Technology

.info Freedom Frenzy

info Freedom Frenzy
 by: Jennifer Chiera
Whether you’re someone that registers domain names on a regular basis, or you’re a person looking to register one domain name for your website or business, then it’s likely that you’ve encountered the free .info registrations taking place at several registrars. I’ve encountered a lot of debate regarding the free .info giveaways. Some think that this free rush will decrease the value of the domain extension, while others insist that no matter what the price, certain domains maintain value due to the high demand of the keywords. The best thing we could do to maintain the value of the .info is to only register the extension appropriate keywords. I’ve seen a lot of random, and worse, profitless .info domain names being registered for the sake of being free. This doesn’t really help the .info market, especially when I’ve personally come across several hundred domain names that match perfectly with the extension, and are still available for registration. The .info should be used for exactly the purpose it was designed. For information. Anything else would just be impractical. It’s not difficult to find worthwhile terms to match with the .info extension. Do some research. Visit your favorite directory and browse through for topics. I’ve found hundreds of available extension appropriate terms using this method. Forget the strategy you’ve been using to find .com’s, and other such extensions. The .info is a very special extension, and should be treated as such. This is not to limit you, quite the contrary. This is a great opportunity for many people to register valuable domain names at little to no cost whatsoever. If you spend a little extra time to find better registration choices, then it will pay off in the end. Rushing out to register the first thing that comes to mind for the sake of doing it won’t benefit you, or anyone else in the end, especially come renewal time. Another tip is to only register names that would be worth registering if you were paying out of your pocket for them. Also only register names that would be worth the renewal cost. Chances are if you avoid these two tips, it won’t even be worth it to you to park your ineffective domains at a revenue bearing parking service. Think before you register. Be sure that there is a way that you can profit from this opportunity, whether it be in reselling, developing, or parking. Quick, thoughtless registrations of the .info are counterproductive, and should be avoided at all costs.

This article was posted on September 11, 2004 http://www.ArticleCity.com

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Testing a Transformer- How To Accurately Test A Transformer

There is two types of transformers in the market- linear transformer and switch mode power transformer. The transformers design is different.Sometimes it is just referred as ac transformer. Linear transformer mostly used in radio, project kits, VCD and etc while switch mode transformer can be found in Monitor, Tv, Fax and so on.
A transformer consists of two or more coils wound on the same core. For power transformers, the core material is usually iron. For a radio-frequency transformer, the core material is usually ferrite or air. The basic property of a transformer is to change AC voltage.A transformer cannot change direct current voltage. A step down transformer has a lower AC output voltage at its secondary winding than the AC input voltage to its primary winding. Conversely, a step up transformer has a higher secondary than primary voltage.The transformer laminations or coating of shellac, enamel or varnish is to insulate adjacent turns from shorts between winding.I will not go too details about how transformer work and transformer calculation as you can read more details from most electrical and electronic transformers books.
How to test transformers:Transformer failures are relatively rare in most electronic equipment, compared with other components. If too much current goes through a coil or winding, the winding heats up and can either open up completely, or the insulation between turns of wire can break down, causing the coil to be partly or completely shorted.
Just like a coil, you can check continuity of any primary or secondary transformer winding. The actual value of DC resistance you read is rather meaningless, but at least you will know whether a winding is open. Checking linear transformer is quite straight forward. Apply the ac voltage to the primary winding and expect output voltage at the secondary side. No or low output voltage means the transformer winding has open or shorted winding. Look for any evidence of overheating, such as darkened or blackened areas or a burnt smell.
About how to test a power transformer-it is a little bit complicated. You cannot apply ac voltage to the equipment and expect the desire output at the secondary side without connect to load otherwise over voltage will happen (because you have removed all the secondary load) and will blow the power section which consist of power fet, pwm ic and etc. Swith mode power supply are designed to run with load while linear transformer can be test without load.
The best way to test a switch mode power transformer is first remove it from the board. Check only the primary winding as secondary winding failures are exceedingly rare. How do we know which one is the primary winding? Trace from the big filter cap the positive pin to see where the circuit goes. It will go to one of the pin of the transformer. Then look for the power fet middle pin which is the Drain and it will lead to another pin of the transformer. This two pins is the primary winding of the transformer. Checking the resistance of the primary winding only can reveal whether it is open but it cannot check if it has developed a shorted winding. Only by using a ringer test you will know if it shorted or not. A shorted turn in the primary winding can cause the power section to blow.
The cheapest ringer tester that i came across is Dick Smith LOPT METER or flyback tester. Just connect the probes to the primary winding and the result are instantly seen from the Led bar graph. 4-8 bar represent a good winding, 1-2 bar represent partial short and if the led goes off means there is a heavy short in the winding. Besides checking the transformer it can be use to check B+ COIL, horizontal yoke coil and flyback primary winding and ballast (choke).
The expensive ringer tester is from sencore equipment. Sencore LC102 and LC103C besides checking capacitor it also have the capability to check all kind of winding. Whether it is a low voltage transformer, high voltage transformer, current transformer, pulse transformer, electric transformer, custom transformer this equipment will be able to check and test it.
If you do not wish to invest on this tester you may use a light bulb to check it. Remove one of the primary winding pin and connect a 60 watt light bulb. One end to the circuit while the other to the transformer pin. If the bulb light and didn’t goes off suspect a shorted winding and if the light goes off, the winding is ok.
Transformer repair is not easy and it require a good skill to do it. Most of the transformer repairer preferred to rewind bigger winding such as fan, car alternator and starter. Swith mode power transformer is a little bit difficult to rewind because of the small size and low price.
Jestine Yong is a electronic repairer and a writer. For more information about electronic repair please visit his website atwww.noahtec.com/electronic-repair-articles.htm

