Unfortunately, the Internet has a dark side. It is full of material that is inappropriate for children and all kinds of predators. Leaving your kids alone to fend for themselves on the Web is exactly as dangerous at leaving them in a crowed airport or shopping mall. You don’t know where they’re going or who with. The news is filled with horror stories about kids who have been taken advantage of on the Internet, but you don’t want yours to miss out on all the positive aspects of the technology. The first line of defense in keeping your kids save on the Web is to teach them how to use it safely.

A lot of online dangers can be dodged simply by reminding kids of one of their earliest learned lessons: don’t talk to strangers. The kinds of people who want to harm kids have all kinds of tricks up their sleeves. They may try to lull your child into a false sense of security by pretending to be someone she knows. Make sure your child understands that it isn’t a good idea to give out personal information such as their address, phone number or the name of their school. The less information a potential predator has, the harder it will be for him to actually locate a victim. It might be a good idea to establish a secret password and share it only with friends and family so your kid has a way to identify people who are safe to chat with.

Chat interfaces and instant messaging are great tools for keeping in touch with friends and conduct business, but they are also direct connections between your child and possible pedophiles and other predators. Most instant messengers have settings that will only allow people on a pre-approved list to approach your child. That way you can let the kids chat with family and friends while keeping the bad guys out. You can visit http://www.internet-parental-control.org to find more information on online child safety measures.

You can’t watch your kids every minute they are online, and you can’t always count on them to do what you have taught them to do. Parental control software is a great back up. Most browsers will allow you to customize age-appropriate settings for each child in your house. You can choose what kinds of Web sites you want your kids to access and block them out of the ones you don’t. It’s a great way to provide a virtual safety net for your family. If the parental controls supplied by your Internet Service Provider, check into installing additional software that will evaluate each site your child attempts to access. You set criteria by which the software judges each Web page and assigns a ratingPsychology Articles, much like a movie rating. Your kids will only be able to look at sites with ratings you have deemed appropriate.

Source: ArticlesFactory.com

Some search engine optimization companies and software developers use unethical tricks and techniques to artificially boost the search engine rankings of a web site. This dilutes the quality of search results and the accuracy of search results becomes questionable.

For this reason, the search engines are continuously trying to trace out the spam techniques which webmasters might be using and penalize or ban them.

They continue to reconstruct their algorithms to prevent spammers from flooding the results page with irrelevant or low quality content.

If you use a web site promotion tool that uses these unethical tricks and techniques, you’ll put your web business at severe risk.

Axandra tools use only ethical SEO methods.

Our products use only ethical search engine optimization methods. They use only techniques that produce lasting results and that don’t offend search engines.

Search engines consider the following search engine optimization techniques as SPAM. For that reason, Axandra products DO NOT use or promote them:

• automatically generated doorway pages
• cloaking and false redirects
• keyword stuffing
• hidden text or hidden links
• pages loaded with irrelevant words
• duplicated content on multiple pages
• misspelling of well-known web sites
• unrelated and centralized link farms
• other methods that try to trick search engines

You might get short term results with these techniques but it’s very likely that your site will be banned from search engines if you use one of these techniques. You’ll put your web business at severe risk if you use one of these methods.

Axandra web site promotion tools use only ethical search engine optimization techniques that produce lasting results.

Ethical search engine optimization is about everyone winning

Ethical search engine optimization leads to a symbiotic relationship:

• Search engines: They win as they are provided with pages that are easy to understand and that contain the quality information that their visitors search for.
• Searchers: They win as they are getting what they ask for from the search engines. They search for “green widgets” and get a page about green widgets.
• Web site owners: They win as they are getting quality visitors who are interested in what their web site has to offer.

IBP helps you to build web sites that are beneficial to web surfers, web site owners and search engines.

MANOKWARI, KOMPAS – Pendidikan keterampilan dinilai lebih cocok dikembangkan di Indonesia. Pasalnya, pendidikan menengah kejuruan langsung menghasilkan tenaga yang dapat langsung diserap perusahaan.

