You embed or add a pdf document much the same way you add an image:

1. However instead of clicking on the first “Add An Image” icon, you click on the last one “Add Media”. It looks like a little dot with spikes, like a star.

2. Next, just like adding an image, you click on “Select Files” and navigate to your PDF file.

3. Change the title to something obvious like “Click Here to Download Blah”, so that folks will know what will happen when they click on the link.

4. Be sure to click “File URL” under the “Link URL” section.

5. Then click “Insert Into Post”.

Here’s a screen shot of the “Add Media” window with the important parts circled in red:

He starts out with the most important things to focus on:

• Permalinks (I always do this)
• Titles (yup, this too)
• Descriptions (um, don’t really do this at all for my posts)
• More text (who new you could change this!)
• Image Optimization (those pesky alt tags!)

Enjoy!

Here’s what I saw:

How scary is that?

A few minutes later it changed to this:

A little less scary. But then it changed back to all red. So I send my hosting company, DreamHost, a support ticket to see what’s up. I’m not sure if it’s a hosting issue, or an Akismet issue, but will update this post when I find out.

…sending happy healthy thoughts to the Akismet server…

UPDATE:

DreamHost tech support said that they had some network issues earlier, but it should be resolved now. Sure enough, I went back into Akismet Configuration, rechecked the servers (had to click the button) and they were all green.

So the lesson learned is, if you have Akismet protecting your WordPress blog and it suddenly stops working, check the Network Status via the Akismet Configuration, and if it’s red, contact your hosting company to fix it.

This tidbit of information is so valuable, that I want to capture it here so that if the other person removes it, I’ll still have it. The article was found on the Cyberstarweb.com website, and is entitled: “How to position a page within an iframe using CSS“. Just a brilliant solution that uses an outerdiv (that controls the size of the iframe) and an inner div (that controls the positioning on the framed page):

#outerdiv
{
width:446px;
height:246px;
overflow:hidden;
position:relative;
}

#inneriframe
{
position:absolute;
top:-412px;
left:-318px;
width:1280px;
height:1200px;
}
<div id=’outerdiv’>
<iframe src=”http://www.websitethatisinsideframe.com/” id=’inneriframe’ scrolling=no></iframe>
</div>

This blog article is a personal one, and since I don’t have a personal blog, I’m writing it here, in the hopes that some of my readers are in Washington state and don’t know about Ref 71 that’s on this November’s ballot. For those of you outside Washington state who enjoy reading my blog, I’d appreciate you considering making a donation to help this referendum pass, as it directly impacts my family.

My partner and I are registered domestic partners in Washington. This gives us all kinds of rights that will generally only be needed if something bad happens, like one of us ends up in the hospital. If, heaven forbid, that happened, I would be treated as her “family”, and she as mine, and we would be able to get access and care for each other. There are many other “benefits”, all of which, honestly, I hope we never have the occasion to use, but knowing that we are registered gives me great comfort.

Bad things happen sometimes. Kate Fleming was a lesbian in a long term relationship in Seattle who was killed by a bizarre flood. Her surviving partner, Charlene Strong, was denied the ability to see her in the hospital as she lay dying. Yes, it’s dramatic, but it’s the kind of story that keeps gay and lesbian couples awake at  night.

With our current Domestic Partnership Law, I’d be allowed to see my partner under these circumstances. There are many folks who believe allowing domestic partnerships for gay and lesbian couples somehow impacts other marriages and perhaps civilization itself. I don’t see how this is rational. What I do know, is that this law impacts me, and my family in a very concrete way.

So if you’re in Washington, please vote FOR referendum 71, and if you’re outside Washington, any donation you can make would be appreciated.

Here are some of the articles that I’ve found regarding Yelp and small business owners who claim they are being told that in exchange for money, Yelp will reduce negative reviews of the business on their  website. While I haven’t had any personal experience with Yelp, I think small business owners should at least be aware of these allegations.

“Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0″
East Bay Express News
“Local business owners say Yelp offers to hide negative customer reviews of their businesses on its web site … for a price.”

BEWARE: Yelp.com is a fraud!
ScottWorldBlog.WordPress.com
“Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to call your attention to a very nefarious website called yelp.com, which you should avoid at all costs.”

CrossFit East Bay Rest Day 090223: Yelp Is A Scam
Cross Fit East Bay Website
“I can confirm that Yelp has been incredibly aggressive in trying to get me to advertise, and has removed six five-star reviews of CFEB after I declined to advertise.”

