Jeber's Tech Blog

When you click "print"...

2012-02-01T19:13:00.000-08:00

Here's what happens:

1. The software application you are using sends the data to be printed to the printer driver.
2. The driver translates the data into a format that the printer can understand and checks to see that the printer is online and available to print.
3. The data is sent by the driver from the computer to the printer via the connection interface (parallel, USB, etc.).
4. The printer receives the data from the computer. It stores a certain amount of data in a buffer. The buffer can range from 512 KB random access memory (RAM) to 16 MB RAM, depending on the model. Buffers are useful because they allow the computer to finish with the printing process quickly, instead of having to wait for the actual page to print. A large buffer can hold a complex document or several basic documents.
5. If the printer has been idle for a period of time, it will normally go through a short clean cycle to make sure that the print head(s) are clean. Once the clean cycle is complete, the printer is ready to begin printing.
6. The control circuitry activates the paper feed stepper motor. This engages the rollers, which feed a sheet of paper from the paper tray/feeder into the printer. A small trigger mechanism in the tray/feeder is depressed when there is paper in the tray or feeder. If the trigger is not depressed, the printer lights up the “Out of Paper” LED and sends an alert to the computer.
7. Once the paper is fed into the printer and positioned at the start of the page, the print head stepper motor uses the belt to move the print head assembly across the page. The motor pauses for the merest fraction of a second each time that the print head sprays dots of ink on the page and then moves a tiny bit before stopping again. This stepping happens so fast that it seems like a continuous motion.
8. Multiple dots are made at each stop. It sprays the CMYK colors in precise amounts to make any other color imaginable.
9. At the end of each complete pass, the paper feed stepper motor advances the paper a fraction of an inch. Depending on the inkjet model, the print head is reset to the beginning side of the page, or, in most cases, simply reverses direction and begins to move back across the page as it prints.
10. This process continues until the page is printed. The time it takes to print a page can vary widely from printer to printer. It will also vary based on the complexity of the page and size of any images on the page. For example, a printer may be able to print 16 pages per minute (PPM) of black text but take a couple of minutes to print one, full-color, page-sized image.
11. Once the printing is complete, the print head is parked. The paper feed stepper motor spins the rollers to finish pushing the completed page into the output tray. Most printers today use inks that are very fast-drying, so that you can immediately pick up the sheet without smudging it.
And all you had to do was click on "print".

Beware: Win 7 Security 2012 malware

2011-12-31T16:58:00.000-08:00

I'm reading a lot of reports of infection by Win 7 Security 2012 in the last couple of weeks.

This malware is so over-the-top malicious that it leaves no doubt your system is infected. It shuts off your anti-virus program and Windows Firewall as well as removes registry settings for Security Center. Then it pops up a fictitious security warning every time you try to open your browser or Windows Explorer.

This is not an easy virus to clean up.

The best solution I've seen so far are the instructions on this site.

Win 7 Security 2012 is a variant of the 2012 name-changing rogue program that changes its name randomly depending on the version of Windows it is installed on. This guide will cover the variant of the 2012 name changing rogue called Win 7 Security 2012. This rogue is promoted in two ways. The first is through the use of fake online antivirus scanners that state that your computer is infected and then prompt you to download a file that will install the infection. The other method are hacked web sites that attempt to exploit vulnerabilities in programs that you are running on your computer to install the infection without your knowledge or permission.

When installed, this rogue pretends to be a security update for Windows installed via Automatic Updates. It will then install itself as a single executable that has a random name consisting of three characters, such as gln.exe, that uses very aggressive techniques to make it so that you cannot remove it. First, it makes it so that if you launch any executable it will instead start the Win 7 Security 2012 rogue and state that the executable you initially wanted to run is infected. It will also modify certain keys so that when you launch FireFox or Internet Explorer from the Window Start Menu it will launch the rogue instead and display a fake firewall warning stating that the program is infected.

If you go to the Win 7 Security 2012 website you'll see that they want $59 to "install" their anti-virus program. Don't do it. They'll just infect your system even worse. Their methods are little better than extortion, and your computer is the hostage.

Follow the step by step instructions at bleepingcomputer.com. The Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware scan will take a while, perhaps hours depending on the size of your drive and the number of files that have to be scanned, but let it run for however long it takes.

Once you've completed that removal routine your system will be free of the malware but you'll still be missing your Windows Firewall and Security Center. The only sure fix I've found for this is to restore your system to a date before the infection. I've seen this work but only if you've enabled System Restore. If for any reason you've disabled System Restore you may need to do a repair re-installation of Windows. Instructions for that can be found here.

Copiers and printers can put personal information at risk

2011-12-30T16:19:00.000-08:00

Most people who own a printer don't give it much thought.

It most likely was provided for free when they purchased a computer. Perhaps it was purchased for business use or leased from a printer supplier. Either way there's a reason printers, copiers and fax machines are referred to as peripheral devices. They aren't primary devices like a computer, their purpose is to augment the capabilities of the primary devices.

They aren't only peripheral to our computers, they all too often are peripheral to our attention. We don't often consider them a source of vulnerability to our networks, even to ourselves. More often printers, especially networked printers, can be used to compromise our security.

At a warehouse in New Jersey, 6,000 used copy machines sit ready to be sold. CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports almost every one of them holds a secret.

Nearly every digital copier built since 2002 contains a hard drive – like the one on your personal computer – storing an image of every document copied, scanned, or emailed by the machine.

In the process, it’s turned an office staple into a digital time-bomb packed with highly-personal or sensitive data.

If you’re in the identity theft business it seems this would be a pot of gold.

“The type of information we see on these machines with the social security numbers, birth certificates, bank records, income tax forms,” John Juntunen said, “that information would be very valuable.”

“Nobody wants to step up and say, ‘we see the problem, and we need to solve it,’” Juntunen said.

This past February, CBS News went with Juntunen to a warehouse in New Jersey, one of 25 across the country, to see how hard it would be to buy a used copier loaded with documents. It turns out … it’s pretty easy.

Juntunen picked four machines based on price and the number of pages printed. In less than two hours his selections were packed and loaded onto a truck. The cost? About $300 each.

Until we unpacked and plugged them in, we had no idea where the copiers came from or what we’d find.

We didn’t even have to wait for the first one to warm up. One of the copiers had documents still on the copier glass, from the Buffalo, N.Y., Police Sex Crimes Division.

