Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Garbage Collection The Technology To Avoid Memory Leaks

As computer technology evolves, the technology to program the computer also takes new forms. There are many companies in the field of programming languages. There is Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Apple to name a few. There are many challenges that a programmer faces while programming an application which is easy to use and so robust that it does not breaks down under demanding conditions. Previously when the technology behind the design of programming language was in nascent stage, it was very hard to program a computer. Mainly the arcane assembly language was used. But programming assembly meant you had the ability to learn a new language syntax which resembled sanskrit or latin!! Due to technological complexity , it was not an average programmer who programmed for the clunky machine called computer. In those tough times , you had to deal with the hardware directly. Whether it was primary memory storage or secondary storage device operation like saving on floppy or hard disk, one had to deal with the hardware directly in language and the language itself was very terse to comprehend and write code into. Then came the so called mother of all language C. With advances in the computing technology the programming languages also started to take on a new form in which one could program in english like language. But the scenario was more or less the same. Specially , dealing with memory was largely an uncharted territory for an average programmer. Memory leaks were very common in softwares and a real killer.

Memory leaks refers to the situation when an executing program claims a patch of memory but forgets to free it. As a result there is a large amount of unclaimed memory in the primary memory area. This makes less and less resources available to an executing program. Obviously this was a very serious problem as the softwares behaved erratically. Many programming guru suggested that in place of depending on latest technology to solve these type of problems , we should tackle these problems by adopting good programming practices. Like if you have claimed a memory from computer , you should free it too, use memory with caution and use it as and when really required. Not many heeded to the advice as a group of programming folks were of view that going too far in adopting these practices will result in a bloated code. Thus something new in computer technology was again expected to solve these perennial problems. Newer and more sophisticated programming languages came into being and with each advance there was something new , something improvised but the problem of memory leaks was more or less the same. Many languages did not introduce any radically new thing but these languages introduced new syntactical sugar which allowed improved structure of code. But again these technological advances could not solve the problem associated with memory leaks.

Then a miracle happened in latest computer technology world. The most popular language Java was invented and this technology changed the programming paradigms forever. The language even today has a cult following and is perhaps the most advanced programming technology. Java solved the problem of memory leaks for good. Java employs the garbage collection technology for this. Garbage collection technology employs an algorithm in which a lightweight process runs in the background when the program is executing. The moment there is a patch of memory which is unused the garbage collector reclaims it. And thus avoids memory leak. This technology is being used by many latest computer language like C# from Microsoft. Thus we see that Java technology has changed the programming world for good.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

SEO Technology

What is SEO Technology ?

Search Engine Optimization is the process of creating and altering of webpages in such a way that search engines recognize the content of those webpages and when a person search for a particular term , the search engine brings up your pages as high as possible.

There are billions of websites on the web and these web sites deal with various subjects like latest technology, computers, news, careers and many more. Now when people search for the information on the web they type that term into the search engine. The search regularly crawls the world wide web for new and updated content so that it may bring up the most results to the person searching for information. If you have a site dealing with latest computer technology, how the hell are the people going to discover it? Obviously through search engines. But how the search engines like Google , Yahoo are going to discover your website and how can you make those bots of search engines to realize that the content on your site is the most relevant one ? Here comes the search engine optimization aka SEO.

SEO Technology Brings Visitors To Your Website

So SEO technology basically deals with making your webpages important for search engines so that your site gets the best page rank. By the way, page rank refers to the place of a particulars site which is assigned to it by a search engine bot. Higher the page rank the more significant the site is to search engine and morel likely is the possibility that people will turn up on your site when they search for a thing on the web.

So how can the SEO technology be applied to your existing web sites to improve their visibility and web traffic.This is the crucial question because the visibility means everything to the website. If there is no none to visit the website you created , what is the purpose of creating. With SEO technology your website may lie stranded on some lonely island on the vast ocean of world wide web. Web traffic is the reason web sites exist in the first place. Without web traffic a web site is like a flop movie that no one watched. The more web traffic there is to your website the more famous it will be and people wil keep turning up. And how do you bring traffic to your website? Through SEO technology.

SEO Technology Applied

To apply the search engine technology to your web site and to reap the benefits it endows there are certain things to be kept in mind. First you have to know how search engine works. What is the algorithm behind the working of search engine which allows it to retrieve the most relevant information searched according to the keyword. the bad news is that you may never know the exact workings of the top search engines like Google. These giants keep their secrets to themselves. They are never going to divulge the information about what goes on behind the scenes when a search engine crawls the ocean of web pages. Moreover, the search engine algorithm is constantly evolving. Search engines like Yahoo , MSN keep refining their searching softwares aka bot to make them more and more sophisticated. You just can make your best guess in this regard through deep observation of how a particular keyword brings up different pages over time.

The best thing you can do to optimize your webpage for search engines is to try to find out what is the keyword that people use to find the information that is contained in your webpage. First, decide your target audience. Try to think like them. For example, the person looking for the latest technologies in computer field will probably enter any of the keyword

latest computer technology
latest technology in computer
latest computer news
latest news in computers
latest technology trends
technology trends in computers
latest technical trends
trends in technology

Above are some of the keywords which a layman will enter in the Google Search box. So first you know the audience and then you try to find out the keywords they will use to find out the information which is the topic of your web site. Now what ? Next you have to write the content in such a way that it contains your keywords.

If you do this correctly you have mastered the art of optimizing the web pages or search engine technology. You do not have to go for any paid promotion of your site and you do not have to use any softwares which submit links to your website. You just keep sitting and search engines will come and notice your site and rank it high. As the saying goes in Zen Buddhism "The Spring Comes And Grass Grows By Itself".

But the sad truth is that the the spring which , in our case, is a crawler of search engine does not come. Well, not always. So , SEO technology is not just about optimizing your pages but it is a very vast term which involves many things beyond that . More on this later, for now just know that search engine optimization can do miracles to the web traffic you get. Search engine is the biggest tool at your disposal if you want to make your identity on the web and if you want to make your website visible. Its working are hidden and the intricacies of its algorithm is not anybody's guess. But if you can just sense even 10% , the way the search engines work, you can be in control of how your web sites turn up and where. SEO technology is becoming more and more complex by each passing minutes but by applying it effectively you can learn the art of web promotion. The art of making your presence felt on the intricate universe of world wide web.