“Yelp ‘pay to play’ pitch makes shops scream for help”
The Register
“Over the last years, five San Francisco Bay Area businesses have told The Register that the company has offered to “push bad reviews to the bottom” of their Yelp pages if they paid to advertise on the site.”

1. Set up an email address like “ssladmin@yourdomain.com”
During the purchase process, GeoTrust will give you a bunch of email choices and you’ll need to have this set up in advance.

2. Obtain your CSR
CSR stands for “Certificate Signing Request“. It’s a big string of code that your web hosting company generates using a “key”. It’s available inside DreamHost’s control panel. They’ve moved things around a bit so I’m reluctant to detail the steps, but it’s under Domains -> Secure Hosting. It will look something like this:

—–BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST—–
huge bunch of letters,numbers, characters, etc
—–END CERTIFICATE REQUEST—–

3. Purchase your SSL certificate from GeoTrust.
I usually get the Quick SSL Premium. As part of the purchase process, you’ll be asked to paste in the CSR from step #2, so have it handy. You’ll also be asked to select an email address that GeoTrust will send an approval to – so make sure you’ve completed step #1 first. Once you’re done paying, you’ll get an email asking for your approval. Once you approve it, you’ll get an email with the certificate code.

4. Give certificate code to DreamHost.
Add the certificate code to the appropriate location inside DreamHost’s control panel. It will be in the same place that you found the CSR code. Follow the steps to complete the SSL process. If you have issues, submit a support ticket to DreamHost and they’ll help you fix whatever’s broken. They’re quite helpful.

5. Check the SSL installation.
I usually do several things to check the installation. First, I go to the website but add “s” onto http, so you go to “https://yourwebsite.com”. Look for any error messages and make sure you see a padlock somewhere in your browser indicating a secure certificate has been found. If all looks good, then I contact GeoTrust and ask them to check the installation for me as well. I’ve used both their online chat service and their email service to do this. Once they give me the OK, I’m done!

I have an iPhone and I love it. But recently I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease which means I need to avoid any foods that have gluten (wheat, rye, barley). It’s tricky and very time consuming to navigate a grocery store now, with all of the hidden sources of gluten in processed foods. Did you know that “brown rice syrup” can contain wheat? But a company called MidLifeCrisisApps.com has come out with an iPhone app that makes my life much easier: Is That Gluten Free?

I’ve been using the “Is That Gluten Free?” iPhone app for a month now, and just upgraded to the latest version of 1.1.1. The developers are quick to answer emails with suggestions for adding new items.

Not only does it help you when you’re shopping in a grocery store, it can also help you avoid trouble when eating over at a friend’s house. Just this weekend, we were getting ready to eat dinner and the hostess asked us about some Parmesan cheese in a can. I looked at the ingredients on the can, but didn’t recognize some of the chemical names – so I just whipped out my iPhone and opened the “Is That Gluten Free?” app, and looked up the ingredients. They were fine, and the hostess was happy and the meal was stress free.

So today, I just wanted to say thanks to the folks at MidLife Crisis Apps for making this great iPhone gluten-free app that is making my life a lot easier and giving me yet another reason to love my iPhone.

As part of the process of giving folks a cost range for their website projects, they often mention that they want a newsletter. I wanted to review the different approaches that can be taken when trying to integrate a newsletter into a small business website.

There are many different ways to integrate a newsletter into your website and I’ll be covering some of the methods that my clients have used successfully with pros and cons of each approach. One of the things to understand about a newsletter, is that part of the process is creating the newsletter, while another part is sending it out. Another part is how to get folks to subscribe and how to manage that subscriber list. Each of these aspects needs to be taken into consideration when thinking about how best to implement a newsletter on your website.

Here are some of the ways my clients have implemented newsletters on their websites, in order of cost.

1. Using a subscription form and manually sending out emails.
Adding a standard HTML form on a website is easy and when someone fills out the HTML form, it simply sends the website owner an email. When the owner gets the email, they add the sender to their newsletter list, usually a distribution list in their mail application.
Pros: Very simple and low cost
Cons: Clients need to spend time manually managing their newsletter distribution lists. If  they send out too many emails, their accounts might be suspended. The formatting of the newsletters is done by clients’ mail applications.

