The interior defense dines under the sabotage.

Kind of a strange random sentence huh.

So I have been a part of the Open Source community for quite some time and have surrounded myself by geeks and nerds for the last few years. I have always been a big time supporter of Skype, especially when they did their FREE calling US and Canada this past year. That just sold me on the whole Skype experience. I have a buddy who refuses to pay for Skype because they don’t use the official VOIP standard protocols. This friend of mine is the ultimate nerd. I’m sure when he reads this he will feel nice and fuzzy inside because of the compliment. Unlike a lot of Open Sourcers, I could give less of a $#%& about if I have to pay or what protocol it uses. All I know is that Skype is the bomb and has always worked well for me.

Some of the problems I have run into with Skype were never really Skype’s problems, but more my network or my computer or the other person on the other line. Skype has always come in crystal clear and worked quite well. If you have the right tools, you can even record the conversations you have and PodCast interviews over Skype. I use a program called PowerGramo. It works very well.

Here is the selling point. Here’s an example of what my costs are for internet and for phone using Skype with voicemail and all the bells and whistles that Skype has.

• SkypeOut - $29.95 a year
  • Outbound calling.
  • Unlimited calling to US and Canada.
  • Ability for International Calling at Discounted Rates.
  • FREE Skype to Skype
  • All Skype to Skype includes Chat functionality and Video functionality.
  • Conferencing Abilities for up to 9 people.
• SkypeIn – $38.00 a year
  • Inbound calls.
  • Choose from a list of available numbers and could even choose a number with a Beverly Hills area code.
  • Call Forwarding (does cost a bit extra but I’m sure your other phone doesn’t do it).
  • Ability to purchase more than one number.
  • Ability to purchase a local number in Brazil and a local number in Salt Lake City Utah to cover my customer base and make it cheap for them to call.
• Skype Voicemail - FREE with SkypeIn
  • Send voice messages to friends.
  • Takes messages whether you are logged in to Skype or not.

Total Cost = $68.00 a year

Including Internet Cost = $29 a month x 12 = $360 + $68 = $428 a year

I know most people around here can get their phone and internet thru a company that rhymes with smomcast at $33 each a month. That is a great deal. I think you have to get Television thru them also if you go that route.

smomcast cost would be = $33 a month (Digital Voice) + $33 a month (Internet) = $66 a month x 12 = $792 a year

Monthly Savings using Skype = smomcast $66 – Skype $36 (Dividing the $68 by 12) = $30 a month

Yearly Savings using Skype = smomcast $792 – Skype $428 = $364 a year

I actually even ended up buying a phone that I can plug right into my router that is cordless that I can carry around my office or house that doesn’t need to be hooked up to a computer. It cost me $150. Even with that I still save more with Skype. I bought the Philips VOIP841 in case you wanted to know. It is so sweet.

I know that I didn’t really want a landline and it seemed so unnecessary, but to help my business out I knew it was a must. For the additional cost it would be on my mobile phone bill, I could very easily get multiple numbers, call forwarding, and a new phone too. I hope I have helped spread the good news and a bit more awareness about Skype.

I talk to people all over the world, and the people in the United States seem to be the slowest to recognize how great Skype can be. You don’t have to have your phone connected to your computer if you get the right phone. You can place and localize your number where ever there is a number available in the world. You can also place easy to recognize links on your site too. As you can see I have a button on the right side of this site that shows my status on Skype. Skype also has a extension for Firefox where you can click on any phone number on any site and dial it just by clicking. It is a great feature and hopefully more people will see that and take advantage of that. You can even post your own public chat channels on your site too and manage it. The list goes on and on. Check Skype out and see if it’s for you. I like saving money and want to get a good solution at the same time. Skype fits perfect for me.

Please leave me your feedback and experience with Skype. This article was not written to say Skype is the only way, it was written to help people understand it is a way and that there are other options. Please comment.

When you sign up for a Google Account you gain access to a lot of different tools. I want to emphasize the tools that help the most with online business. When you sign up for a Gmail account, you instantly gain easy access to all the many tools that Google has to offer. Below are the tools that I think can benefit any business/online business owner.

