Table of Contents
Nonprofit spotlight: Center of Hope
E-passports: The next generation of travel
Protect your searching privacy
Written and produced by authors and editors at CustomGuide,
Inc.
Copyright 2006
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Issue 51, March 2006
www.customguide.com
New Mac training products available
Online training for Mac OS X Tiger and Word 2004 are now available, with
courseware to be available soon. Call your CustomGuide rep for more information!
Upcoming trade shows
FETC
March 22 and 24 in Orlando, Fla.
TechEd 2006
March 27-29 in Pasadena, Calif.
ASCD 2006
April 1-3 in Chicago
For more information on this news or CustomGuide computer training products, contact your CustomGuide sales rep, or call (888) 903-2432.
Nonprofit spotlight: Center of Hope
Center of Hope is a non-profit faith-based organization that provides food, housing assistance, vocational training, financial aid and personal guidance to disadvantaged people in the Weatherford, Texas area. Through a network of church, civic, and community organizations, Center of Hope serves an average of 530 different families every month.
Through a program called Hope for Tomorrow, the organization provides computer training to prepare people for the job market. They currently have a computer lab with 10 terminals, a teaching terminal, and an overhead projection system, and are using CustomGuide training materials and certificates to teach and recognize their students.
Challenges and needs
Center of Hope has one volunteer college student who comes twice a week
to teach computer classes, plus other volunteers that help when they can.
One challenge they face is that many potential volunteers find it difficult
to commit to teaching a class for several weeks at a time. Also, volunteers
who do have the time available to teach a class often feel insecure about
their own computer knowledge.
How you can help
Center of Hope is in need of volunteers, as well as financial support.
If you would like to join CustomGuide in recognizing Center of Hope, please
visit their website
or e-mail them at centerofhopetexas@sbcglobal.net.
Have an organization you'd like to recommend?
Help us out by referring your favorite non-profit organization. Just follow
this link to provide us with contact information, and we will take it
from there!
E-passports: The next generation of travel
If you've ever traveled outside of the U.S., especially after 9/11, you know that getting through customs can be a pain. Having to wait in an endless line to get your passport stamped is the last thing you want to be doing after a 13-hour flight, and by this time next year, you might not have to.
This spring, the U.S. Department of State plans to introduce a new passport embedded with a small electronic chip containing the holder's personal data. The purpose of such a passport is to increase U.S. border security while enabling faster immigration inspections.
By this fall, all new and renewed passports will be of the electronic variety.
How does it work?
The e-passport will look exactly the same as a traditional passport, with
the addition of a tiny Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag embedded
in the back cover. This tag will store the data that is visually displayed
on the photo page of the passport, a digital photo of the holder, and
a digital signature to protect the stored data from alteration.
The digital photo will make it possible to use facial recognition technology in identifying travelers. Immigration inspectors will use an electronic device called a reader to access the information stored on the chip and therefore authenticate the traveler's identity.
So far, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia have already issued e-passports, and travelers in Dubai need only swipe a special card. Referred to as an "e-gate" card, the Dubai card contains an electronic chip that stores everything from fingerprint information to frequent-flier miles.
Increased security, or an invasion of privacy?
Unlike most smart card-type chips, which are activated on contact (phone
cards, gift cards, etc.), RFID tags can be read from a distance. Barry
Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Technology
and Liberty Project, worries that using this technology in passports "effectively
plants a bull's-eye on the back of every American traveler, literally
broadcasting the fact that they are Americans."
The Department of State is currently testing a variety of different security technologies for the e-passport, including a fortified front cover and spine made of an "anti-skimming" material that prevents the chip from being read unless the booklet is open. A variety of concerns regarding the security and privacy of the e-passport are addressed on the U.S. Department of State Web site.
Passport facts:
- If you currently own an "old-fashioned" passport, don't worry: all passports without electronic chips will still be valid for the full extent of their validity period.
- The cost to outfit a family of four with first-time passports is $358.
- An estimated 75 percent of Americans do not own a passport.
For more information, visit travel.state.gov/passport or www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler.
This month's free download is a preview of our new Mac OS X Tiger online training.
Click here to access a free online training lesson.
Part I: Web site optimization is key
When you use a search engine, the results page displays a list of sites relevant to your keyword search, but it also displays something else: ads. Ads are ever-present on the web, nowhere more than on search engine sites. If you work at a company that doesn't already advertise on the web, it probably will soon, and it pays to understand the positives and the pitfalls. If you're simply a web surfer, understanding the basics of web ad strategy will help you to be a more informed web user and consumer.
Web ad basics
Ads appear on search engine sites in different forms and locations, including
banners across the top of pages, and listings beside the non-ad search
results. As an advertiser, it's valuable to understand how to maximize
your impact in this marketing space. As a web user, it's important to
differentiate between paid-for search results, and the main search results,
which are ranked by how well your search keywords actually match the content
of web pages.
Search engine optimization
So you're ready to advertise on the web. Before you get too excited about
all the web advertising services that are available for a fee, capitalize
on free advertising. Start by making sure your web site is optimized for
search engines.
When surfers type in search keywords, the search engine displays a list
of sites that best fit those keywords. The first result is the site that
the search engine has determined is most likely to contain the desired
information. Making your site appear as high as possible on the list of
results for certain keyword searches is called optimization.
To gather the web site information that powers their searches, search engine sites such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN all have "web crawler" robots that comb the web, indexing and cataloging site information. They do this for free, but if you frequently add pages to your site and don't want to wait for the webcrawlers to pay you a visit, you can pay search engines to immediately include your web pages in their webcrawls. This ensures that all your pages are instantly available and up-to-date, and you don't need to worry that some of your pages were passed over.
Optimizing your web site can be difficult because different search engines use different formulas for determining search results. This is why a search for the same word returns different results on Yahoo and Google. The complex formulas rely on many factors, but usually center on the use of keywords on your site. If you want your web site to appear near the top of the search results list when users enter certain keywords, then you need to make sure your web site includes those keywords. Try to stay consistent with your use of terms, and consider increasing the frequency of certain words.
Optimization applies not only to the text that's visible on your site, but also to the site's META tags. META tags are descriptions and lists of keywords that you can add to your site to tell webcrawlers what your site is about. Unfortunately, simply loading up your site's META tags with popular search terms will not always give you the most success. Some search engines give more weight to the visible words on your site, and pay more attention to how high on the page the words are placed. Do some research on the search engines whose results you covet, and experiment until you find the right mix of results from the search engines you desire. You might also consider retaining the assistance of a web marketing firm to help you optimize your site.
Next month, we'll continue examining web advertising
by looking at pay-per-click advertising. We'll also address the biggest
stumbling block for advertisers: click fraud.
Twenty-one percent of workers said they pitied their bosses, and 54 percent said they "could never be paid enough to take their boss's job," according to Money magazine. The average chief executive's salary increased 14.5 percent in 2004, compared with a 3.7 percent raise for the average worker.
United
Nations University compared the number of open source mailing list
postings from different countries with the Internet penetration of each
country. Norway turned out to be the country most involved in open source
development.
Juniper Research finds that the global market for mobile and wireless hardware, software and services in local government will grow exponentially from $802 million in 2005 to $8.6 billion in 2010.
The CSI/40mpg.org survey found that 58 percent of Americans - including 57 percent of independents and 42 percent of conservatives - are more concerned about global warming today than they were two years ago. Also, more than three out of four Americans (76 percent) - including two out of three conservatives - think the federal government is not doing "enough to address global warming and develop alternative energy sources in order to reduce our dependence on foreign oil."