Friday, April 18, 2008
How To Pick A Web Site Domain Name For Your Company Or Law Firm
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Sunday, April 13, 2008
Cisco Certification: The Joy Of Hex
Cisco certification candidates, particularly CCNA candidates, must master binary math. This includes basic conversions, such as binary-to-decimal and decimal-to-binary, as well as more advanced scenarios involving subnetting and VLSM.
There s another conversion that might rear its ugly head on your Cisco exam, though, and that involves hexadecimal numbering.
Newcomers to hexadecimal numbering are often confused as to how a letter of the alphabet can possibly represent a number. Worse, they may be intimidated after all, there must be some incredibly complicated formula involved with representing the decimal 11 with the letter b , right?
Wrong.
The numbering system we use every day, decimal, concerns itself with units of ten. Although we rarely stop to think of it this way, if you read a decimal number from right to left, the number indicates how many units of one, ten, and one hundred we have. That is, the number 15 is five units of one and one unit of ten. The number 289 is nine units of one, eight units of ten, and two units of one hundred. Simple enough!
Hex numbers are read much the same way, except the units here are units of 16. The number 15 in hex is read as having five units of one and one unit of sixteen. The number 289 in hex is nine units of one, eight units of sixteen, and two units of 256 (16 x 16).
Since hex uses units of sixteen, how can we possibly represent a value of 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, or 15? We do so with letters. The decimal 10 is represented in hex with the letter a ; the decimal 11 with b ; the decimal 12 with c , 13 with d , 14 with e , and finally, 15 with f . (CCNA candidates will remember that a MAC address of ffff.ffff.ffff is a Layer 2 broadcast.)
Practice Your Conversions For Exam Success
Now that you know where the letters fall into place in the hexadecimal numbering world, you ll have little trouble converting hex to decimal and decimal to hex if you practice.
How would you convert the decimal 27 to hex? You can see that there is one unit of 16 in this decimal; that leaves 11 units of one. This is represented in hex with 1b one unit of sixteen, 11 units of one.
Converting the decimal 322 to hex is no problem. There is one unit of 256; that leaves 66. There are four units of 16 in 66; that leaves 2, or two units of one. The hex equivalent of the decimal 322 is the hex figure 142 one unit of 256, four units of 32, and 2 units of 2.
Hex-to-decimal conversions are even simpler. Given the hex number 144, what is the decimal equivalent? We have one unit of 256, four units of 16, and four units of 4. This gives us the decimal figure 324.
What about the hex figure c2? We now know that the letter c represents the decimal number 12 . This means we have 12 units of 16, and two units of 2. This gives us the decimal figure 194.
Tips For Exam Day
Practice your binary and hexadecimal conversions over and over again before you take your CCNA exams. Binary math questions come in many different forms; make sure you have practiced all of them before exam day. The number one reason CCNA candidates fail their exam is that they re not prepared for the different types of binary math questions they re going to be asked, and that they aren t ready for hexadecimal questions at all.
You don t have time to learn how to do in on exam day. You ve got to be ready before you go into the exam room, and the only way to be ready is a lot of practice.
Finally, make sure you read the question carefully. You ve got hex, decimal, and binary numbers to concern yourself with on your CCNA exams. Make sure you give Cisco the answer in the format they re looking for.
Chris Bryant, CCIE 12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage, home of over 100 free certification exam tutorials, including Cisco CCNA certification test prep articles. His exclusive Cisco CCNA study guide and Cisco CCNA training is also available!
Visit his blog and sign up for Cisco Certification Central, a daily newsletter packed with CCNA, Network+, Security+, A+, and CCNP certification exam practice questions! A free 7-part course, "How To Pass The CCNA", is also available, and you can attend an in-person or online CCNA boot camp with The Bryant Advantage!
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There s another conversion that might rear its ugly head on your Cisco exam, though, and that involves hexadecimal numbering.
Newcomers to hexadecimal numbering are often confused as to how a letter of the alphabet can possibly represent a number. Worse, they may be intimidated after all, there must be some incredibly complicated formula involved with representing the decimal 11 with the letter b , right?
Wrong.
The numbering system we use every day, decimal, concerns itself with units of ten. Although we rarely stop to think of it this way, if you read a decimal number from right to left, the number indicates how many units of one, ten, and one hundred we have. That is, the number 15 is five units of one and one unit of ten. The number 289 is nine units of one, eight units of ten, and two units of one hundred. Simple enough!
Hex numbers are read much the same way, except the units here are units of 16. The number 15 in hex is read as having five units of one and one unit of sixteen. The number 289 in hex is nine units of one, eight units of sixteen, and two units of 256 (16 x 16).
Since hex uses units of sixteen, how can we possibly represent a value of 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, or 15? We do so with letters. The decimal 10 is represented in hex with the letter a ; the decimal 11 with b ; the decimal 12 with c , 13 with d , 14 with e , and finally, 15 with f . (CCNA candidates will remember that a MAC address of ffff.ffff.ffff is a Layer 2 broadcast.)
