ORIGINALLY POSTED BY TALEN FOR THETAZZONE/TAZFORUM HERE

Do not use, republish, in whole or in part, without the consent of the Author. TheTAZZone policy is that Authors retain the rights to the work they submit and/or post…we do not sell, publish, transmit, or have the right to give permission for such…TheTAZZone merely retains the right to use, retain, and publish submitted work within it’s Network.

Here’s a pair of commands that will enable RDP on a remote workstation. The caveat is you have to run PowerShell.exe using your administrative credentials. You can use the –credential option on the first command, but not on the second (which is a drag).

This only works for Windows XP (and 2000), not for Vista. Which isn’t to say you can’t do the same for Vista, but since the security on RDP 6.0 is different, it’s a little more involved. I’ll dig it up and post it sometime…

ORIGINALLY POSTED BY TALEN FOR THETAZZONE/TAZFORUM HERE

Do not use, republish, in whole or in part, without the consent of the Author. TheTAZZone policy is that Authors retain the rights to the work they submit and/or post…we do not sell, publish, transmit, or have the right to give permission for such…TheTAZZone merely retains the right to use, retain, and publish submitted work within it’s Network.

How many servers do you have running applications that make use of MSDE 2000? You know you should be backing up the database files, but you can’t quite justify the extra cost of a SQL agent for your backup software. I’ve come across the situation more than once. Did you know you can use an OSQL command from the command line to create a backup of the database while it’s mounted and running? This command will create a .bak file that you can backup using a regular backup agent, no SQL agent required. I wrote a script that would run the command, and then simply used the Windows Task Scheduler to run the script once a day. The .bak file is overwritten each time, and our Backup Exec server maintains the archival copies. Here’s the script:

Bear in mind that line 8, the line beginning with “strOSQL”, is one command on one line. If you want your script to wrap for readability, break up the command where you see fit.

You’ll also want to adjust the backup path defined in the OSQL command, ‘X:\<filename>’ in the example, to fit your server/network as well. If you want to back it up to a networked drive, make sure the drive is already mapped locally, I haven’t tested this using a UNC path.

Enjoy.

You’re new…just starting out…and have limited funds to work with…or maybe you’ve been around a while and you just don’t know what to do…

not sure where to spend those limited funds to get the most ‘ bang for your buck ‘…

not sure which advertising company you can trust to give you value or live up to their claims…

well…you’ve come to the right place.

Another benefit to the Alexa data is that they give you traffic stats for your site for various Countries…as an advertiser this would be essential information if you’re targeting specific global areas…

for instance: if you’re selling products geared specifically to India or Brazil you want to advertise on a site that has a good traffic rating in those Countries.

thetazzone.com traffic rank…as of this date…

India…58,171
Ecuador…58,974
Vietnam…61,918
Greece…65,422
Netherlands…78,121
Mexico…82,542
Malaysia…86,088
United States…90,439
Indonesia…91,971
Romania…101,947
Australia…110,340
Canada…134,007
Singapore…134,818
United Kingdom…155,302
Poland…192,122
Germany…195,471
France…218,217
Brazil…364,447

So…essentially…you’re looking for sites that have a traffic rating from 0-250,000 ( extremely high traffic to medium traffic respectively ) in the Countries you are targeting.

OK…we touched a little on Alexa…now Google…

Google Page Rank is not a good indicator of traffic, not a good indicator of how well a site is built, or how well a site is maintained…it is a lousy indicator of whether or not you should advertise on a site.

Let’s say I have 50 apples each of varying grades…and I have to grade them using a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the best…well, I’d end up having to lump several different grades into each wouldn’t I? If I have 50 grades, to have a precise count of each’s worth I would need 50 grade levels. That way you’d know whether you were eating a grade 34 or a grade 44.

Google Pagerank lumps huge amounts of sites into the a grade level that they shouldn’t all fit into…this is one problem.

You’d look at two sites both with a page rank of 5 and wonder ‘ how the frig are these both a 5? There’s no way these both are a 5. ‘

If those sites were on a scale of 1-1,000,000 one might be a 500,001 and the other a 599,999…

This is why Alexa is far better at determining the true value of a site’s worth…their number structure is large enough to use as a better indicator.

You can’t lump millions of sites into such a small range as 1-10 and have any real sense of a site’s worth.

Another problem with the Google Page Rank is back-links…now…I don’t know about you…but I have gone to many sites, sometimes often, and never linked to them…why the hell should I?…they don’t link to us. There are thousands of people who come here to our sites everyday who don’t link to us…probably for the same reason…or for other reasons…

back-linking at best is fickle and not a good way to determine a site’s worth.

Breakdown of the Google Page Rank:

sites 0-2 very low traffic
sites 4-6 medium traffic
sites 7-8 high traffic
sites 9-10 top grade, tons of traffic

where’s 3?
Page Rank 3 seems to be like limbo…it’s the place where you’re no longer wasted internet space but not yet quite there yet…it’s like Google has reserved that spot for all the sites they have no idea what to do with.

Ultimately you want to jump over Page Rank 3 …avoid it like quicksand…it’s the Hotel California of Page Ranks.

First off…don’t even bother about those ‘ i got my brains from a box of Cracker Jack ‘ Alexa haters…Alexa is a very good tool to determine traffic and they recently improved it to make it even better…

generally, as I said in the last post this is how it boils down:

anything over 1,000,000 has little or no traffic to speak of

sites between 500,000 and 999,999 are very low traffic

sites between 250,000 and 499,999 are low traffic but have potential

sites with a traffic rating between 100,000 and 249,000 are medium traffic sites

sites with a traffic rating between 50,000 and 99,999 are high traffic sites

and, of course, those with a ranking between 1 and 49,999 are the top grade sites with tons of traffic.

Alexa is also a good indicator of whether or not you should advertise on a site…using the above figures you can determine if the price you are paying is giving you a good return in potential traffic.

Well…if you do, congrats! Because it’s not easy to find…so…why not share it?

If you already have inexpensive advertising or know where to get some why not post a comment to share with others? We have no problem with posting, or promoting, places other than ourselves who offer decent rates for those with shallow pockets.

But…please…and this is not a knock cause everyone has to start someplace…don’t bother listing sites that have bottom prices and no traffic…because if a site has no traffic then it really doesn’t matter how low their prices are…there’s no point or sense advertising on a site with no traffic.

A site should have a decent traffic rating on Alexa or a decent page rank on Google…

TheTAZZone.com, for instance, is presently at 182,075 which is a very decent ranking…not fantastic…but very decent…normally, our .com site fluctuates between a low of 180,000 and a high of 250,000…summer months tend to make the biggest changes…

a site with a rating over 1,000,000 isn’t even worth bothering with…sites between 500,000 and 999,999 are very low traffic…sites between 250,000 and 499,999 are low traffic but have potential…sites with a traffic rating between 100,000 and 249,000 are medium traffic sites…sites with a traffic rating between 50,000 and 99,999 are high traffic sites…and, of course, those with a ranking between 1 and 49,999 are the top grade sites with tons of traffic.