Namun di Indonesia, masyarakat awam masih memandang SMK memiliki kualitas lebih rendah dibandingkan pendidikan SMA. Stigma ini, ditunjukkan dengan sejumlah 70 persen siswa pendidikan menengah bersekolah di SMA dan 30 persen saja di SMK.

Lukman Hakiem, anggota Komisi X DPR, Rabu (4/4), mengatakan stigma ini harus diubah. “Pendidikan SMK lebih cocok bagi siswa Indonesia untuk menghasilkan lulusan yang siap kerja,” ujar dia saat bersama tim Komisi X mengunjungi SMK 2 Manokwari.

Ia mengatakan pemerintah bersama DPR telah bersepakat mengubah porsi jumlah siswa di SMA dan SMK. Pada tahun 2009, ditargetkan 70 persen siswa menempuh pendidikan SMK dan 30 persen SMA.

Marketing tips for your web site success

The success of your web site is influenced by a variety of factors. The articles in the marketing tips collection will help you to get the most out of your web sites.

In addition to search engine optimization tips you’ll learn how to design your web pages so that web surfers buy something on your site, how to create a good robots.txt file and more.

To view an article, click on its name in the list on the left.

There are billions of web pages on the Internet. It’s obvious that not all of them can be listed in the top 10 results on search engines. Search engines only list web sites that they find relevant to a special topic. You must make sure that your web site is such a site.

If search engines cannot find out that your web site is about fishing equipment, they cannot give your web site high rankings for that keyword. The process of optimizing your web pages so that search engines find them relevant is called search engine optimization (SEO).

Only a few web surfers look further than the first or second result page of a search engine

75% of searchers never look further than page one (Source: Georgia Institute of Technology). Most search engines display ten results on the first page; and very few searchers click the links to look at the second page. Usability expert Jakob Nielsen points out: “Users almost never look beyond the second page of search results.” Danny Sullivan, ClickZ Search Engine Marketing Columnist, puts it out this way: “Being listed 11 or beyond means that many people may miss your web site.” For that reason, search engine optimization is crucial if you want to be successful with your web site.

Use software IBP to makes search engine optimization as easy as possible. If you want to get targeted visitors from search engines, you must optimize your web pages for search engines. It’s not enough to submit your web site to search engines. In this manual, you’ll learn how to optimize your pages as efficiently as possible. 

How do search engines rank web pages? 

Search engines use mathematical formulas to determine the rank of a web page. These mathematical formulas are called ranking algorithms. Although search engines don’t reveal the exact algorithms, IBP’s Top 10 Web Page Optimizer can help you to decrypt these algorithms.

All major search engines use the same principle to rank web sites. The exact ranking algorithms differ from search engine to search engine but the principle is the same. We’ll use the ranking algorithm of Google as an example.

How does Google rank your web pages?

Google explains the ranking algorithm on their company pages:

“Traditional search engines rely heavily on how often a word appears on a web page. Google uses PageRank™ to examine the entire link structure of the web and determine which pages are most important. It then conducts hypertext-matching analysis to determine which pages are relevant to the specific search being conducted. By combining overall importance and query-specific relevance, Google is able to put the most relevant and reliable results first.”

PageRank and hypertext-matching analysis?

Google uses PageRank (which is a mathematical formula and not the green bar in the Google toolbar) and hypertext-matching analysis to rank your web pages. To get good results for the PageRank factor, you need good links from related pages that point to your site. It’s a simple principle: if page a links to page b then it is a recommendation from page a to page b. The more links point to your web site, the better your rankings. The quality of the links is also important. A link that contains the keyword for which you want to have high rankings in the link text is better than five links with the text Click here. A link from a web site that has a related topic is much better than links from unrelated sites or link lists.

The software tool ARELIS can help you to get high quality links as easily as possible. You can start ARELIS by clicking on the ARELIS panel in IBP‘s main window. Details step-by-step instructions can be found later in this manual. While the linking concept is easy to understand, the hypertext-matching analysis factor is a bit more complicated. Google explains hypertext-matching analysis as follows:

“Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Google’s search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), Google’s technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts,subdivisions and the precise location of each word. Google also analyzes the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user’s query.”

