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Web Hosting - All About Domain Names "What's in a name?" Shakespeare asks in Romeo and Juliet. In the case of your web site the answer is: quite a lot. A domain name is the English (or other) language designator for your site. Because of the way the Internet functions, that name is associated with an IP address, a numeric identifier that computers and network components use to connect a browser to a web site. It's not mandatory that a site has a name. But directing visitors by IP address can quickly generate difficulties. Having an IP address IS mandatory, since it's ultimately the way a web site is located by other computers and network software. In the early days of the Internet the name was chosen carefully in order to help a person remember the URL. That made it easier to type, too. With hotspots on a page, great search engines, social networking and other contemporary tools, that's not as important now. But from a marketing perspective, it still helps to have a good name. It's still beneficial to have a site called 'CheapTVs.com' if what you sell are inexpensive TV sets. Calling your site, 'InexpensiveElectronicVisualDisplayDevices.com' may describe your business in some way, but it's a little harder to refer a new person to your site. Which name you choose can, therefore, affect how much traffic your site gets, how soon. Sooner or later, if you have information and/or products/services that people want, word will get around. But having a good name can certainly help. Love them or hate them, the Google company chose well. Of course, the fact is that there are millions of web sites around the world. That means, you don't necessarily get the name of your first choice. ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is the internationally recognized authority for managing IP addresses across the worldwide Internet, along with the top-level domain name-parts (.com, .net, .org, .edu, and so forth). But registering a name is done by simply contacting any of a hundred organizations that work as intermediaries to establish and track the names. GoDaddy, Register.com, Network Solutions and a great many others provide the service for anywhere from free to a few dollars per month or year. You contact them by navigating to their web site. Then, using a feature they all provide, you can select a possible name. They use something called whois and other software to determine if the name is already claimed. Or, you can check yourself at www.whois.com. Registration is for a limited time, but typically renewable in perpetuity provided you pay the (usually annual) fee. You may have to go through several choices to find a domain name that isn't already in use. With so many millions of sites, the odds of you getting your first choice is slim, unless you have a highly unusual imagination. But, it's also true that domains tend to die or expire. As they do, the name becomes available for use by someone new. A method for getting on a 'waiting list' is available. You register the name you want and if and when the name becomes available, you are offered the chance to claim it. Naturally, there's competition even on the waiting list for 'good' names. There are many different ways of establishing priority that vary by company. At any given time there are thousands of so-called auctions going on to bid on names. Give some thought to your new domain name and research its availability, but don't stress over it. The name isn't everything. After all, if Google had built a search engine that delivered usable results only 10% of the time, their name would be mud.

Web Hosting - FTP and Other File Transfer Tools Anything related to the Internet or computers is bound to introduce technical issues pretty soon. One of the earliest that novice web site owners encounter is FTP, which is an acronym for File Transfer Protocol. Seeing it spelled out, it's easy to see why those in the know quickly move to speaking in short hand. The reason web site owners soon will (or need to) become familiar with FTP is obvious to anyone who has built a site on a remote server. You have to have some way of getting the files to the remote computer and FTP is one of the most common tools. It's also one of the simplest and most efficient. FTP is composed of two parts: the client software and the server software. It's similar, in a way, to talking to someone on the phone who writes down everything you say. You (the client) make a request ('transfer this file to the server') and the listener (the server) takes the request and acts on it. That request to copy a file from a local computer to the remote one is carried out (often 'under the covers') by a PUT command, as in PUT this there. You create the web page (in the form of a file) and then PUT the file on the server. To move a file in the opposite direction, from the remote server to your local computer, your client software issues a GET command. Many FTP clients have graphical interfaces, similar to Windows Explorer, that allow you to drag-and-drop or otherwise copy the file without ever seeing the actual commands that carry it out. But it's helpful sometimes to know what goes on underneath. In tricky cases it can be an advantage to use a command line interface (in Windows, the 'DOS box', with a similar interface familiar to most Linux users). Knowing the commands and being able to use them in the command line form can sometimes help you diagnose what is going on when the graphical tools misbehave. But FTP is not the only way to get a file from here to there. In fact, your browser moves files around from a remote computer to your local one all the time. In most cases, when you type in or click on a URL, what happens under the covers is in essence a file transfer process. The web page is transferred from the web server to your local computer then displayed by the browser. Alternatively, you can sometimes even email a web page/file from your local computer to the remote server, then use an email client on the server itself to get the file and put it in a folder. That requires that you have some form of access to the remote computer. But there are many ways of doing that, such as in-built utilities in the operating system or using commercial remote control programs. Those alternatives can be helpful to know in cases where the FTP file transfer process is misbehaving. Having more than one way to accomplish the task helps you diagnose what might be going wrong. It also helps you get the job done when the usual tools aren't cooperating. The more you learn about these sometimes puzzling acronyms, the easier you can accomplish your own goals.

The History of Writing (history of writing) Writing is commonly used by billions of people each day. However, many of us don?t know the history of writing, and some of us would rather not ponder it for fear of getting a headache. Written communication is much needed today, and many societies could not survive without writing. Writing has a history like everything that is in existence today. The exact history of this form of communication may be clouded and even over exaggerated at times, but there are two known facts, writing has been used for a very long time and writing will be used for a very long time. The true beginning of writing is unknown, but it does have a comprehensive history. The first artistic paintings and writings were said to be done in the form of naturalistic paintings of animals and people in caves. The pictures were known as attempts to appease the spirits of animals that were needed to kill in the hunt. In ancient times pictures were also done of human beings. These pictures of humans were typically done in series, with a figure appearing in different physical positions progressively, which represented positions a ceremonial dance performed by ancient people. Progressively, the early societies began to stylize their messages, which were similar to using symbols to represent restrooms, handicap-accessible places, and international road signs. These stylized symbols are known a petroglyphs and hieroglyphs. The most famous system of hieroglyphs belonged to the ancient Egyptians who had hieroglyphics that were partially representational pictures that were stylized. Petrogylphs were often used by Native Americans as messages along trade routes, ritual information, and various other things. However, they were not as sophisticated as hieroglyphs. During this ancient period, Europeans preserved esoteric knowledge in runes and in an alphabetic writing system known as ogham. The Chinese culture also has a place in the history of writing. The culture began by writing like many others by using pictures then slowly moving to stylized pictures. However, over time the pictures became less representational and more abstract. Today, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other Asian languages are written with the use of ideeographs. An ideeograph is used to represent an idea instead of a word. Around 1700 B.C. a new form of writing appeared in the Middle Eastern cultures. During this time, the Phoenicians created an alphabet. This development was different from all others because the symbols represented sounds, not pictures or ideas. The combinations of sounds made up the words of the language, which was crucial in the history of writing. The alphabet developed by the Phoenicians spread to Northern Africa and became the system of the Arabs, and spread northwest to Greece. The Greek developed their own letters, which were modified even more to become the Cyrillic alphabets of Russia, the Balkans and the Romans. The Romans modified the alphabet and made it the alphabet that is recognized today. The history of writing developed even further into the 20th century. Following World War II, the Japanese and Chinese began to use the alphabet to represent the sounds of their languages. For these Asian cultures, the alphabetic system was easier to write by hand and to print economically, so it made life far simpler for those cultures. The artistic form of writing used by these Asian cultures will likely never die, but there are many advantages to using an alphabetic system, and many modern people of these cultures benefit handsomely from learning to read and write using the current alphabet. The history of writing is long and sometimes vague, but it can be seen as a necessary teaching that will help modern societies understand the importance of written communication, and understand how the world would be forever changed without it.