While checking my email late night, I got a request to write something about “how internet works”. This reaction resulted from my previous article on Uses And Limitations Of The Internet - At Glance

This email was from a Mauritian and I was amazed since I rarely find any Mauritian interacting on my blog considering that I’m a Mauritian too. I thank “this guy” for his time and consideration to contact me and I hope to get more requests about topics to write about.

From the information that I read from the email, I guess I will go straight into technical details.. So, here we go for a small explanation on our subject:

NOTE: As you can see from the picture above, each arrow are numbered. This is important since they denote ordered steps as detailed below:

Consider for instance that you want to access the site http://wakish.info which resides on a server, just as any website or object that you want to access on the net.

1) The Browser, for example firefox, (from your pc - aka client pc) contacts a DNS Server to get the required IP address of the domain name wakish.info
(recall that all address names are stored as numbers (IP). These numbers are given names for humans to be able to read and remember them)

2) The DNS Server* searches for the IP address and returns it back to your browser

3) The Browser can then contact the Web Server where wakish.info resides to get access to that website

4) The Web Server, in turn, locates the requested page of wakish.info on its storage space

5) Once found, the Web Server returns the web page to the browser

6) The browser assembles the response and displays the page in a human readable format so that you can undertand it

Additional Remark:
* The DNS system in its own, forms a network of its alikes. So, if one DNS server does not know how to translate a particular domain name, it asks another one and so on, until the correct IP address is returned

That’s it Feel to add and comment on what I have been explaining above..

What’s Next:

=> Upload your own image on the Internet, can you?
=> Domain transfer, did you know how this is actually done?
=> robots.txt - why it this simple file still so widely used?
=> Website Customization: What can you do to improve the layout of your blog or website?
=> How Do Search Engines Work - Web Crawlers / Web Spiders

Today while going to work, I was sitting behind two university students. I guess they were in their first year, seeing them revising pretty obvious things, apparently for a class test. (but I was like them too in my first year )
I heard one of them saying: “did you search for the uses and limitations of the Internet.. damm, we can be assessed today..”
So, I tried to figure out the answer in my mind, but then I said to myself why not blog about it tonight itself So, let’s briefly find an answer to our two “uni friends” examinable question

Uses Of The Internet

1) Information Resource.

Anyone, anywhere, can use the Internet as an informative resource since it is packed with so many many many articles about almost any topics.

2) Education Resource.

I guess you figured this out: our “two friends” can find an answer to their question online if they haven’t find the solution But most importantly, they can immediately google for this information right from the university lab (which I bet they did). So, the Internet can be a very handy and instant educative platform for any student from any machine with an internet connectivity.

3) Online Magazines and Newspapers

Nowadays, you don’t really need to buy a newspaper or magazine due to their online availability.

4) Online Shopping and Commerce (E-Commerce)

This is pretty obvious too, you can buy and sell online. A very big advantage of E-Commerce is that you can target a wider audience as compared to a business which is local to a country.

5) Online Communication

How can we possibly forget this one? Internet is a crucial medium for communication and interaction. Examples are blogging (you are reading this from a blog), forum or communities, chat rooms, social platforms like myspace, facebook..etc, instant messaging like msn or yahoo messenger chat, Email, and so many other forms of communication available.

6) Sharing of views and opinions about anything.

A concrete example is me, Wakish, sharing my own perception and experience about “the uses and limitations of the internet” which you are reading right now Another example might be YOU, the reader, contributing more to what I’m saying by commenting in the form below..

7) Sharing of softwares, music, ebooks and other products

This is pretty much clear

Advertising and Promotion of items and products.

Internet has become a very powerful advertising medium..infact it’s a craze these days.. Everyone everywhere has something to advertise online, including me (it’s the mantra..lol)

9) Video Conferencing and Remote Desktop

These two have undergone a whole new and beneficial dimension, especially for business and companies (If you want an explanation on these two concepts, let me know - I’ll be glad to try to come up with something to p lease you )

10) *You Say What?*
Common, this is supposed to be you and me discussing, so let us here some more uses from you

Limitations Of Internet

1) The quality of information resources might not always be reliable and accurate.