How to optimize your web pages for Google’s hypertext-matching analysis

As Google analyzes the full content of your pages you also have to optimize the full content of your web pages. It is not enough to edit your meta tags. You have to optimize all factors that can influence your search engine rankings.

The problem is that many webmasters don’t know which page factors can be important. That’s why we developed IBP’s Top 10 Web Page Optimizer. IBP’s Top 10 Web Page Optimizer analyzes more than 75 web page elements that search engines use to rank a website. You just have to enter the search term for which you want to be listed and IBP compares your web page with the web pages that currently have a top 10 ranking for that search term. That means that your own web pages will be perfectly prepared for Google’s hypertext-matching analysis then. You can find details about IBP’s Top 10 Web Page Optimizer later in this manual.

One page is not enough

As mentioned in the explanation of Google’s hypertext-matching analysis, Google also analyzes the content of other web pages on your site to ensure that your web page is really relevant. That means that you should optimize different pages of your web site for different but related search terms.

The more web pages of your web site are optimized for keywords about a special topic, the more likely it is that you’ll get high rankings for a special keyword that is related to that topic. Your web site must have both optimized content and incoming links. Fortunately, IBP can help you with both aspects. In this manual, you’ll learn how to perfectly optimize your web pages for the exact ranking algorithm of Google, Yahoo or any other search engine of your choice. In addition, you’ll learn how to get high quality links to your web site that boost your search engine rankings.

Are there thousands of search engines?

Some people promise to submit your web site to 50,000 or more search engines. There aren’t thousands of search engines on the Internet. The majority of these 50,000 so called “search engines” are free for all (FFA) link pages or special interest web pages. Submitting your web page to thousands of FFA sites means that you’ll end up with thousands of spam email messages. In addition, you won’t receive a single visitor when you submit your web site about office equipment to a directory of poets in
Poland.

There are four major players

There’s only a handful of search engines that can really bring visitors to your web site. As always, it’s quality that matters, not quantity. For this reason, you should concentrate on the important search engines when you submit your web site to search engines.

Currently, there are only four major players: Google, Yahoo, MSN Search and Ask.com. They are responsible for the bigger part of the search engine traffic you can get because they also power other search engines, for example the search engine on AOL.com displays Google results. In addition, there are country specific search engines. If you have a German web site, you should also submit to the popular German search engines. In general, there aren’t more than three or four relevant search engines in a country. The majority of the web surfers uses the same search engines.

Internet directories can be a good addition

Internet directories are different from search engines because all web site submissions are reviewed by humans. There are several directories where your web site should be listed. One of the more important directories is The Open Directory Project at www.dmoz.org.

You should also submit to topic specific search engines. If your web site sells garden equipment, you should submit your web site to specific garden directories. Even if they send you only a few visitors, they could improve the link popularity of your web site which helps your ranking in other search engines.

Definition: Search engines and Internet directories

Search engines use indexing software programs, called robots or spiders. These software programs are programmed to constantly crawl the web in search of new or updated pages.

They will go from URL to URL until they have visited every web site on the Internet. When visiting a web site, a search engine spider will record the full text of every page found (including sub-pages). After that, it will continue to visit all external links. The URL of a web page is the address of a web page, for example “http://www.Axandra.com/ibp”

By following external links that point to your web site, search engines are able to find your site. The

search engine spiders will then revisit your site periodically to refresh the recorded information.

Search engines rank your web pages based on mathematical formulas.

Search engines and Internet directories are not the same. Internet directories don’t use indexing software programs. If you submit your web site to an Internet directory, your web site will be indexed by real people who decide whether to include your web site or not.

Directories are usually subdivided into categories, and you have to submit your URL under the most appropriate heading. If you don’t, it is very likely that your web site won’t be listed.

What is unethical search engine optimization?

