0 Photoshop: Changing The Way We Make And See Images

Photoshop has become the standard of the industry when it comes to graphics and digital image editing. When we speak of power, versatility and innovation, very few programs can hold a candle to what Photoshop is capable of doing. Its commands and tools are so easy to learn that even beginners can use this program without the benefit of a formal class.

Photoshop (also known as Adobe Photoshop) was created by Adobe Systems and was intended at first for image editing for paper printing. It wasn't too long before it was used to create and edit images to use for websites.

The best thing about Photoshop is not only the integrated tools and devices you can use to tweak images and create your own, but because of the flawless interaction of its commands and tools. Given one image, you can do virtually anything you want with the confidence that Photoshop tools will follow your command and produce an edited picture the way you want it to appear.

Export-ready
When it comes to exporting its images, Photoshop allows seamless program shifts among other Adobe software used in image editing, authoring and animation such as Adobe Illustrator, ImageReady and After Effects. Photoshop files (.PSD or Photoshop document format) may be manipulated to produce special effects such as adding textures and changing backgrounds. Non-linear editing is also a breeze.

Another advantage of Photoshop is that it can work with several color models such as RGB, CMYK, Lab, Bitmap, Duotone and Grayscale. This allows any user a lot of flexibility in terms of image editing, giving him the power to play with every type of photo image there is.

The newest version of Photoshop is v. 10, also known as CS3. It's integrated with Adobe Creative Suite, hence the 'CS'. The most popular, though is the CS2 which was made available in 2005. It has successfully integrated new tools and former plugins like color replacement, warping and multiple-layer select.


How it has changed the industry
When it comes to image post-production, Photoshop has given professionals and amateurs a magic wand with which to alter and improve images. Since the advent of digital photography in the 90s, Photoshop has been the standard with which photographers improve finished photo quality.

Photoshop is also changing the art scene, allowing artists to create original pieces or artwork using program tools. Photoshop artwork has appeared in books, comic books, architecture designs and more notably, in special-effect films.

Photoshop has become so popular that the word 'photoshopping' has already ingrained itself in our vocabulary. Photoshopping has actually made careers, fed media frenzy, made paparazzis happy and changed the way we see things, often literally. In pop culture, Photoshop in becomingly increasingly prevalent, appearing in almost every other photo for image-hungry consumers to devour. The irony is, Photoshop is so popular that images have to appear that they haven't undergone tweaking in order to be declared as Photoshop-perfect.

Cracking the Photoshop Easter eggs
As with some of the most popular software, Photoshop comes with a few Easter eggs, hidden gems of humor and help tips that can be accessed with a few strokes of the keyboard. The first ones came with Photoshop v. 2.5 and subsequent Easter eggs have appeared with every version that came along. The latest Easter eggs are with the CS2 (the Adobe SpaceMonkey) and CS3 (the Adobe Red Pill).

Photoshop may be used by Microsoft Windows, Mac OS and Mac OS X. Linux users can use Photoshop v. 9 and lower.

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0 Web design with a difference

Anybody looking for a web designer is spoilt for choice. Type in web design in Google and you will come up with millions of websites offering web design around the world. The web design industry is indeed extremely competitive. So how do we go about choosing a web design company that offers websites that are not only well designed but equally important, a website that ranks well on major search engines?

A lot has been written on web design that sell products and services but relatively few web designers know how or are even bothered about developing websites with the basic elements required to give your website a head start on search engines.

Here are a few important web design tips that will set your website apart when it comes to ranking on search engines and selling your products and services.

1. Every web design should include the famous tags. There is no excuse for not including these in a web design from the outset. No matter what they say, tags have their say in the way search engines look at your website and no web design is complete without carefully chosen tags.
There are 3 important tags namely the Title tag, Description tag and the keywords tag. Each web page should have its own set of tags. What are these tags? These are words and phrases that are embedded in the HTML of the website and very easy to include in your web design.
Let us look at each of these tags.

2. The Title tag is an important part of web design for search engine optimisation. This tag is likely to be picked up by search engines and displayed as a result header when a visitor finds your website on a search engine. This tag also appears as the title that in the blue strip at the top of your browser.
A good web design will contain a short Title tag that includes the keywords you think visitors will use to find your site.

3. The Web design should also include the Description tag. This is a short description of what the web page is about and it often appears just below the title in search engine results. Although the importance of the Description tag in search engine ranking is uncertain, the description in a web design acts like a sales pitch. This is your opportunity to tell the visitor what the web page is about and why he or she should click on your website. Remember, web design is not just about building a website and getting it ranked. A good web design should do all this, get the visitor to click on your website when it is found and sell your products and services.

4. Let's look at the Keywords tag. A lot of web designs contain a mass of supposed key words in the Keywords tag. Keywords are the words or phrases that visitors use to search for websites on search engines. A good web design practice is to have focussed and themed web pages. This means that each web page should be focused on one keyword at a time and this keyword should be in the web page Keyword tag. It is very important that the keywords used in the tag also appear in the body of the text.

5. The h1, h2 headers are also important elements of a good web design. Use h1 and h2 headers as these are read by search engines. Use them as high up on your web page as possible and where possible use the keywords in the h1 header. H1 headers are by default large fonts. It is possible to format these so they match the overall look of the web design and retain their header properties.

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0 TCP-IP architecture model

1. Network interface(Data link) layer

2. Network layer

3. Transport layer

4. Application layer

Network interface layer

The lowest layer of the TCP/IP model. Its task is to provide access to the transmission physical medium and it differs according to the implementation of the medium.

