One of the biggest mistakes new home-based business owners make is trying to do everything from square one.

You can rest assured that whatever you are attempting to do or build, it has already been done.

Sure, it probably won’t be a mirror image of what you’re doing, but it will have many of the same basic ingredients.

The fastest and easiest way to get your business going and growing is by finding others who have already done what you want to do and learning and benefiting from their efforts.

A local business person recently told me he was in the process of building an autoresponder. Of course, this wouldn’t be a strange thing to be doing if it was a service he plans to sell, but it has nothing to do with his business!

Instead of investing a few hours to explore those autoresponders already in existence, he is investing well more than a hundred hours trying to build one on his own so he can communicate with his customers.

By conducting only a couple of hours research, he would have discovered a variety of outstanding, affordable autoresponder services that are highly sophisticated and subject to continual upgrading and improvement to keep up with ever-changing technology and consumer needs.

Imagine the kind of business he could have generated for himself if he focused those one hundred plus hours acquiring new customers for his business and expanding and improving on his products and services!

Unfortunately, like him, many new home business owners are still of the employee mindset — that they have to work relentlessly and do everything alone.

They haven’t yet developed the entrepreneurial mindset that understands you have to work smarter, not harder.

Another time-consuming task many new business owners take on is spending hours, even days, trying to design the perfect logo. I’m embarrassed to say I spent DAYS searching the Internet for sample logos, looking for ideas, then sitting and drawing possible logo after logo.

Most people have more creative flair in their big toe than I have in my entire body, yet I thought that if I put enough time into it, even though it meant not focusing on increasing business, the perfect logo would reveal itself.

I eventually abandoned the obsession and as soon as I handed the project over to my web designer, I had a new, effective and eye-catching logo within 24 hours.

It was a costly mistake. I had spent so many years working in a support capacity that I didn’t know how to make the shift to a leader capacity and delegate the task.

(Even more important, I later realized, having a logo is waaaay down on the priority scale and doesn’t even have to be considered during the start-up period.)

As you are starting your business, consider the following tasks and ask yourself if someone else could be doing them while you focus on building:

designing brochures and marketing materials

creating your web site

setting up your voice mail and e-mail

purchasing supplies and equipment

stuffing envelopes and taking them to the post office, or delivering flyers

market research

hooking up your new computer, modem, fax and installing software

trouble shooting computer problems

writing articles, reports or white papers

These are not revenue generating activities and if you find them challenging or time-consuming, delegate these tasks to someone else like a family member, co-op student or part-time assistant.

For the more specialized items, seek the input of a mastermind member or business colleague on how they handle those responsibilities. Also, hire or barter with experts in marketing, web design and technology.

Another wheel you don’t need to re-invent is that of processes, particularly in the area of marketing.

Marketing may not be your forte, yet it is the most important element of your business, and this is where many new home business owners bury themselves.

The good news is you don’t have to develop your marketing process by trial and error. Commit several days to studying other businesses both in and outside of your industry. How do they promote themselves? How do they collect leads? How do they convert leads?

In other words, how do they catch the attention of potential customers, get them to express an interest to learn more, and how do they get them to ultimately pull out their wallets and buy?

The quickest and easiest way to create winning processes is to study already successful businesses, then model what they do. Sign up for their newsletters and request additional information. Let them begin a courtship with you and pay attention to what they’re doing. Buy a product or two and see what tools they use to keep inviting you back for more.

This doesn’t mean copy them word for word or action by action, but assimilate what works, mould it to your specific business and add the essential ingredient of uniqueness that allows you to stand out from the crowd.

These are just three simple strategies you can start with today to get on the fast-track to home business success.

Again, here they are in a nutshell:

Uncover what has already been created or invented, then implement or install. Don’t reinvent the wheel.

Think like a business owner, not an employee. Delegate, hire or trade.

Model the processes of others who have already achieved the level of success you’re seeking. They’ve already made the mistakes for you and know what works.

Incorporate these strategies and you will shave hours and dollars from your start-up curve and begin reaping the rewards faster than you ever thought possible.