Some search engine optimization companies and software developers use unethical techniques and tricks to artificially boost the search engine rankings of a web site. This dilutes the quality of search results and calls into question the accuracy of search results. For this reason, the search engines are continuously trying to counter the spam techniques which webmasters might be using and penalize or ban them.

They continue to reconstruct their algorithms to prevent spammers from flooding the results page with irrelevant or low quality content. If you use a web site promotion tool that uses these unethical techniques, you’ll put your web business at severe risk.

Axandra tools use only ethical SEO methods.

Our products use only ethical search engine optimization methods. They use only techniques that produce lasting results and that don’t offend search engines. Search engines consider the following search engine optimization techniques as SPAM. For that reason, Axandra products DO NOT use or promote them:

•  automatically generated doorway pages
•  cloaking and false redirects
•  keyword stuffing
•  hidden text or hidden links
•  pages loaded with irrelevant words
•  duplicated content on multiple pages
•  misspelling of well-known web sites
•  unrelated and centralized link farms
•  other methods that try to trick search engines

You might get short term results with these techniques but it’s very likely that your site will be banned from search engines if you do. You’ll put your web business at severe risk if you use one of these methods. Axandra web site promotion tools use only ethical search engine optimization techniques that produce lasting results.

Ethical search engine optimization is about everyone winning

Ethical search engine optimization leads to a symbiotic relationship:

•  Search engines: They win as they are provided with pages that are easy to understand and that
• contain the quality information that their visitors search for.
•  Searchers: They win as they are getting what they ask for from the search engines. They search for
• “green widgets” and get a page about green widgets.
•  Web site owners:

They win as they are getting quality visitors who are interested in what their web  site has to offer. IBP helps you to build web sites that are beneficial to web surfers, web site owners and search engines. 

Can SEO companies guarantee high rankings?

Some SEO (search engine optimization) companies guarantee that you will get a special search engine position if you let them do the work for you. Actually, this is not possible. No company can guarantee search engine listings.

If a company makes such promises, take a closer look at the small print. The catch is often that the company selects the search terms. You’ll be listed for obscure search terms that nobody searches for. If you have a unique company name or a unique product name, it’s relatively easy to get high search engine rankings for that term. Before paying a company to get high search engine rankings for you, try it yourself with IBP. You’ll find out that you can get high search engine rankings for yourself.

A single spam element can destroy your work

Before you start with your search engine optimization efforts, you must make sure that your web pages are spam free. This is very important. If you use a spam technique on your web site, all other search engine optimization efforts are pointless.

If a search engine has tagged your web site as a spam source then you have to remove the spam elements from your web pages before the search engine will take another look at other elements of your site.

Most search engines consider the following spam:

• cloaking (the web server returns different pages for search engine spiders and human web surfers)
• doorway pages
• misleading redirections
• hidden text (text has a color that is very similar to the background color, text in very small font sizes,
• text that has been hidden with CSS tags etc.)

If you use one of these techniques on your web pages, remove them now. You might get short term results with them but it is extremely likely that search engines will ban your site if you continue to use them.

When you’re sure that your web pages are spam free, you can start with your search engine optimization activities. Search engines don’t like to be cheated. Don’t try to use search engine optimization techniques that try to trick search engines. It might work for a while but search engines have managed to detect all tricks sooner or later.

Better concentrate on ethical methods that are beneficial to you, web surfers and search engines (you get more visitors, web surfers get what they want, search engines can deliver better results). That way, your rankings will last much longer.

What can happen?

It is important that you read the contents of the previous chapters. If you overlook something, your web site optimization efforts might not work as expected.

What can happen if you use the wrong search engine optimization methods?

If you use unethical search engine optimization methods then search engines might ban your web site. Search engines consider some methods such as doorway pages and cloaking as spam. Using the wrong search engine optimization methods can get your web site banned on search engines.

What can happen if you overlook spam elements on your web pages?

If you have spam elements on your web pages, all other optimization efforts are pointless. As long as you have spam elements on your web pages it is very difficult to get high search engine rankings.