1. Gmail – FREE web based email system. Great spam filtering and features.
2. Google Analytics – FREE statistical tracking system that has no limits and is very graphical including pie charts, geomapping and many other features.
3. Google Base – FREE product/services/resume/etc. listing engine. It can help inject and speed up indexing for Google search rankings and traffic. Great for marketing.
4. Google Local – FREE business listing and mapping. Best way to register your business on a local level with Google.
5. Google Calendar – FREE calendar program. You can easily create a business calendar and share it on your site. You can open it up for scheduling and also feed it thru and RSS Feed. It also has a great feature that will send a message to your phone to remind you of appointments.
6. Google Talk – FREE instant messaging system that uses a Jabber framework and uses your Gmail account for instant messaging and Talk to Talk phone calls.
7. Google Page Creator – FREE simple web page creator and simple site hosting.
8. Google Video – FREE video hosting.
9. Google Docs and Spreadsheets – FREE web based Spreadsheet and WordProcessing software. Save your spreadsheets and processed documents online.
10. Google Picasa – FREE photo editing software. Can be used to resize images also.
11. Google Picasa Web Albums – FREE image hosting.
12. Google WebMaster Tools – FREE Google sitemap management and other webmaster tools associated with Google. Submit your site to Google.
13. Google Adsense – Earn additional income thru Pay Per Click advertising.
14. Google Adwords – Create more traffic using Pay Per Click advertising.
15. Google Blogger – Create a FREE blog.
16. YouTube - FREE Video hosting.
17. Google Checkout – Credit Card processing and merchant account. FREE processing until the end of 2007.
18. Google Notebook – Installs a plugin within your browser and you can leave notes about individual sites and things that you visit. Perfect for researching design, business plans and models, etc. Saves it to a backend system on Google and it is even shareable.

So you can see if you didn’t know about all of this FREE stuff you do now. I recommend getting signed up with Gmail right away to make it easy to get all the other services going. Let me know if you are aware of any other Google Tools that I may not have listed that you feel could be advantageous to sign up for. No matter how hard you try to hate Google, you gotta love them when they give away stuff like this.

Now on to the new Plugin…

MetaTagz – WordPress Meta Tags Plugin

MetaTagz is straight forward and easy to use. The application of the plugin involves the custom fields features found in the bottom of the Post/Page editing page in the WordPress Control Panel. Each meta tag used within the MetaTagz plugin has a special key. The content doesn’t involve any HTML coding at all either.

For Example if you wanted to add a custom meta description to your post/page, you would go down to the “Custom Fields” area and type in the following into each field:

key value would be: head_description

value would be: What ever you would like your description to be.

The output in the html would look like the following:

<meta name=”description” content=”What ever you would like your description to be.” />

The code comes out xhtml compatible so this plugin validates with any strict w3c validation.

So you do not need to worry about adding any special coding to any of the meta tags, the plugin is setup to have the proper formatting come through automatically. Here is an example of what the Custom Fields should look like once you have added your custom fields. The example shows the author, description, keywords, and title meta tags:

I have listed below the compatible meta tags and their associated keys to use when inputting them into the Custom Fields area in your administration.

• Title – head_title
• Description – head_description
• Keywords – head_keywords
• Robots – head_robots
• Abstract – head_abstract
• Author – head_author
• Copyright – head_copyright
• Distribution – head_distribution
• Expires – head_expires
• Language – head_language
• Refresh – head_refresh
• Revisit – head_revisit

Please let me know if you would like me to add any additional tags to this plugin and I will update those immediately. This is just a starting point. Your feedback is appreciated.

Installation

The current version 2.0 should be compatible with all know versions of WordPress. Let me know if you run into any problems. I will assume that you have never installed a WordPress plugin and start with basic installation instruction.

1. Download the metatagz.zip file.
2. Extract the metatagz.zip file.
3. Take the contained file metatagz.php and using your favorite FTP program upload the metatagz.php file into the following directory: wp-content/plugins
4. Go into your WordPress control panel and click on the “Plugins” menu item.
5. You should now see the plugin listed in there with any other plugins that you may have in there.
6. Select “Activate” on the far right and you are ready to roll.

If you ever need to update, just upload the newer version replacing the older version of the plugin.

