Online Trail Blog

Refinancing your home mortgage can come with some great perks. If you do it with no money out of pocket, you can skip one to three mortgage payments. You can save money on your payment or pay off your entire mortgage faster when you have better terms. Here are a few things to pay attention to when you refinance your mortgage loan, to make sure that you don’t overlook anything that you might regret, or that can cause you problems later:

1. Apply for a pre-approval to many different lenders to make sure you are getting the lowest rate possible. When you do this, make sure that with the initial pre-approval application, the lender is not pulling your credit history. You will want to reserve your credit pull for the lender that you are most likely to work with. You can decide that after you have gone through the preliminary pre-approval process with a few lenders. Each time your credit is pulled, it docks your credit score just a little. If you have too many inquiries, it could keep you from refinancing your mortgage loan with the lowest rate possible. When you pre-apply for home mortgage loans online, most lenders or mortgage service companies will not initially pull your credit. Check for information about this on their website. They will usually tell you whether or not they are going to pull your credit. Also, if on the application you do not give them your social security number, they cannot pull your credit. If, on the application, they ask you to describe your credit, they are probably not pulling your credit.

2. Make sure that your original mortgage does not have a pre-payment penalty or early payoff penalty of any kind. Sometimes people will get into their mortgage with the mortgage having a pre-payment penalty and they will not even know about it. Pre-payment penalties usually range from 6 months to 3 years with a penalty for an early payoff. The penalty is usually about the amount of 6 months worth of your mortgage loan interest, but this varies. You would have to be able to have some significant payment and interest savings on your refinance loan to justify refinancing a mortgage loan with a pre-payment penalty.

3. When evaluating different lender offers, in the mortgage loan pre-approval process, pay closest attention to the interest rates they are offering & the closing costs. These are the two biggest factors that will help you figure out which lender is right for you. If one of these two factors is too high, it could offset the benefit of refinancing for you.

4. Get your interest rate and closing costs in writing as soon as you decide on a lender to work with. Get your lender to give you a commitment in advance of all of the costs that will be involved with your loan. Find out if the refinance loan you are getting has a pre-payment penalty as well. Sometimes lenders will leave out important information like this, if they think it might scare you away from refinancing with them.

To view a list of highly recommended refinance mortgage lenders, most of which will not pull your credit in the initial application, visit this page:Recommended Refinance Mortgage Lenders.

Carrie Reeder is the owner of http://www.abcloanguide.com. ABC Loan Guide is an informational loan website with informative articles, the latest finance news and lists of recommended mortgage lenders.

In this day and age we have many reasons to believe that we just might have a virus. In the past we only had to make sure our anti-virus software was up-to-date and if by some fluke chance we contracted a virus that was new and undetectable to virus software we needed to contact our anti-virus software makers to let them know and receive their experience and technical aptitude in solving our virus problem.

Now-a-days there is a new kind of problem cropping up, and it’s becoming more and more common. Virus hoaxes are a well-known catch phrase and you might have heard of them in the news or read about them somewhere on-line. A virus hoax is most commonly spread in the form of e-mail and is designed to make the receiver of the email to believe that their computer security has been compromised.

Most commonly the email will tell the recipient that their computer is infected with a virus and they must delete “such and such a file”. Step-by-step instructions are usually included and if the person reading the email is fooled, a file crucial to their computers operations can be deleted. There are many that will try to play on the fear factor and get you to send them your login information to verify your identity as well.

There are usually very easily spotted warning signs common to all hoax emails that you should know about. The first sign that usually gives the hoax away completely is the request in the email for you to “send this email to everyone you know”. No credible source will ask you to send the email to all the people you know. Secondly the email will be trying to sound credible and technical. By saying that their email has been provided by a well-known authority on viruses and providing links to that site, a lot of people will be more likely to believe the email. Check the site that is linked to, if you get a generic homepage for say.. Mcafee or Symantec, you more than likely have a hoax. Generally a well-known corporation will have specific information linked in their warning email.

Another way to make sure you are not being hoaxed is to check the major sites of virus and security to see if the email you received has been indexed as being a hoax. McAfee and Symantec both have pages dedicated to hoaxes. As well there are other sites loaded with info to check out for virus hoaxes.

Most of all it’s just a good idea to take a sceptical eye when reading anything you receive on the internet. Just because something has been written down/typed out and hailed as truth, does not mean it is so. Keep your eyes open and your computer virus-free.

Josh is the owner of New User Help. A website which offers a free three step solution finder.

A quick search on Google for advice on creating a site map initially threw up many links to software you could buy or download for free to create a site map.

But why do you need a site map?