Of course, with so many many websites and webmasters claiming to be an expert in almost anything, we are ending up with stuffs like “learn how to earn online with a 13 year old“. While I don’t blame such approaches, their integrity and experience about the subject is definetly questionable.

2) Searching of information can be very tedious. (It IS definetly time consuming)

Let’s a take an example, just google for the word “money“, you will see 10 pages full of resources (That’s only with google, now there are yahoo, msn..etc). So finding what you are exactly looking for, might take you some hours of browsing..

3) Internet is definetly not 100% secure.

We cannot neglect things like identity theft, a pc being compromised by a cracker or your email account being compromised..etc
( Thought: may be you could think about the possible solutions for this situation )

4) *Say Your Part*
What have I left out or wrongly said? Let me hear you..

As most of you know, Text Link Ads, aka TLA, was founded by Patrick Gavin. But did you know about how actually TLA was born? How did Patrick come up with this brilliant idea? Was it luck or effort?

Fortunately, Patrick has just started his own blog and it’s pretty cool to read about how he came up with this wonderfully creative business idea of Text Link Ads. It all started from the “Brick to the Click” as Mr Partrick Gavin narrates in his article: History of TLA.

Before you go, here is another interesting article that I spotted; it gives you insights about the evolution of text links in general and most of the aspects and trends centered around them. The article was produced by Gord Collins, titled Text Link Ads: Buy Your Way to the Top?

Suggested Reading:
=> Money - The Root Of All Success!
=> What Is Search Engine Optimization - SEO
=> Moneybookers better than Paypal - Discuss!

A Purchasing Power

It seems paradoxical that while genuine hatred for a Scrooge or a Shylock is widespread, people everywhere often complain about being short of money. Miserliness or material greediness is not socially or morally desirable for as the old saying goes: “money is the root of all evil“. Yet to man, money appeals as an (ultimate) purchasing power and the more money he has, the better he is able to satisfy his ever increasing needs and wants.

Technological Growth Proportional To Ways Of Making-Money Online

Virtual life is no exception to this. Since the recent years, we are all witnessing the sudden urge of  ’making money online‘. As technology is evolving at a frightening speed, an array of unprecedented ways of making money online keeps on emerging. Some of these are:
1) Affiliate marketing
2) ‘Get-Paid-To’ opportunities
3) Freelancing
4) Blogging
5) Ebooks’ business
6) and so many many more..

Make Money With Money?!

“The ability of a programmer to code and design a system is only limited by his/her own creativity“. In this respect, while the possibilities to shape a successful means of making money online is endless, most of us are limited by ‘money‘. We all have dreams and excellent ideas of doing ‘this and that‘ online, but money is the big problem. If you want to be successful, you will need to invest in buying a domain name, a dedicated host, professional unique designs and packages, advertising your site to get consistent and sustained traffic (like Text-Link-Ads or
) and paying a coder to design and customize a specific system, etc.. Hence there is no denying that most, if not all, of those big guys on the net are successful because they had (have) the financial requirements to boost their ‘x, y, z making money online platforms‘ at the right time, at the right place, to the right audience. There is no such thing as ‘making money without money’!

The Survey!

I made a small survey across three online communities and here are some of the responses:

Question asked: “If you had the necessary budget, what would you do.. online?”

1) Responses from HostBidder Forum

=> Posted by Fergal - (Owner of HostBidder)

If I had the time and funds I would purchase a domain name reseller account from Enom and give away even more free domain names from HostBidder.com. Another service I would offer is free hosting accounts through a partnership with an established hosting company.

My motivation is helping new webmasters get their first site up and running. The free domain names from HostBidder.com together with the excellent advice and support provided by the friendly members of our community is a great way for new webmasters to get their site set-up and generating revenue.