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iW-x86 Processor

Features :

* Non multiplexed 20-bit address and 16-bit data bus support
* Arithmetic Logic Unit
* 1M-byte memory space divided into 4 segments
* 64 K-byte IO space
* DMA Controller with 4 channels
* Programmable Interrupt Controller
* Serial Controller Unit similar to 8251 with Full duplex double buffer system
* Programmable Wait State generator
* Clock Generator
* RTL code in verilog format
* Bus arbitration unit

Description
Figure-1 : iW-x86 Processor Block Diagram
The iW-x86 processor is fully binary compatible to the
well known 80186 Processor from Intel. This new core is an
excellent choice for many embedded controller applications and it
provides a cost-effective alternative for replacing x86 processors
that are no longer manufactured. This IP core is available as
synthesizable circuit description.
Figure-1 shows iW-x86 processor. This core has nonmultiplexed
20-bit address bus and 16-bit data bus, which
eliminates the need to have address latch enable logic externally
and allow easy connection to memory. It supports 16-bit execution
unit using familiar x86 instruction set and has 1Mbytes address
space. The core incorporates 4-channel DMA controller with two
configurable bus modes and 3 transfer modes for efficient data
transfers, one programmable interrupt controller compatible with
8259 , capable of handling 8 external requesters with the capability
of defining priorities and masking at individual levels allowing
complex priority schemes. One real time programmable timer
compatible with 8254, incorporating three counter/timer
channels. It offers wait control unit, which automatically inserts up
to 8 wait states in CPU and DMAU bus cycle. It also offers a
variable-rate asynchronous serial controller compatible with 8251,
which gives RS-232 protocol support and incorporates a baud rate
generator selectable as transmitter / receiver clock. The bus
arbitration unit performs the arbitration for the internal bus
mastership between CPU and DMA with priority.

Applications

* Quick migration of 80186 based design to an FPGA latform.

* Deliver Retrofit of existing systems, maintaining the I/O ompatibility.

* Replacement for 80186 Processor and ASICs.

* It is an excellent choice for embedded applications, catering or the growing needs of industrial, automotive and ommunication system solutions.

* Extensive use has been in medical instruments designed to erform routine clinical measurements (endoscopes, reathing aids…)

Example Application :

The design has been optimized for the requirement of a
SOC design flow, the block diagram shown in the fig-2 is an
example application which includes additional peripherals like PCI
Target Controller, programmable timer and Multi Protocol Serial
Controller. PCI target controller to manage 32-bit data transfer
between the PCI and the user Interface, MPSC which is general
purpose communication controller consisting of two sets of bidirectional
parallel/serial converter for data communication
supporting the character oriented protocol and bit oriented protocol
communication features and the Timer/Counter unit identical with
the one used in processor. The iW-x86 SOC reduces system size and
weight while dramatically reducing the number of components in
the system by eliminating the reliance on the component that are or
may become obsolete.
This fast-running version raises the high end of our IP
product line, improves the reliability and ensures the long-term
availability and tremendous support.

