With the increasing use of internet for daily activities, the chances of websites being attacked by malicious content such as malware, spyware or hackers has increased. As a business, one may need to take extra precautions to determine if the website is secure from different threats, and select a web hosting plan which comes with many security options.

Website owners generally believe hacking as the worst kind of attack to business security as it puts at risk important customer information such as credit card numbers and contact details. This is why website managers running online stores should consider the following things while finding a hosting plan.

1. Select a Secure Hosting Option:

If your website is prone to security threats, you might end up losing valuable customers as people do not like to shop from places which do not offer maximum protection of their credit card information. Therefore, while making a selection, conduct a thorough research on available web hosting options and their advantages. For example, shared hosting is affordable, yet prone to security threats. On the other hand, dedicated hosting is secure to the extent you may select your own software, however, it is expensive.

2. Look for SSL Certification:

Look for a hosting plan which offers SSL Certification as it will allow you to encrypt all cost related data, such that the credit card information of customers will be protected from hackers.

3. Be Aware of the OS:

While selecting a web hosting plan, find out what operating system the hosting plan will run on. If you are looking for the most secure hosting, you need to be aware of every little detail of the operating system offered by the hosting company. Know the differences between security options offered by Linux operating system and Windows operating system. Even if you run a small online store, you will still manage databases and the security of these databases is very important.

4. Look for Firewalls:

While finding a hosting plan for your website, you will have to ensure the company has in place a reliable firewall system to protect their servers and your website from security threats.

5. Get Automatic Software Updates:

Make sure you get automatic software updates as these updates or patches allow you to protect the software or your website from potential bugs. Also, when you run your website on open source software, you risk the security of the website. Since open source software such as Joomla is free, hackers can easily find methods to breach the security of websites running on such software. However, these breaches might be avoided by using latest versions of the software. Similarly, if your web hosting plan is based on Windows operating system, make sure it gets automatic software updates from Microsoft.

Therefore, if you run an online store, it is highly imperative you find a secure web hosting plan which comes not only with the above mentioned things but also includes spam protection. It is always wise to look for hosting companies which promise to monitor your data and the website to ensure maximum security.

Thinking of selecting the ideal web hosting plan? There are various plans to choose from these days but how do you know the right one for you? The following tips will help you;

Operating system: The two major operating systems available now are Linux and windows services. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Linux servers are more cost effective and applications tend to cost less when hosted on them. Moreover, Linux servers support the installation of more open source applications, but it all depends on how comfortable you are with each system.

Choice of hosting company: Before choosing a web hosting company, check its uptime reliability. Ask for free trial, dig out information about the company and read reviews about it you wouldn’t want a hosting company that goes offline every now and then, so take your time.

Speed of server: This is also very important because if your website doesn’t load fast, your visitors would go elsewhere. During your free trial, take note of the servers speed. Find out the location of the server and other URLs hosted by the company. Use these other to confirm the speed of the server. Speed depends on the power of the machine, the location of the data centre and the operation system of the server. Also top search engines have recently included hosting speed into their hosting algorithms in order to enhance service delivery and ensure user positive experience.

Web hosting type: The most common types are shared VPS and dedicated. Shared hosting plan is ideal for those planning a simple HTML site. It is cheap and if you subscribe to an annual account, you would get a reasonable discount. If your plan is for something bigger or you want more control over the server, VPS (virtual prints server) hosting is your best VPS, though is an a shared machine, website owners have more control over the server because dedicated resources are provided. This is ideal for those planning a medium-sized site. If VPS is not perfect enough for you, dedicated plan might just do it. Dedicated hosting is the most costly because the exclusive use of the machine is yours. You don’t have to worry about outages caused by congestion and you can float as many sites as you want.

Your budget, type of site being planned to set up and the rate of growth envisaged are the final determinants to choosing the right web hosting plan.

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Having a good web hosting plan for a website is always something that is going to get any site on the way to greatness, however whether that happens today or not is anyone’s guess. Many people will have problems over their web hosts and their web hosting plans also. That is because today there are thousands of web hosting companies out there that are offering this and that and for most of them they will deliver but for a lot of them they really wont and everyone can be left so disappointed.

That is why when it comes to setting up a website we are all going to need a web host, now for a regular website or a blog then more people are going to turn to blog web hosting because this can be the best type of web host of today.