“Sekarang, seni juga menjadi kecakapan hidup,” kata Dekan Fakul­tas Seni Rupa dan Desain ITB , Dr. Biranul Anas didampingi Ketua Jurusan Kriya, Drs. Zaini Rais, M.Sn., kepada Singgalang di Pariaman, Jumat (23/2). Menurutnya, para pekerja seni harus selalu meningkatkan potensi diri dan kualitas kerja dengan semakin banyak belajar. Ini juga seiring dengan kemajuan zaman. Disebutkan, kemampuan autodidak atau tradisional, terasa tak cukup bagi seorang seniman bila tak menyelaraskan dengan perkem­bangan ilmu pengetahuan, serta teknologi. Itu dilakukan agar bisa bersaing dalam era globalisasi. Berangkat dari itulah, INS Kayu­tanam menjalin kerjasama dengan ITB dalam pengembangan SDM, teru­tama tahap awal dalam bidang seni rupa.

Perguruan tinggi (PT) ternama tersebut memilih INS sebagai partn­er kerja dalam pembinaan. Lantaran sekolah ini adalah sekolah unggul yang menjadi kebanggaan masyarakat Sumbar. Meski demikian, INS ibarat mutiara dalam lumpur yang perlu ditangani serius. Bukan keunggulan saja yang dimiliki, namun keunikan juga. Mungkin tak dimiliki oleh sekolah lain di Indonesia. Kebesaran nama INS sebagai bentuk lembaga pendidikan yang mengembangkan secara seimbang intelektual, keimanan, dan kecakapan hidup dengan mela­hirkan tokoh-tokoh besar, sudah menggema ke seluruh Indonesia , bahkan hingga Asia Tenggara.

Dikatakan, sesuai pengamatan Biranul, INS sama besarnya dengan Taman Siswa. Cuma, tempatnya saja yang berbeda, INS dari Sumbar atau pulau Sumatra , sementara Taman Siswa dari Jawa. Apalagi, kondisi alam yang juga sangat mendukung dengan luas areal 18 hektare. Dia berpendapat, sekolah yang didirikan oleh Engku Sjafei sebagai tokoh pendidikan nasional pada tahun 1926 itu memiliki konsep pendidikan yang jauh ke depan. Belum terpikir oleh orang lain, namun INS telah melakukannya dalam meningkatkan kualitas pendidi­kan. Saat ini, tercatat angka pengangguran di Indonesia sebesar 30 persen dari jumlah penduduk. Karena kesempatan kerja yang minim, serta para pencari kerja juga tidak mempunyai keahlian yang cukup. INS sebagai sekolah unggul menjawab itu semua dengan memberikan solusi.

Tapi, perlu juga dipertimbangkan agar wacana ini tidak menimbul­kan keresahan di masyarakat, termasuk organisasi pemerintahan itu sendiri. Di samping itu, Ferry mengingatkan jumlah kabupaten/kota yang ada saat ini 440, dengan tambahan pemekaran baru menjadi 450. Pertan­yaannya, apakah gagasan penghapusan Pemprov itu memang efektif untuk ditangani kementerian. Apalagi, format provinsi dibentuk untuk menjembatani pusat dan daerah.

‘’Kalau sebagai wakil dari pemerintah pusat bisa saja, tetapi kewenangan dia bagaimana,” tanyanya sambil menambahkan, UUD menegaskan gubernur sebagai wakil pemerintahan pusat yang menja­lankan administrasi di daerah. Karena itu, Ferry lebih setuju kalau ide Gamawan itu dilempar untuk merampingkan organisasi Pemprov, bukan menghapus struktur pemerintahan sebagaimana yang telah ditetapkan oleh konstitusi. Sikap keinginan untuk organisasi pemprov dengan tujuan untuk melaksanakan efesiensi dan efektifitas itu, harus pula diikuti oleh perampingan organisasi ditingkat Kabupaten/Kota. Saat ini Komisi II DPR tengah membahas Rancangan Undang-undang yang diu­sulkan Menpan agar 70 persen PNS di daerah harus dikerahkan untuk pelayanan publik, 30 persennya lagi untuk tugas-tugas administra­si pemerintahan.