=> Posted by Thanoz

If i had the money i would love to pay all the mentainance fees & domain name fees for some charity organizations that are really worth of it.(e.g Greenpeace).I would also be willing to setup the websites and (all the hosting&domain fees) for local charity organizations of my area and not only.
I would also love,apart of the above, to setup a directory of all the charity and non-profit organizations that are dedicated to help suffering people all around the world.
If only i had that money…:(

=> Posted by dancom96

I would start some good money making websites, so I can bring in some cash. And start donating to some charities, and give some $ to the people who helped me get so far. Also, I would PAY webmasters to GET RID OF SPAMMERS.

=> Posted by aashwin

if i had a budget i sure will by a high space & bandwith server and start a new free service site something like free templates or fre games!

and then start making my own small bussiness

and also stop people getting scammed by surveys and stuff

=> Posted by MOGmartin

If youve got the budget, then the best thing to do realistically is to develop new idea’s and focus on new niche markets.

Is someone else doing something well, in one market, but not in another?? Well YOU do it in the other market.

Carry on doing this until you have enough to retire, then go live on the beach somewhere!

Thanks!!

MOGmartin

2) Responses from Digital Point Forum

=> Posted by newzone

Many times i wanted to start a hosting related business but if i write here this means i don’t have the money so i try to “dream” in this post … internet radio was and is my passion , a radio streaming business maybe but not the first choice, the first choice will be my own social network well promoted or a website using an affiliate programs like CJ , the next can be a reseller in the domain names and hosting category… really want to make some good money on internet but i think some luck in everything is necessary…

=> Posted by daryo

I would probably buy a dedicated server and start selling great hosting. But I don’t have enough money I can only dream… But when I finish school and get a job I’m definitely gonna get few dedis. xD

=> Posted by Michael-Martin

I would start taking some of the startup ideas I have and actually see about hiring programmers and such to make it work.

I’d best go start by buying lottery tickets…

3) Responses from BlogCatalog Community

=> Posted by Albran

I would spend everything to promote A Course In Miracls, which is the most advanced idea of forgiveness you can get. It offers you a simple mind training to start changing your mind and thoughts, and aquiring a new perception of everyone and everything in the world. It’s a miracle.

It is not about earning money. It is about earning gratitude and happiness and all the things that belong to you in truth, which have been lost to you — or better, to your awareness — by your decision to be a limited self in a body in time and space.

Hundrets of excellent videos by The Master Teacher of A Course In Miracles are available to watch on TV, the internet, on DVD and VHS.

=> Posted by wehireu

I would build a content supersite that sold a variety of high quality content, magazines, books, ebooks, reports, audiobooks, software, just about anything you could download with information in it.

=> Posted by zawadi

I would make a Gaming Site.

=> Posted by MoneyMoose

I’d finally have enough money to fund my expedition to Norway so that I can collect my $16,000,000 winnings from the Staatslater lottery that I was apparently entered in automatically through a random selection service and won.

In all seriousness, though, I’d probably buy a professional logo/website design. Brand building is good.

What Is The Conclusive Tendency

Money is more than ever the essence of life both in our real world and virtual world.

“But then one is always excited by descriptions of money changing hands. It’s much more fundamental than sex” - Nigel Dennis

Do YOU think ‘Money is the root of all success in our present world ?‘

Suggested Reading:
1) Writing the GP Essay - Write to convince!
2) What Is Search Engine Optimization - SEO
3) How Do Search Engines Work - Web Crawlers / Web Spiders
4) Ryan Giggs Became The 11th Man Utd’s Man To Score 100 Goals - (A Century!)

Even though more and more Internet users switch to broadband every year, a large portion of the web’s population is still running on good old dialup connections. It is therefore unwise to count them out of the equation when you’re designing your website, and a very major consideration we have to make for dialup users is the loading time of your website.

Generally, all the text on your website will be loaded in a very short time even on a dialup connection. The culprit of slow-loading sites is mainly large images on your website, and it is very important to strike a delicate balance between using just enough images to attract your users and not to bog down the overall loading time of your site.