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Domain Name Ideas Generator for your Website or Business.

MakeWords.com is a brainstorming tool that simply returns a list of available domain names. Various algorithms and wordlists are used generate words and names that are “pronounceable” in different languages.

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List of companies and assets owned by Microsoft

A bit of Apple here, a whole lot of Rare over there, Hotmail, NTL, RadioShack, Sendit, WebTV, AT&T….. The list just seems to go on and on forever!

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The 5 most sexy fonts you have ever seen

You have seen fonts that are professional and fonts that are stupid, but I bet you haven’t seen fonts that are this sexy.

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Bestbuy Harman Kardon GPS Navigators

Harmon Kardon is lauded within the trade for its high-quality loudspeakers and A/V components, and now the company has leveraged its expertise to develop the Guide + Play GPS-300, a portable GPS navigator with an integrated MP3/WMA player.

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Cheap Dedicated Server Web Hosting: What To Know While Go Fo

Dedicated server web hosting can alleviate the need to share hardware or software with any other sites or web pages. Webmasters are given the autonomy to decide on applications that are installed on the server to create specific configurations for their web needs, and have the ability to provide a secure environment for their site.

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Reseller web hosting

Reseller web hosting: allows clients to become web hosts themselves. Resellers could function, for individual domains, under any combination of these listed types of hosting, depending on who they are affiliated with as a provider.

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Aromatherapy Phone Service Coming to iPhone?

Japanese carrier NTT Communications Corp will be launching a service that provides users with certain fragrances intended to work the same way and bring about the same advantages as aromatherapy. Will it be used in iPhone?

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Free iPod Video Converter

Free iPod Video Converter provides an easy and completed way to convert all popular video formats to iPod video. You can enjoy DVD/VCD and AVI, MPEG, WMV, RM, RMVB, DivX, ASF, VOB video files in your iPod with few clicks. The program is a freeware and does not contain any form of malware.

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Poor customer service costing businesses billions

Look after your customers or they’ll ditch you - that’s a key finding of a recent survey into customer churn.

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Half-life (orange box) being ported to Linux?

title says it all folks, someone claiming to be a valve employee entered #ubuntu-offtopic looking for win->linux porters, just directed them to job description and asked them to email valve, jobdescription: http://www.valvesoftware.com/job-SenSoftEngineer.html

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Half-life (orange box) being ported to Linux?

title says it all folks, someone claiming to be a valve employee entered #ubuntu-offtopic looking for win->linux porters, just directed them to job description and asked them to email valve, jobdescription: http://www.valvesoftware.com/job-SenSoftEngineer.html

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Tutorial: How to assign a domain name to your home web server

A dynamic DNS service is a constantly updated database of IP addresses and domain names. DynDNS.com is one provider of this service. For free, you can get one of the available DynDNS domain names plus a custom subdomain, or for a small fee you can register your own domain (like joesmith.com) and have it resolve to your home computer web server

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Gmail addresses available with a shorter / cooler domain name

izi.jp is a domain name powered by Google’s hosted Gmail. The address is very short and many generic words and names already taken on Gmail.com are available on izi.jp because it’s newer and not as well known. But the email system is powered by Gmail, which means everything works the same wonderful way, including Calendar, GTalk, Spam filter etc.

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Network Solutions Front Running Whois Domain Searches

In a developing story regarding domain names, registrar Network Solutions has been caught front running domain names. Any domain names searched via NSI whois are being purchased by the registrar thereby preventing a registrant from purchasing the domain at any other registrar other than NSI.

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Domain Name Registration - Key Tips

Domain name registration is a necessary, easy, andstrategically important first step in establishing an onlinepresence, whether for business or otherwise. A well-chosendomain name registration can set you up for success withyour new site in so many ways, the most prominent of thesebeing increased search engine traffic. Here’s some vitalelements.

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Google Purchases Shortest Domain Name Ever

Google has purchased the shortest possible domain name to make it easier for Chinese users to find Google: g.cn.

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US man gets $2.6m for domain name

A US man has sold the domain name pizza.com for $2.6m (
£1.3m) - after maintaining the site for just $20 a year since 1994.

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