Potential Problems

This plugin inserts the code into your template within the head where it says:

<?php wp_head(); ?>

If for some reason the plugin is not working or the placement of the code does not look correct when you view the source, try taking the above code and inserting it just below the <head> tag. If you can’t find that code try checking in the header.php file or even the index.php file. For best use, you can customize what template pages use or do not use this tag. If you end up with 2 titles you may need to delete any code that looks like the following from your template:

<title><?php bloginfo('name'); ?><?php wp_title(); ?></title>

To learn more about meta tags and how to use them, check out the following links:

• W3C
• Wikipedia
• Meta Tag Generator

Not all meta tags are necessary, that’s why this plugin was created so that you can use whatever meta tags you choose.

Please let me know what you think!

Well the comparison is pretty dang easy.

BlueHost

1. $6.95/month
2. Platform – Linux
3. Disk Space – 200GB
4. Host 6 Domains on 1 BlueHost Account
5. 1 FREE Domain Name
6. International Domain Support
7. 2000GB of Transfer (Bandwidth)
8. 20 SubDomains
9. 50 MySQL Databases
10. Fantastico
11. 24/7 Support
12. Everything Else

HostMonster

1. $5.95/month
2. Platform – Linux
3. Disk Space – 200GB
4. Host Unlimited Domains on 1 HostMonster Account
5. 1 FREE Domain Name
6. International Domain Support
7. 2000GB of Transfer (Bandwidth)
8. Unlimited SubDomains
9. 100 MySQL Databases
10. Fantastico
11. 24/7 Support
12. Everything Else

Contact Info

Did you ever take a look at their contact pages? Check out their mailing addresses:

BlueHost

1215 N. Research Way, #Q3500

Orem, UT 84097

HostMonster, Inc.

1215 North Research Way, #Q3500

Orem, UT 84097

Yep that is the same address. So I bet you’ll get as good as support from one as you do the other. The differences seem to be that HostMonster was set up for the person not wanting limitations and BlueHost sets some limits like so many other hosts. HostMonster of course is $1 a month cheaper to get more. Might as well go with HostMonster, or BlueHost. Whatever. Both of them are top notch hosts or should I say they are a great family of hosting solutions.

I think I have found something for people to start with that don’t have a lot of experience. I have been reviewing these two options for some time and I think I have used them enough now to make a recommendation.

To really make an ecommerce website work, there are two main things that you need:

1. Shopping Cart
2. Merchant Account

Shopping Cart

If you don’t know what a shopping cart is, look it up on wikipedia. For the most part a shopping cart is nothing more than the software used to manage transactions and shopping carts when people purchase products online. There are a lot to choose from, but they either cost too much or are hard to use. Getting them to look the way you want them too and getting them to function the way you want them to is hard sometimes too.

Shopify is a good starting point. With Shopify it is the easiest shopping cart I have ever tried using. It takes a minute to understand the organization of it, but it is organized way better than any shopping cart I have run into. The way you enter in your products is so simple it’s crazy. It’s FREE to set up and it doesn’t cost anything for hosting. How they charge you is based on your sales. If you sale less than $10,000 a month they take 3% of your transactions. If you make over $10,000 a month, they charge 2%. Pretty simple. If you are huge and selling tons then 2% can add up after awhile and it may be worth paying someone to put together another shopping cart for you, but to begin with it’s an awesome option. That 3% or 2% doesn’t include merchant account fees.

Shopify is compatible with PayPal and Google Checkout. So If you understand those fees then Shopify can be set up in no time.

Shopify also makes it really easy to create content pages. It doesn’t necessarily give you the ability to add meta tags, but you can change what the url of each page is. You can also make your domain name work with it too. To make it easy on yourself, get your domain from GoDaddy because they give you exact instructions on how to implement a domain from GoDaddy.

Merchant Accounts

PayPal is accepted just about anywhere, and that can be a great option to use with Shopify, but their fees are around 3% per transaction and if you add the 3% with the Shopify of 3% or 2%, that adds up and becomes expensive. Then again, keep in mind a good secure shopping cart can cost upwards of $50 a month.

Google Checkout on the other hand is allowing customers to process all credit cards FREE until at least the end of 2007. It works much like PayPal. If you use Google Checkout that basically limits any type of fees to the 3% or 2% per transaction fees that Shopify charges.

Conclusion

You have nothing to lose with Shopify and Google Checkout so I recommend going and setting up some accounts today. They don’t cost a thing until you actually sell anything. You have nothing to lose at all.