Chuck Davis

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Google Internet Summit 2009: The State of the Internet May 5, 2009 Google Internet Summit 2009 Internet Standards Session. Panelists include Zaheda Bhorat,Tony Rutkowski, John Klensin, Tina Dam, Erik Kline. On May 5 and 6, 2009, in Mountain View, we brought together Googlers and leaders from academia and the corporate world for a 2-day summit to discuss the state of the global Internet. The goal of the summit was to collect a wide range of knowledge to inform Google’s future plans–from product development and market reach to users’ expectations and our ability to keep the Internet open yet secure. More than 30 speakers and moderators led discussions around 8 topics: Networks; Wireless and Sensor Technologies; Security; Standards; Applications; Democracy, Law, Policy and Regulation; Search and Cloud Computing; and The Future. Eric Schmidt, who offered some remarks, expressed optimism that the challenges we face with governments’ walling off access to the Internet can be overcome technologically by building networks that are transparent, scalable, and open.

In the process of becoming an Internet marketer, most of us have used free traffic exchanges at one time or another. After all, they promise free website traffic, and it seems to be so easy to just sit there and click away. However, after a while, most of us realize that either we are doing something wrong or free traffic exchanges just don’t work!

Oh, they deliver free website traffic, all right, but nobody buys into our product or program. We soon figure out that the people looking at our page have seen it before, are bored by it, and are just looking at it, if they ARE looking at it at all, just to pass the time until the next click is due. Really, they are probably more interested in what is going on with their web page than spending time worrying about ours. Eventually, most people begin to feel that it seems so pointless and they drop out and go try something else.

Now, there ARE people using free traffic exchanges to generate real traffic, visits by interested people, to their website, only they have learned a few tricks to make this happen. They have learned to avoid some of the more common mistakes that most people make when using free traffic exchanges.

1. They don’t use their real page. Certainly, the occasional offer or web page is either so universal in topic or so tempting in some way or another that it does okay…at least for a while. However, think about it. After a while, you began to recognize many of the web pages you were shown…over and over. You even began to think to yourself, “There’s that one again. That’s the seventh time I’ve seen it in the last hour.” That is, you might think that if you haven’t already zoned out.

By the way, that “seventh” time may actually be a first time. You realize, of course, that perhaps you have actually been looking at seven other members of the same affiliate program who are promoting their affiliate link. Ever see “your” site roll by? Maybe it wasn’t “your” site!

Part of the game for a successful Internet marketing experience is to stand out in some way, and this is especially true at free traffic exchanges. If you want to stand out, you are going to have to offer something that catches the eye of the other surfer and encourages him or her to click over to your real site. I am not going to go into a discussion of lead capture pages and splash pages right now, but a quick search on the Internet will provide more info.

They sometimes don’t even send people to their “sales” or “pitch” page directly from the traffic exchange. After all, if you can offer someone some kind of gift just for dropping by that helps predispose them to look more favorably on other offers you present than they would if they just show up at a sales site.

2. They use the best free traffic exchanges. For a newcomer, or even for an old internet marketing pro, figuring out which traffic exchanges are the best ones to use can be a challenge. Rest assured, however, that it can be done and it is worth the effort. There are websites that do keep track of this sort of thing, and it is well worth your while to track those down and avail yourself of their knowledge. The good news is that these are generally free and provide you with additional information about free traffic exchanges as well as the opportunity and tools to help build your downline in the various traffic exchanges.

3. They build a downline. Remember the hours you sat in front of your computer clicking away only to find that you have generated just a few hits to your site? Well, to make use of the relatively untargeted visits provided by free traffic exchanges, you need to have hundreds of hits…perhaps even thousands. There is no way most people can or will sit there for the hours needed to generate web site traffic in the volume required. In fact, there are just two ways; buy it or build a downline. Having hundreds of people in your downline at any one site, maybe even thousands, can provide the hits you need for free.

By the way, this brings us back to being with the best traffic exchanges as they will usually have the biggest base of people to view your site, will be the easiest to recruit people to, and may even allow you to buy a downline, as in the case of WebbizInsider.com.

4. They pay for services. This requires a little savvy shopping around, but once the Internet marketing professional has his or her free traffic exchange system up and running, they are willing, at some exchanges at least, to pay to upgrade to a professional level. Many traffic exchanges will allow an upgraded member to collect commissions on purchases made by their downline in addition to getting credits when they surf. Plus, an upgraded membership often includes extra credits as well. With a big downline, this could be a business in itself.