With blogging hosting this is going to be something that is really will help any blog to be set up quickly and even get it out onto the web quicker which is what we are all looking for. There are a lot of things that people have to remember to look for when they are getting a blog host.

Remember the price – that is not always something to look at if people want the best but if there are going to be any added fees for storage space of bandwidth that has to be added then think about this option. Think about if this can really be something affordable, it might be that is seems OK at first but think about if the fees are going to be that high every month and if it is then maybe that plan is not going to be good enough.

Think about the amount of space, if there are unlimited accounts, the support that comes with this and everything else. Each should be thought about very carefully, especially and technical help and support, this could help when something goes wrong.

Having a good web hosting plan for a website is always something that is going to get any site on the way to greatness, however whether that happens today or not is anyone’s guess. Many people will have problems over their web hosts and their web hosting plans also. That is because today there are thousands of web hosting companies out there that are offering this and that and for most of them they will deliver but for a lot of them they really wont and everyone can be left so disappointed.

That is why when it comes to setting up a website we are all going to need a web host, now for a regular website or a blog then more people are going to turn to blog web hosting because this can be the best type of web host of today.

With blogging hosting this is going to be something that is really will help any blog to be set up quickly and even get it out onto the web quicker which is what we are all looking for. There are a lot of things that people have to remember to look for when they are getting a blog host.

Remember the price – that is not always something to look at if people want the best but if there are going to be any added fees for storage space of bandwidth that has to be added then think about this option. Think about if this can really be something affordable, it might be that is seems OK at first but think about if the fees are going to be that high every month and if it is then maybe that plan is not going to be good enough.

Think about the amount of space, if there are unlimited accounts, the support that comes with this and everything else. Each should be thought about very carefully, especially and technical help and support, this could help when something goes wrong.

With the growing web hosting technology there now many web hosts in the market. Many of the web hosts are able to meet the specifications and requirements of wordpress minimum requirements. WordPress hosting provided by some web host companies gives your website, unlimited disk storage and unlimited amounts of data transfer. With wordpress hosting services that come from qualified companies, you are able to host numerous domains on just one account. The packages come with internet mails, MySQL database and a platform to control and manage networks and back-ups for your website files.

The web hosting providers have PHP enabled servers that are supported on MySQL databases. They run smoothly and can be installed easily without a lot of complications. The installation process allows you to launch the website on the servers immediately.

WordPress has come up with WordPress 3.0 that allows you to support multiple sites. It will be crucial when you are planning to run a number of sites through the wordpress hosting service providers.

Magento hosting has proved that it is the best provider of secure and scalable hosting solution. The Magento hosting has SIP plans that provide a stable solution for running of your website. The SIP plans that are provided by Magento hosting plans are self-contained and are fine tuned to serve the e-commerce industry. In order to host e-commerce websites, they need to be hosted on reliable platforms and the Magento host is one of the best. SIPs have pre-installed Magento stores that on the best Magento software and can be optimized and will help increase your website performance that will be stable and secure.

All-inclusive hosting provided by Magento hosting has high quality additional e-commerce resources and comes with themes that suit the business industry. Magento hosting plans provide you with control management systems that have infrastructure and services that will make sure the operations of your site are secure and are reliable e-commerce platforms.

The Joomla CMS is one of the most used control management systems and there are many Joomla websites running on these applications. The application is very easy to use and is user friendly. Joomla hosting is a very user friendly hosting service. The platform comes with features that will enable you to build a customized and professional websites. The Joomla CMS creates a database in the Next color panel and will be deployed on your websites Power Tools menu. By use of the Joomla CMS you will be able to install software

Elevating your web site seems to become a difficult job to complete. Yet, you shouldn’t have that you should get worried simply because this kind of task can be achieved less complicated with the aid of the web-hosting providers. A web host is in reality a company, which links your site around the world Wide Web or the server. It is extremely much necessary from you particularly if you would like your how does someone generate more visitors or if you want to produce more cash from an online business’ website. You just need to wisely compare hosting plans of numerous internet hosting providers in order to have no regrets in the long run.

