I have a lot of people ask me, "What's a good program for getting screen captures?" They tried trial programs from Download.com, and for one reason or another, haven't liked them. But whether you like those programs or not, you should know that there is a much easier way to get screen captures, and it doesn't require a single download. Uninstall any programs that eat up your resources by waiting in the background for you to hit a key, because you don't even need them. I'm really not even sure what the point of a screen capture program is.

The term "multi-homed" is used commonly by bandwidth providers as a sales pitch to attract your business. Do you know what this means? If a provider claims to be multi-homed, are they truly multi-homed?

Multi-homed is used to refer to the practice of hooking one network to the Internet at more than two places, giving the network multiple paths to the Internet and providing speedier connections around the world as well as giving their network a better level of redundancy in case of network issues or fiber cuts.

One of the first unwritten rules many newbie webmasters immediately break is to over complicate their pages with all of the nifty little tricks they find amongst the webmasters sites they surf. If a cool JavaScript is found, it immediately goes on their pages. If a crazy mouseover effect is found, that mouseover winds up on their pages. In the end, their pages look like a jumbled conglomeration of colorful madness. There is one element of media that has been misused almost every time I've seen it: sound. Just a few years ago, many webmasters seemed to think that by playing a favorite BeeGees midi file in the background of their pages, surfers would be impressed... perhaps sing along while browsing. That's just sick. Things have improved on that front in that last several years, but the problem has not gone away.

When I browse the Internet, I still hear a lot of pointless techno beats, annoying mousever sounds, wave files that play when the page loads, etc. This often annoys me, as I'm sitting in a quiet office and sudden unexpected sounds can be jarring. Many times I immediately hit my back button to make it stop.

We hear a lot about the importance of regular redesigns in order to keep our sites fresh to our visitors. We also hear a great deal of emphasis on the importance of branding. But what is never mentioned is the paradox that can exist between these two objectives.

I'm not of the school that says that a regular redesign is essential to the continued success of your site. I do believe it can be helpful to stimulate renewed interest, but it's definitely not crucial if your current design is already effective. In fact, some of the most successful sites have gone through little to no redesign work for years. In some cases, I believe in some cases that their lack of redesigns may have helped them more than it hurt them. These are sites that people visit day in and day out, and they know exactly what to expect. There are no surprises. It's simple, easily accessible, and the visitors know exactly where to click, because the layout hasn't changed a bit over the years.