Practice Your Conversions For Exam Success
Now that you know where the letters fall into place in the hexadecimal numbering world, you ll have little trouble converting hex to decimal and decimal to hex if you practice.
How would you convert the decimal 27 to hex? You can see that there is one unit of 16 in this decimal; that leaves 11 units of one. This is represented in hex with 1b one unit of sixteen, 11 units of one.
Converting the decimal 322 to hex is no problem. There is one unit of 256; that leaves 66. There are four units of 16 in 66; that leaves 2, or two units of one. The hex equivalent of the decimal 322 is the hex figure 142 one unit of 256, four units of 32, and 2 units of 2.
Hex-to-decimal conversions are even simpler. Given the hex number 144, what is the decimal equivalent? We have one unit of 256, four units of 16, and four units of 4. This gives us the decimal figure 324.
What about the hex figure c2? We now know that the letter c represents the decimal number 12 . This means we have 12 units of 16, and two units of 2. This gives us the decimal figure 194.
Tips For Exam Day
Practice your binary and hexadecimal conversions over and over again before you take your CCNA exams. Binary math questions come in many different forms; make sure you have practiced all of them before exam day. The number one reason CCNA candidates fail their exam is that they re not prepared for the different types of binary math questions they re going to be asked, and that they aren t ready for hexadecimal questions at all.
You don t have time to learn how to do in on exam day. You ve got to be ready before you go into the exam room, and the only way to be ready is a lot of practice.
Finally, make sure you read the question carefully. You ve got hex, decimal, and binary numbers to concern yourself with on your CCNA exams. Make sure you give Cisco the answer in the format they re looking for.
Chris Bryant, CCIE 12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage, home of over 100 free certification exam tutorials, including Cisco CCNA certification test prep articles. His exclusive Cisco CCNA study guide and Cisco CCNA training is also available!
Visit his blog and sign up for Cisco Certification Central, a daily newsletter packed with CCNA, Network+, Security+, A+, and CCNP certification exam practice questions! A free 7-part course, "How To Pass The CCNA", is also available, and you can attend an in-person or online CCNA boot camp with The Bryant Advantage!
Bookmark it:
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Selecting a CMS Vendor
With so many mid-tier content management system vendors vying for market share, it s important to look for unique selling points (USPs) and specialist expertise that fits your requirements.
When a market sector becomes awash with choice, it can be hard to differentiate between the USPs of your shortlist of vendors. This is currently the case with the mid-tier content management system (CMS) marketplace, where products range from web CMS solutions to enterprise CMS offerings.
Web CMS solutions are built to drive websites - incorporating features for capacity planning, site design and layout, content development, production, content delivery, session tracking, and site evolution. The core focus of these products is to empower business users, webmasters and website developers to create and manage their website content.
But today s web CMSs are rapidly evolving to embrace enterprise content management systems (ECMs). These provide the strategic "glue" for enterprise content, helping to integrate multiple back-end processes and data stores, with multiple customer-facing applications. Meanwhile, the front-end customer-facing applications could include e-commerce, sales automation, customer relationship management, supply chain management, or an employee portal, for example.
With many mid-tier CMS solutions jockeying for position in the marketplace today, what should information professionals look for when choosing a system?
At a technical level it comes down to products being industry standard, easy to integrate into a heterogeneous IT environment, and scalable - independent of delivery requirements and without incurring major incremental costs. They should also be able to deliver content to end-users in a variety of ways, and be capable of supporting multi-lingual websites.
The ability to customise the solution to meet specific business needs is also key, as is ease of use and efficiency, in terms of content reuse across multiple channels. Content reuse capabilities are essential to enable organisations to improve knowledge worker productivity and avoid creating content chaos. Products should also offer the right balance in terms of rich, out-of-the-box functionality, rapid implementation and easy ongoing administration by IT.
Information professionals should also look for CMS vendors that offer good content collaboration tools. These are invaluable since they improve knowledge sharing and teamwork, including project collaboration capabilities using facilities such as discussion forums, bulletin boards, team calendars, to-do lists and file-sharing.
These features and strategies will guarantee a flexible, extensible CMS development platform that can grow with the business.
But the system has to be affordable too, which is when you need to consider total cost of ownership. In terms of ROI, look for an affordable services contract tied to short implementation timeframes. That s why we ve been enjoying our use of a new and many-featured content management system called Traffic King Pro. More info here: http://www.traffickingproducts.com.
Obviously, CMS vendors should be financially sound, with a track record in the appropriate sector. But they should also be culturally sensitive - an offshore vendor is fine provided its solution has been appropriately adapted to cater for the European market, and it can offer good, local support.
Information professionals should also look for a vendor of a similar size to their own organisation, so as to maintain their influence on issues such as support. Of course, this is not always necessary, or even possible - witness the option of buying Microsoft s Content Management Server. Microsoft s CMS may not fit all needs, despite being the brand of the moment, while the vendor dwarfs most users.