It is quite indisputable that you have presently an array of hosting companies available in this day and age. Each of those providers definitely has their unique website hosting plans. Along with the only simplest way to while using best plan possible is to compare website hosting plans. You can use so many essential things that you simply should compare once you are on your venture of trying to find a particular hosting plan or service that you can utilize in the interest of your internet site. Some of these everything is as follows:

o Provider’s Integrity and Believability: You have to opt for services being provided by reliable and credible web hosting providers. It is possible to utilize age of the provider being a basis in identifying whether a specific hosting provider is reputable and reliable or otherwise not. This really is simply because that if a provider has efficiently remained longer on the net then, it is just reliable advice which it has effectively stood quality of energy which it’s undoubtedly dependable in addition to trustworthy.

o Features and Services: The internet hosting provider’s functions and services can also be some of the most essential things you’ll want to consider if you are to check internet hosting plans. The reason being to the fact that much better features and solutions can simply result in a boom inside your site’s traffic along with a success in your web business. A number of the features and services that you need to consider have something connected to the bandwidths, disk space, links, plastic card services, url of your website, catalog, and shopping cart application assistance.

o Price: Your economic capability plays an important role during your search to get the best web hosting plan from your best web hosting providers. In connection with this, you must wisely select a well-priced provider so as to make certain it is possible to still make use of its services even on the cheap only. In addition, we already have a lot of reasonably-priced web hosting service providers accessible in now.

Certainly, you will find loads of significant things to bear in mind to find and examine web hosting plans. Some of these situations are previously exposed above. All that you should do would be to keep them in mind to start with a scheme or provider which is dependable and credible enough, has an excellent services and functions, and has a great value. After all, keeping those things into mind is not a quite complex thing to do.

At Hostchart.com we are often asked what is involved in the setup of a new hosting account. This article reviews the basic steps of:1. domain name setup2. login to a control panel to manage the hosting account 3. set up of new email accounts 4. upload of a website to a hosting plan.

These are the first things a new web hosting customer needs to accomplish, and in a lot of cases they will not need to adjust their account again, except to view website traffic statistics. This article covers these four steps, as well as a couple of other important tasks needed to get a website up and running with your hosting plan.

Let us start by defining what a hosting plan consists of: A hosting plan is memory space on the hard drive of a server, it is internet bandwidth, and it is a control panel of features to manage your site.

Step 1: Domain Name SetupThe first step in getting your website up and running is to purchase a domain name. Current prices range between to per year. This will be the actual name of your website. No one else will be able to use your name once it is registered. Examples of common domain names you have heard of may include ebay.com, mapquest.com, etc. Once you have chosen a domain name, it needs to be pointed to the server that holds your hosting account, so when someone types http://www.yourdomainname.com into a browser, it will find the website files you will upload to your hosting plan.

Every domain name has at least 2 DNS settings that map the domain to an actual computer. The Domain Name Server (DNS) is a server that has a look up table of domain names and the IP address they belong to. The IP address is the internet address of a computer connected to the internet. There are thousands of DNS’ throughout the internet, which help with its flexibility. When you order a new hosting account with a web hosting company, they will send you 2 DNS settings. There are at least 2 DNS settings for each domain. This allows for a backup in case the primary DNS setting is unavailable. This is one of the beauties of the internet. Each DNS contains only a handful of domain names, and each domain name has a backup. This makes it virtually impossible for a hacker to bring down all websites, or the entire internet for that matter.

You will need to login where you registered your domain name and change the DNS settings to the ones that the web hosting company has given you. Note that you will have a control panel to manage your domain name, as well as a control panel to manage your hosting plan. New customers to hosting are often confused about the difference between registering their domain name and hosting the website for that domain name. Once you make these DNS changes, it will take 24-72 hours (1 to 3 days) for your domain name to propagate, at which time your domain name will start pointing to our servers and to your new hosting account. The time delay is caused by the distributed nature of the internet. A hosting company cannot tell you exactly how long it will take for your domain name to propagate across the whole world. It is dependent on all of the Internet providers in the world picking up the new results.

Step 2: Logging in to your Control PanelYou’ll want to login to your control panel to do such things as view web traffic statistics, set up email addresses, set up databases, do backups, etc. Every web hosting company offers a control panel to manage your account (cPanel, Plesk, Helm, and Hsphere are the most popular control panels offered by web hosting companies, but some have even built there own to customize it to their services). They all offer basically the same features. In the control panel you can read your email, or set it up to be read through an email program like Outlook. You will also manage databases here, view your website’s performance, backup your website, install pre-built scripts, etc. You can use the control panel to upload your website’s files, but a lot of programmers prefer to do this through a separate FTP program. There will be more on this later. You should have a way to login before your domain propagates. This will allow you to get started on your control panel while propagation is occurring.

