Importance of website for small business

21st century – the era of computers, the exchange of goods and services, transcending the geographical boundary, is happening online. An intelligently designed website of product s and service providers forms the effective tool for online trading, for corporate as well as small business developers.

In the present era, life has become busy ad time has become the precious asset that every individual would like to posses. People want services to reach their door steps in the least possible time. Internet has made transactions possible, sitting at home, just by a click on the mouse. In such a scenario, the business class has identified the need for possessing a well architectured website.

A well structured website not only generate sales but also save man power costs by automating basic functions, which are still traditionally handled by humans. Understanding the pulse of the corporates, SME, small business developers, companies providing website design service have come up with innovations . Small business website designers have succeeded in blending the creative ideas with advanced technologies.

For small business group a website of their own is the most cost effective method of advertising about their products and services across the world. A well customised website can act as user friendly interface between the vendors and the buyers, thus generate a higher revenue through online sales.

As globalisation has broken the political and geographical ambits, transfer of knowledge and technologies between countries is occurring at a greater phase. Outsourcing of website design services has emerged as a cost effective way of developing websites specially for small business developers.

A judiciously designed website is the sharpest weapon that a small business developer could posses to have an edge over their competitor.

Yahoo! Web Messenger

With the launch of Yahoo Web Messenger, Yahoo became one of those online chat provider who offer web based interface of their chat service. This flash based web messenger by Yahoo is awesome because it works on all platforms and works well with popular browsers like Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera.

Two notable features are interoperable with Windows Live Messenger, which was already present in the full version of Yahoo Messenger and message history, which saves chat logs on Yahoo’s server. Message history was also present in the full version of Yahoo Messenger, but it worked by saving messages locally.

Yahoo Web Messenger’s flash based interface is completely lovable. Once you load the page, you’ll never have to reload the page again (even to check your message history). Unlike Meebo, Yahoo Web Messenger has a tabbed chat interface. Whenever you initiate a chat or someone sends you a message, it’ll neatly open up as a new tab. It has advertisements as well, but it shouldn’t really be an issue as they are giving you all the above goodies.

Yahoo Web Messenger was announced on May 2nd, but I was not able to try as it was not available for my country at that time. If you look into the past, Yahoo had announced that they’ll integrate Yahoo Messenger within Yahoo Mail; so far the feature hasn’t been enabled for my account. It’s surprising to see a company like Yahoo do injustice to its users.

Just as a reference, Yahoo Web Messenger was built on Flex 2. You can try it by typing http://webmessenger.yahoo.com/ or simply http://web.im/

Norton 360! Worth the price?

Symantec Norton 360 is a complete security and performance solution as promised by Symantec earlier. Norton 360 provides a much better user experience and security protection than either Windows Live OneCare or McAfee Total Protection.In fact, Norton 360 is better than Norton Internet Security 2007 in some respects, namely that it’s lighter on system resources, the tools are better integrated, and it presents a much better design model than the current Norton product line. But more advanced users should stay with the Internet security suites for now.

Lets speak about the Pros and cons of Norton 360

Pros:

Its greatly low on system resources; it’s intuitive, covers most of the bases that a comprehensive security-and-performance tool should, and includes free online storage. And not to forget its very attractive design and user interface.

The bad:

The biggest weakpoint is that it doesnt yet support Firefox or Opera browsers; doesn’t include wireless security tools, doesn’t provide an ID vault for passwords or credit card info.

Setup:

The final shipping version is surprisingly fast and easy. Norton 360 requires 300MB of hard drive space, considerably less than Windows Live OneCare, but certainly more than that of McAfee Total Protection, almost double we can say. As usual Norton consumes a lot of RAM, Norton 360 requires 256MB of RAM.

The Norton 360 interface is really awesome; it’s really different when comapred to the interface used on the rest of the Norton 2007 product line. The UI for Norton 360 is clean, intuitive, and no-nonsense. A toolbar across the top allows quick access to scans, configuration for tasks, access to your Norton online account, in-program Help, and technical support. Below that, there’s a line that displays any current system alerts, such as configuring your backup and recovery options. The main section includes modules for PC Security, Transaction Security, Backup and Recovery, and PC Tuneup. Each of these modules displays a color-coded status and a brief explanation, with an option for more details.

Features:

>Removes viruses from email and instant messages

>Blocks Internet worms at point of entry

>Stops spyware from tracking you online

>Authenticates popular shopping and banking Web sites

>Protects you from phishing sites designed to steal your confidential information

>Discovers new files and backs up that data automatically

>Automatically back up important files to a secure online service

>Local backup to CD, DVD or external drive

>Automatically removes unwanted Internet clutter and temporary files that can slow down your PC’s performance.

Conclusion:

For personal use such as for home, Norton 360 represents the best value for ease of use, tools offered, and overall system performance. Its much better when compared to McAfee Total Protection and Microsoft Windows Live OneCare.