It took Juntunen just 30 minutes to pull the hard drives out of the copiers. Then, using a forensic software program available for free on the Internet, he ran a scan – downloading tens of thousands of documents in less than 12 hours.

The results were stunning: from the sex crimes unit there were detailed domestic violence complaints and a list of wanted sex offenders. On a second machine from the Buffalo Police Narcotics Unit we found a list of targets in a major drug raid.

The third machine, from a New York construction company, spit out design plans for a building near Ground Zero in Manhattan; 95 pages of pay stubs with names, addresses and social security numbers; and $40,000 in copied checks.

But it wasn’t until hitting “print” on the fourth machine – from Affinity Health Plan, a New York insurance company, that we obtained the most disturbing documents: 300 pages of individual medical records. They included everything from drug prescriptions, to blood test results, to a cancer diagnosis. A potentially serious breach of federal privacy law.

“You’re talking about potentially ruining someone’s life,” said Ira Winkler. “Where they could suffer serious social repercussions.”

Winkler is a former analyst for the National Security Agency and a leading expert on digital security.

“You have to take some basic responsibility and know that these copiers are actually computers that need to be cleaned up,” Winkler said.

If you own a digital copier you owe it to yourself and your customers to read the full article. Don’t let your electronics compromise your security.

You may also want to read about "One of the most mind-blowing presentations at this year's Chaos Communications Congress (28C3)...Ang Cui's Print Me If You Dare, in which he explained how he reverse-engineered the firmware-update process for HPs hundreds of millions of printers. Cui discovered that he could load arbitrary software into any printer by embedding it in a malicious document or by connecting to the printer online." (Read it here)

Prepare for Facebook's Timeline

2011-12-19T09:46:00.000-08:00

It's a change that's coming to all users of Facebook, the Timeline.

Thomas Houston at The Verge has an excellent article on what the Timeline is and how to ensure your settings and security are set up just the way you want.

You're going to have to deal with it sooner or later — Timeline will be a mandatory change in the coming months — so get a jump start on the inevitable by heading to facebook.com/timeline. The point here is to help you manage the shock of a new design that makes your history more visible and easily accessible than ever before. Once you begin the process, you've only got seven days before your newly redesigned personal identity is published live, so enable when you've got some free time to tinker with your profile. It won't be visible by others until you hit publish or hit your seven day limit, and once it's published, there's no way to revert to the old profile. If you're like most of us, you — and your friends — have logged hundreds or thousands of status updates, photos, videos, events, and check-ins over the years, and Timeline throws it all onto a single page.

It's both exciting and terrifying. Facebook's built a browsable, visual history of your life without much effort on your part — aside from providing the content — and it's got much more of an immediate impact than any previous version of Facebook. Our friends, jobs, break-ups, late nights, hard times, great meals, and everything else we've documented will soon be laid out in reverse chronological order on what will be the world's biggest digital scrapbook — 800 million users strong — that we've been posting to and tweaking all along. It might feed late-night narcissistic binges where you spend hours highlighting your favorite photos and hiding questionable status updates from 2006 in order to present the best "you," or, as Zuckberg said at f8, "It's a new way to express who you are." Regardless, you'll probably need to consider how you want the new digital you displayed. Where in the past photos buried in galleries may have been shared with your friends, your data has never been this accessible.

Read the full article for valuable tips on configuring the Timeline to meet your needs and expectations.

I've been using it for a while now and admit I rather like the layout, though the two-pane view is confusing at times. Overall I think it's an interesting way to present your Facebook activity in a way that illustrates the progression of our lives and interests.

You may like it, you may hate it, either way you're going to have to deal with it if you intend to continue using Facebook. Let Thomas show you how to make it easy and safe to use.

By the way, that's Cleo my wonder(ful) dog in the image of my Facebook timeline above.

From G+ to the web

2011-11-27T13:25:00.001-08:00

Did you know you can post from Google+ to any blog or service that lets you post by email?

Just create a circle with a single member and use your "post by email address" as the email address for that member. Anything you share with that circle will be posted to the other service.

What? Again?

2011-10-09T17:47:00.000-07:00

Third time's a charm, right? I sure hope so.

This marks the third time in the last year I've had to republish this blog, but this time the reason is not the same as the last time.

As you may be aware I just left my last job and moved across country, from the West coast to the East. In part this was due to the job. I'd worked there for 7 years and, in addition to the complete lack of benefits, had nothing to work toward, no possibility of advancement, no future wage increases, no idea if the company would even survive for another year. It was a dead end job and the only reason I kept reporting for work every day was to keep a roof over my head and food on the table (for me) and the floor (for Cleo and the cats).

My best friend on the East coast had been urging me for months to get out of that job and San Diego. She had a room I could "borrow" until I got re-established in a less expensive, friendlier place.

A month or so ago I decided to take her up on her kind offer. At the end of September I loaded up the truck and a trailer and Cleo and I left town. 2606 miles and 5 days later we arrived at our new home a short distance South of Washington D.C.

Until I find another job I'm going to have to keep costs at a minimum. My 401K from Sam Goody was wiped out in the crash and I've exhausted nearly all my funds making this move. I sold everything I could before leaving. Now I need to find a way to generate an income.

In the meantime I have to reduce my expenditures as much as possible. This means I will have to give up domains that I have registered since I won't be able to cover the quarterly cost of renewing them.

In a way I'm glad to be forced into this. Word Press has been misbehaving for some time now and neither of my sites that use WP are fully functional. My primary web host (1&1) shows no signs of upgrading their hosting to the latest versions of PHP or MySQL, which means that all of us using them cannot upgrade to the latest version of WP. By moving both my blogs to Blogger I'll be eliminating the security vulnerabilities and outdated software issues that plague me currently. I'll also be saving a few bucks, and right now that's no small thing.

So welcome to the new home of Jeber's Tech Blog. I'll be changing over the URLs I have in signatures and on forums over the next few days. Change your bookmarks.

And as always I thank you who take a few minutes to read my blogs. Your suggestions, comments and insights are always welcome.

5 Ways to Avoid Getting Phished

2011-10-07T10:10:00.000-07:00

Another bit of phishing, spam intended to fool you into providing your user name and password, appears to be making the rounds.

New computer users can easily be tricked into giving away their credentials by these, as can even the most computer savvy person who doesn’t pay attention to a few clues that are common to this kind of spam. Watch for the following indications that you are being played.

