The Internet’s Big Secret-It Really Is WIRED!

Bonnie Boots — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:54:56 +0000

See that octopus wrestling with a cable? He’s wrapped up with one of the internet’s biggest secrets–it’s wired. Really wired! And as a product creator and publisher, you need to know this.

One of the main steps in creating and selling your own digital products is putting up a web site or blog where visitors can click that "buy it now" button and then download their purchase.

Once that web site is published, a lot of people think the worst is over. "All I have to do now," they say to themselves, "is watch my PayPal balance grow."

Ah, the poor fools! They’ll soon discover that the next step is answering questions and complaints from people who think that web site isn’t working properly. Any web site that receives any measure of traffic also receives complaints. A video or audio won’t play. A picture isn’t showing up. A product didn’t download. These complaints usually come with an associated belief that anything wrong with a website is the fault of the publisher–that dummy!– and can immediately be fixed by him or her.

Yesterday I got an email from a visitor downloading a free ebook. His complaint was that his first attempt to download the book failed. His second attempt worked, but the book he downloaded was titled Book 2. So he tried again and this time got Book3. His complaint was twofold: he wanted Book 1, the book he originally came to get, and he wanted to know why I hadn’t explained beforehand that there were actually three books to be downloaded.

"I think you should fix your site!" he said.

Here’s what he didn’t realize: his first download attempt worked perfectly. But the book downloaded so fast that he didn’t even notice it was happening. Thinking that download had failed, he tried again.

His computer, of course, recognized that the book had already been downloaded, and that a second copy of the same file was now being downloaded to the same location. So his computer politely named the second file Book 2, just to help its master keep things sorted out. When a third download was made, the computer named the third identical file Book3.

I politely explained to my visitor what had happened, and moved on to the next email, a complaint that my video wasn’t working.

Letters like these are evidence that most people really don’t know how the internet works. They think their computer is taking a direct path to my web site and anything that happens there is my fault. But the truth is that a web site publisher has very little control over many of the problems that can appear on their sites.

Problem number one, as I’ve just illustrated, is often user error. A user just doesn’t understand how their computer works.

Problem number two is that there is no direct path between any two computers. When a visitor enters your web site, they do so through an electronic signal that may have jumped through a dozen or more different geographical hubs before they landed on your web site. At any one of those hubs, all sorts of things can happen to an electronic signal. It may be blocked by filters sorting out signals that might be malicious. It may be corrupted. Or it may be broken altogether because a power pole has fallen or an octopus has carried off a cable.

There’s a lot of talk on the internt about wireless this and that, but the truth is, the majority of the internet is very much WIRED. It runs through cables wrapping all the way around the world and even under the oceans. As you might imagine, cables lying on land and underwater are prone to all sorts of problems.

For instance, in January and February of 2008, almost eighty percent of the Middle East temporarily lost internet access when boat anchors accidentally cut undersea cables.

Later that year, Hurricane Ike smashed into Houston, a major internet hub. Both of these events affected web traffic all around the world. Yet the day after Ike hit, I received a record number of complaints that my web sites weren’t working. Internet cable failures happen every day, every hour, every minutes–and they affect your experience on the internet, both as a publisher and as a surfer.

Popular Science has published an excellent article explaining how the internt actually works and how prone to failure it is. In fact, once you read this article, you’ll be newly impressed that the internet works at all. Read it. It’s at the end of this link to the Popular Science web site. You’ll come away with a better understanding of how your web site works, and you’ll be better equipped to answer those inevitable complaints. And if by chance that link doesn’t work, don’t tell me—tell the ocotpus!

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Bonnie Boots publishes The Internet Wizards Magazine and this companion The Internet Wizards Blog to teach self-employed people and small businesses owners how to leverage the internet for advertising, marketing and promoting their business. To stay in touch with her, type your name and email into the subscriber box in the upper right corner of this page. You’ll be glad you did!

Slow Internet? Robot sub searches the Mediterranean for severed Internet cables (sciam.com)
Latest undersea cable cuts affecting billions (venturebeat.com)

The Internet Revolution: The Not-for-Dummies Guide to the History, Technology, and Use of the Internet

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Mozy Unlimited Backup Can Save Your Business, Save Your Life

Bonnie Boots — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:20:44 +0000

When you’re involved in online business, your entire life becomes wrapped up in your computer.

It holds your emails and all your contact lists, family photos, medical records, to-do lists, purchase receipts, ebooks you’re writing, ebooks you’ve purchased, business plans, tutorials and a million other things that keep you living and working each day.

Your life and your business are irrevocably tied up in the data stored on your computer. What are you doing to protect it?

"Backup!" is the mantra that’s been mouthed by tech experts since the dawn of the computer age. But even so, the vast majority of users still skip this all-important step.

If you’re backing up your computer’s data to a disc or an external hard drive, you’re miles ahead of most people. But don’t bend over too far patting yourself on the back. Have you stopped to think what will happen to your data if there’s a theft or fire in the room where you store that backup?

Last year, friends of mine came home to find they’d been burgled and their computer was gone. So were all the original software discs and their precious backup discs that had been stored on a shelf above the computer.

And last week, there was an article in the local paper about a business that had its backup stored on an external drive. Again, it was stored on a shelf near the computer. Both the computer and backup were destroyed when an electrical short caused a fire that spread through the building late at night. By the time the owner was on the scene, there was nothing left to save.

In both cases, the computer users thought they were doing the right thing–backing up. But they forgot one of the golden rules of backups–always have one stored on and one stored off your property.

I’m a fanatic about backing up my data. I have all my computer data stored not once, but twice, on two external drives here in my office. Then I add a triple layer of protection by storing a third complete backup off my property. I do this effortlessly by using Mozy Unlimited Backup a company that offers unlimited backup storage online.

To use Mozy Unlimited Backup all you do is download a self-installing piece of software. This connects to the internet at any time you designate (I have mine set to connect anytime my computer is idle for 20 minutes) and backs up your entire hard drive.

This means I never had to remember to do a backup. Mozy Unlimited Backup does it for me, as often and at any time I designate.

Mozy Unlimited Backup is a simple, easy and effective solution to the question of how to protect your most important asset-your computer data. I’ve used it for two years and I wouldn’t be without it. For less than $50 a year, I never have to worry. You can get 10% off annual and biannual MozyHome Unlimited and MozyPro sign ups when you register now and type the code "February" into the Mozy Unlimited Backup referral box at sign-up. When you consider that your whole life is wrapped up in your computer, you can easily understand the real value of Mozy Unlimited Backup.