Step 3: Setting up Email accountsOnce you are logged in to your control panel, you’ll want to setup at least one email address. Even if you do not want one, it is good to at least define one as a catch all to make sure you do not miss any emails sent to your domain.

Email Forwarding-If you want to simply “forward” all email to an outside email address (like your ISP email address), then simply set your Default Address (a tool in the Mail Management section of your Control Panel) to your ISP email address…. or to any email address where you want the emails to automatically be forwarded to. That way, any email sent to ‘anything’@yourdomain.com will be automatically (and immediately) sent to you.If you want to forward some emails to one address, and others to other addresses, you can do this with the Email Forwarders tool in your control panel.

Email Accounts (POP3 Accounts)-If you want to create a new email address with its own account (or email box; this is called a POP3 email account), then use the Add / Del Email Accounts tool in your control panel. From there you can add POP3 email accounts, assigning each one it’s own unique password. You will then want to go to your own email program (like Outlook, Outlook Express, etc.) and configure it to receive the emails sent to the new account you created.

For example: let’s say your new hosting account is yourcompany.com and you created an email address in your control panel called you@yourcompany.com and assigned it a password called yourpass. The details you’ll need to setup your email account(s) are as follows:

Account name: you@yourcompany.comPassword: yourpassIncoming POP3: mail.yourcompany.comOutgoing SMTP: mail.yourcompany.com

Here is a video tutorial that shows setting up an email account in Outlook, http://www.roundberry.com/tutorials/email/email_outlook2002.htm.

Step 4: Uploading your Website/FilesOnce your domain name has propagated, you can upload your website and files to your account using an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program like WS_FTP. If you do not have an FTP program, you can download a free version of WS_FTP… it is one of the most popular FTP programs in use today. FTP is the most common way to move files around on the internet. If you are going to build and publish websites you will become very familiar with FTP. It is a simple protocol and there are a number of good FTP clients available for free. With FTP you connect to another computer and drag and drop files between them. In this case the “other computer” is the server where your hosting plan is located.

Microsoft FrontPage-If you are using FrontPage to build your website, then you do not need an FTP program. Instead, use FrontPage’s “Publish” feature to publish your website to your hosting account, using the username and password for your account (provided in your welcome email).

Prior to Domain Propagation-Another way to upload your files to your hosting account is by using the File Manager tool in your control panel. In fact, you can do this prior to your Domain Name propagating, so that your website will be functional prior to your domain name working. All of the common control panels have a File Manager tool or at least an FTP client.Viewing your Website/Files Prior to Domain Name Propagation-You may want to view your website prior to your domain name working, to make sure that it looks and works the way it should. You can immediately view your website prior to your domain name propagating by using the following link:

http://IPaddress/~username

Where IPaddress is the primary nameserver IP address given to you by your hosting company, and username is the username for your new account which is also given to you by your web hosts. So for example, if you are assigned the IP address of 12.123.12.123, and a username of “youracct”, then you would simply browse to:

http://12.123.12.123/~youracct

If you want to view a specific page in your website, say contactus.html, then you would browse to:

http://12.123.12.123/~youracct/contactus.html

Of course, you will first have to upload your website to be able to view the pages…. and you can do that from within your Control Panel.

Congratulations! After completing the above steps, you will have setup your domain name, created email accounts, and uploaded your website to your web hosting account. You are now in business!

The success of your small-business web site depends a lot on how you choose partners at each step of its development, right form designing your small-business website to hosting it over the net.

When you are at the start of your business, you don’t need a big website and a huge disk space on the server and probably look for companies offering affordable web hosting plans. Let’s say, you have got your Domain Name (www.yourdomain.com). Its time to check for a good hosting service provider to have your files uploaded in the domain.

If you go for a Linux Based Hosting Plan, make sure you have the following included in your plans:1. Control Panel – This is the nucleus of your website. In a Control Panel, popularly known as CP, you can literally do anything. The moment you signup for a hosting plan, you must be provided with a CP to manage your web space.

