It's time to make money in the Web!

Local Phone Access

admin — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:18:15 +0000

One advantage of using the Internet for information gathering and disseminaion is its low cost and flat monthly fee.
Your cost savings can vanish instantly, however, if you choose an access provider that’s a long-distance phone call away. Although the various telecommunications companies might appreciate your use, it’s a sure bet that your first phone bill will be enough to make you rethink your Internet connection strategy!
This isn’t a problem if you sign up with an Internet access provider in your city, but it’s something to think about when considering whether to hook up with a national or international Internet network.
For example, Computer Witchcraft, one of the Internet providers that Rosalind uses, charges $8 an hour to log on if you dial direct to the company’s computer in Louisville, Kentucky, but $15.20 an hour or more if you dial in through the company’s toll-free number. With Delphi you pay an extra $9 an hour to log in through the local SprintNet gateway if you log on during business hours.
The good news is that many of the biggest Internet providers are beginning to offer local dialup access in a variety of locations throughout the United States. For example, Netcom Communications Service, with computers in the San Francisco area, has local dialup numbers in Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle, Portland, New York City, Las Vegas, Chicago, and Austin, Texas. This can be a double boon if you travel and want to remain connected without paying for long-distance phone calls.

Network Security

admin — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:17:44 +0000

We’ll be honest here; there are some security risks associated with connecting to a global network. The more sophisticated your connection, the higher the risk. Nonetheless, despite what you may have read about crackers and pirates swooping down on unsuspecting Internet users and pilfering passwords or reading private e-mail, chances are quite slim that it’ll happen to your company.
If you plan on becoming an Internet user, you’ll want to learn more about minimizing these risks. At the same time, there’s no need for undue panic. Remember that your cellular phone carries major security risks—just ask anyone with a handheld scanner—and even voice mail has been the target of break-ins.
If you’re planning to sell your product or service on the Internet, however, there are other problems to consider. If you’re planning to sell your goods or services online, you need to consider strategies for transmitting credit card information in a secure manner. As a result, it’s vital to find an Internet access provider who will work with you to set up “firewalls,” passwords, and other network security measures. Security is also a reason that a provider that’s been on the Internet a while may prove a safer choice than a brand-new access provider.

Customer Service

admin — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:16:10 +0000

Increasingly, companies are turning to the Internet to set up customer support bulletin boards offering technical advice, monitoring customer satisfaction, providing new product information, and making software upgrades available electronically.
For many companies, it’s a cost-effective way to do business. By supporting customers electronically, they save the expense of 800 numbers and corporate news¬letters announcing upgrades. Customers, meanwhile, save on long-distance phone calls. What’s more, simple upgrades can be quickly distributed to your customer base at no expense—a technique used extensively by Apple with its Macintosh software suite.
On the Internet, small businesses can tap into a global community of more than 20,000,000 users to swap mail, make contacts, market products, search databases and other reference sources, and even engage in real-time discussions for less than $20 a month. Larger companies can buy their own direct Internet hookups starting at about $160, and high-speed, leased-line connections to the network— connections capable of supporting hundreds of employees using the Internet simultaneously—can be maintained for under $1,500 per month.
Although there are unquestionably many advantages of doing business on the Internet, there are also many risks and problems. In addition to the business-averse Internet culture, there are also security breaches, traffic jams, and reliability problems that crop up from time to time.
Another problem is that much of the underlying Internet technology is based on the somewhat arcane UNIX operating system; low-cost, dialup connections are likely to plop you right in the middle of a UNIX session, leaving novice users hopelessly lost.
Right now, security is probably the most pressing concern that most businesses have about connecting to the Internet. Late in 1993, for instance, electronic “crackers” broke into the Internet and began stealing account passwords for a variety of different machines. By the time anybody noticed, the bandits had already learned thousands of passwords, the keys to public and private computer accounts throughout the world. No one knows exactly how many passwords were stolen, but according to The New York Times, officials at the government-funded Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) estimate that tens of thousands of computers around the world have been put at risk—computers not just on the Inter¬net but on any computer network attached to it.
Then there are the traffic jams. On the Internet, as on any real-world roadway, traffic tie-ups occur when thousands of people try to tap into a particular computer at once. One example is the Illinois National Center for Supercomputer Applications computer, which offers free copies of the popular Internet browsing software, Mosaic. So many users try to download the software from the machine that it often slows to a veritable crawl trying to meet the demand. Other times, due to its traffic load, it simply refuses entry to users trying to connect. Internet computers and data providers are working to add capacity, although it seems a safe bet that however fast networks are expanded, there will always be places where user demand will exceed computer capacity. Call it rush hour on the information highway!
Another occasional problem is network reliability. Unlike centralized for-profit services like CompuServe and Prodigy, there’s no guarantee that your message or data will get to where you send it in a timely manner, and there are precious few reliable ways of checking or confirming receipt. Our experience shows that the system is nonetheless quite reliable, with hundreds of messages transmitted without incident to Eastern Europe, India and the People’s Republic of China for every message that vanishes or bounces back.