The things that often will help determine what host may work best for you are as follows:

• What is your skill level?
• Are you planning on being your own webmaster?
• How much traffic are you planning on?
• Are you going to need a shopping cart?
• What type of support do you want?

What is your skill level?

Depending on how good you understand the internet and also your computer may help to determine what type of a host may work best for you. If you aren’t very good with either, then I recommend finding some easy builder. It may be more expensive but in the short run and long run it will pay off.

If you are fairly advanced, then you probably don’t need to be reading this but if you are you can probably handle a traditional hosting account. Traditional hosting accounts involve FTP and SSH and allow you to build a site from scratch, template and all and also allow you to create databases. From my experience the Linux hosting is a lot more secure and reliable than the Windows hosting.

Are you planning on being your own webmaster?

If you are planning on being your own webmaster then you need to decide what you are going to use for hosting. If you are planning on having someone else being your webmaster then often times allowing them to choose the hosting can be a good decision as long as you double check the pricing and make sure they are charging you extra for the hosting.

How much traffic are you planning on?

With hosting the biggest concern that you have to be worried about is bandwidth. If you don’t have enough bandwidth during the month your site will get shut down. Now a days most host give you plenty of bandwidth. Bandwidth is like the fuel in your car. After you burned up all the fuel/bandwidth the car/site shuts down and you can’t get going again until you fill up with gas/more bandwidth. Extra bandwidth isn’t bad, but if you can find a host where you won’t ever have to worry about it, you will be a lot better off.

Are you going to need a shopping cart?

Sites that require a shopping cart get very complicated. Hosting costs will usually quadruple while disc space can be cut by ten. Shopping carts often times require merchant accounts which often times require SSL certificates that can usually cost close to $100 a year. You also have to make sure the shopping cart works well and that you can get some support if something happens. There are very few Open Source shopping carts that I have found that are easy for a beginner to customize and manage. I’m all about Open Source but I have had enough experience with shopping carts to understand that they suck to deal with especially when you run into problems. It’s worth paying extra for hosting to get reliable support to help you when you run into issues.

What type of support do you want?

Most hosts have email support, but not all of them have 24 hour phone support. It is well worth finding a host that you can call on the phone even if you are talking with Muhamad in India. Email support can be slow and often times is a sign that the hosting company is just starting up and may be a fly by night operation. I know from experience and loss of time and frustration that small hosting companies have a tendency to abandon you and often times disappear. If you get your domain and hosting from them you can get in big trouble.

If you can I recommend finding a host that has the following forms of support:

• 24/7 Support
• Email Support
• Phone Support
• Live Chat Support
• A Hosting Forum/Good Documentation

That way you can get a hold of them at any time and/or find your own answers.

Recap

These are just a few questions and can get your bearings where they need to be before choosing a web host. Check out our recommendations below to help you decide on a host that might work for you.

Web Hosting

Web Hosting is when someone rents you on a monthly basis disc space on their servers which are persistently connected to the internet. To run a web site you must have a persistent connection to the internet or else your site cannot be accessed. If you have a solid connection at home and a reliable computer then you can even host your own sites, but if your hard drive crashes or your power goes out, your site goes down. Often times it’s not worth the hassle of hosting your own site, and Web Hosting can be very inexpensive.

Domain Hosting

To understand Domain Hosting you must first understand domains. Like I spoke about in the previous paragraph, you must have a computer persistently connected to the internet. Every computer connected to the internet has an IP address which looks something like 11.111.11.111 and it is a group of numbers. You web host has servers or computers especially made for hosting websites connected to the internet and every server has a different IP address. If you know the IP address of your server you can often times access your site just with the IP address. What a domain does is that it takes a word or phrase with an extension like .com and assigns it to an IP address. Your host then has something called a Domain Name Server (DNS) that keeps track of where your site is located on the server. That is why often times when you purchase a domain it ask for your DNS information so it knows where to look for your website.

So in a nutshell now understanding how a domain fits into web hosting, all a domain name is all about is that is a nickname more or less used to identify the IP address of the server your site is on. You define the Name Servers in your Domain Control Panel, and your host does the rest.

You can download Democracy Player for Internet Television by going to http://www.getdemocracy.com.