A bogus return address. In this example Gmail only sees the part of the address just before the @ sign, “verifications”. It ignores the “google-” portion of the address. An authentic email from Google will always contain “google” as the final part of the address.
It asks you to click a link in the email instead of logging into your account. A legitimate warning from a service provider will instruct you to log into your account and make any changes from there.
They ask for your Username and Password. If this was authentic it wouldn’t ask for those. They would have sent this to the email address associated with your account, so obviously they would already know who you are.
Misspellings. Spammers are either lazy, too lazy to use spell-check, or are from countries where English is not their first language. Look for bad sentence construction, improper capitalization and misspellings. This example is full of all three.
You don’t use the services of the company contacting you. I can’t count the number of phishing schemes I’ve received that were supposedly sent from Wells Fargo, Bank of America, AOL mail and other companies that I don’t do business with. These should be obviously phony, but sometimes a person may think, “Oh, an account I forgot about”.

You should always ignore email like this, always, no exceptions. If you think this may be a real warning, log into your account at that site and look for a message from the site owners. Otherwise just delete the email and refrain from clicking any link in it. Some links in these emails could even include a virus or worm that will infect your computer. There’s simply no reason to click on any link in the email. Delete it and go check your account on the real website if you’re concerned.

(Note: the example is a real email making the rounds. Hat tip to Michael Lee Johnson at Google+for the heads-up)

TMI - It's a Problem for Everyone

2011-10-01T16:07:00.000-07:00

TMI, popular shorthand for “Too Much Information”, is usually used when someone shares a little too much personal information on the Internet. When Bill tells us how good sex was with Nancy last night; TMI. When Liz describes the new pimple she found on her ass this morning; TMI. But there are situations in which TMI is a problem in itself.

These days everywhere we go online offers us a flood of information. Google search offers links to thousands of web pages on any topic of interest to us. Popular news sites provide hundreds of links to today’s top story, cute kitten videos and the latest gossip out of Silicon Valley. It’s become the rare web page that doesn’t offer ads, links to other stories on the site, excerpts of external links, on and on. We are subjected to a constant and uncontrolled barrage of information on a daily basis.

TMI is a concept I’ve been thinking about for over 30 years. Back in the 70s I was assigned to the NSA as a member of the Army Security Agency. Even then, long before all the modern tools and techniques that exist now to intercept and collect data, there was an ongoing debate over how best to analyze and make use of all the data that flowed into the building every day from around the world. The situation had gotten so out of hand that there was a warehouse across the street from the headquarters building, the sole purpose of which was to store intercept recordings until the analysts could get to them. I’m not sure how extensive the backlog was, but I often heard it referred to in terms of months. If some highly sensitive data was intercepted in March, it might be November before we knew we had it.

Now I’m seeing the same sort of thing happen to individuals who access the net frequently. We are being buried under a flood of unfiltered information, so much that the truly important and significant info risks slipping right past us. So much that we can’t possibly process it all. So much that it may soon become useless.

Like Internet security, it’s a problem that isn’t going away and will only get worse in the future. One of our highest priorities has to be developing filters to ensure we can find and process the information we need without being blinded by all the other crap in our streams.

(Originally posted on Ayloo)

Cleaning the Windows Registry

2011-09-29T07:45:00.000-07:00

It’s inevitable. The longer you use your computer the slower it seems to run. And that impression is not entirely false. Over time Windows builds up a lot of junk, applications that fail to remove all their system entries when deleted and software that bloats your system. Even something as simple as adding a new printer to your system can leave behind orphaned drivers and manufacturer-specific software that the new printer cannot use. Eventually Windows slows to a crawl, overburdened with useless software and invalid entries in menus and the registry. Applications like Ccleaner can remove references to deleted programs from your system and improve overall performance. But when asking an application to remove entries from the registry, caution is required. Removing an empty folder from the C:\ drive won’t hurt a thing, removing a necessary key from the registry can make it impossible to even get Windows to boot up.

So what is the registry and why is it so critical?

Microsoft describes the registry as a “central hierarchical database used in Microsoft Windows 98, Windows CE, Windows NT, and Windows 2000 used to store information that is necessary to configure the system for one or more users, applications and hardware devices.

The Registry contains information that Windows continually references during operation, such as profiles for each user, the applications installed on the computer and the types of documents that each can create, property sheet settings for folders and application icons, what hardware exists on the system, and the ports that are being used.” (Microsoft) Microsoft’s TechNet adds, “In much of Microsoft’s documentation, the Microsoft® Windows® Registry is considered a central repository for configuration data. Just what does this mean? Well, I can’t think of any better way to put it than by stating that it’s simply a database for configuration files. The structure is hierarchical, meaning that configuration data is stored in order—much like a simple outline would be structured. Furthermore, each piece of data is stored in the outline as an order pair—that is, it has an associated name and a value assigned to it. It’s very much the way all of your online transactions are conducted. You’re assigned an account number (the name), and when you order, you’ve created a balance (the value).

The Registry serves dozens of innovative purposes, allowing features that were difficult, at best, to implement in previous versions of Windows. It keeps track of the software you install on the computer and how each program relates to the others.” (TechNet)

It would seem that cleaning out orphaned keys and unnecessary entries in the registry would be a worthwhile step in making a Windows system meaner and leaner. Yet because the registry is such a vital part of the Windows operating system extreme caution should be exercised when making any changes to it, whether you are adding or removing entries.

You can access the built-in Windows registry editor by typing regedit into the Command Prompt program. Before you do anything else, go to File/Export and save a backup copy of the registry to your desktop. That way if by any chance something corrupts your registry you can go toFile/Import and with some luck, restore your system to its current configuration. One very important thing to know about regedit: any deletion you make to any entry in the registry is committed immediately. There are no warnings and there’s no undo. For this reason we strongly advise people not to make any changes to any entry within the registry unless you know exactly what you’re doing.

A registry cleaning program scans the registry for keys that refer to programs no longer installed on the system or keys that point to outdated versions of programs. If the program is well-written, like Ccleaner mentioned above or PC Pitstop’s PC Matic, it will show you a list of invalid and unnecessary keys it has found in the registry and offer the option to delete them or change them to the correct settings. The best rule to follow when deciding which keys to let these programs delete is this: if you don’t recognize the key as relating to a program you know for sure you’ve deleted from your computer leave it alone. Unnecessary registry keys are small files and in most cases will not interfere with the normal operation of your computer. It’s better to leave a key that you aren’t sure about than to remove a key that might prove to be essential to the system.