5. They experiment. Maybe I should say that they test. One thing works good at one exchange but not as well as another. It may be only the background color is turning people off, or it may be the whole design of the site. Maybe the product or offer is just not catching on. One test of a product is “did I like it”, but, even so, not everyone is going to be interested in what YOU are interested in.

6. They treat their traffic exchange membership like a business. They take the stance of selling the traffic exchange they are using just as they would do marketing their main product or service. They keep records and try to track which exchanges and which pages are giving the best results.

Donovan Baldwin

Technorati Tags: 2009, Google, internet, standards, summit

Eric Schmidt speaks at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference on March 3, 2009 in San Francisco.

Even experienced vendors and system builders get it wrong with all the tools and support they have.  Although in some ways its never been easier to build your own, there have also never been so many choices and therefore pitfalls.  A modern computer is a complex system of interdependent components.  The performance of all components in the system is often limited by the capability of the least common denominator.  In other words, you can’t have a top performance graphics PC by installing the latest graphics card (GPU) without also having a CPU powerful enough to keep the GPU pipelines busy with work, and fast memory within which to work.

With this in mind your approach to the architecture, design and build of computers of any size needs to be the same.  Carefully select individual components that you know will all compliment each other and work well together.  Then thoroughly test and benchmark your designs to ensure they work as well as you expected them to.  The last thing you want is an unexpected crash at a vulnerable time.  I’ve taken key snippets out of our own internal build & design process and best practice documentation to help you do your own.

There’s just too much to this subject to do it justice in one article so I’ve split it into two parts which also makes it a little more digestible.  In this article we will look at the heart of a PC build with:

• The CPU (processor)
• The Memory (RAM)
• The Motherboard (or main board)
• The Power supply (PSU)

In part 2 will continue by looking at the remainder of the PC:

• The Storage subsystem (hard disk or HDD)
• The Graphics Processor (GPU)
• The Case
• The Cooling (HSF or heatsink & fan)

Why build your own?

The benefits to you of doing it yourself are:

Pros

• You know best what you want and therefore you can build it exactly the way you want it
• You can choose exactly the components you want and shop around for the best prices
• If you built it you will know how to fix it yourself and might save time in the event something goes wrong
• It can be fun!

Cons

• If you get any component choices wrong then you might just have to settle for what you ended up with, or, sell it on at a loss
• You will get limited support from component retailers in the event of compatibility or stability problems between components
• Quality of advice on the best component selection from the retailers is highly variable, and sometimes downright dubious and self serving
• You are the designer, builder, installer, tester and support engineer, be ready for the possibility of some long nights and a rough ride with little support
• You will spend potentially a lot of time learning a lot of things you might never have wanted to know
• Ill just say; drivers, drivers, drivers….

You might have expected me to put price or cost on the list of Pros.  I haven’t because generally it just isn’t true any more.  There are plenty of machines out there built ready for you to buy that barely cost any more than it would cost if you bought the component parts yourself.  If you take labour cost hours into account then it’s a no brainer, just buy it ready built.

Design…Select…Standardise…Optimise and Build…

Assuming I haven’t put you off lets get on with looking at all the component parts and the things you need to be thinking about.  For some of the components a bit of history is worthwhile as believe it or not we are living today with the legacy of design and architecture decisions made twenty or more years ago.

The CPU (processor)

The CPU is probably the single most important element of the computer.  Everything the computer does is touched by the CPU (Central Processing Unit).  Modern processors are made up of millions of transistors networked together to perform instructions set by the operating system and software that runs on your computer.  Each instruction it can execute takes a certain number of clock cycles to run through, so for example a 1GHz processor can run a thousand million cycles worth of instructions a second.  That sounds a lot, but when you consider that the average application or game now contains millions upon millions of instructions you can see that the processors have their work cut out to keep up with demands.  A concept known as Moore’s Law has accurately described an exponential increase in computing performance and power since the early 1970’s.  You can be pretty sure that a computer on the market in three years time will be more or less twice as powerful as the equivalent today.

