Click on it and a new tab opens with twin panes - your computer drives on the left and a blank pane on the right. Next you can click on manage accounts, and enter up the details of your GMail account - and if you haven’t got one then I suggest you go get one straight away! Click on the "Login" button and, assuming you’ve entered your details correctly (duh - I didn’t at first), you’ll find that it will tell in the lower right pane that you have been successfully logged in. Now all you have to do is select the file(s) to back up in the left hand pane and either drag or click on the arrow in the middle that points to the right hand pane and "Bob’s your uncle" - your file will be uploaded to your GMail space and stored as an email attachment would be, and you’ll actually get an email telling you it’s there.

There are deals on offer from every company, all trying to either lure you in or get you to upgrade. But the most insidious of all is the "unlimited usage" tag applied to so many of them now…

The small print invariably says something like "fair usage policy applies" and then leaves you hanging, with no idea what the fair usage policy is, where it is, or what it stipulates.

And in some cases it’s downright diabolical. A recent national press campaign from e2save, an offshoot of Carphone Warehouse, offered "unlimited data" with a contract for a BlackBerry 9000 Bold. They took their information from network provider Orange, but investigation of the small print showed that the "fair usage policy" limited the user to 250mb of data transfer monthly.

Now this is where it gets really interesting…. by the time I’ve read that I’m mentally shouting "complain",  "sue them", "report them to the Advertising Standards Authority"…. and thinking "I’ll do it - I’ll teach them to con people out of their money", and then I discover that they have already been reported to the ASA, who have said that it’s ok, and they can carry on promoting it as "unlimited".

How does that happen? How can they explain such a clear contradiction? How do they work it out to justify the validity of the ridiculous tag "unlimited"?

I shall tell you. It seems that to the ASA the word "unlimited" does not mean unlimited at all. It means above an average users usage.

e2save quoted statistical data from Orange which showed that "250MB monthly usage limit was far in excess of the amount of data that an average customer would use".

Additionally it was apparently claimed that 1mb of mobile data would allow for the transfer of "160 WAP pages, 100 short emails, four video clips or three music tracks".

Who on earth calculated that? A chimpanzee sitting on the beach, whilst trying to write out the bible on a coconut at the same time?

My mp3’s, such as they are, average 3-5mb each - so 25 of them would knock up about 100mb. Video clips - well they can easily run to a lot more than that, whilst You Tube shorties might only be 1-3 mb total, approx 2mb per min is nearer the mark, so ten 5 minuters would run you another 100mb. And whilst it’s true that text emails are quite small, attach something to one and distribute it to a few people and they’re anything but. Browse a few web pages along the way (the Blackberry Bold has full browsing built in) and you can see that this is a limit that could easily be blitzed.

The ASA appears to have completely overlooked two important factors;

1) That most users are so frightened of going over their limits that they use their phones with extreme caution and ensure that they use a minimum of transfer

2) That a somewhat more expensive "unlimited" contract is likely to be taken up by someone who wishes to have the freedom to transfer more data without worrying.

These factors mean that any talk of an average user is nonsensical.

And last but by no means least - there should not even have to be any discussion about average users and data transfer quotas - when it says "unlimited" it should be "unlimited".
 

All you have to do to join is register, and when you get your confirmation email with your password, it will take you to a notice that will inform you that you are being sent to a Pay Pal secure payment page that will look like this. After payment click on "Return to site" and you’re done! And if by any chance you wish to cancel you can do so through PayPal anytime - you don’t even have to tell us, though we’d certainly prefer to know why….

This all-new eBizKing is evolving daily, and our aim is to make this the very best value "one-stop shop" for starting an online business - so please let us know by email if you have any product requests, problems or suggestions; ebizking.com(at)gmail.com.

Make a WordPress theme? To my own design? In 5 minutes. It might just sound too good to be true, but I assure you it’s for real… I know, I’ve done it, and if I can do it anybody can do it! Admittedly the 5 minutes is only possible if you’re sticking to a fairly basic design and using their images, or you have your own graphics ready to go, but it is possible.

It’s equally possible (in fact considerably more likely) that you’ll spend ages there playing around, and end up reverting to something you knocked up in the first place (well, that’s what usually happens to me - the more I fiddle the worse it gets!)

I love WordPress, and regularly use blogs for niches that I want to explore (or exploit!). And therein lies the problem…. every time I have an idea for a niche I have to find a theme to suit, and I can easily spend half a day on that, and I still end up with something where I have to hunt around to find a new header and background image, and then I have to mod them to fit. Not to mention the trauma of changing  margins or padding just because my headings are shorter or longer than the originals, or the text overlaps my new image badly, and maybe the original font doesn’t work so well, and the links are the wrong colour now - and then hoping that I’ve done it right and that I don’t break the theme…. and that’s assuming I can find the right place in the code to do it all anyway! Aaaaagghhhh!

Well now that’s all changed with the advent of a new online tool, and it’s quite simply - brilliant. It’s like a WYSIWYG editor, and you simply build up your unique theme by picking a base template which defines the "style", e.g. two column or three column, tabbed or not, and then you add or modify the features you want one by one. Every template is hugely configurable - fonts, colours, header images etc. etc., though of course it makes sense to start with the one that’s the closest fit to your desired finished product.

The site’s in beta at present, but I’ve found it to be stable so far, and at the time of writing there are two versions available. The latest incarnation is on the home page, and has some fairly snazzy designs - almost ready to go "straight out of the box", but I marginally prefer the original version which has somewhat more basic templates available, and more of them.

Enough already! I’ve included the links to both versions, so pop over and try it out - it’s actually fun and very rewarding! The new version is on the home page at themepower.com, and the original version is at http://v1.themepower.com. Happy designing!