Basically as websites get larger and more complex both the human browser and the search engine spiders need an easy to follow map to find all the pages within your site. A site map gives them a simple navigational tool.

Site maps have 3 main benefits:

1) A site map allows visitors to easily find what they are looking for by simply visiting your site map and clicking on the link to go directly to the page they want to visit.

2) Often technologies employed to assist in reading webpages such as web page readers and screen readers can only follow text links. For practical reasons it may not always be possible to show a text link to every other page within your site on your main page and other pages within your website and so use a site map.

3) Search engine spiders like text and text links. If they cannot follow a text link to a page of your site it may not get indexed. Make it easy for the spider to index all your pages through a site map.

A site map consists of the two things search engines love – text and keywords. To build a good site map combine relevant keywords with a hyper text links. For example on your site map you may have a link to your webpage about website promotion so your hyperlink should contains the words ‘website promotion’ and link directly to that page within your site.

A site map does not need and indeed should not be fancy, but should be clear and easy to navigate.

Here are some tips for a good site map:

1. Place a prominent link to your site map on every page and lable it SITE MAP.

2. It should show all your webpages through different levels as basic text links.

3. Use standard colours for links and visited links.

4. It should show a quick, easy to follow over view of the site without the need to scroll around in the web browser.

Google started allowing people to submit site maps to their account as a way of letting google know about all your webpages and updates to your site. It does not increase your page ranking at all but is worth taking the time to set up properly.

You can find free software for creating site maps at:

http://www.likno.com/sit emap.html

http://www.freesitema pgenerator.com/

http://www.sitemapspal.com/

And when you are done, don’t forget to tell Google about your site map so they can trawl and hopefully index all the pages of your site.

http://www .google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

A well planned site map can ensure your Web site is fully indexed by search engines.

Back 20 years ago when the Internet was just in its infancy, the only way to build a webpage was simply to use notepad, a free text editor supplied with Microsoft Windows. Now as the Internet has become a collage of music, special effects and flash, the art of writing HTML code is slowly being lost to HTML Editors like Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver MX. Yet, whether you like it or not, to be able to effectively build websites you still need to know at least basic HTML Code.

Let me explain …

HTML or Hypertext Markup Language is in all essence the language of the World Wide Web. Without HTML our Internet Browsers like Netscape, Internet Explorer or Firefox would not be able to interpret our webpages. HTML is made up of a series of tags that describe the inner workings and structure of how you want to present your webpages. Now in all seriousness you could survive building webpages without knowing one little bit of HTML but to be truly successful on the web this is not true.

Search engines are now one of the main tools utilised on the web and everyday you see Microsoft’s MSN, Yahoo and Google jostling for the number one position in the search engine stakes but as a web programmer being able to position yourself into a top ranking spot is probably one of the most important skills you will need to master. As being in one of the top positions for your keywords means that you will be receiving free focused traffic to your website which is much better than having to pay for it via Google’s Adword, Overture and any one of the other text ad based services.

So why is knowing HTML going to help you in getting your website positioned into a top spot in the search engines …

The first thing you need to know is how to correctly format your header tags of your webpage because without properly formatted header tags, the search engines won’t know what your sites about and what keywords you wish to associate with the webpage. One of the big issues I have seen with some of the HTML editors is that they don’t address this issue of Header tags or in particular meta tags, which means if you are building a website you are already compromising the websites ability to be placed into the right position within search engines.

For example many of the HTML editors will provide you with popup forms that will help you set your meta data for your descriptions and keywords but they miss out other important meta data such as whether the search engines spiders should index all the pages, the language of the webpage, the character set and what type of document you are creating based on the HTML Standard.

PLEASE NOTE: I have substituted the < > tags with [ ] brackets simply because many of the article submission companies and websites will not allow you to lodge articles with HTML Tags in the body of the article. To use the code sample below in your webpages simply replace the [] square brackets with the < > tags

[!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"]
[html]
[head]
[meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us"]
[meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"]
[meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 6.0"]
[meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document"]
[TITLE]Your Title Goes Here [/TITLE]

[META NAME="description" CONTENT="Your Description Goes Here"]
[META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="Your Keywords Go Here"]
[META NAME="robots" CONTENT="index,all">
[/head]

[/html]

One thing I should note is that just because you provide all this information does not mean that -

a) All Search Engines use this information
b) You are guaranteed to get a top place in the search engine

But having each of these small elements in your webpage, certainly do when put together makes an improvement in your search engine place. Remember though that every search engine is different and that the algorithms they use for website placement is incredibly complex and certainly a well guarded secret but if you do add these elements at least you will get a few points in the positive direction.

