Technology Toolkit

Ebay is an online internet company that has its origins in the United States from the mid 1990s. It is a place where anyone can sell or purchase anything they wish as long as it is not illegal on a local basis or to anywhere in the world. Three years later when the site went public the originator became an instant billionaire. The site apparently attracts 902 million visitors per year although it had humble beginnings with the first item being a broken laser pointer which sold for under $15. The found may never have imagined what was to come.

There are different types of auctions. There are sets of rules on how the bidding needs to be done that are covered on the help pages of Ebay. There is a feedback system where the buyer can rate his experience with a particular seller. This way one can get an idea if this seller is one that you would like to do business or not. There used to be feedback from the seller about the buyer but this option has been removed. If a seller or buyer feels that one or the other has been dishonest in some way, a dispute can be filed to Ebay.

The auctions are pretty open and although there are regulations, they are not free from fraud. There are a number of accounts of fraudulent activities noted, but the major percent of the auctions done fall under business as usual. Over the years restrictions began to show up on illegal items such as firearms, tobacco, drugs, bootleg recordings, etc and the security and monitoring of the system tightened up.

There is really no limit on what can be bought and sold. You can find tickets to entertainment events, sporting events or memorabilia, stamps, antiques, industrial equipment, etc, etc. You can even find real estates. You can find houses in foreclosure which are being auctioned off both residential and commercial. If you are looking to rent an apartment there are endless listings for you to browse through.

The Help section on Ebay directs new users one how to buy and sell and how to find what you are looking for. It shows how to deal with transaction issues or problems and goes over security and how their feedback system works. There is also something called the Ebay University and classes are available to educate one on how to be successful with Ebay if one is doing more than just casual buying and selling and wants to make some income from their ventures.

Of course there is a way that Ebay makes its money which are from various fees, but the most obvious ones being fees for listing products and fees when something sells. Each country has variations of these fees. One advantage customers in the United States find is that if you are purchasing something which is out of your state you do not have to pay sales tax.

As Ebay branches out throughout the world there are lists and list of job opening available in various companies. It is expanding and adding different services such as purchasing PayPal in the year 2002. Needless to say it is a massive operation.

Internet radio really could not be more simply stated as being audio broadcasting over the internet instead of by other means. It has also been called webcasting. What internet radio does is to pull all parts of the world together. Whereas in the past if you were listening to a radio station in New York City, you could only hear it in NYC. Now, if this radio station was connected up to the internet, anyone anywhere in the world could potentially listen to this radio station. Traditional radio stations typically had a broadcast range of about 100 miles. Within this broadcast range there was also only the potential of about 2 dozen stations.

The particular aspect of internet radio where a radio station takes its broadcast and puts it onto the internet began in 1994 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA. The first internet only radio station came around in 1995 and was and is called HardRadio and it was a licensed affair.

Internet radio should be available on cell phones and wireless in relatively short order. What about internet radio in your car? While it can be done, there are some issues to get around to make it work such as the connectivity to an internet provider which may require some custom device to connect up to each carrier. This will need a bit more work before it becomes a widespread reality.

So what is the difference between internet radio and more traditional radio. Traditional radio is programmed and has a schedule which is followed and people listening know their stations and can predict what they are doing to listen to. With internet radio people generally search for what they want to listen to. Traditional radio has a stronger appeal to those over 35 years of age and internet radio is more popular to those between the age of 18 and 34.

The internet radio stations do have a similar set up for advertisement which is where they make their money unless it is like the BBC where there are no advertisements and where they get their funding from the viewers. Internet radio is generally free. Then there is the question and controversy at this time as to whether or not or how much in terms of royalties will be paid and how will this be done? It appears that webcasters are being asked to pay performance royalties that a typical broadcast station would not be required to pay. Webcasters typically want to pay the musicians who create the music but are not in agreement with other extraneous royalty fees that are being dictated by music conglomerates. It is the same sort of issue that accompanied records where the record labels were in control of the financing aspect of the music which was produced. Anyway this is the realm where this needs to be sorted out.

Not everyone that uses the internet has purchased or shopped using the internet, however based on surveys roughly 2/3rds of users have. More and more people are doing their banking online as well and the current percentage is roughly 40 percent of internet users do their banking online.

There are advantages to internet shopping. You have a multitude of choices to hand that you can view to find the best bargains. Those with products to sell over the internet can keep prices down as they have less overhead costs as they do not require a store to keep their products or sales people on site selling them. There are also bargain and discount sites available online where you can find deals on items you are looking for.

If you are trying to find out information about a product, it is easy to search out this information and read all about it before you buy. You do not have to jump in your car and go to the store, so you save gas and you save time. You also do not have to shop during store hours and can shop any time of the day or night.

There are concerns that people have about internet shopping. The main one is not wanting to give out credit card and other personal information on the internet. The amount of information available on the internet can also be overwhelming. Some might like to stick to going to the store that they are familiar with and where they can see the product they are about to buy. Surveys show that lower income families are more liable to feel that way about the safety of their personal information.