2. Using a hosting company based “distribution list”.
Some web hosting companies (click here to see DreamHost’s) have a distribution list feature. This requires setting up a few pages on a website that incorporate subscription and un-subscription code. Newsletters are sent out via the hosting company’s control panel.
Pros: Fairly simple and low cost. Subscriptions are managed automatically.
Cons: Your hosting company has to offer this. There will be limits on the amount of messages you can send out in a given time unit. The formatting is controlled by the hosting company control panel.

3. Installing your own newsletter software
You can also install your own newsletter software on your website. This will require the creation of a database to store your subscribers. Some online stores have this capability and will integrate a newsletter feature with the purchase process.
Pros: Moderate cost. Subscriptions managed automatically. No monthly fees.
Cons: Need to find appropriate software and someone to install it. Learning curve required for clients understand how to write and send newsletters. May still need to limit number of emails sent and received to avoid email server shutdown.

4. Using a third party newsletter or email marketing solution.
A good example this is Constant Contact or My Emma. You sign up for an account, pick a plan, and then add a little snippet of code to your website. Many of them have nice templates you can customize to make your newsletters appear professional. The email list lives within the third party’s database, and their email servers are used to send out your messages.
Pros: Easy to set up, automatically subscription management, no worries about having your own email account shut down, templates available.
Cons: Monthly fee.

Summary

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve got clients who use all four of these newsletter or email marketing strategies. From their feedback, the ones that seem to use #3 (using an online store integrated solution) and #4 (third party) are the ones that send out the most newsletters and get the most benefit. If you’re not too tech savvy, then I’d simply recommend using a third party newsletter or email marketing service. Although it requires a monthly fee, you don’t have to send out emails from your own email server, which is a big plus, meaning you are not limited in the number of emails you can send. They also manage subscriptions automatically, letting folks subscribe and unsubscribe directly, without your involvement. Happy newslettering!

The vast majority picked the contact form: 76% of potential customers contacted me via my contact form, while 24% contacted me via email. This data was collected over the month of July of 2009 and covers a total of 37 inquiries. It does not include folks who contacted me by phone, but typically this is less than 1 per week. This would indicate that potential customers are three times more likely to use my embedded contact form than they are to click on my email address. To see what my contact form looks like, click here.

Let’s example possible reasons why this might be happening.

Reasons why people might like contact forms better than email

1. Less Thinking Required

When you fill out my contact form, you fill in fields that I’ve set up for you to fill in. You fill in your name, your email, your phone, your contact preference, and your question/comments. Very little thinking is required. But when you send me an email, you have to create a subject, an introduction, a closing, and remember to add whatever contact information you want to put down.

2. Don’t Have To Leave The Page and Open Another Application

When you use my online contact form and hit “submit”, you’re done. You stay on my website and get a nice friendly thank you message.  But if you send me an email, you first have to actually have an email application installed and configured. If this is done, then it will open automatically when you click on my email address. However, if this isn’t set up, then you need to carefully copy and paste my email address from my website into your mail application. Too much work!

3. Faster

As long as I haven’t required folks to fill out a lengthy form, it’s much faster for them to fill in fields and hit submit. Contact forms should be kept as short as possible for ease of use.

Reasons why I prefer contact forms versus email

1. Spam prevention: My contact form has math captcha built in – meaning that I get zero automated spam via my contact form. Not so with my email address.

2. Field Validation: I require certain information to be sent – email addresses and phone numbers are required – so that I can actually contact people back. Not so with some of the emails I get.

3. IP Address: When folks fill out my contact form, I capture their IP addresses. This way I can find out what city they are in, and actually match their visit to my website traffic tracking system, and see where they went on my website before I contact them back. Knowing what they’ve already viewed on my website makes our conversation more efficient.

4. I get to say “Thanks” right away. When folks hit “submit” on my contact form, they are automatically redirected to a page were I say “thanks for contacting me” and offer them links to some helpful blog articles. If they send me email, they get nothing until I respond to their email.

So for all these reasons, I always put contact forms on the websites I develop, in addition to providing email addresses and phone numbers. For my business, this has proven to be the way prospective clients prefer to make their initial contact. It’s possible that your business may be different, but unless you put all three (contact form, email, phone) on your website, you may be missing out on giving prospective clients a way to contact you that’s easiest for them.

The solution: use a desktop mail application.

Having a desktop mail application is like having your own personal delivery person whose job it is to go and retrieve all of your email from where ever it may be and delivery it right to your desktop.