There is another reason for putting this information into your website. Not having some of this information can also affect the ability of a visually impaired person to view your website. This might sound a little strange but visually impaired people have tools that convert screen webpages into brail messages. However, in some cases not including some of the information outlined above in your meta tags like the content language and character set can affect whether their brail software will read your website correctly. So if your customer base is built on say a 30% market of those people who are disabled with visual impairment then you could be costing yourself money.

One of the other key reasons why you should know how to write at least basic html code is to help you build incoming links to your webpages. A technique you can follow to build those incoming links is to write articles that provide information for people about what you do. For example if you owned a Golfing Website that sold all things Golf, then you might consider writing articles on how to select a Golf Club or where the best Golfing Clubs and ranges can be found.

When you are submitting your articles to places like EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com or ArticlesON.com they will ask you to use certain html tags to help accentuate your article. For example generally in the body of your article you can only use things like bold, italics, underline and list items but in other areas like where you put your details you can add things like Hyperlinks and Hypertext. Now in the three article submission sites mentioned before, if you want to add a Hyperlink then you must know your basic HTML code, because they do not build your links for you, you have to write the HTML Tags from scratch.

When you are building your hyperlinks to link back to your webpage, you will want to make sure one two things -

1. The Hyperlink, that is the webpage or website you are linking to contains the keywords in either domain name, folder name or webpage name.
2. Make sure the Hypertext or better known as anchor text uses your keywords as well.

Let us look at a basic example. If I had written a really cool article on a brand new Golf Club that I knew was going to sell millions and had a lot of interest in the market then my link back to the webpage that provides more information on the Golf Club would be built in the way shown below. Let us say the name of the Golf Club is called the Lion Heart X9.

[a href="http://www.GolfProAustralia.com.au/LionHeartX9.htm]Lion Heart X9 Golf Club[/a]

Note -Once again the < > tags have been substituted with [] brackets simply to meet the article submission requirements. You must use the < > bracket tags in your webpage or you webpage will not work.

If you didn’t know how to write the hyperlinks in the way shown above and the search engines found your articles on a number of different websites, then they would not be able to give you credit for the links back to your website and again this is going to cost you web traffic.

The bottom line is this. If you want to build serious webpages and sites that are going to make you money, you will definitely need at the very least good basic skills in using and understanding HTML code.

A newcomer to the world of investments in the notion of “Virtual Real Estate Investing“. Everything from using the internet as an avenue to make more money in real estate to online games such as SecondLife seem to be included in the popular definition of this term.

To get the facts, I sought out the man generally considered to be the father of virtual real estate investing: Bryan Ellis.

Ellis says he adopted the term “virtual real estate investing” sometime before Y2K after he realized that making money online is conceptually very similar to making money with physical real estate.

Bryan Ellis cites the similar strategies one can employe to make money from “virtual property” and “physical property” as a primary parallel of the two markets. “These types of assets – websites and physical real estate – can be monetized in very similar ways like buy lo/sell high, leasing/rental and advertising opportunities” he says.

The parallels really are obvious. For example, if you’re the owner of a desirable property, its desirability is (in a business context) largely due to its being in a location that is of interest to others. Similarly, ownership of a desirable domain name is valuable for the same reasons. In either case, you could sell or lease the asset and turn it into cash.

In our next installment of this series on virtual real estate investing, Bryan Ellis will share the internet analogies to the physical concept of real estate development.

For a child, teenager, or adult suffering from ADD, a difficult road may lie ahead. If you have just recently been diagnosed with ADD, you may not know what life will be like for you, how the symptoms will persist, or how age affects ADD. The good news is, as time goes by, you will more than likely learn effective ways to deal with your disorder, making it less and less obtrusive on your life.

As a child, symptoms of ADD are inattentiveness, impulsiveness, distractibility, and often hyperactivity. Interestingly, this does not change that much with age. However, the ability to deal with these symptoms may improve dramatically.

Whether you choose to take medication for your disorder is one deciding factor in how ADD will affect your life. You may wish to discuss with your doctor the long term implications of taking stimulants and other common ADD medications. If you choose to take medications, it may be easier for you to deal with the disorder. However, behaviour therapy may also be utilized.

Certain characteristics you may expect in your lifetime are difficulty in paying close attention to detail, inability to remain immobile for any length of time, fidgeting, or an inability to follow through and complete tasks. These are all traits common of ADD.

However, there are certain things you can do to improve your skills in the areas typically impacted by ADD. For example, utilizing an organizer will do wonders in keeping things in order and manageable. While book calendar systems are very effective, you may want to try the more technologically advanced digital organizers or personal assistants. They work wonders in keeping you organized. The important thing is to train yourself to utilize such a device to keep up with important information and scheduling.