You should also go to a greater length and optimize every image on your site to make sure it loads in the least time possible. What I really mean is to use image editing software to remove unnecessary information on your images, and thereby effectively reducing the file size of your image without affecting its appearance.

If you own Photoshop, it will be obvious to you that when you save an image as a JPEG file, a dialog box appears and lets you choose the “quality” of the JPEG image — normally a setting of 8 to 10 is good enough as it will preserve the quality of your image while saving it at a small file size. If you do not have Photoshop, there are many free image compressors online that you can download and use to reduce your image’s file size.

On the other hand, you can opt to save your images in PNG format to get the best quality at the least file size. You can also save your images in GIF format — the image editing software clips away all the color information not used in your image, hence giving you the smallest file size possible. However, saving in GIF format will often compromise the appearance of your image, so make your choice wisely!

NOTE: You might also want to have a look at my previous article on Uploading your own image on the Internet, can you?

Technorati Tags: image optimization, load time, reducing load time, website, blog, internet, broadband, dialup connection, photoshop, JPEG image, PNG format, GIF format, image file size, image, appearance

Did you ever wanted to show your friends your favorite image or a pic that you have just made or found?
Did you ever wanted to upload your avatar on the net to use it on forums or your blog? I bet that most of you have that strong will, since all “internaut” needs to keep such things handy.
This small guide are for people who do not have much experience on the net and yet wants to be trendy Lets, start this small journey..

Before going further, have a look at some specific words and their definition:

1. Image file - image file usually ends with the following ‘extensions’: jpg, gif, png, bmp, psd and tiff..etc These different extensions gives a clue of the ‘type of image‘ you are using.
2. Image Sharing - This is the process of showing your picture or any image from your pc to anyone you want via the Internet. You do this by sharing the ‘link‘ of your image (once uploaded)
   A simple link might look like this: http://www.thisdomain.com/image.gif
3. Image Uploading - In a layman’s term, it is the process of “taking a picture or image from your computer and storing it on a server on the internet.”
4. Image Hosting - Is The service which allows you to upload your image on the internet.

Image Hosting services are now becoming increasingly available free of charge. Now I guess you are wondering how then will the owner of that service pay the cost of maintaining his server? (Hint: They accrue profit from advertisements and sponsors)

Good, now let’s head to the actual steps:

Step 1:
Choose an Image Hosting Service and open it in your browser. We will be using http://imageshack.us/ as our Image Hosting Service.

Step 2:
Click on “Choose” as shown by the red arrow in the picture below

Step 3:
A small window will pop-up in front of you. This is where you will select the image from your computer. Once you have selected the image from your desktop or my documents or whichever place it is on your pc, click on “Open” or “OK“.
See image below:

Step 4:
Now click on “Host it!” and wait for some few minutes for the process to complete
(See image)

Step 5:
Once uploaded, you will be redirected on a new page where you will find different “types” of link for your uploaded image.
Scroll Down the page and select the link where you see “Direct link to image”.
The link will look something like: “http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/2747/img01uy7.png”
(See image below)

NOTE:
=> Before uploading your image, take careful observation of the size of your image + the type of your image and the size/type allowed by the Hosting Service. If your image does not match the requirements of the Service, you will not be able to upload your image.

=> Google for “Image Hosting Service” to know the different services available and see what additional features they provide, for instance more uploading image size allowed, more types of images allowed..etc

=> For our example above, I have chosen Image Shack, since I have been using it for the last 3 years and it has been very handy for my purposes. It is a stable Service.
Usually you will want to choose for a Service which has been in the business for a long time and which is popular.. but usually the best policy is to try them out and judge for yourself

Happy Uploading!
- Wakish -

Technorati Tags: image, picture, avatar, uploading, hosting, image hosting, image uploading, image hosting service, imageshack, image shack, image link, image sharing, image file, image size allowed, image type allowed