2. POP3 email Ids & Aliases – yourname@yourdomain.com is an example POP3 ID. You must be provided with ample of POP3 email ids depending on your package size for better mail administration.

3. FTP Accounts & Virtual FTP – This is your online folder where you upload your files, delete them, and update them. Make sure you have handful of FTP sub-accounts to provide your clients/users with password protected directories. This is very much useful wherein your clients/users can use the FTP to upload /download files from designated password protected folders.4. Backup – Most quality hosting service providers take automated backups. While choosing your hosting plan, make sure of this.5. Web Statistics – Say, your website has been launched and you get NIL Visits or More than 100 Visits per day. Whatever the case may be, visitor analysis plays a key role in the success of your website. You can view the Report using Statistics Application that run in the server backend.

6. Bandwidth – Choose the hosting plan that gives enough bandwidth for your website. Even though you cannot judge at the beginning, as time progresses, you can easily calculate the bandwidth required.

7. PHP & Mysql Support – All the Linux Plans support PHP & Mysql. Make sure you get this free of charge when you buy the hosting plan. Few Hosting Providers may charge extra for MYSQL Database Support & PhpMyAdmin.

8. Webmail & SMTP – Email becomes key part in your life once you launch the website. Check if the hosts provide WEBMAIL (mail.yourdomain.com) to check your mails through a web based interface using Squirrelmail or Horde. Corporate users prefer downloading mails thru Email Clients such as Eudora or Outlook Express. Only if SMTP or IMAP support is enabled you can use this option. Hence check if SMTP support is provided.

9. SPAM ASSASIN – No email user is free from a spam attack. Hence you need to have Spam Filters installed on the server where your website resides.

10. IP – If your website requires SSL Support (https ://), make sure you get a DEDICATED IP. Most of the websites are hosted on shared IPs. Ask your Hosting Provider about the extra charges involved in getting a dedicated IP and SSL Support. Note: For SSL (https ://), you need to buy a Digital Certificate.

These are the basic ingredients of Linux hosting plans.Choosing your hosting provider is perhaps the most crucial element in the success of your website. You need a good hosting partner for hosting your well-designed web pages on the server to be viewed by your potential customers. The right web partners help you to get good footing on the net from the very start of your small-business, be it in the terms of building your brand image and presence, search engine optimization or providing small business hosting solutions.

Summary – Choosing your hosting provider is perhaps the most crucial element in the success of your website. You need a good hosting partner for hosting your well-designed web pages on the server to be viewed by your potential customers.

Once your website has been created, it is time to make it go live on the internet. In order to do so, you will need a hosting plan. A hosting plan is different from a domain name. You own your domain name but you rent a hosting plan. A hosting plan in it’s simplest terms is paying a company to broadcast your website onto the internet. This article covers what to look for in a hosting plan.

SERVICE The number one thing to look for in a hosting plan is service. It does not matter that a multitude of features are offered or if the price is low if the service you will be getting with your hosting plan is sub par or even worse, nonexistent. Once your website is live on the internet you will want it to be up all the time. Therefore should a problem occur it is important to select a hosting provider that is readily available and will resolve the issue in as timely a manner as possible.

UPTIME What is the hosting company’s “uptime guarantee”. Many guarantee 99% uptime for their servers. That sounds great, but it does mean that your site could go down for 1% of the time, which means over 7 hours out of each month! If you can, choose a host guaranteeing 99.9 uptime.

SIZE How large is your site? Most sites do not require much space but if you’re planning on having a large site with a lot of multimedia content or an ecommerce site selling multiple items, you’ll probably need additional disk space.

DESIGN How was your Web site designed? For example, if you designed a website using ASP or ASP.NET, you’ll need to find a Windows hosting plan. If you have a Web site that uses CGI or PHP, you’ll need to get a Linux hosting plan. For the novice user who is building a simple website the above may not be a consideration at first, but may become important later on as you become more experienced and add more features to your website.

TRAFFIC How much traffic or how many visitors do you expect monthly? The more visitors or traffic you expect on your site, the higher the bandwidth you will need.

At http://www.startmywebsitetoday.com we offer 99.7% guaranteed uptime and service 24/7, and a variety of shared hosting, virtual dedicated hosting, and dedicated hosting plans with either Linux or Windows operating systems for every need and budget ranging from the small personal website to large online multimedia sites to those interested in ecommerce website building. Check us out HERE.