Dalam pembahasan ini, tambah Ferry, komisi II secara khusus akan mengundang para gubernur yang dinilai telah maksimal dalam mela­kukan pelayanan publik, maupun yang belum optimal dalam memberi­kan pelayanan publik. Jadi wacana yang dilongarkan Gamawan itu juga akan menjadi bahan pertimbangan untuk penyempurnaan RUU dimaksud. Selain itu, kalau perampingan itu harus ditujukan untuk mengurangi jumlah PSN di tingkat provinsi sangat keliru, karena ini akan membawa konsekuensi berkurangnya DAU bagi provinsi. Sehingga tidak tertutup kemungkinan dari 30 kewenangan yang diberikan kepada Pemprov juga akan ditinjau ulang karena sedi­kitnya jumlah pegawai di provinsi.

Pendapat senada juga disampaikan Wakil Ketua Fraksi Bintang Pelopor Demokrasi (FBPD) DPR Nizar Dahlan. Menurut dia, wacana Gubernur Sumbar sangat menarik, hanya saja persoalanya akan memunculkan persaingan-persaingan ditingkatan Kabupaten/Kota. Gagasan itu bisa dijadikan sebagai bahan diskusi, karena untuk diterapkan membutuhkan pemikiran yang matang. Selain akan terjadi hubungan yang disharmoni dengan Kabupaten/Kota, ide penghapuskan juga berhadapan dengan konstitu­si, katanya seraya mengingatkan keberadaan Pemprov masih dibutuh­kan. (503)

Bandung, itb.ac.id – Dengan ditandatanganinya nota kesepahaman antara PT Bakrie Telecom Tbk (BTEL) dan Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB), maka dimulailah seluruh rangkaian proses pendidikan dalam Mobile Broadband Technology Center. Acara perkuliahan perdana diadakan pada hari Rabu (21/02) bertempat di Gedung Elektro Labtek VIII Lt 3, MBTC classroom yang telah direnovasi. Acara diawali oleh speech dari Anindya N. Bakrie selaku Presiden Direktur BTEL, kemudian dilanjutkan speech dari Prof. Dr. Ir. Djoko Santoso, M.Sc. selaku Rektor ITB.

Kemudian bersama–sama menyaksikan kuliah singkat yang dibawakan oleh Armein Z. R. Langi, Kepala Pusat Penelitian Teknologi Informasi dan Komunikasi ITB. Acara dilanjutkan dengan perkuliahan jarak jauh pada kuliah perdana antara Prof. Eric G. Frost, Associate Professor dari San Diego State University, California, Amerika Serikat dengan 30 mahasiswa ITB di kampus Ganesha, Bandung.

Diharapkan para mahasiswa yang mengikuti perkuliahan jarak jauh ini akan mampu menciptakan program–program unggulan yang aplikatif dan memberikan solusi bagi kehidupan masyarakat, mulai dari pendidikan, kesehatan sampai dengan pariwisata serta manajemen bencana alam. “ Semuanya bebas biaya. Kami yang akan menanggung keseluruhan biaya program ini. Tugas mereka hanya fokus pada perkuliahan dan menciptakan produk–produk unggulan yang bermanfaat bagi masyarakat”, tegas Anindya N. Bakrie.

Melalui keberadaan MBTC ini, mahasiswa Institut Teknologi Bandung dapat mengikuti perkuliahan jarak jauh (Distance Learning) dari California Institute for Telecommunications and IT (CALIT2), San Diego, Amerika Serikat. Kesempatan yang sangat bagus juga didapatkan dengan keleluasaan untuk mempelajari teknologi pemrograman BREW dan pengembangan berbagai aplikasinya. Materi dan perkuliahan dipaparkan secara langsung oleh pakar–pakar teknologi telekomunikasi kelas dunia, termasuk di antaranya adalah Profesor Eric G. Frost.