Are You Prepared For The End Of The Recession

Are you prepared for the end of the recession?

Chances are, like many people, you are simply trying to get through it as best you can and haven’t given any thought to what happens once the economy starts coming out the other side.

The problem is, when the economy does begin to improve, your financial position may actually become much worse.

You may be wondering how things could get any worse, with global economies slumping, and multinationals folding, but the truth is, individuals may be much worse off after the recession, than during it.

I am not referring to the people already suffering financial stress due to a lost job, or home foreclosure; rather to everyone who has kept their house and job, but is still affected by the recession. Most people have been affected in some way, even the very rich have had to make changes in their lifestyle either through circumstances, or fear of how bad the recession may become.

With this recession being the worst since the 1930’s, reports are indicating the fist signs of green shoots coming back into economies. While this may yet turn out to be a false dawn, it is encouraging that things may be on the way to turning the corner.

Why Things Could Be Worse After The Recession

Taking a hypothetical position, let’s say that these green shoots continue to blossom into full blown growth; how could this possibly make things worse? Well if you haven’t been following all the developments, you may have missed some important details about the depth of government debt.

When $700 Billion Isn’t Enough

Remember that $700 billion bailout that was designed to solve all the US’s problems and prevent it spiraling into a sustained recession, well it turns out, it wasn’t quite enough. Just last year, $700 billion sounded like an awful lot of money, but it is amazing how quickly such a large figure seems so mundane.

The real cost of the bailout has risen considerably above this figure and today stands at $15 trillion. Yes, you read that right, the real cost is presently $15 trillion. To put that in context, in 2008, the US gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion, so the bailout is now more than the US makes in an entire year.

Here is an image to show you what $1 trillion looks like.

This image is only of $1 trillion; the real debt is 15 times this amount, so you can do the visualisation of what this looks like. Does that give you a better idea of just how bad things are? How about looking at is another way, that is $50,000 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and 16 times the $899.8 billion of currency in circulation, which is just plain scary.

The reason things may get a lot worse for everyone is that the interest on this debt has to be paid and don’t even think about trying to pay the debt, just meeting the interest alone will be bad enough. Once the economy looks like it has turned the corner, that is when the pain will start, with interest rates rising, unemployment rising, wages dropping, higher taxes and inflation raising its ugly head. I wont go into the economic reasons for these predictions, as the topic is too large for this post and there are numerous sources of information on the Web that will teach you the economic mechanisms for managing government debt that you can research yourself. The purpose here is to make you aware and hopefully get you thinking enough to start preparing to put actions in place that will minimise its impact on you and even allow you to prosper.

Believe it or not, there are plenty of people prospering in the present environment, as always happens in a recession, if this is not you, now is the time to thing seriously about prospering after the recession. In future posts, I’ll be gving ideas on how you can prepare and prosper now and into the future, so you can be better prepared for the future.

FTP For Beginners

I have had a couple of queries recently about ftp and other aspects of Internet technologies. After helping some friends with various computer problems over the weekend, I realised that it is pretty easy to forget that many people learning the ropes about earning money online don’t come from a geek or tech background; while they can pick up many of the techniques to get them started to earning money online, they may not have sufficient knowledge, or the underlying technical skills necessary to understand many of the terms and techniques they learn.

With this in mind, I thought it time to devote some posts to explaining some of the standard skills and tools you will need to master. This is aimed at the beginner to intermediate user, who will each learn from this post. To begin, I will detail something you have probably heard of called ftp.

What is FTP?

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is simply a protocol for transferring files over the Internet. Using ftp, you can send and receive files between computers located anywhere in the World. If you have a Website, or are hoping to create one at some stage, you will be using ftp to transfer files from your computer to the Web server hosting your site

FTP uses a URL (the address of the site) that is similar to what you are familiar with from your Web browser. To load Webtrepreneur in your browser, you enter the address: http://www.webtrepreneur.net/.

The ftp address looks very similar: ftp://ftp.webtrepreneur.net.

This post will only detail connecting to your host server (where your Website is hosted) and the basic commands and details you will need for uploading your files.

There are numerous ftp programs available for all of the major platforms, both free and commercial. The selection comes down to your preference. Some of the basic terminology you may encounter is listed below:

Profile Name:- A name for you to remember the profile you created for a connection.

Host / Server Address:- This is the server your computer will connect to, e.g. ftp://ftp.webtrepreneur.net.

Port:- This is the port on the server you will connect to. The default port is 21 and this should work on most servers

Login / Username:- This is your username for your account on the remote server.

Password:- Likewise, this is your password for accessing your account on the remote server.

Initial Path:- The first directory that will be opened on the remote computer.

Attempts:- This is the number of times the computer will try to download (or upload) a file if it is interrupted.

Retry Delay:- The time between each retry.

Download Path:- The directory on your computer where files will be downloaded to.

You don’t have to know all of these, as you may not have to be concerned with all of these commands, depending on the application you select.