I’ve tried to create a picture below that describes how using a mail application to retrieve and delivery mail from various web mail accounts works. When you have web mail, whether it’s using one from your ISP (Internet Service Provider) like Comcast, or whether it’s from a free web mail service like Google, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail, or whether it’s from your website’s domain – all of them reside on different web mail servers. Each has it’s own separate place on the web that you need to go to, login with a different userid and password, and different interface that allows you to read new mail and send mail.

There are many disadvantages of having to check, one by one, each different email account – the waste of time, confusion, having to learn each different web mail interface…and the worst of all, the time delay that a potential new customer experiences when they send mail to a mailbox that no one is checking regularly.

Here’s the picture of web mail versus using a mail application:

The desktop mail application does the work for you. It remembers where the different web mail accounts are, each of their userid’s and passwords, and constantly monitors them to check to see whether new mail has arrived. It also allows you to reply and send emails out via each web mail account with separate “from” addresses that match that account and signatures. It keeps your personal and business emails separate – but integrates them into one, simple application that you view on your desktop.

There are many mail applications out there. Most of my clients seem to use Outlook. I’m on a Mac, and I prefer to use Thunderbird, which is free. Thunderbird retrieves email from my three separate email accounts (one business, two personal) and puts them into one nicely organized inbox. It continuously checks my mail accounts for me, and makes a noise whenever new mail arrives. I send and reply to my different email accounts from one place, without ever having to login to anything.

Using Thunderbird, or any other mail application, will greatly simplify your email life, and it’s something I highly recommend to all of my website clients. Even if you only have one web mail account, it will save you time and frustration.

When Luis contacted me for help with his website, he was in awful shape. He was getting around 2 visitors  a day, around 60 visitors a month. He was having trouble with his current web designer, who was also hosting his website and over-charging him. We moved his website to DreamHost, installed a traffic tracking tool, and set about working on SEO. I did my best to educate Luis as to the rules of the SEO game, and after a few months, Luis agreed to install a blog to further add unique relevant content to his website. The results are amazing, and today, he emailed me a picture of his most recent stats:

Last September, he had 256 visitors. This July, he had 1,742. That’s an increase of nearly 700%!

This increase is a result of following Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, good basic SEO principles, and adding lots of unique relevant content. It’s also a result of the website owner, Luis, carefully watching his website stats and continually using the data to improve his website.

As you can see, working together as partners, we’ve done good job at improving his website traffic. And it’s not just traffic, Luis has gotten many new clients because of the SEO work we’ve done – remember, SEO is not just about rankings or traffic, but about getting new clients and customers for your small business. Before you hire someone to do SEO on your website, ask to see real data from past clients!

1. Make sure domain names are purchased.
I’m assuming that you’ve already purchased your domain names from DreamHost.com.
If you purchased the domain through another domain registrar, you’ll need to modify the 3 DNS (Domain Name Server) settings to point to DreamHost:
ns1.dreamhost.com
ns2.dreamhost.com
ns3.dreamhost.com

2. Host your new domain names at DreamHost.com
Domains -> Manage Domains->Add New Domain
Domain to host: fill in
How do you like the www in your URL: add “www.”
Uncheck Google Apps and Gmail
Leave all other choices at default
Click “Fully host this domain now”

3. Install WordPress
Goodies->One-Click Installs ->Install new website software-Advanced mode
Select Wordpress
Install to: select right domain. Can elect to put in subdirectory, which is optional. If the entire website is a blog, don’t put in subdirectory. If website is already there, put in subdirectory (like “blog”).
Create a new database
Make up a database name
Use existing hostname – pick domain
First user: make one up
Password: make one up
Click “install it for me now”
In 10 minutes, you’ll receive email from DreamHost; follow instructions in that email to complete installation process. Make sure you save original admin login password! Yes, you can change it later.

4. Choose a theme
Log in to Wordpress admin area.
Click on Appearance.
Choose a theme, see preview.
If you like it, click “activate” in upper right hand corner.
Note, themes are made by other people and there is no guarantee they will function correctly. Be sure to fully test any theme for functionality.

These are the basic steps to setting up a WordPress blog on DreamHost, assuming you have purchased your domain name from DreamHost and already have a hosting account set up with them.

Here’s what I look for and what I found:

1. Professional – the website was professionally designed

2. Content – the content was well written

3. Company Info – I was unable to quickly find any information that gave me details about the company. Namely I look for a phone number, a mailing address, an email based on the website domain – none of this was available.

