This lightning fast communication makes it possible for small companies to literally snatch huge market share away from more traditional companies.

Blogging also has a distinct advantage over traditional email newsletters in that subscribers can get udpates without having to receive an email message. Through power of RSS (real simple syndication), subscribers get notified of updated content though an rss news reader.

Bottom Line: publishing a blog with an RSS feed that your readers can subscribe to means your content NEVER gets blocked by a SPAM filter.

Blog software basically comes in 2 flavors: hosted and stand-alone. Hosted blogging solutions make it extremely easy to get set up with a blog, often in just a couple of minutes.

If you know how to type, you can create a blog. Log on to Blogger.com and you can set up a blog free of charge and start posting in just a few minutes.

Blogger.com (owned by search giant, Google) will even host your blog on their servers.

Typepad.com, which charges as little as $4.95 per month, is also an excellent hosted service offering additional features that enable you to quickly get your own blog up and running.

The alternative is stand-alone blogging software installed on your own website.

A very popular solution is Moveable Type, available from moveabletype.org, which provides a very versatile and powerful suite of tools for creating a full-featured blog to rival that of any size company in world. Which ever blogging solution you choose, if you plan to successfully conduct any form of business online, understand that a "blog" must form an integral part of your overall plan for customer communication and interaction.

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Technologies used for backup solutions will vary depending on operating system platform and type of data that is being backed up. In a Windows environment, Veritas (www.veritas.com) software’s BackupExec is a premier solution for those who cannot afford any data loss. Veritas produces special agents to work with many leading software applications to ensure data from those applications is backed up perfectly. In a Unix environment, open source backup software such as Bacula (www.bacula.org) makes for a high-quality, low-cost solution.

In addition to software products that actually run backups, businesses must consider what type of media they want their backup stored on. Choices include secondary hard drives in same computer that is running site, tape drives, separate network storage devices and CDs or DVDs. CDs and DVDs make for great portable backups, but are limited to relatively small file sizes (roughly 700MB and 4.8GB respectively). Network storage devices can be very expensive, but can backup enormous amounts of data. Tape drives offer perhaps best balance of cost, storage capacity, portability, security and quality. Backups done to a second hard drive are easiest on budget and fastest in terms of restore time, but are vulnerable to corruption in a situation where disaster is caused by a hacker.

Choosing right backup plan for your business should be done in consultation with an experienced professional who can help you design a solution that will allow you to restore your site to full functionality as quickly as needed. While often overlooked in price-conscious shopping process, backups are critical to long-term success of any Web operation. Computers being what they are, after a certain amount of time it is a given that your backup solution will be tested. It is just a matter of when. It is best to be prepared for this day with an appropriate backup solution.

Four Things To Do When Administering Backups (potential sidebar to this article)

·Have written policy and procedures in place on how a restore from backup should be handled. In a time of crisis, this will cut down on confusion and allow process to move along more smoothly. ·Test restores from backup. This is very critical. Some complex applications might require special software agents or configurations to backup and restore properly. Make sure test restore is successfully accomplished in a time frame that would be acceptable for a real restore. If process takes too long, you may have to reconsider your backup strategy. ·Physically protect backup data from hackers and thieves. Someone getting a hold of an unencrypted backup is just as bad as someone breaking in. ·Keep copies of software that may need to be re-installed along with your backups. This includes operating systems, software applications and security patches for either of those.

Chris Kivlehan is the Marketing Manager for INetU Managed Hosting, an award-winning web hosting provider that specializes in managed dedicated hosting for businesses nationwide. www.inetu.net / chrisk@inetu.net / 610-266-7441