcom-Monitor.com has the solution.
Dotcom-Monitor.com can provide customized monitoring through its highly respected and acclaimed Dotcom Monitoring Service. This automated, non-stop (24x7) service caters to a site's specific functional and performance monitoring needs, automatically alerting and reporting deviations to site management, in real time, through the built-in Dotcom-Monitor reporting system. This prompts site management for immediate remedial action.

How Dotcom-Monitor works
Dotcom-Monitor has remote agents strategically positioned around the world, each acting as an Internet browser. After a customer creates an account, he or she supplies the URLs of the Web service site, along with functions to be monitored with inputs, algorithms, expected results, and performance norms. Then, the process starts immediately. Dotcom-Monitor's global agent checks the Web service(s) to ensure that it is accessible and maintaining acceptable levels of performance. If any of these fall outside the specified parameters, the customer is notified
1. Functional Monitoring: Dotcom-Monitor constantly checks the functionality of the service by making specifically tailored, functional calls to the site (application) server to monitor the accuracy of the results obtained in real time. It uses representative input from transactions/messages, algorithms, and results provided by the Web service company for this purpose. The monitor performs Dotcom-Monitor's service at pre-defined intervals. Any deviations from the supplied results are promptly reported for appropriate action.

2. Performance Monitoring: Most Web service companies use SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) technology to architect service transactions' receipt, de-serialization, processing, serialization, and delivery. SOAP is a lightweight, stateless, XML communication protocol that lets applications exchange structured messages/transactions across the Internet. Most current SOAP implementations use HTTP binding due to SOAP's wide availability and ability to pass through firewalls.

One of Dotcom-Monitor's features is to determine the level of performance available from SOAP implementations using appropriate test transactions/messages. First, Dotcom-Monitor checks for latency, the round-trip time taken to send and receive a single transaction/message from the monitor server to the service server and back. High resolution timers are used to measure the time taken for each round-trip. Dotcom-Monitor repeats this check at a defined interval. For throughput, Dotcom-Monitor conducts checks to find the peak throughput available from each SOAP implementation using a number of concurrent driver threads, records the number of round-trips completed per second, and compares it to supplied norms.
Dotcom-Monitor conducts a separate exercise to measure SOAP serialization and de-serialization overheads. The test driver sends a number of customer detail records to the server. The monitor captures the times required by the server to perform serialization and de-serialization of SOAP transactions/messages. Any overall performance degradation beyond the Web service-defined boundaries are recorded and reported. A proper log of the checks made is maintained for later analysis.

In Conclusion
Just as business is vital to economy, Web services are crucial to e-business. Web services must consistently perform with absolute integrity and deliver sustained, non-stop performance to B2B or B2C e-business sites. Since these sites are concurrently concatenated with hundreds of e-business Web sites providing functions vital to each business they serve, there is no margin for error or for failure.

Web service sites must plan for zero tolerance. While it is easy to plan and implement redundant hardware and network infrastructure, exposure lies in making flawless functional delivery within desired turnaround time, every single time. That is only possible if constant monitoring for correct functional output(s) and response time performance are maintained, and any deviations highlighted in real time for remedial action. A 24x7 website monitoring solution from Dotcom-Monitor.com is the real answer.