Rodes Web Design & Development

Web Design, Hosting, SEO and Statistical Analysis

Social Networking Safety

Social Network Logo'sSocial networking Web sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and Windows Live Spaces are services people can use to connect with others to share information like photos, videos, and personal messages.

As the popularity of these social sites grows, so do the risks of using them. Hackers, spammers, virus writers, identity thieves, and other criminals follow the traffic.

Read these tips to help protect yourself when you use social networks: [Read the rest of this entry...]

10 Tips for improving your wireless signal

If Windows ever notifies you about a weak signal, it probably means your connection isn’t as fast or as reliable as it could be. Worse, you might lose your connection entirely in some parts of your home. If you’re looking to improve the signal for your wireless network, try some of these tips for extending your wireless range and improving your wireless network performance.

10 tips for improving your wireless network

1. Position your wireless router (or wireless access point) in a central location

When possible, place your wireless router in a central location in your home. If your wireless router is against an outside wall of your home, the signal will be weak on the other side of your home. Don’t worry if you can’t move your wireless router, because there are many other ways to improve your connection.

Bad router and good router comparison [Read the rest of this entry...]

Communications Etiquette 101

We all have our pet-peaves. Some of us have laundry lists of them. My list of personal pet-peaves is rather short, and asCommunications Etiquette 101 far as my business pet-peaves, there is only one: Communications Etiquette.

What I am going to propose below might startle some of you largely due to the fact that most of us don’t follow the simple rule I am about to share with you…and it is so very simple!

Respond in kind. Thats it! (but allow me to ellaborate):

I have broken this down into 2 sections, Type, and Content. [Read the rest of this entry...]

What is a Computer Virus?

Computer VirusComputer viruses are small software programs that are designed to spread from one computer to another and to interfere with computer operation.

A virus might corrupt or delete data on your computer, use your e-mail program to spread itself to other computers, or even erase everything on your hard disk.

Computer viruses are often spread by attachments in e-mail messages or instant messaging messages. That is why it is essential that you never open e-mail attachments unless you know who it’s from and you are expecting it.

Viruses can be disguised as attachments of funny images, greeting cards, or audio and video files. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Windows 7 resources

With Windows 7 now available worldwide, I wanted to share some resources available to help IT Pros become more proficient with Windows 7 and consumers more savvy about new support resources for Windows 7.

Microsoft Learning has developed a wide range of training and resources for IT Pros that address the benefits and key technical aspects of Windows 7. With these resources, IT Pros can prepare for deployments and become Windows 7 experts within in their organization. These resources include: [Read the rest of this entry...]

Windows 7 at-a-glance

As the launch date for Microsoft Windows 7 approaches (10/22/09), the guardians at Redmond have closed the gates on the RC version. Having thoroughly tested it, here are our initial opinions:

Windows 7 Stylized Logo

The good: Strong design and Microsoft don’t always go together, but they do in Windows 7.
Users might take a while to get used to the new taskbar and Aero Peek, but they’re a pleasure to use.

The bad: Performance is still hit-or-miss in Windows 7. At the ripe age of seven, Windows XP still performs better in some categories.

The bottom line: Windows 7 is more than what Vista should have been, it’s where Microsoft needed to go. How much damage Vista did and whether Windows 7 is enough for people to finally abandon Windows XP are questions that nobody has the answers to right now.

Google PageRank™ Explained

What is PageRank?

PageRank™ is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links PageRank Imageto another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is. Google calculates a page’s importance from the votes cast for it. How important each vote is is taken into account when a page’s PageRank is calculated.
PageRank is Google’s way of deciding a page’s importance. It matters because it is one of the factors that determines a page’s ranking in the search results. It isn’t the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one. [Read the rest of this entry...]