4. Person Responsible – I was unable to find out WHO is running this company – there was no name of anyone affiliated with the company anywhere.

5. Red Flags – I found that on the company’s main contact page, they were collecting all kinds of personal information, including social security numbers and net worth details. This page was not secure, meaning that it didn’s have “https” and that this information was being sent unencrypted. It seems incredible to me that people would be asked to submit this kind of very personal information to a website that had no easy way to identify who the information was being sent to. Really scary stuff here.

Due to my workload I declined the project, and gave this same feedback to the website owner.

If you’re considering doing business with someone and the only information you have to evaluate them is their website, it’s important you review that website in detail. Look for generic sounding “About Us” pages that really give you no concrete or verifiable information about the company. Look for missing phone numbers, missing address info, missing or generic (free) email accounts. Try to find the name of a real person associated with the business. Lastly, look for any red flags that might suggest less than good intentions, like collecting very personal information (credit card info, social security info) that’s being send over unencrypted (http not https) connection. While all of these issues can certainly be present on a completely reputable and valid business website, they are also markers of a business that can easily disappear without a trace. Be careful out there!

Since my client has her domain ownership kept private by DreamHost, the email was sent to clientdomainname.com@proxy.dreamhost.com. The email was from: erica.bucker@blueridgehosting.com and the subject was “domain clientsdomainname”.

Here’s the email, with my client’s actual domain name replaced by “clientdomainname.com”:

Dear owner of clientdomain.com,

I noticeded [sic] that your domain “clientdomain.com” expires in a few weeks, which means that it is going to be publicly available soon. I’d like to buy this domain name before it expires.

I assume that you are not interested in keeping it for yourself.

I can buy this domain for $60 plus any renewal related expenses. What do you think?

Erica Buckner,
erica.buckner@blueridgehosting.com

As I mentioned, I emailed Erica and also filled out a contact form for Blue Ridge Hosting asking whether there was someone named Erica working there and why they were trying to purchase one of my client’s domain names – neither method resulted in a reply. I looked up BlueRidgeHosting.com and the whois info said it was in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

You may be asking, how did they know that the domain was going to expire soon? Domain name expiration dates are public information. This is why, if you intend to keep your domain name, you set your domain registration to “auto renew” so that no one can grab it if it happens to expire and you forget to renew it manually. My client had it set to “auto renew” but it hadn’t renewed itself yet.

I can only speculate why this person, whoever they are, is attempting to purchase one of my client’s domains for a measly $60 – we’re talking about a very well established business with a high amount of website traffic and many sales. It makes no sense, unless it’s some kind of scam, or perhaps a competitor? I have no idea, but just in case some of you out there have received the same email, I wanted to post it here, because you can’t be too careful.

And when you get strange emails regarding your website, it’s always best to ask your web designer or do some research yourself before answering. There are lots of scam artists out there trying to take advantage of small business owners who have websites.

If I hear from the person or someone else from the company, I’ll post it here to let you know the outcome.

We called the number here:

10800 NE 8th St, Suite 600
Bellevue, WA 98004
Tel: 425-586-6000

But the recording said they were closed for the holiday.

UPDATE: 7/3/09 8:24am

We’ve tried unsuccessfully to contact Wells Fargo and whenever they transfer us to Authorize.net, the line is busy. We did manage to reach a Wells Fargo person who said they have been in contact with Authorize.net this morning and that there was some kind of power outage. The representative said she didn’t know when they could be back up.

UPDATE: 7/3/09 8:27am

From http://twitter.com/authorizenet

We apologize for this disruption and ask for your patience as we work with the team at our datacenter to restore service.

We are down due to a fire at our primary data center in Seattle. We are working to restore services, but no ETA at this time.

UPDATE: 7/3/09 11:13am

My client tells me that her Authorize.net is back up and her online store is working again.

From http://twitter.com/authorizenet

Transactions are up except for Global processing and Concord. No ETA on those, but we are working on in.

The email came from: Sunny with an address of Sunny@ntwifinetwork.com

To whom it may concern: 2009-5-27
We are a domain name registration service company in Asia,
Last week we received a formal application submited by Justin Lin who
wanted to use the keyword “_[yourdomainnamehere]_” to register the Internet Brand
and with suffix such as .cn /.com.cn /.net.cn/.hk/ .asia/ domain names.