Keep It Clean

2011-09-25T18:10:00.000-07:00

The number one cause of premature death in electronic devices is heat. The primary cause of heat is poor ventilation, a lack of airflow over the electronic circuitry. Lack of proper airflow is usually caused by improper maintenance and cleaning.

Allowing dust to build-up on fans and in ventilation ports prevents air from circulating properly, leading to excessive heat and an early death for electronic circuits. This is true for nearly every electronic device we use on a daily basis. Television sets, monitors, modems, routers, computers and even printers are all subject to overheating and early death if their ability to cool their electronic components is thwarted by dust-clogged ventilation ports and dirty fans.

It’s a good idea to wipe the dust and dirt off the exterior of a device’s ventilation ports at least once a month, more often if the device is in an especially dusty environment. Use canned air to blow dust off of fan blades, video and audio cards and electronic circuits. Use a toothpick to hold the fan blades still while cleaning them. It’s not always good to allow the fan to spin up to a speed faster than usual when blowing it of with canned air. This can damage the motor and gears. Also, try to always blow toward the outside of the device. You may be creating further problems if you blow the dust and dirt into the case and onto the other components.

By keeping your electronic devices clean, you allow them to keep themselves cool and extend their lives as long as possible.

Social Networking and the SMB

2011-09-15T20:32:00.000-07:00

There are many books and websites dedicated to helping business owners use social media to their advantage. Zappos is often offered as a shining example of how to use the internet to spread your brand and reach new customers, and rightly so. As a company with a world-wide market, the internet is a perfect venue for Zappos. They have used sites like Facebook andTwitter to provide customer service, advertise specials and offer discount coupons and bolster their image as a hip, cool, 21st century retailer.

But what if your business is a franchise? The franchiser may have a global reach, but each franchisee is usually limited to a set geographic boundary. It isn’t directly profitable for me with my ABC Diapers franchise in San Diego to promote ABC Diapers nationwide. What value does it bring my individual store and my employees to garner a following of faithful customers in Baltimore? Conversely, of what interest is it to those folks in Baltimore that I’m running a “Buy 1 Get 1 Free” sale this weekend at my store?

All businesses in general, but franchisees in particular, need to ensure the time, effort and money they put into advertising are well spent. For a franchise this means making sure that your efforts are going toward reaching local customers and potential customers. This is all the more important if you do not sell your product online. Selling online increases your potential customer base and makes your business more like Zappos than my ABC Diapers service. At ABC Diapers I only sell to walk-in customers and those within a reasonable distance from my store to whom I can deliver. Selling online provides your business with a nation-wide if not worldwide audience. For my ABC Diapers service, I am only interested in reaching local families.

So is Twitter and Facebook of no use to me? Is it a waste of my time to set up and maintain a Facebook page or a website specifically for my store?

It is a waste of time if you don’t take the time to plan how you are going to reach the audience you want and need to reach.

I would encourage any business, even a small home-based one, to consider buying a domain name (yourbusiness.com for example) and setting up a website that promotes your business to the internet audience. Websites cannot be as easily targeted as other marketing tools, but through the use of specific keywords and linkbacks you can ensure that the audience you want to reach has a good chance of finding your site. Mentioning your site’s URL on your business cards, answering machine message and in your email signature will help potential customers know where to go to learn more about your business. That’s a good start.

According to a lot of online pundits and “SEO gurus” (people who claim to have mystical knowledge of how to ‘leverage’ social media through the application of Search Engine Optimization, a field that has much in common with voodoo), Twitter and Facebook are “where it’s at” these days. What these “experts” often fail to mention (or perhaps don’t even take into consideration) is that not every social medium is the best possible venue for everyone.

While not targeted at a specific group of people or geographic location, Facebook does provide an excellent place in which to interact with your customers. They can comment on your product or service and recommend your page to their friends. A Facebook page can contain pertinent information about your business like directions, hours of operation and contact info.

Twitter offers far less in the way of publicizing your brand. What it does offer is an easy, almost “instant message” like means to communicate with your customers and employees. It’s a practical way to provide and follow up on customer service calls. While it does require your customers to register an account with Twitter if they don’t already have one, it doesn’t require them to download or install software on their computer. All your conversations can take place on Twitter’s website.

Still, neither of these provide a way to reach people specifically in your area, your potential and actual customers. You should consider complimenting your Facebook and Twitter accounts with accounts on sites that allow you to focus on your local area like Yelp and Google Places. In addition you can cross-link to other small and medium sized businesses in your area. Two ways to do this are to contact the person at that business and see if they are willing to host a link to your website if you do the same for them or to leave a comment on an story on their site making sure you provide a link back to your site when you register to comment.

It may not involve social networking exactly, but another easy way to ensure your business gets exposure are business cards. In this digital age business cards may seem old-fashioned but they still have their uses. Many local businesses around here have bulletin boards for announcements of local events. Pin one of your cards to the board. Scan your business card and include it as an HTML signature on your email. Exchange cards whenever possible with other local business people and try to set up a cross-referral program with them.

A franchise owner is the ultimate local business person. They are often restricted to a geographic area and are not allowed to advertise or do business out side it. It is vital to the success of their business to find ways to reach their local audience without wasting their time or advertising money reaching those whom they cannot serve.

Push or Pull?

2011-09-15T13:47:00.000-07:00

In discussions of on-line content you may frequently encounter the terms push and pull. These are more than catch-phrases. They reflect two totally different philosophies employed in sharing content with your audience, whether they are reading your posts on-line or employees at a company meeting.

Pushing content has become the traditional method for delivering a company’s message to customers. We tend to call our customers consumers because that’s how companies see their customer’s role in the business cycle; consumers are expected to swallow what’s fed to them, be it products or propaganda. In the words of industry analyst Jerry Michalski, a consumer was no more than “a gullet whose only purpose in life is to gulp products and crap cash.”¹ This business model creates a wall of separation between the business and it’s customers. We are telling them what we think they need to know about us and our product. It’s a one-way form of communication, one that discourages feedback from our customers. When we deny them the opportunity to provide us direct and instantaneous feedback we run the risk that they will find other outlets for their comments like blogs and community forums. These sites are not under our control and correcting misinformation or offering clarification is often impossible, even on those few occasions when we’re aware that we’re being discussed outside of our own website.