Connected

After choosing your ftp application and entering the settings relevant to the instruction above, you simply connect to the remote in order to transfer files. Once connected, depending on your application you will be presented with a window similar to the one above, with the remote server in the left or right hand side and your computer in the opposite.

Transferring files is simply a matter of dragging them to the appropriate location on either. If you wanted to copy a file or directory from the server to your computer, you simply select the file and drag it from the server window across to the window representing your computer. Don’t be worried, this action will not delete the copy from your server, it will simply copy it across to your computer.

Be aware though, that if you already have a file with the same name, you will be prompted whether you want to overwrite. Make sure that this is what you want, as it will overwrite the file, so proceed with caution if you are unsure and place the file in a different directory if needed.

Permissions

Something else you will come across when transferring files to your server is that on occasions you may read about things called permissions and / or CHMOD. CHMOD stands for CHange MODe.

I wont go into too great a detail here, as you don’t really need to know all the Unix idiosyncrasies behind CHMOD, what you do need to know though is that the server needs some details about who and what can do certain actions on and with your files. Basically, you are setting permission about who can do certain things to your files. For example, on a blog, you want visitors to be able to read posts and comment on them, but you don’t normally want them to be able to access your scripts and change them and damage your site.

That is basically what you are telling the server through you CHMOD settings. It does this by assigning numbers to each file. These numbers set the actions that can be preformed on the files. There are only 3 actions, so it is not too daunting. The actions are:

READ

WRITE

EXECUTE

You can set these permissions on most ftp programs, either by a tick in a text box or by writing a combination of numbers, or both.

To give you an example, a standard WordPress installation will have permission similar to the ones below:

Directories should have permissions of 755. Never use 777.
All files should have permissions of 644.
If you do want to use the built-in theme editor, theme files should have permissions of 666. Once again, never give them 777.

Once you get your ftp program up and running, you will be able to see this by experience and get a better understanding of it.

WordPress 2.7 Review

Earlier today, I uploaded and installed WordPress 2.7 Coltrane. This is my first post with the new and from appearances and features, greatly improved WordPress.

As usual (for me anyway), the upgrade was a painless process. It was actually quicker than the last one I did a few weeks ago.

The first thing you will notice is the completely new interface. The developers have spent a lot of time listening and have made usability improvements in every area.

Dashboard

When you login, you are greeted by a completely new Dashboard. In the upper right corner of the screen is a ‘Screen Options. button that allows you to select the options to display in your dashboard by checking or unchecking the various modules.

Another cool feature is the ability to move the items in your dashboard into different positions that suit your workflow. It is a simple matter of grabbing the top of each modules window and dragging it to your position of choice. Now you have complete control of the features you want and the location of them on your screen.

Vertical Menus

One of the most prominent new features is the inclusion of vertical menus. This is a great improvement, as navigation is greatly simplified, with each section using Ajax to display a list of options for you to click.

This provides a major speed improvement, as it means you have far less screen loads to get to the section you want to edit. As an example, the Appearance menu option already has the current theme listed, making it possible to go directly to the theme options in one click.

Top level navigation items are Media, Links, Pages, Comments, Appearance, Plugins, USers, Tools and Settings. If you prefer not to have the vertical menu taking up valuable screen space, you have the otpion to minimise it to the side. Mousing over each icon provides the menu item subset. A very nice feature.

Plugins

Plugin management just got a whole lot better, with the ability to search for plugins directly from the dashboard. Do a search for a specific term, such as twitter and you get a rated list of the available plugins from the WordPress plugin repository.

Installation can now be done directly from the dashboard; you no longer have to FTP your plugin files to the server. This is another great improvement for those new to the technology.

Likewise, future upgrades of WordPress itself can be done in the same manner, so no more uploading and overwriting files.

Threaded Comments

Threaded comments is a welcome addition to the core functionality of WordPress. Many blogs already have the feature via plugins and services such as Disqus. I personally use Disqus on another blog, so this will give me a chance to compare that over the inbuilt system.

Sticky Posts

Another little feature that people have been requesting for a long time, is the ability to make a post ’sticky’, i.e. keep it on the home page no matter how old it is. Making a post ’sticky’ is just a matter of checking the box.

Take a look at the video below and then go ahead and try it yourself. As with all things though, be sure to make backups, just in case you have some problems…..

Gold 3G iPhone - More Apple Bling

The good people at Computer Choppers continue to develop high-end blinged out Apple products. This time, it is a 24kt Gold 3G iPhone.

No price has been released as yet, but you can email them and get a quote. You can see the rear view below.

If you are after even more variety for your iPhone bling, Goldstriker International has several offerings, including standard 24kt gold, white gold and even rose gold, priced from $2,200 - $2,700.

For the ultimate in iPhone bling, you can opt for the Diamond and Ruby offering from Goldstriker International, retailing for a paltry $5,600.