You should also try to utilize schedules and routines as much as possible. You will inherently be forgetful and scatterbrained; by implementing a system of order, you will act out of habit, which leaves less room for error. The more you can do by automation, the better.

You may also want to seek support groups or at least companionship from other people like you. You may have difficult times that you want to discuss with someone that can truly relate to your situation. While other friends and family will listen and offer support they may not be able to understand you in the same manner another person with ADD would.

DefensePro Proven to Offer Comprehensive Application Security and Performance Capabilities at High Throughput Speeds

Helping organizations secure, optimize and ensure performance for mission critical applications, Radware (NASDAQ: RDWR) the leading provider of Intelligent Application Switching solutions, announced that recent independent tests by The Tolly Group confirm that DefensePro offers comprehensive Intrusion Prevention Switch (IPS) capabilities. Results showed that DefensePro not only provides standard IPS capabilities to isolate, block and prevent attacks at 2.5 Gbps throughput, but also offers advanced security intelligence features such as attack isolation, traffic shaping, bi-directional SSL inspection, Denial of Service Protection, Mass Mailing Protection and protection against Evasion Techniques, that ensure application performance and reliability even while the network is under attack.

Realizing that application security involves more than strictly blocking malicious content, Radware enlisted The Tolly Group to conduct a series of real-world tests that examined the DefensePro 3000’s ability to thwart attacks and still ensure the availability and performance of mission critical applications. In standard IPS performance tests, Radware solutions were proven to secure mission critical applications in real time across high-speed and high capacity environments. Recognition was noted to Radware on the company’s integration of Intrusion Prevention and Denial of Service protection in one device as well as the ability to mitigate SSL-based attacks and SMTP mass mailing attacks.

“To guarantee both network security and application performance and reliability, an IPS solution needs to go beyond just blocking or preventing attacks,” said Assaf Ronen, VP R&D of Radware. “Advanced security features like bandwidth management and attack isolation should be a requirement in any IPS solution, so that organizations can ensure end-to-end security and performance of their mission critical applications – even while in the throes of an attack. The Tolly Group’s tests confirmed that DefensePro’s advanced security features can block all manner of attacks while leaving these mission-critical applications unaffected.”

The Tolly Group tests underscored the unique capabilities of DefensePro 3000 and concluded that:

DefensePro blocked application attacks at an unmatched speed of 2.5 Gigabits per second by identifying and mitigating protocol and traffic anomalies in real-time.

DefensePro’s unique bandwidth management capability was able to isolate attacks by dynamically managing bandwidth to stop propagation across users and resources while ensuring complete continuity and performance of all secure traffic to proactively control impact and limit damage.

DefensePro prevented DoS/DDoS attacks and SYN floods, safeguarding against illicit traffic patterns and hacking. DefensePro also leveraged a wide range of DoS protection capabilities including packet-based attacks, TCP, UDP and ICMP flood protection and DHCP flood protection.

“DefensePro ranks among the strongest providers of IPS solutions we have reviewed before,” stated Kevin Tolly, president/CEO of The Tolly Group. “With features like bandwidth management, SSL and evasion attack capabilities and multi-segment protection, Radware provides a solid package of cost effective application security and performance for organizations.”

Radware (NASDAQ:RDWR) is the Global Leader in Intelligent Application Switching, enabling the full availability, maximum performance and complete security of all mission critical networked applications while dramatically cutting operating and scaling costs.

Radware’s integrated Application Security , Application Infrastructure and End-to-End Connectivity solutions are deployed by over 2,500 enterprises and carriers worldwide. Radware offers the broadest product line in the industry meeting application needs at every critical point across the network including Web and Application Servers, Firewalls, VPNs, ISP links, Anti-Virus Gateways and Cache.

The Tolly Group, an independent testing and strategic consulting organization based in Boca Raton, FL., offers a full range of services designed to furnish both the vendor and end-user communities with authoritative and unbiased information. Additionally, The Tolly Group is recognized worldwide for its expertise in assessing leading-edge technologies. For more information on The Tolly Group’s services.