Traditionally therefore the way for processor manufacturers to increase performance was simply to increase the speed of the clock for the processor.  That way it could execute more instructions in less time.  Hence how the old Intel processors between the 1980s and just a few years ago went up from 5MHz clock speed and 20,000 transistors to the best single core Pentium at 3.8GHz and 55 million transistors in 2006.  At this point Intel hit the buffers with the technology with a problem known as silicon junction leakage.  Where beyond these clock speeds the semi-conductor technology we currently use simply ceases to function correctly.  Primarily due to the large amount of energy leakage around the transistor junction and the heat generated in operation.  Hence also why over time CPU heatsinks have got bigger and bigger, and fans more and more powerful, and noisy.

Intel tackled the issue tangentially with the idea of running multiple processors on a single silicon die with the Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad technology (see picture right).  As the picture above shows this deals with the workload presented by games and applications by processing it in parallel rather than having to do instructions one at a time (known as multi-threading).  The multi-core processors until recently were still produced on the 65nm manufacturing process that the last Pentium was fabricated on.  Then in Q1 2008 Intel started producing 45nm processors based on new Hafnium Hi-K semi-conductor technology using the same Core 2 designs, codenamed Yorkfield, which runs cooler and more efficiently than the old silicon technology.  Now from, Q4 2008 we have a new processor architecture with Nehalem.  It has an integrated memory controller and the FSB has gone to be replaced by a much master QPI (Quick path interconnect) and a new socket (LGA1366).  By 2010 we should see a new die shrink to 32nm with the Westmere codenamed processors, after that the roadmap gets a bit more vague.  See the Intel site for more information.

You need to look closely at both Intel and AMD on processor technology to careful assess how they can best deliver the highest performance computing from the technology roadmap.  The new Core i7 and Yorkfield processors together with high performance cooling have raised the bar again in Intel’s favour in (this article being dated Q1 2009) by exceeding 3GHz clock speeds in a quad core machine (33%+ over performance!), and around 4GHz when overclocked.  The Core i7 is a big hot CPU with more going on in it than ever before with its built in memory controller so you wont be able to take full advantage of its performance ceiling without efficient and effective cooling technology and delivery of clean stable power to the processor.  Mainstream PC’s otherwise typically have a maximum factory clock speed of 3.2GHz.

The Memory

Memory can be a crucial bottleneck to potential performance and is rarely paid much attention at all by main stream system builders.  Memory comes in a variety of forms and bandwidths from PC2-3200 to PC3-16000 and up.  Where PC2 or PC3 indicates DDR2 or DDR3 memory respectively, and 3200 or 16000 refers to the bandwidth in MB/s.  Of course it goes without saying that you should use the highest bandwidth memory you can afford whether in double bus speed DDR2 or quad bus speed DDR3 forms.  If you are planning to use your self built PC for video, photography, CAD, 3D graphics or gaming the memory speed does make a difference.  However there are a number of other qualities that hugely impact on memory performance and we also take these into careful consideration:

• Core clock speed – the speed the memory bus runs at (adjusted for DDR2/3)
• Data rate (DDR, DDR2, DDR3) core memory bus speed multiplier
• Latency (access cycle delays) – memory can be made to run at higher clock speeds but also with higher latency delays, making it on occasions actually slower than high quality memory running at lower frequencies with lower latencies.  For example PC2-6400 memory at 800MHz and latencies of 4-4-3-5 will generally perform better than PC2-8500 at 1066MHz and latencies of 5-5-5-15

A lot of manufacturers currently ship PC’s with memory of PC2-5300 (667MHz) specification with average latencies in standard packages.  That’s usually because they have a heap of it in a warehouse to shift.  The minimum specification memory you should use is PC2-8500 (1066MHz).  With low latencies in an enhanced package for better cooling it can even outperform even some of the faster DDR3 memory.  The highest specification memory available often runs ahead of being specified in terms of JDEC standards.  If you want to be future proof you should consider some mid range DDR3 memory (say 1600MHz C8).

Clearly you need to make sure you’ve got enough as well.  For dual channel boards the minimum to consider ought to be 2GB – 4GB and for triple channel boards (DDR3 only) .  Bearing in mind if you are stuck with a 32-bit OS (Windows) you have a practical limit of around 3GB anyway, for 64-bit fill your boots.