Now that you are ready to build a new website or blog, your next step is to find yourself a web hosting company that suits the needs of your project. When you start searching for a new web hosting provider you should review all aspects of their web hosting plans carefully. Here are a few of the most important things to consider when selecting a web hosting plan:

Pricing: Web hosting does not need to be very expensive thanks to an extremely competitive industry. Although pricing should not always be the main concern when choosing a web hosting plan, there are some affordable hosting options available for just a few dollars per month and these can be a good entry point for a new site.

Scalability: Once your web site begins to gain popularity you may need to consider upgrading your hosting plan to a more powerful one. This is why it’s a good idea to choose a web host who offers an upgrade path form basic hosting all the way up to VPS or even dedicated plans. your host should be able to upgrade your hosting plan quickly and without any down-time.

Reliability: The reliability of your new web hostin plan is extremely important since this may effect the availability of your website due to potential server down-time. If the web host you select is always down or the connections are slow then it can impact your business and profits. Review the up-time percentage record the web host has listed on their website. You may also find that some web hosts provide you with an up-time tracker so you can monitor the up-time of their servers.

Customer service and support: You should ensure that the web hosting provider you decide to go with is easily accessible via email, live chat or telephone, preferably 24 hours a day. Some web hosts will advertise this on their site, but unfortunatly some will not always honor it. Before committing to any web host, it’s a good idea to send a test email or two to their support staff to ensure they respond quickly and helpfully to your inquiry. Another good test is to call them outside normal business hours to see if someone is available to answer your query. This can give you a good indication of what service level you can expect should you decide to host with the company.

Hosting plan features: When selecting a new web host, always review the features they offer on their site thoroughly. You should not assume that the web host provides all the features you are looking for. Go through their features list in detail and if there is a particular feature you require, and it

As hosting plans have evolved to new levels of competitiveness, so also reseller hosting is making giant advances. The term ‘reseller hosting’ may seem a little ambiguous. But, it basically means that a reseller buys a web hosting package from a merchant and sells this independently. The seller makes a profit from the discount that the merchant offers. As the number of customers increases, the reseller will be able to make larger profit margins. Many merchants offer commission when sellers refer customers to the merchant.

Windows reseller hosting plans are basically the resale of windows based hosting plans. Both Linux and Windows are equal players in the web-hosting arena. But, windows reseller hosting plans have some definite advantages, which makes it a popular choice among many customers. Here are some of the reasons why many customers switch over to windows reseller hosting plans.

Powerful, user-friendly tools: Windows, from the time of its inception, has always valued customer friendliness above all else. Thus, a Windows platform is very easy to use, with customer friendly options and tools. Besides, a windows reseller hosting plan also gives you access to ASP.Net, which is a very powerful tool when it comes to developing web based applications. With ASP.Net, you will also be able to use popular content management systems like DotNetNuke. It is true that ASP scripting runs on UNIX platforms, but you would still not have full access to all the powerful features of ASP.Net as this has been developed for full Windows compatibility. On the other hand, you can run applications written in other languages. So, you still have access to Php and MySql, if you need them.

Associated tools: Windows reseller hosting plans gives you access to a number of products like ActiveSync and SharePoint. These tools help you consolidate your marketing position and bring in huge, recurrent dividends, in the long run. Windows reseller hosting plans also provide you with free access to MS SQL, a comprehensive, all-inclusive, data management tool. This business solution allows businesses to organize and analyze critical information while ensuring confidentiality. Your Windows reseller hosting plan makes you eligible to own the fastest growing database tool in the business.

Easy to use: Windows control panel is easy to use and provides you with an all-in-one solution. So, when the number of clients increases, you do not need to keep multiple accounts, which is the case with Linux systems.

Windows reseller hosting plans are popular because the Windows Control Panel makes use of a clustered Directory Technology. Thus, you have access to enterprise solutions right from the start.

These are some of the reasons why resellers find it very profitable to sell Windows reseller hosting plans. These plans allow them to sell their customers solutions that they require, at competitive rates.Windows reseller hosting plans ensure higher customer satisfaction and give clients the ultimate opportunity to utilize a full pack of cutting edge technologies.