Creating things over and over just does not make that much sense, all you have to do is have a template and everything will work so much better. It takes only one template to make thousands of similar things and take out so many headaches that are involved in the initial figuring out of things. When you cook, you use a template, which is a recipe. When someone creates an initial recipe, others can use the template recipe over and over, enjoying the original creation. This makes it so easy for others to use. If we all had to make everything in our life from scratch, we would never be able to accomplish all that we do. Even brushing our teeth everyday is a kind of template. We follow it because someone found out that it works to keep our teeth clean and our breath smelling good. There is even a template when it comes to weight loss, Acceletrim is a formula that has helped thousands drop the pounds, and all you have to do is follow the template that has been given to you. The creation of these templates takes time, testing, and error, and these templates are for all kinds of things in our daily lives. Once they are perfected, we can all use them for easier living and better experiences on daily basis.

The fundamentals of real estate marketing

Before we go into the best practices of a personal marketing program, it would be a good idea to touch on the key elements that make up such a program. Call it “Personal Marketing in a Nutshell.”

Marketing is more than just blasting the neighborhoods with your farming pieces. It’s about how you present yourself (and how your company presents itself) to prospects and customers. Effective personal marketing combines elements of direct marketing, public relations and education. It is the sum of all your informational parts.

In this article, we’ll be dissecting the direct marketing piece of the pie. Specifically, we will examine personal marketing mistakes and how to avoid them.

Where do real estate marketers go wrong?

First off, they put a greater emphasis on technology than they put on the message that technology is designed to delivery. They also ignore the fundamentals of persuasive writing.

Why?

Because it’s quick and easy to use a boilerplate message (that’s been used 50,000 times before) and simply change the contact info.

Because of the herd mentality.

Because it’s easier to imitate than to create.

Because “I’ve seen other agents do it … so it must work.”

The field is primed for a leader

As far as marketing goes, the real estate industry is primed for a breakout leader. The vast majority of real estate professionals go about their personal marketing, recruiting and general communications all wrong.

Imagine how could capitalize…

Picture this. You’re a homeowner in a bustling real estate market. You get 15 direct-mail pieces from real estate agents every week.

Fourteen of those postcards say the same thing, obviously borrowed from some stock message database somewhere. They use worn-out phrases and talk about “superior service” … “the utmost commitment” … and the classic “no-obligation consultation.”

But the last card — the one out of 15 that tried something different — leaps out at you from the first line. It identifies your problem and promises to solve it. It addresses the questions burning in your mind and promises to answer them.

It offers something much more valuable than the no-obligation consultation. It doesn’t ramble on about the agent’s accolades and personal philosophy. It’s written in honest, original language, like one human being talking to another. How refreshing!

Based on all that, which of the 15 agents would you call? An easy decision, isn’t it?

Why is it so important to get that first phone call? An NAR survey sponsored by the Gooder Group (of Real Estate Rainmaker fame) found that 74% of people shopping for a real estate professional go with the first agent or REALTOR® they call.

Apply the fundamentals to take the lead

I’m talking about applying proven, tested fundamentals of copywriting to your farming pieces. If that sounds like a simple approach, that’s because it is (provided you understand those fundamentals, which I do).

I hope this illustrates how many real estate marketers are missing the point — and how much you could capitalize on this, provided you have the right guide.

Love is like a tree. Imagine days, when you hear no word from your sweetheart. You start getting ideas. You get lonely and think of why? This why may bring many answers that may not be very conductive to romantic love.

Romantic love demands affirmation regularly. Every lover loves to hear from his or her daring – I Love You. That increases the passion of love and keeps the love flame alive. As I said before love is like a tree. It needs care till it grows strong. How to use ecards to keep the love strong at all the times? Let me tell you.

Visit any good ecard/egreeting/greeting card website. Many are free and some charge money. Look for the free websites. Give a keen look at the cards. Look at three elements – Design, colors and text. All three combined should create a feeling of very strong love and longing. The ecard should be such that makes your darling desperate to meet you immediately. Are the cards evoking such emotions? What is the weight of the ecard? How much time does it take to open the card? Look at the site design. Send a card to yourself and see how it looks at the receiver’s end. It should create an atmosphere of passion and euphoric love. Does it do that?

After satisfying yourself, that the ecards are such that they will create a feeling of great romantic love, begin sending them. Send one a day. Don’t send a card on the day you are to meet. Send a card saying I Love You in different ways everyday. Express your love. Intentionally miss a day. That will increase your darling’s longing for you. Play the love game as an expert. It is not for amateurs.

Ecards will be of great help to you in playing the romance game. Learn the art of proper selection of a free ecard and begin. You will keep your love tree strong forever, with flowers coming every season and that tree will never have autumn.

CD Mohatta writes advice and articles on love, marriage and dating. This website is a guide on dating, love, relationship, romance, marriage, and break ups. He also writes for ecards and online greetings, screensavers and desktop wallpapers. You can view the ecards here- free birthday cards He also writes content for fun tests and quizzes on dating, personality and love.