Network layer

The network layer provides network addressing, routing and datagram transmission. Used protocols that will be of interest further regarding DHCP are IP and ARP.

IP protocol
It is the basic protocol of the network layer and in general the internet as a whole. It sends datagrams, which are independent units that contain information about the destination, source and the sequence number of the datagram. The sequence number is used for message reconstruction, since the delivery order of the datagrams might not be the same as their order in the message and delivery reliability isn't guaranteed at all.
IP protocol versions:
" IP v4 - 32 bit addresses. Provides approximately 4 billion unique addresses which aren't sufficient at present times.
" IP v6 - 128 bit addresses. The transition to v6 will bring (is bringing) higher security, QoS, packet segmentation and many more IP addresses. (the transition from IP v4 to IP v6 must be supported by the system provider)


ARP protocol
The ARP abbreviation stands for Address Resolution Protocol. This protocol is used to find the physical address (MAC) based on a known IP address. If required ARP sends information concerning the wanted address to all the stations in the network - Broadcast. The stations consequently answer with a message containing their MAC. If the wanted device/station is outside the node/segment, the appropriate router will answer instead of it.

Transport layer
The transport layer is implemented only in terminal devices and it adjusts the behavior of the network according to the requirements of the device/application.



Application layer
The application layer is composed of programs that use net services to fulfill the needs of users. Examples of specific protocols are for instance FTP, DNS and DHCP.
Application protocols use TCP, UDP or both services at the same time. So called ports are used to differentiate between application protocols, they represent a type of label of the application. It is possible to change the ports in the settings of the service, but each service has a default port that isn't changed for most services and is used as an unwritten standard.

" FTP = 21
" DNS = 53
" DHCP = 67 + 68

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0 Attracting Web Business

o you've finished building a great website and you're ready to start raking in the profits – if you can figure out how to let the world know your business exists. Although creating an attractive website is an important first step if you plan to start your own online business, it is definitely not the last. In fact, once the website is complete you've still got quite a lot of work on the horizon.

Just because you have a website up and running, it doesn't mean people will automatically know where to find you. And yet, surprisingly, many first-time web entrepreneurs drop the ball at this point in the game. They assume customers will find them amongst all the other sites floating around in cyberspace, as if through some kind of psychic connection. But if you think about it, this type of thinking is very misguided.

It is the same with any business: customers won't start flocking to your store unless you invest some time and money into advertising. Depending on your budget, you can either blast the trumpet really loud or toot the horn a little bit at a time. But in the end, you have to make some kind of noise in order to be heard.

But how do you achieve this in the vacuum of cyberspace? Or perhaps more fittingly, how do you make yourself heard amidst a crowd of other aspiring musicians all trumpeting their own cause? Obviously, online marketing is different from marketing a bricks-and-mortar business, so it's important to know exactly where to begin. If you take the proper steps you will be attracting interested customers in no time.

The first step is to know your customer, inside and out. This is key if you want to be successful in your marketing strategy because you can't market to potential customers if you don't know who they are. For someone selling baked goods, targeting the "Carb-Haters of America" might not result in the profits you are anticipating.

Next, determine where you want to market your product. The Internet allows every new or expanding business the opportunity to reach a global market, but not every business is aiming for that goal. If your website is set up as one arm of your existing offline business, you might wish to target potential customers in your local area who also want the option of online shopping. In this case, integrate your website into promotional materials for your store so people will learn about the new branch of your business. Essentially, the efforts you make to promote your business outside of the Internet can be used to get your web address out there as well.

Internet Marketing

But of course, most people who begin an online venture are looking to broaden their customer base and attract a global clientele. There are several ways to start advertising online. Just remember: online marketing is always changing, and nothing works perfectly for every business. You might have to tailor a marketing plan to suit your company's specific goals, or if Internet marketing makes your head spin, you also have the option of hiring a company to do the marketing for you

Step one: register with search engines. Unfortunately, this doesn't guarantee hits to your site, and the promises many search engines make are usually more pie-in-the-sky than realistic, but it is still a necessary evil. If you have to choose, register with Yahoo! and Google, as the highest percentage of web traffic originates from these two giants. In the past, achieving top search results could be done for free; now you have to shell out some cash if you want to get top placement and advertising space. Yahoo! Express and Google's Adwords program are two examples of this type of paid search engine placement.

Another way to get noticed is to participate in a link exchange. Simply put, this involves seeking out other websites that are related to your company or product in some way and asking the owner if he/she will post your link on the site. If the owner agrees, you offer to post their link on your site, hence the term "link exchange." This is a good way to start advertising your site because it involves targeting the right kind of people (someone visiting a site already related to your business) and forming solid bonds with other websites. And the more links other sites have to your site, the more popular you become with the search engines, without having to pay for top placement.

Finally, don't sit back and wait for customers to come to you. Be proactive and go directly to your clientele. Of course, this means you must know where to find them, but this sounds harder than it actually is.

For instance, many new businesses actually use eBay to source potential customers. It depends on what you're selling, but if you know a lot of people looking for your product spend a good amount of time making eBay purchases, that might be a good place to begin and get your name out in public. Use eBay as a marketing tool – sell a few items for very low prices, get people on your email list and invite them to consider future purchases from your website. EBay is more than a place to sell goods; it can be used as a highly effective marketing tool.

Or, as mentioned above, make business connections with people in a related business. Pay to have banner ads displayed on other websites to help spread the word about your business. This will bring you closer to the people who make up your target market.

This is just the beginning when it comes to online marketing, but if you start off on the right foot and persevere, you will succeed.

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