There are things which you can do to give you an idea if the site you are purchasing from is legitimate or not. Do they supply you with contact information such as their phone number and email address? Keeping a record of all printed transactions is also a good idea when internet shopping. It is always good if you recognize the store you are purchasing from. Never give out your Social Security number to someone who asks for it online.

One other fact is that currently there are no taxes on items purchased on the internet if you are purchasing out of state. If you live in one state and are purchasing something in another state, you are not charged tax as the selling state does not have offices in your state. There are pro tax people fighting this so it may not go on this way forever.

There are ways for you to get your own shopping mall and earn rebates on your personal purchases. You can also earn rebates on purchases of others if you get them buying on the same mall system that you are purchasing from. This is also a potential income source for you. Typically the stores used in your own mall would be either well known or at least reputable stores.

Then there is always Ebay. This is the largest auction in the world which started with one idea and one sale in 1995 and grew to a point where today there 900 million plus people that use the site annually. You can buy or sell virtually anything on Ebay provided it is legal.

One thing is for certain and that is that internet shopping is here to stay. The specifics of the way it will go may not be known, but it is not going anywhere.

A search engine is basically an information finding system in a computer that helps one find out information they are trying to find. They dramatically cut down the time needed to find the information one is looking for.

The concept of optimizing a website for the search engines began in the mid 1990s when webmasters saw the benefit on high ranking of their sites.

In earlier years webmasters were able to manipulate their websites with the result of them being able to get high ranking in the search engines regardless of whether the content of their web page was actually relevant to the targeted keyword or not.

Over time the search engine computations of the relevance of a particular web page to a particular keyword or set of keywords became more sophisticated so that the search engine could tell what web pages were relevant to a keyword being searched for and what web pages had just been manipulated just to gain traffic. This was done by those computing by being able to determine the quality and strength of incoming or inbound links to a web page. This system however was still not foolproof as webmasters were still able to manipulate by exchanging, buying or selling for the higher quality links to their sites. From that point on other factors were entered in to the computations the search engines use in ranking pages. This information is not available to webmasters and the public at large.

There are companies that are search engine optimization companies. The service they sell to the public is to optimize their website to give it the best possibility of higher ranking with the search engines. If their techniques are too aggressive the effect may be detrimental to their clients to a point where their websites could be banned from search results. Not something you would want to pay someone for.

Some of the search engines have made efforts to communicate with the search engine optimization companies to get their efforts aligned for everyones benefit. There are those who use search engine optimization to conform with the desires and wishes of the search engines and there are those who seek to get around the search engine rules and guidelines to get what traffic they can until they are caught.

It is a good practice to mix a campaign using search engine optimization with one of a good paying campaign. The reason for this is that the computations that the search engines use do change and one may see a drop in unpaid traffic due to this factor. It is also a good practice to avoid search engine optimization companies that make false promises they can not deliver, that guarantee a top rank with Google, that are secretive, that are nondescript about where your money goes, etc.

Happy hunting.

As with any tool to communicate to your public, audio messages are used to give your potential customers a closer sense of who you are. The presence of your voice on your site makes you that the much more real to anyone that is considering purchasing the product that you are presenting to sell to them.

You could say that there is a certain etiquette used with audio messages just as there is now a certain etiquette used in relation to flashing graphics, popups, etc. In the past you might have heard a voice coming right at you the moment you logged into a site. This is not really acceptable practice at this time as these tools have become a bit more refined and the one searching wants to have a choice of what they want to have bombarding their eyes and ears. You want to be able to see a button to click to start a video or audio presentation and a button to click to turn it off when you have had enough.

You can just give a greeting or introduction, technical advice, instructions, tips or secrets of the trade or positive feedback from your customers. Whatever you want to do to attract the attention you need so that your potential customer continues on with your site rather than shooting off somewhere else.

Adding audio messages to your site is not a difficult nor is it an expensive activity. As with anything it takes looking into, going through the learning curve and then just persisting and doing it.
If you have been creating websites and getting them on line it is no different than what you have been doing so far. You just need to find out how it is best done and do it. You will need a microphone which is not expensive and software such as Audacity.

Audio messages are used extensively in religion and getting the word out. If you do a Google search of the term audio messages, there are many that come up from various different religions. Actually it is more like a majority. Again as stated above it is a way of getting your word out no matter what your word might be.

There are ways to send audio messages to a server from a mobile phone and then pick it up later from your computer. You can set up your computer so that when you get an incoming email it can alert you with a sound so you know you have new traffic.

There are services where you can use your personal computer to create and edit voice messages rather than sending an email. Phone messages can be store, as can meetings. Then they can be sent along to others. You can create a diary in audio form which can be stored and developed and built upon.

The potential and future potential of this sort of tool is virtually unlimited.