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The "Catch" to Some of these Freebie Sites Remember that old saying, "There's no such thing as a free lunch?" Well, it's not true—there are plenty of freebies out there. However, there are some things you should know about if you are going to go after these freebies. The World Wide Web is awash with web sites that like to offer visitors with loads of tempting freebies. But although many of these are legitimate offers, there are some things you should know about these freebie sites. Here are some things to know about these freebie sites. Getting Things for Free—A Caveat Here is the basic caveat when it comes to these freebie offers—there is usually something you will have to endure in order to get your freebie. Although you may not have to make any sort of financial contribution or monetary expense, you will have to pay in some small non-monetary way. Here is a quick rundown of various kinds of 'catches' that you may come across as you seek out the best of the web's freebies. Watching Ads Before You Get to the Good Stuff One of the most common techniques that websites will use before you can get access to their freebies is to force you to watch ads. There are many different versions of this method. Many sites that promote freebies will support their site through advertisements. Most advertisements show up as pop-up or banner ads. Some websites also use video websites. With the ubiquity of high speed Internet, video ads have lately become the preferred method of advertisement on many websites. The less subtle of these ads are the pop-up and banner ads. Pop-up ads are often quite obtrusive and they can interrupt your enjoyment of the website. You might want to avoid ad-based freebie sites at work, as these can often interfere with your screen. Many popular freebie websites also offer ad-free versions of their content. This may be something to consider if you really find the website's content valuable. Be Wary of Automatic E-mail Sign-Ups Many freebie websites will sign you up automatically for their email newsletters. The worst-case scenario is when the website allows its partners to bombard you with email ads. What is the best way to avoid getting on an unwanted email list? Read the fine print, and whenever you get the option, uncheck the opt-in box at the very bottom of the page. Take Care of Your Privacy Many sites that offer freebies make money by selling the personal information that they gain from their web traffic. In order to avoid having your personal information being sold, you should avoid giving your personal information to websites that can't provide you with an upfront privacy policy. You should also look for the TRUSTe seal that ensures your personal information is kept secure and private. Also, never provide more information than you need to provide. Avoid Large Downloads Whenever Possible Another thing you should watch out for are large downloads. Although there are many legitimate large downloads out there, you should avoid sites that don't tell you exactly what you are downloading, how long the download will take, and how big the file size is. Watch Out for Disappearing Websites If there is one thing to know about freebie websites is that they are often 'here today, gone tomorrow' type enterprises. Many freebie websites simply don't survive for very long. You should think hard before committing to a website that offers free services that you will have to depend on. The last thing you want is to depend on a website's services, and then have those services disappear or suspended.

Free Anonymous Phone Number and Voice Mail through JC Connect Do you wish you had access to free anonymous phone numbers and voice mail for your business or personal use? The web offers many freebies, including access to these types of services. Most of the time, you just have to know where to look. Here are some services, including the well-known JC Connect, which provides users with free, fast and accessible service to these types of services. Get Fast and Free Access to Business Services with JC Connect What is JC Connect, and what can it do for you? JC Connect free service is the web's longest-running service in terms of providing its users with free phone numbers. You can use these free incoming phone numbers in order to receive fax and voice messages. This service is still widely known by its old name, JFax, but now it is officially recognized as JConnect Free services. This well-regarded service offers their free services at no cost to you. The service also requires very little personal information from its uses. All you need to provide in order to use its services include your name, email address, gender, age and your zip code. After signing up, you will receive a unique phone number. Use this unique phone number in order to forward messages. These messages are well-compressed image and audio files. You can forward these messages to your email in-box. Because these services are free, the company requests that users limit their usage to a certain number of messages at a time. This is a good site if you don't have easy access to a fax machine. Need Free Web Space for Your Business? Another tool that most small businesses need is free web space. Freeservers is a popular web service that provides users with 20 MB of free website space. The site has become well known for its complete suite of tools and features. Some of the features that this free service boasts include easy-to-use web design templates, FTP upload and many other web-based tools. You can also program your account so that emails can be sent directly to your domain. There are also many free web traffic analysis tools, including daily and weekly breakdowns of all your site's traffic. You can actually see how many people have viewed your website on a daily basis. Freeservers does require users to display a non-obtrusive banner ad on their website pages. Free and Easy Tools for Keeping Up With Your Portfolio Are you looking for a free and easy way to keep tabs on your portfolio? Here is a website that allows you to do just that. Company Sleuth is a website that helps you keep track of your investments. You simply sign up and enter the ticker symbols for the companies and corporations that you want to watch, and let the site do the rest. What sort of information will come your way once you have signed up? Once you have signed up, the site will cull information from news sites, investor forums, press releases, job listings and even official SEC document in order to give you the latest information on the companies you want to keep an eye on. Want to Test Your Website? If you want to test the mettle of your own website and its servers, NetWhistle is there to do just that. This service tests the reliability and strength of your domain's website. It will check to see if your website server is up at intervals. This service will create a log and notify you immediately if there is a problem with your website. You will also receive a handy weekly report card.