Content that pulls customers in and along, on the other hand, provides a means for them to engage and converse with us. The conversation may not always be pleasant or productive; there are times a dissatisfied customer simply wants to vent and ignores any attempt of ours to become involved in a conversation. But if we’ve pulled them into our venue, our website or blog, we have the means to turn their comments into a conversation with other customers even if the original customer never responds. We can’t always control the conversation but we can always become engaged in it. When we pull our customers into engagements with us, we can be aware of what’s being said about our company and products and respond in a timely manner.

To pull customers we need to provide interesting and informative content and most important, a way for them to post their comments on our company and products. The best option for a company website is to provide for comments right on the site. Deflecting comments to a third-party site or only providing an opportunity for email contact detracts from the immediacy and transparency of our communications. As Doc Searls and David Weinberger remind us in The Cluetrain Manifesto:

The Internet is a place. We buy books and tickets on the Web. Not over, through, or beside it. To call it a “platform” belies its hospitality. What happens on the Net is more than commerce, more than content, more than push and pull and clicks and traffic and e-anything. The Net is a real place where people can go to learn, to talk to each other, and to do business together. It is a bazaar where customers look for wares, vendors spread goods for display, and people gather around topics that interest them. It is a conversation. At last and again.

In this new place, every product you can name, from fashion to office supplies, can be discussed, argued over, researched, and bought as part of a vast conversation among the people interested in it. “I’m in the market for a new computer,” someone says, and she’s off to the Dell site. But she probably won’t buy that cool new laptop right away. She’ll ask around first — on Web pages, on newsgroups, via e-mail: “What do you think? Is this a good one? Has anybody checked it out? What’s the real battery life? How’s their customer support? Recommendations? Horror stories?”

“I’m in the market for a good desk dictionary,” says someone else, and he’s off to Amazon.com where he’ll find a large number of opinions already expressed:

I love the look of this book, and the publisher did a great job; but I made the mistake of buying it without realizing that it was first published over 7 years ago….

I’ve had this book for two days and I keep going back to it. I may not be typical since I collect dictionaries and wanted this when I heard about it last year, but….

Ugh, they don’t have “aegritudo” but they have the “modern” definition of “peruse”….

These conversations are most often about value: the value of products and of the businesses that sell them. Not just prices, but the market currencies of reputation, location, position, and every other quality that is subject to rising or falling opinion.

It’s nothing new, in one sense. The only advertising that was ever truly effective was word of mouth, which is nothing more than conversation. Now word of mouth has gone global. The one-to-many scope that technology brought to mass production and then mass marketing, which producers have enjoyed for two hundred years, is now available to customers. And they’re eager to make up for lost time.

If we do not engage our customers in conversations, if we fail to talk with them, we can be sure they will be talking about us somewhere else.

These days the easiest way to begin a conversation with our customers is to take advantage of the many social networking platforms available to everyone on the internet. Create a Facebook account for your company, set up a Twitter account and start a blog. You don’t even have to spend a lot of money buying a domain and setting up a fancy website. Begin with a Blogger account and a Gmail address in your company’s name.

Once you’ve set up a place for the conversation to take place, initiate the dialogue. Start posting and Tweeting. You may not get much feedback at first, but don’t let that dissuade you. Mention your blog and Facebook page in your email signature and on company advertising. Make sure your customers know you are there and willing to respond to their comments and questions. Keep your content up-to-date and informative. Eventually your customers will respond.

When they do, treat them as if they were at the counter or front desk of your place of business. Don’t be dismissive or rude. Don’t treat them any differently than if you were both face-to-face. Use these opportunities to converse, to educate, to correct misconceptions, to build relationships with your customers. If you impress them as an open and honest business person willing to take suggestions and even criticism, it won’t be long before they are recommending you to their family, friends and co-workers. And as every small business owner knows, personal recommendations are the best advertising money cannot buy.

Improve Connection Speeds with DNS

2011-09-08T16:01:00.000-07:00

If you have a home or office network you have probably noticed that on occasion a webpage will load slowly or you may even get a time-out message in your browser. Sometimes this may be caused by an overload of internet traffic on a particularly busy server, but other times it is most likely the result of a poorly configured DNS setting in your router.

If you’re not sure what this is all about, DNS (Domain Name Servers) are servers scattered throughout the world whose job it is to translate human readable domain addresses into machine readable addresses. In the early days of the internet, to reach google.com you would have to type 64.233.183.106 into the address window of the browser. Every website had its own particular address, and they still do. Web servers, the computers where webpages are stored and “served” to you and I, cannot understand words, only numbers. Web servers have no idea what yahoo.com means, but they know where 69.147.114.224 is. You can prove this by typing 69.147.114.224 into the address window of your browser. Domain Name Servers take 69.147.114.224 and translate that into yahoo.com strictly for the benefit of us humans. Comodo explains the purpose and functionality of DNS well here.

In a router there’s a setting for DNS. Usually the default settings will be those of your ISP (Internet Service Provider) like Cox or AT&T, but they may also be whatever default DNS addresses the manufacturer chooses to use.

Whenever you click a link or type an address into a browser, the first stop for that electronic packet is a DNS server (I know, that’s redundant). The server will translate the typed address into a machine readable one. If that DNS server is too far away from you, you’ll notice the connection is very slow or may even time out. So the ideal situation is to have the DNS listings in your router be servers as close to you as possible. You do not have to use those provided with your router or by your ISP. There are several alternatives, one of which may speed up your browsing because it’s closer to you.

Google has entered the DNS provider ranks with their Public DNS, 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. Needless to say this has raised security concerns over Google having access to our searches and web browsing.

Comodo offers their SecureDNS (156.154.70.22 and 156.154.71.22) and OpenDNS has been around for a while (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220).

To determine which DNS server is fastest at your location may I recommend Steve Gibson’s Domain Name Speed Benchmark.

Use Google Apps to Control SMB Costs

2011-09-02T18:25:00.000-07:00

It can be expensive setting up a small or home-based business. There are supplies to buy, equipment to purchase or lease and infrastructure to put into place. You could easily spend thousands of dollars on new computers, copiers and printers, a faster internet connection, desks and chairs, lighting, office supplies like pens and paper and all the other bits and pieces that are required to run a business day to day.