It doesn’t take much common sense to see that that is utterly stupid and nonsensical…

When I hit sign out I expect it to do it. No if’s no buts, just do it. Whether it’s a home machine, or worse still a work, or dare I say public - hotel or internet cafe - machine, this is a major security risk and a cardinal sin of programming.

It is far better to sign out, and then to have to sign in again if I made a mistake, than to leave me logged in so that somebody else could come back and reclaim the session. What proportion of "log out" clicks are erroneous anyway? The system should be "fail safe" - yet they put extra work in for themselves and everybody else because they’re too thick to see that it’s wrong!

And in case any bright spark says I should read the screens presented to me  - I do - usually… but it’s all too easy to get distracted, and in any event connection or server problems can mean that the confirmation screen doesn’t appear immediately, and I say again - the system should be "fail safe"!

Phone cards and calling cards that allow cheap phone calls could soon be a thing of the past, and if it really takes off then voip services such as skype may be hit. A PC phone (aka internet phone) is unnecessary, as are headsets and microphones, since you can call from your own phone - well, to be precise in order to call someone you register the numbers online and they call you straight back, and then they connect you to the other party (party? who said party? a free party?).

Another plus is that as you are calling from your own phone you don’t need a broadband connection - a dial up is fine for registering the numbers.

Ok, there is one catch…. at present calls are limited to ten minutes, but you can call straight back again, and hey, did I say it’s completely free!

I ticked off a few IT and IM categories and figured that that would give me enough to get going, only to find that instead of the twenty to thirty questions I thought I’d be notified about there were hundreds! However the most amazing thing wasn’t the quantity of questions - it was the quality! Not in my wildest dreams could I ever have envisaged questions like;

• What_are_the_names_of_all_websites_that_end_in_org?
• What is redius (sic) of the circle of the CD or DVD?
• Why Your laptop getting struck regularly.?
• What_are_the_advantages_of_computer_programing?
• What_is_a_good_website_on_which_one_can_get_a_text_examplepreview_thingy?
• How_did_the_wars_inpack_the_US?
• TEll_me_of_a_time_when_you_have_been_responsible_for_a_budget
• Where is the closes spar shop near new park?
• Who has a barbie on that website?
• How_are_rollercoasters_tested_or_measured_for_effectiveness
• How many pages of paper can an office computer printer print before the printer can no longer work?
• What_is_the_growth_potential_for_a_website_designer
• How much was computers in 1930s?
• How_to_make_spokespeople?
• Who_is_the_highest_paid_african_player_now?
• Why you like computers?

And so it goes on…. and on….. and on…..

Let me explain. I love my code. Not that I’m great coder, but I have a go. And I enjoy it. Ok, so my ideas usually outstrip my abilities - by several orders of magnitude actually - but I can usually mod packages and I like to make a few improvements, fix a few bugs etc.

So when SCGM7 was announced I headed straight over to see what was on offer - 10 packages for $197, but with a $100 discount for early birds - $97 - not bad at all.  But having skimmed the list of products there were only a 2-3 I was really interested in, and it just didn’t seem worth it.

Then came the usual raft of emails promoting it. Many were affiliates, and others were only reselling the individual products with MRR, but a few said things like "I bought the entire package with the upsells so you could benefit….. " and I thought to myself "ok, when the price dips below $50 I’ll buy it". And it did, so I did. I bought Source Code Goldmine for under $50 - and then it hit me - no, I hadn’t bought v.6 by mistake, I had the entire package but without the source code!

I complained and was informed that no-one was allowed to sell the source except JB, and that it was clearly explained in the terms on JB’s page. I pointed out that I didn’t buy from JB’s page and hadn’t read his terms because I wasn’t interested in his terms. I also pointed out that I thought it was tantamount to a con to sell what purported to be SCGM7 without the code, and that that was nothing to do with JB. The marketer was clearly very aggrieved, and appeared to think I was either dense or awkward or both. I thought likewise. I nonetheless very politely stated that if I couldn’t have the source code then I would like a refund (for the first time in my IM life) which I must say I received promptly but with no good grace - in fact with no reply at all - not even a "kiss my a***".

Register now and receive your 200 dollars in gift certificates just for joining (if you are already a member just login for full access).

I always have one rule that takes out Rolex and Viagara (and some of the variations) and puts them straight into the deleted folder, and others to direct different addresses to their respective folders, and it’s often taken me several attempts to get them to work the way I wanted - and I’ve always assumed I was doing something wrong…..However, when I recently decided to set up some more complicated rules to subdivide further, they didn’t work - the messages just didn’t go into the folders I stipulated. I checked the logic several times, and eventually gave up - well, put it on the back burner for when I had more time to search for a solution.

Today frustration and infuriation overcame me - and I turned to Google, which came up with its usual hundreds of thousands of replies. Most explained how to set up simple rules, and many pointed out that the rules are applied sequentially, and that a lot of problems are caused by them being applied in the wrong order. One good tip though - or so I thought - was to test the logic by hitting "Apply Now" when the messages were in the inbox (or wherever) and checking what happened. Lo and behold, when I did that all the messages went straight into the correct folders! My logic was good - or so I thought - so why wasn’t it working.

As I read my umpteenth post, I struck gold. You have to scroll down the actions ("beyond the fold") and check one called "Stop processing more rules". It seems that just because rules are checked sequentially, they aren’t actioned sequentially (ie automatically). A rule can test positive and OE carries on checking against the rest of the rules. If it then finds another it can apply, it will! The only way round this is to check the "Stop processing more rules" box for every rule!

It’s only taken me about 10 years to figure that out…. and much as I’d like some comments, I do not want to hear that everybody else knew that all along!