The Motherboard (main board)

Critical to good performance between the components of a PC is the motherboard on which it is all installed and interconnected.  The motherboard chipset (usually either nVidia or Intel based, known as Northbridge and Southbridge) hosts all the vital interfaces such as the PCI bus (PCIe 2.0, for the graphics and sound cards), the network (USB2, Firewire IEEE1394, WiFi and Ethernet), the storage (IDE, SATA-II, RAID), BIOS configuration, bus clock management, memory controller, hardware management and monitoring, power supply regulation to the CPU and memory.  The motherboard chipset dictates which CPU’s it supports, the maximum FSB (front side bus) speed supported, the range of CPU’s supported (by socket such as Intel LGA775, or AMD).  Intel’s Nehalem and X58 Chipset has changed all this now that the memory controller has moved off the motherboard and inside the CPU.   This unlocks a phenomenal amount of additional memory bandwidth.

A sophisticated BIOS is important to allow fine enough control and monitoring of system components for the high degree of performance tuning required.  Due to the compatibility and support dependencies most manufacturers tend to choose fairly mature motherboards and chipsets, perhaps a year or two old.  You could choose the low risk approach and do the same thing, or, go high risk and try the bleeding edge technology.  Whatever you decide make sure it’s a board that has a reputation for being overclock friendly if that’s what you want to do (you will need flexible Base Clock speeds for Core i7).  Make sure it supports the latest CPU’s, high bandwidth storage and PCI bus, highly flexible BIOS and preferably DDR3 high speed memory.  However a good DDR2 board is now excellent value for money and can match some DDR3.

Pay careful attention to the PCI express lanes.  Every Intel chipset has a set number of total lanes that can be allocated across all the PCIe slots the board designers have chosen to give you.  The more lanes a given slot has the faster it can run as they move data to and form the card in parallel.  I’ve listed below some of the current main chipsets and how many lanes they provide:

• P45 – 16 lanes (2 of PCIe x8)
• P55 – 16 lanes (2 of PCIe x8)
• X48 – 32 lanes (2 of PCIe x16)
• X38 – 32 lanes (2 of PCIe x16)
• X58 – 32 lanes (2 of PCIe x16, or 4 of PCIe x8)
• nVidia 680 – 46 lanes (2 of PCIe x16, 1 of PCIe x8, 6 of PCIe x1)
• nVidia 750 – 32 lanes (2 of PCIe x 16)
• nVidia 780 –  48 lanes (2 of PCIe x16, 1 of PCIe x16 (1.0))
• nVidia 790 – 48 lanes (2 of PCIe x16, 1 of PCIe x16 (1.0))

If you’re hoping for a smoking big SLI setup you will need as many x16 lane PCIe slots as you can get.  At the least aim for a board with 2 PCIe x16 slots then you have an upgrade path if you need it.

The Power supply (PSU)

One of the side effects of delivering more and more power form your PC is that it requires more and more electrical current to function.  The power supply is not only critical for the delivery of power, but also the smooth, stable and reliable delivery of power at the instant it is required, transient power.  The ATX standard 2.3 dictates what the power supply should be able tot deliver.  Its surprising how many big manufacturers commonly used power supplies would fail this basic test.  Many mainstream power supplies are also woefully inadequate at 300-400W.  When you consider the CPU can draw over 100W, each high power graphics card up to 200W, the multitude of fans and disk drives, PCI adapters, attached USB devices and perhaps a water cooling system.  It’s to see how you can soon hit the magic 1kW (1000W) power requirement.  It’s surprising just how much power a modern PC with powerful graphics, CPU and storage actually requires. 

To give yourself a bit of upgradability headroom you want to be buying 600-800W or more and exceed the ATX standard requirements.  Most modern switch mode power supplies are multi-rail as it’s an easier and cheaper design to use.  However a single rail at over 100A of current gives your build more flexibility, otherwise you have to be careful which rails you use for what as they all have individual current limits.  Not to compromise on noise you should prefer to use power supplies with large 120-140mm fans to increase air flow, and reduce air speed in turn reducing cooling noise.

Alan Johnson

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