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Following Up on Fallacies about Getting Free Stuff ?Free stuff? ? the mere whisper of the words is often enough to make many people throw common sense out the window and head for the free goods like a missile to a target. And then there are those people whose eyes glaze over when they hear those words, because they can?t believe anything worth having can actually be free. The truth about free stuff is really somewhere in the middle. Yes, you can really and truly cash in on many freebie deals for things that you want to have, but a healthy sense of cynicism about free gear is also useful. Here are some of the important things to keep in mind about free stuff. The first myth you should throw out the window is that nothing good comes for free. The fact of the matter is that the price tag on a good doesn?t always match up to the quality, and there are many great free things out there. Case in point: music. Sure, everyone has heard the scare stories about file sharing online, and maybe some big record labels will come after you if you focus on their artists. Dig a little below the surface, however, and you can find a whole new world of really great bands that are more than happy for you to listen to their music over and over again. The same goes for free software. People on the cutting edge of technology who have a passion for creating new and efficient applications often develop open source code software. They?re doing it for the love of it, and they often have more talent than any ten suit-and-tie tech guys trying to hock their latest product for a mega profit margin. Here is where the reality part comes in, however. Yes, you can find wonderful things that are completely free ? but yes, you can also find a lot of free things that aren?t worth your time at all and in some cases can cause you a lot of trouble. The net is a great place to fall victim to a ?free stuff? scam, but you can also sometimes come across these scams in the mail as well. If something is free, but requires you to give your credit card number or bank details, run the other way. Another myth people have about free stuff, especially free stuff on the internet, is that when you try to cash in, the only free stuff you will be getting is an inbox full of more spam than you can handle. The truth about this is, well, that is can certainly be true. Many companies give away free things in exchange for your email address, so they can try to hit you up to purchase things in the future. What makes this a myth, however, is that it can be avoided. If you don?t want to choke on an inbox of spam, and who could blame you, set up a special (free) email account that you will use exclusively for freebie hunting. You?ll have the best of both worlds. The last myth about free stuff involves the ?catch? people are always looking for. Often, for free stuff, the catch is a bit of junk mail or email or the fact that you have to submit to a time consuming survey. Sometimes, the catch is that if you get free stuff through a trial offer, if you don?t cancel it, it keeps coming, and this time you have to pay. The truth about these catches is, however, that the catch is in the eye of the beholder. These things don?t make products any less free; so don?t write off every free offer offhand. You might just find a catch you can live with to get a great free product you really want.

Web Hosting - Managing Disk Space Few things are less exciting than managing the disk space that always seems to be in too short a supply. But few things are more important to the health and well being of your site. The most obvious aspect of managing disk space is the need to have enough. If you have only a few dozen web pages, that's not an issue. But as the amount of information (web pages, database content and more) grows, the quantity of free space goes down. That's important for two reasons. All permanent information on a computer is stored on hard drives. Temporary information is often stored in memory only. The two components are completely separate, though they are sometimes confused with one another. As the amount of free space on the hard drive decreases several effects occur. Here's one way to picture them... Imagine you had a table with a certain area and you lay out playing cards on the table. At first, you lay them out in order, the 2 at the side of the 3, then 4, and so on. But then you pick up one or two cards from the middle and discard them. Then you add some more cards. Pretty soon things look pretty random. Now cover the cards with a big opaque sheet of paper. You want the cards to appear in order when displayed to someone. A special robot could be designed to always pick up the cards from underneath the sheet in order. Or, it could slide a hole in the sheet over the cards to display them in the correct order (2, 3, 4, ...), no matter what order they are really in. That's similar to how the operating system always shows you information in a sensible way, even though it's actually stored randomly. Why should you care? Real files are stored in pieces scattered around the drive wherever there is space for them. The more free space there is, the quicker the operating system can find a place to store a new piece. That means, if you delete the junk you no longer need (and free up more space) the system actually runs quicker. It helps create space you might need, and allows the operating system to store files for you faster. But there's a second effect. As you delete old files or change them, the pieces get more and more scattered. It takes the 'robot' longer and longer to fetch or display the 'cards' in order. Existing files are fetched and put together 'on the fly' (say, when you request a graphical page or a list of names). But, it takes longer to put together the web page when there are more scattered pieces. So, the other aspect of managing disk space is to keep the pieces of the files more or less in order. A utility that does that is called a 'de-fragger' or de-fragmentation program. You can request that a system administrator run it, or if you have the authority, you can run it yourself. That keeps the 'cards' in order and allows for quicker access to them. So, managing disk space involves chiefly three things: (1) keeping enough space to store what you need to store, and also (2) keeping enough free space to make new file storage quick and (3) making old file retrieval fast by keeping things orderly. When only a few files are involved the benefit isn't worth the effort. But as the number and size of the files grow, to thousands of files or several gigabytes of data, the effect becomes more noticeable. Keeping things organized then makes a significant difference in performance. Much of this can be automated using utilities. Some will delete files in a certain folder older than a certain date. A de-fragger can be set to run automatically during times of light usage, or quietly in the background at all times. Discuss the options with your system administrator and help him or her do the job better by keeping your house in order. You'll benefit by having a better performing web site.

Free Blogging Resources to Save Money and Maximize Net Exposure Blogging is one of the new hot activities on the Internet. What is blogging might cross many peoples mind and to put that mind at ease, here a quick explanation s to what a blog is and what it does. A blog is a part of a web site or a website itself, where most commonly entries are displayed in reverse chronological order. It is a website where either news on certain subjects or personal entries can be made and then displayed and read by others. One important feature of many blogs is for readers to leave comments on the site. Currently there are more than 110 million blogs as per some of the blog tracker engines. Therefore blogs can be used for many different things; one of them might be to save money and to maximize net exposure. Many online web pages offer free web hosting space to people or offer a web blog that can be built into one?s own homepage. Blogs are a great tool to get feedback from friends, customers and anyone who visits the page. Blogs can help with net exposure due to the popularity of some blogs. There are two essential ways a blog can get popular and give one greater exposure. The one is the citation of the blog on certain major homepages visited by many, and the second is through affiliation. Whole blogging communities exist, where people almost chat with each other about certain topics. One can save money by using blogs that are offered for free or by actually boosting one?s own site on some of the popular blogs that allow such content in their text. Some of the blogs are used to post money saving tips on a regular base. These pages will post deals, finds and more in their blog for others to check out. These blogs are created and then added to by many. It is easy to find these blogs using one of the blogospheres. Blogoshperes, blog content search engines can help Internet users to find a blog with a content that they a re looking for. Major financial companies offer blogs for financial tips. This is a way to save money without having to have an own paid financial adviser, but the blog can act like one. Some of these financial blogs also offer help and assistance to people. It is a community of people that have had similar problems and where one can get help if necessary, Of course it is always dangerous to release too much information about oneself on the Internet, but when handled with caution, these blogs can be a great help for personal finances and for saving money. Blogs for saving money offer many categories. Some money saving tips on these blogs is about health care, baby products, student life, buying cars and more. These informative pages can help anyone who takes the time to read them save big bucks or even make money. Help is often given to people with these pages in the form of others that have experienced similar things, experts in the field or just general advice. Blogging is as easy as writing and e-mail and therefore can be done by anyone who has a working PC that is connected to the Internet. Blog generally offer an entry form and an option to read the entry before it is posted. There is also a way to respond to certain post by posting another blog entry. All the entries are generally public and available to anybody and therefore it is important to know that there are consequences and liability when writing blog entries. Even though some are anonymous, many blogs require the posters name.