Once your office is ready to go there’s an often unforeseen cost that may not pop up until you log into your computer. You want to present a professional appearance to your potential customers. On the internet that means having a domain name for your business and an email address that reflects the name of your company. Business people these days are not taken seriously if their business doesn’t have at least a rudimentary website or if they have an email address that ends with “hotmail.com” or “aol.com”. Most domain registrars offer low cost packages that include a domain name, web space and email to and from that domain for a relatively modest monthly or annual fee. With any luck you’ll have a relative or employee who will be willing to put together a website for your business.

There is a no-cost alternative that might fit your needs.

Google offers a suite of applications for domain owners. Google Apps for Domains consists of a Gmail account with your domain name (i.e. Sally@sallysdecor.com), an associated Google Site (a simple website), Google calendar and Google Documents. Google Documents includes a word processor (like Microsoft Word), a presentation application (like PowerPoint), a spreadsheet composer (like Excel) and apps to create forms and drawings. Google’s apps are not as robust or fully-featured as what is offered in Microsoft Office, but they are about $400 cheaper. They are certainly capable of performing the basic tasks an average SOHO business needs to accomplish. If your business requires more features, there is a paid version of Google Apps that offers more for only $50 a year per user.

A big benefit of using Google Apps over Microsoft Office is that your information is available anywhere you go as long as you can access the internet, even on your smart phone. It’s a mobile office in the cloud. This may present a security risk if your business involves classified documents or communications. But for the majority of us it’s a solution to the problem of having to be tied to your office computer to check or send email or update customer and client information. Even if your personal computer crashes or is stolen your email and data are safely preserved on Google’s servers.

You can spend $400 plus on Office and another couple of hundred dollars for CSM (Customer Service Management) software, but why should you when there’s a free to low-cost alternative that offers benefits those expensive suites lack?

If you have a SOHO business and haven’t yet found an affordable software solution for customer contacts and your web presence, you owe it to yourself to check out Google Apps.

One Way to Organize your Windows Desktop

2011-08-30T15:58:00.000-07:00

Most of us who spend a fair amount of time working on a computer appreciate our desktop. We decorate it with a picture of our kids, our significant other or maybe just an image that relaxes us when we aren’t working.

Where’s Waldo?

Then we start adding shortcuts to programs and websites, installed programs install an icon on the desktop and soon our image is buried beneath a bunch of distracting images. When there’s no organization to the desktop shortcuts it often takes longer to find the icon you want there than it would be to simply open the Start menu.

Here’s a tip that I’ve used for quite a while that both frees up your desktop image and makes finding program shortcuts easier and quicker.

The first step is to right-click on the desktop and choose View, then uncheck the option to Show Desktop Icons.

Now you have an uncluttered view of your desktop.

Next, right-click on any open space on the taskbar (to the right of the Windows Start button), select Toolbars and select Desktop.

Now you have a pop-up menu of every icons and its associated program on the taskbar.

One last step adds a degree of organization to your Desktop menu.I’ll use my personal method as an example. You can organize your menu to meet your needs.

Using Windows Explorer, I open the Desktop folder. I right-click anywhere in the window and select New then selectFolder (do not select NewFolder in the first window). I then create folders for Apps, System, Games, Office, Reference and so forth. Finally I left-click on each icon and drag it to an appropriate folder.

Being more organized increases efficiency. Being able to enjoy your desktop image may relieve stress. I’d say either of those is a good reason to get rid of your disorganized desktop today.

Delete Fonts to Free Up Hard Drive Space

2011-08-27T14:10:00.000-07:00

Modern hard drives offer capacities in the hundreds of gigabytes. Yet we still manage to fill them up with pictures, videos and music, documents and applications. Remember when we thought, “Wow, 20GB. I’ll never use all that space”? Now we buy a computer with a 500GB hard drive and soon we’re shopping for another one, or a 1TB drive to replace it with.

But not all that space is being filled up with things we add to the operating system. Some of that space is being used by the system itself to store items we may never use. Fonts, for instance.

In most versions of Windows fonts are stored in the System folder on your C: drive. Versions of Windows before XP were limited to storing around 1000 fonts. The most current version of Windows ships with over 1000 fonts just for non-Latin languages alone. That requires a rather substantial amount of storage space on your hard drive, space you may prefer to use for other purposes.

More fonts are added almost every time you install a word processing or web design program. Some Adobe programs install hundreds of additional fonts. A web designer or professional writer might have a use for many of those special and fancy fonts. For the rest of us they are just space hogs.

There are advantages to having a robust collection of fonts available to your computer. Very few people I know change the default setting in their browser to, “Force web pages to use my fonts”. Most of us prefer to see a web page as it was designed with the designer’s choice of fonts and colors.

Having thousands of fonts on your computer can become too much of a good thing.

Before you decide to dig into your font folder and start deleting fonts, there are some things to keep in mind.

Some fonts are essential to your system. You do not want to delete commonly used fonts like Arial and its family of derivative fonts, Courier, Helvetica, Microsoft Sans Serif, Verdana or Tahoma. Your computer will become unusable if you delete system fonts. Do not delete any fonts your browser uses. And when in doubt do not toss it out.

You’ll no doubt find a rather large number of fonts that you have never used and never even knew were installed on your computer. The safest way to find out if a font is essential or unnecessary is to create a new folder in My Documents called “Font backups” and instead of deleting fonts right away, drag them from your System/Fonts folder to this new one. If after a week or so you haven’t noticed any problems caused by the absence of those fonts, burn that folder to a disk (just in case you ever want to reinstall them for any reason) then delete the “Font backups” folder.

Still Using Windows XP?

2011-08-19T17:28:00.000-07:00

Slightly more than a year ago Microsoft called an end to its official support for XPs most significant service pack.

Service-pack 2 made so many improvements in both performance and security to the XP operating system that many considered it an upgrade to the OS rather than an update. It delivered an almost entirely new XP to Microsoft’s customers.

Microsoft XP was first released in August of 2001, making it perhaps the oldest operating system still in widespread use. A lot has changed in computer software and hardware in the last decade, and while Redmond has made an effort to keep XP updated, it has just about run its course.

Microsoft urges XP users to either install Service-pack 3 or upgrade to the most recent release of Windows, the Windows 7 operating system.

Like Vista before it, 7 demands newer hardware and won’t run some software intended for Windows XP and older systems. Microsoft offers an upgrade advisor that will scan your system and let you know if certain components need to be replaced prior to installing 7. If your computer is more than 3 years old I would strongly suggest you run the advisor to avoid any unpleasant surprises when you upgrade. Another consideration before upgrading is whether or not you need to buy the upgrade version of Windows 7 or the full version. Microsoft has a chart you can consult to help you decide.