After our initial examination, we found that these domain names to be
applied for registration are same as your domain name and trademark.
We aren’t sure whether you have any relation with him. Because these
domain names would produce possible dispute, now we have hold down his
registration, but if we do not get your company’s an reply in the next
5 working days, we will approve his company’s application
In order to handle this issue better, Please contact us by Fax
,Telephone or Email as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely
Sunny
Checking Department
Tel: 86 513 8532 2060
Fax: 86 513 8532 2065
Email:Sunny@ntwifinetwork.com
Website: www.ntwifinetwork.com

Sounds plausible? What a nice thoughtful domain registration company to let someone know when another person tries to purchase domain names similar to theirs. Except it seems to be just a scam, an attempt to get you to register domain names you don’t need.

Here’s an article on this topic that my client found on ScamWarners.com. It’s the nearly identical email spam/scam except it’s  from “Treey, Attorney at law of Legal Department”. Both emails are from ntwifinetwork.com.

Another article that discusses a similar scam attempt, but with a different company: Asia Domain Name Registration Limited. Here’s the article: Asia Domain Name Registration scam. In this case, the recipient of the email responded and was encouraged to pay between $140 – $840 for five years for each domain registration. Keep in mind domain registration is typically around $10 per year. So they were attempting to lure the email respondent into paying over 16 times more than the normal price for domain name that they didn’t need or want.

Here are some additional links that describe similar scam attempts:

Asia Domain Name Registration Limited – Scam
Asian Domain Name Fraud Warning
Asia Domain Name Registration scam

Be careful out there!

The name of this article is “On Horizontal CSS Centering using Absolute Positioning or how Relative Positioning can rock your css.”

In this case, I had a client’s website where they wanted these overlapping regions of content, so I had to use DIV’s to make this happen. I used the “z-index”, which worked just like it was supposed to, even in Internet Explorer.

But if you use this method, you run into an issue if you use “relative” positioning. You have to use negative “top” numbers to push up the overlapping divs, which naturally fall to the bottom. This leaves these big regions of emptiness at the bottom of the page, which looked terrible. So I changed to “absolute” positioning and was able to use normal, positive “top” values.

My next problem, is that my client wanted her website centered. But using “absolute” fixes things on the page, so that when you stretch your window wider, everything stays put. I needed it to move and recenter.

So this is where this lovely blog article written by “Candy by James” comes to my rescue. I’ll reprint the part that was most useful to me:

.wrapper {
position:relative;
margin:0 auto;
text-align:left;
width:whatever;
}

For good measure, you’ll need to apply the IE fix:
body { text-align:center; }

Then he uses this for the content:

.content {
position: absolute;
left: whatever;
top: whatever;

width: whatever;
}

Change the body tag, create wrapper, and then content inside it, and it will magically auto-center while letting you use absolute divs inside. I’ve tested this on PC (Firefox, IE7) and Mac (Safari, Firefox) and it works like a charm. Thank you James!

Long ago, my client had once opened a SuperPages.com account and started a pay-per-click campaign. She put the pay-per-click campaign in a “paused” state several years ago and forgot about it.

But then, she received an email recently that said SuperPages.com was actually billing her $20 per month since October 2008. She was surprised to see these charges were indeed showing up on her business credit card. SuperPages.com told her that they changed their policy in October 2008, to begin charging a monthly fee on paused pay-per-click campaigns, even though customers were not actually getting any clicks – because the campaign was paused, inactive, dead, you get the idea. The client’s credit card was getting charged $20 each month, month after month, no clicks.

My client called SuperPages.com provided by an online chat session (1-866-478-2611) and was successful in getting all of the credit card charges refunded (as of the writing of this article, this hasn’t been completed yet, but SuperPages.com has promised).

SuperPages.com’s parent company, Idearc Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2009. It seems that it would be prudent for folks who might find themselves in this situation to a) carefully review their credit card statements to look for charges and b) if they indeed have been accruing monthly fees for a paused pay-per-click account, contact SuperPages.com to ask for a refund. Time might be running out.

“Computer security specialists warn that Facebook users have been hit with a series of data-stealing attacks in the past week as cyber crooks increasingly stalk social-networking websites. This attacked is called 419 Scam.”

Here’s the link: http://webcastr.com/videos/informational/facebook-cyber-crooks-target.html

Anytime someone contacts you via the internet asking for money, whether it’s via email or via a social networking site like Facebook, it’s a good idea to be skeptical and attempt to verify directly with the individual – even if the individual is someone you think you know.