Bookmark it:
When a market sector becomes awash with choice, it can be hard to differentiate between the USPs of your shortlist of vendors. This is currently the case with the mid-tier content management system (CMS) marketplace, where products range from web CMS solutions to enterprise CMS offerings.
Web CMS solutions are built to drive websites - incorporating features for capacity planning, site design and layout, content development, production, content delivery, session tracking, and site evolution. The core focus of these products is to empower business users, webmasters and website developers to create and manage their website content.
But today s web CMSs are rapidly evolving to embrace enterprise content management systems (ECMs). These provide the strategic "glue" for enterprise content, helping to integrate multiple back-end processes and data stores, with multiple customer-facing applications. Meanwhile, the front-end customer-facing applications could include e-commerce, sales automation, customer relationship management, supply chain management, or an employee portal, for example.
With many mid-tier CMS solutions jockeying for position in the marketplace today, what should information professionals look for when choosing a system?
At a technical level it comes down to products being industry standard, easy to integrate into a heterogeneous IT environment, and scalable - independent of delivery requirements and without incurring major incremental costs. They should also be able to deliver content to end-users in a variety of ways, and be capable of supporting multi-lingual websites.
The ability to customise the solution to meet specific business needs is also key, as is ease of use and efficiency, in terms of content reuse across multiple channels. Content reuse capabilities are essential to enable organisations to improve knowledge worker productivity and avoid creating content chaos. Products should also offer the right balance in terms of rich, out-of-the-box functionality, rapid implementation and easy ongoing administration by IT.
Information professionals should also look for CMS vendors that offer good content collaboration tools. These are invaluable since they improve knowledge sharing and teamwork, including project collaboration capabilities using facilities such as discussion forums, bulletin boards, team calendars, to-do lists and file-sharing.
These features and strategies will guarantee a flexible, extensible CMS development platform that can grow with the business.
But the system has to be affordable too, which is when you need to consider total cost of ownership. In terms of ROI, look for an affordable services contract tied to short implementation timeframes. That s why we ve been enjoying our use of a new and many-featured content management system called Traffic King Pro. More info here: http://www.traffickingproducts.com.
Obviously, CMS vendors should be financially sound, with a track record in the appropriate sector. But they should also be culturally sensitive - an offshore vendor is fine provided its solution has been appropriately adapted to cater for the European market, and it can offer good, local support.
Information professionals should also look for a vendor of a similar size to their own organisation, so as to maintain their influence on issues such as support. Of course, this is not always necessary, or even possible - witness the option of buying Microsoft s Content Management Server. Microsoft s CMS may not fit all needs, despite being the brand of the moment, while the vendor dwarfs most users.
Bookmark it:
Friday, April 4, 2008
Advantages Of Discount Laptops
Used or refurbished electronics are better than new ones for some excellent reasons. Companies such as IBM, Dell, Compaq, HP, Gateway and are known for the high quality of laptops. Each company is a manufacturer of reliable quality of the goods and is highly competitive in the marketplace. Giving customers exactly what they want, which makes products first, and providing redress in cases where the goods are defective are some of the options that are provided to the customer. Each company spends a lot to announce its new product. However, when the product is not reformed to announce that, therefore, saving money. Products being reconditioned must pass a thorough examination. After the repair of any defect and disinfect if necessary, the repackaged product, either by the original manufacturer or a professional reputation outside the company can carry out refurbishment, the return of the products to new and emerging conditions. Each refurbished laptops sold must meet the standards of the original manufacturers and must maintain high quality standards. Each item is checked several times for the proper functioning and quality. Reacondicionados products tend to have a very low cost performance. Much money can be saved by purchasing remanufactured goods. The savings can range up to 50% 60% of the original cost. A new laptop will have the same technology and features as a new device for mobile computing except for the price. Refurbished laptops also offer the best services for extended warranty and support programmes. Buying refurbished computers or laptops that use to save money and still owning a & 39; characterised stica-rich, quality desktop or notebook computer with a manufacturer& 39;s warranty. Some discount stores computer excel in providing quality, brand name laptops restored. They constantly have been used more laptops, computers, monitors, printers, which have been refitted and has been approved for sale by manufacturers such as HP, Dell, Compaq, Gateway, IBM and Sony. It also suggests considering whether the LAN card, CD Writer, DVD Player, DVD-CDRW (although they can depend on personal preference), 56K modem, IrDa (infrared), and Bluetooth are available at the time of choosing a cheap laptop, as it is usually provided with all current laptops. Additionally, it is recommended always consult updating the laptop.Discount Apple Notebooks provides detailed information on discount Apple Notebooks, Dell Laptops Discount, Discount Laptop Batteries, Discount Laptop Cases and more. Discount Laptops Apple is affiliated with Color Copiers.
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