Perhaps the most cost effective way to upgrade from XP to Windows 7 is to buy a new computer with the OS already installed. Many new computers actually cost the same or less than the parts you might need to buy to make your current computer acceptable to Windows 7.

I used to build custom computers. One time a customer brought me a list of the hardware she wanted installed in a new computer. I priced out the cost of the motherboard, memory, video card and other bits and pieces she wanted from the least expensive source I could find and arrived at a total, just for parts, of around $400. Then I found a store here in town that offered a computer already built with nearly the same components she wanted for only $300. Obviously her best option was to buy the $300 computer. This was about the time I quit building custom computers. These days a very nice and reasonably equipped desktop computer with Windows 7 pre-installed can be found for around that same $300 price-point. That option would make more sense than spending nearly that just for the Windows 7 disk and still having to upgrade various bits of hardware in your current computer.

I haven’t spent any time encouraging current XP users to upgrade to Service-pack 3 for the simple reason that XP itself is quite outdated and support will soon end for SP3 just like it did for SP2. It’s like duct-taping the muffler on to your car to get a few more miles out of it. It’s not worth the effort. Far better to bite the bullet and buy a better car.

By continuing to run and out-of-date and insecure operating system, you leave yourself vulnerable not only to security risks but to hardware failure and data loss. If you are running a hard drive over 5 years old, odds are it will fail sooner than later. When it does, whatever you have stored on it may be lost for good. Of course any hard drive can fail no matter how old. This is why your computer savvy friends are always on you to backup your files. It your data is important to you then backing up your files should be just as important. But while any system or piece of hardware can fail, the older it is the more likely it will fail.

I use and recommend Windows 7. It’s like a modern version of XP. It’s well worth upgrading to 7 if you are still using XP or Vista. That said, you may also want to use this opportunity to consider a computer running Linux or Mac OS X. These two operating systems are more stable and less prone to encounter hardware incompatibility than any modern version of Windows. There is a bit of relearning to undertake in adopting a different operating system, and some new software to get used to, but I’m seeing more and more former Windows devotees considering the switch.

Drivers can Solve Hardware Issues

2011-08-18T06:45:00.000-07:00

One practice we frequently employed on help desks was to insist that the caller first go and download and install the latest driver for their hardware before we attempted to troubleshoot their problem.

This wasn’t done to get them off the phone. It was a valid attempt to solve their issue.

The disk that comes with your printer, mouse or router was most likely created months before your printer was packaged and sent to the retail store where you bought it. By the time you go to install the drivers on the disk into your computer they could be over a year old. During that year other owners reported issues they had to the hardware manufacturer, the manufacturer’s engineers re-wrote the drivers to correct those problems, and the manufacturer made these updated drivers available on their website. Windows 7′s recent release will also have caused new drivers to be written in order for your device to work with this new operating system.

This is why I recommend that when you encounter odd behavior or other issues with your hardware, before you do anything else in an attempt to fix those issues, go to the manufacturer’s website, look for the Support section and download and install the latest drivers for your device and operating system. That alone may very well solve your problems.

5 Tips when Buying a New Printer

2011-08-17T13:50:00.000-07:00

There is no fixed season for new printer purchasing. Printer manufacturers don’t have any particular time of year set aside to introduce their new models. Some manufacturers introduce a new printer once a year, others bring out several new models a year. The decision to buy a new printer is going to be based on your needs and the condition of your current printer. From what I've seen, the average life expectancy of a new inkjet printer is about 2 years. Since inkjet printers are not made to be repaired, if your inkjet printer breaks you really have no alternative but to replace it (and recycle your broken printer). Laserjet printers are designed with repair in mind and replacement parts are usually available. But these days the cost of parts and labor can exceed the value of the printer. In those cases replacing the printer may be a better decision financially than repairing your broken machine. We would generally advise a customer to reuse their old machine, but with an appreciation of financial reality, we understand that doesn’t always make the best fiscal sense. Still, I encourage anyone replacing their current printer to find a way to recycle it rather than throwing it in the trash.

So you’ve decided it’s time to but a new printer. Here are some questions to ask yourself before you commit to a specific model or brand.

1. What type of printing will the new printer be doing as its primary task?

This is the most important question of any you need to consider before deciding which printer to buy.

Will you be printing photographs or color copies? Then unless you are willing to spend a few hundred dollars for a color laser printer you’ll be looking for an inkjet printer. Inkjets produce the best color prints for a reasonable price per page. If you only intend to print out documents and forms and have no need for color printing, then you should consider the various models of personal laserjet printers being marketed today. These are smaller than the typical office laserjet and while the single cartridge may set you back $40 or more, that cartridge will produce, on average, ten times more pages than an inkjet cartridge, so your cost-per-page is a tenth of that printing with ink.

2. How often will you be printing?

If you print something at least every couple of weeks then either an inkjet or laserjet will be useful to you. However, if you’re only going to use your printer for a few weeks every year you’d be better off considering only a laserjet. Laser printers use powdered toner which isn’t subject to drying or evaporating. You can leave a laser printer alone for 3 months, come back and run a perfect print. That isn’t going to happen with the majority of inkjet printers. Laserjet printers are subject to humidity, though. The toner in a laser cartridge kept in a humid atmosphere will clump up and be unavailable for printing. This can be remedied by gently shaking or rocking the cartridge back and forth to break up the toner clumps. At worst clumped up toner is a waste; toner clumps cannot damage your printer. Ink cartridges left too long without being used will most likely form hard blocks of dried ink on the printhead. This can sometimes be cleared up but most often requires replacing the cartridge.

3. Is printing vitally important to you or something you only do once in a while?

The more important printing is to you, the more attention you should pay to all the capabilities of your next printer. If you do a great deal of printing, you want to minimize costs as much as possible while ensuring the highest quality of output available. You’ll want to purchase your printer from a retailer who offers a solid warranty and good service-after-the-sale. If printing is a casual practice and you don’t need all the bells-and-whistles of a high-end printer, watch for sales at the big box electronics retail stores and even scout out your local thrift stores. Older printers and discontinued models may meet your needs and save you quite a bit of money.

