Internet and Web Marketing Tools

Choosing a decent RSS reader to browse and read your favourite RSS feeds was not a straight forward task. I tried and tested many different windows desktop readers but I ended up uninstalling them for one reason or another. Then I found Bloglines and I am pleased to say I have not yet been disappointed with it.

The reason I need a decent RSS reader is that I spend a lot of time reading feeds. I run an RSS resource website http://www.newsniche.com/ which means I have to keep up to date with all things RSS. Naturally I have come across many RSS readers but have found them always to be lacking in one thing or another. In my research I came across Bloglines which is a web based reader.

It’s a shame Bloglines does not have an affiliate program as I would love to promote it, purely because it is such a great tool. Unfortunately for me but fortunately for you this tool is free and everybody loves free internet tools. The main reason I am writing this is because I feel I need to give something back to Bloglines and I also want you to benefit from such a great RSS reader.

Lets start by looking at the main benefits of using Bloglines. Firstly it is fast to use. Now usually web based tools are a lot slower than there desktop counterparts, in this case because Bloglines has a cache of feeds because of its large user base the feeds are already on the Bloglines server. With desktop reader you would have to download the feeds when you start up your reader, if you subscribe to a lot of feeds like me then you will end up waiting a long time.

As it is a popular web based reader you have the advantage of the social side of RSS. There is a directory of all the feeds it there readers have subscribed to and if the reader chooses to make their list of RSS feeds public you can see what everyone else is reading. Another great spin off from this is the ability to see how many Bloglines users are subscribed to each feed.

As you know everything has its down side and Bloglines is no exception. The main negative is that if Bloglines is ever down then you will not be able to access your feeds. Now this is certainly a big potential problem especially if you really heavily on being able to have access to your feeds. Since I have been a user I have as yet not experienced any down time. As a precaution you can export your RSS feed list as an OPML file so you can import into another RSS reader should Bloglines go belly up or experience any serious down time.

I am happy to say Bloglines is a tool I would gladly recommend to an RSS user. It is easy to setup, easy to use and it is at the moment totally free. So why not try it, I promise you that you will quickly become addicted and you will be checking your feeds more than your email

By Allan Burns

Allan is the webmaster at %26lt;a target=”_new” href=”http://www.newsniche.com/”;http://www.newsniche.com/ an RSS resource for webmasters. Learn how to use RSS to attract and retain visitors to your site.

What would be the reason to research web hosting websites? In order to get the best value for your money when using the services of a web hosting company to host your website, it is important that you research and compare different web hosting companies. You can get information and reviews at Web Hosting Reviews to help you make this important decision.

There are web hosts that are dishonest about what they have to offer and do not take good care of their clients whereas the web hosts that are driven by superior customer service take good care of you as a valued client. With all the many web hosts available today it can be a challenge to find a reliable web hosting service.

By reading the reviews of actual web hosting customers you would be able to make a decision about the integrity of the various hosting companies available. Many web hosting customers are able to find some of the best deals with positive feedback as to why they prefer some web hosts above others.

Some important factors to consider are knowledgeable customer service to support you when you have a problem, the amount of space and bandwith they offer, continuous backup, the download speed and also whether they have forced popups and advertisements that will show up on your website.

When you shop around for a good web hosting provider, it is easy to get fooled. Often, the web hosting company takes the attitude that their would-be customers are a bunch of suckers - gullible people who are easily impressed by large numbers.

A budget web hosting provider using this tactic may tell the world something like: “We give you unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage, all for $3.99 per month!” An irresistible deal, right? Well, first of all: there is no such thing as “unlimited” resources on a web server. The web host may put hundreds of shared hosting accounts on one server, and tell each one of those customers that they have “unlimited” space and bandwidth.

Therefore, in case you visit a web hosting ranking site to find out about different hosts, then pay more attention to such things as customer satisfaction than to things such as bandwidth etc., offered by web hosting providers.

Think about it for a moment: if even a fraction of all those customers on the shared server started to actually use large amounts of the server resources, then the server would crash. And the first component which begins to act up will be the central processing unit (cpu). When there are too many requests coming in, the cpu is no longer able to handle them fast enough. The web pages hosted on the server then begin to load very slowly, especially if they are database-driven.

Now, no web host will allow this to happen since it will result in a torrent of complaints from the customers using this web server to host their web sites. Therefore, if the server load goes up beyond a certain point, then the web host staff will disable those web sites that are primarily responsible for this state of affairs.

Various hosts then have different policies regarding how to deal with these offending accounts - some will cancel the hosting account, others may just issue a warning to that customer. In any case, every web hosting provider will have a clause in their TOS (Terms Of Service), to the effect that they reserve the right to disable any hosting acount that uses “too much” server resources. And note that it is the hosting company that decides, at their discretion, how much is “too much”!

So much for that “unlimited” advertising hype. Sure, if you have a totally static web site you could get away with using fairly large amounts of bandwidth, since serving up such pages is not that cpu-intensive. But if you have a dynamic site that is based on scripts such as PHP or ASP, and/or is using databases - then you can more easily hit the ceiling in terms of cpu-usage.

So, don’t get fooled by empty promises from budget web hosting providers. Instead, visit an honest web hosting review site to get an idea of which web hosts are most popular among real users of their services!