Web Hosting - Domain Name Changes and How They Affect You New domain names are registered all the time, and ones previously registered expired. Sometimes that's the result of simple neglect. The owner of the name chose not to renew his or her ownership, so the name became available for someone else to use. In rare cases, a highly original mind managed to think of a new one. In the other common scenarios, someone chose to just let it go or sell it. When you choose to change your domain name, there are actually two separate steps involved: releasing the old name, and adopting the new one. But, just as the postal system can have difficulty forwarding your letters when you change your personal name, changing your domain name brings certain difficulties. One of the most prominent is the fact that any name change requires a change to thousands of DNS Servers around the globe. DNS (Domain Name System) is the set of software/hardware components that allows domain names to map to IP addresses. IP addresses are what are actually used 'under the covers' when one computer communicates with another. Note that there isn't always a 1:1 correspondence between a name and an IP address. One IP address can serve multiple domain names and one domain name can have multiple IP addresses. For the sake of simplicity, we'll stick to the common case here. DNS servers around the world maintain internal databases that match the name to an IP address. Not all servers have all pairs of names/addresses. A series of complex routines allows a request to be forwarded when the particular DNS server doesn't have a needed record. When you acquire a domain name that used to be associated with a given IP address, the odds of you acquiring the same IP address are extremely low. In the unlikely case, for example, that you acquired the domain name yahoo.com, you would almost certainly not get the IP address that was matched with it (unless you bought the Yahoo! company). So, as a result of the change, the name/IP address pair is no longer what it was. A similar circumstance exists when you retain your IP address, but want to change the domain name associated with it. In either case, the pairing has changed. The catch is this: when the change takes place, those DNS databases are not all updated instantaneously around the world. Even apart from the limited speed with which computers and networks operate, (and neglecting the human factor if/when the change is made manually to more than one server) the reason is something called caching. In order to communicate efficiently, DNS servers are designed to assume that changes will be relatively rare. Just as with the postal system, you don't move your address or change your name every minute. Since that's true, in general, the name/IP address pair is cached. A cache is a set of stored information that is reused so that fresh information doesn't have to be communicated with every request for a web page or data. A chain of DNS servers pass requests to the last known address. There is usually more than one system between your computer and the server you want to communicate with. Most of the time, that's your current name/address. When you change the name, that pair is no longer valid. In order to propagate the new name/address pair (so the terminology goes), that cache has to be refreshed. Something similar happens when you establish an entirely new name. That name is first associated with an IP address and that pair has to be communicated to DNS servers around the world in order for you to be able to reach any one of them at random. But DNS servers don't do that until they are requested to do so by your action of asking for information from a remote server. Because of that, but chiefly because of caching, it can take quite a while for the new pair to become known around the Internet. Caches can expire and get refreshed in a few minutes or a few hours. It varies. That time can be as short as an hour or less, if the path between your computer and the web server is very simple and only one DNS server needs to be updated. Or, it can take up to 48 hours or more. Though the 'official' range is often given by registrars as 24-48 hours, the average is closer to about six hours. But that's an average. The actual time in any given case can (and does) vary widely. In the meantime, a number of effects can occur. The most obvious is that, since the name/IP address pair can't be resolved properly, you don't reach the server you want. Your browser points to the old one (in the rare case it's still accessible by that name and address), or it simply reports there's no such name at that address. So, when registering a new name or buying an old one, you should establish the site, but not advertise it for at least a couple of days. Better to wait to get visitors than to turn them off by being 'not at home' when they call.