4. Where will your printer be located and how many computers will be using the printer?

One of the capabilities being built-in to newer printers, both ink and laser, is wireless connectivity. Previously, if you wanted to connect your printer to a wireless network, you had to purchase a separate print server, a nasty piece of hardware that usually proved difficult to configure and nearly impossible to use without problems. I used to work for D-Link on the help desk, and I’d say the most difficult calls we had to handle dealt with print servers. No one is happier to see the end of these devices. Printers with built-in wireless capabilities are simple to set up and deploy. It’s not much harder than adding another computer to your network. A wireless-capable networked printer is available to any computer within range of the router. You could have your printer in one office and send print jobs to it from any other office in your business or any room in your house.

Another alternative is a wired network printer. Many newer laser printers have an ethernet card built-in to the chassis and can be added to your network by simply connecting a standard RJ-45 ethernet cable from the router to the printer. This means that the printer will need to be located within cable length of the router, usually 6-15′.

One advantage to a wired printer is security. If for any reason you are sending print jobs to the printer that should be kept secure from possibly being intercepted by an unauthorized 3rd party, you’ll want to have a wired connection to the router for both your computer and printer. Any data sent wirelessly to a router or printer can be compromised by being intercepted en route. For the average user this isn’t much of a concern. But if you deal with sensitive data or any information that shouldn’t be exposed to the risk of interception, it’s something to keep in mind.

5. What is going to be the cost of consumables?

The initial cost of the printer is not the only expense you’ll be incurring over the lifetime of your printer. You need to factor in the cost of consumables, primarily ink/toner and paper, as well. With each new generation of printer the manufacturers are shrinking the volume of ink and toner in their cartridges. This makes sense when you consider they make little or no profit off the sales of the printer but instead have chosen to make most of their profit from the sales of cartridges. To increase profits they need to make you buy cartridges more frequently. This is most easily accomplished by reducing the amount of ink and toner in the cartridges so you’ll have to replace them more often. It’s true they have also reduced the price of many of their newest cartridges, but the price reduction doesn’t always reflect the amount of toner or ink in the cartridge. Your new cartridge may cost $2 less than the ones you used to buy, but you’re often only getting half the ink that was in those older cartridges.

Power Cycle to Clear Memory

2011-08-16T13:10:00.000-07:00

When I worked on help desks we frequently advised people to power cycle their hardware and see if that corrected the particular problem they were experiencing. We offered that advice so often that some folks accused us of using that as “busy work”, a tactic to get people off the phone and out of our hair.

That wasn’t, and isn’t, the case. Power cycling performs a vital function. It clears out errors and corruption that can occur in volatile memory, memory which requires power in order to store data. Once power is shut off to volatile memory the data it is storing is lost.

Examples of volatile memory configurations

Most single-function devices like printers, routers and modems have volatile memory chips. This short-term memory stores information relating to start-up errors, cartridge status and machine readiness.

When a device is power cycled it clears out all the data in volatile memory; a power cycle is similar to a reboot of the operating system.

Occasionally a print job sent by the computer becomes corrupted en route and once stored in the printer’s volatile memory refuses to allow another print job to be completed. The first step in fixing this issue is to open Printers and Faxes in the Control Panel (Windows XP, Vista, 7), select your printer and choose the option that deletes or clears the print queue. All too often this accomplishes nothing.

The next step would be to power cycle the printer. This should clear all the pending print jobs from memory and return the printer to a ready-to-print status.

A power cycle can be accomplished in two ways. You can simply turn the device off with its power switch, wait 15-30 seconds, then turn its power back on. This works in most devices that do not have internal batteries. The more effective way to power cycle any device is to first turn off the power with its switch then unplug the device from its supply of electricity. This cuts off all power to the device so that even things like computers, TVs and some printers that have an internal battery will shut completely down. Wait up to a minute before plugging the device back in and powering it up.

Just as most computer experts will suggest the occasional full reboot of your computer, the occasional power cycle of your electronic devices that run on A/C can help performance and clear out problems with the memory.

Social Networks

2011-07-08T15:38:00.000-07:00

This week saw the advent of Google+, the latest effort by Google to create a credible challenger to Facebook. It’s earlier attempt, Orkut, never really took off in the U.S. or Europe though I understand it is very popular still in South America.

Every time a new social network hits the web it seems to rekindle the “Network Wars”, the 21st century equivalent of the “Browser Wars” between IE and its myriad of competitors in the 1990s and 2000s. The primary target in the Network Wars is Facebook and every other service that debuts is immediately compared and contrasted with Mark Zuckerberg’s immensely popular service. Facebook has vanquished its once largest competitor, MySpace, which was sold just this last week by News Corp. for a measly 35 million dollars (“measly” compared to its valuation just a couple of years ago).

Now Google has re-entered the fray and thrown down the gauntlet at Zuckerberg’s feet.

The greatest benefit of a world wide network of computers is the opportunity for people in various places around the globe to connect to one another, to form human networks on top of the electronic one. The web has always been about networking people together from it’s earliest days to the present.

Mankind is a social animal. Language came about as a result of our desire to share information with the others in our social group. Almost every major invention, from the buggy to the car, from the telegraph to the phone to the Internet, has arisen in response to our common need to interact with one another. It should come as no surprise that some of the very first applications developed for the web were focused on communication; bulletin boards, chartrooms, email.

From small towns to large cities people form webs of friends. Casual acquaintances, co-workers, former classmates, neighbors down the block, all form distinct yet occasionally overlapping circles of friendship. The social aspect of religion has resulted in a multitude of churches in even the smallest town. The means we use to maintain these friendships has evolved as technology improves. People we used to call in the evening we can now email whenever we want. IRC has given way to SMS. How amazing it is to walk down a street, take a picture on your smart-phone and within seconds be sharing it with 500 of your closest friends?

The biggest problem with the early forms of computer-based communication was fragmentation. Sure you could add recipients to an email but you had to wait for a reply from each recipient in turn. Social networks corrected this issue. In a social network you can “talk” to all your friends at once, as long as they are members of the same network. And their replies are immediate. It’s more like a real-world conversation.

Social networks are obviously popular, over 500 million people have Facebook accounts. If just one percent of those accounts are active, updated daily, that’s a huge number of people sharing their thoughts and interests with their friends. Google had to suspend invitations to their Google+ network the very day it went into public beta. Too many people wanted to be involved. People want to form friendships.

Some question the relative value of online friendships as opposed to real-world friendships. I would argue that online friendships aren’t a replacement for real-world friendships, nor are they qualitatively better or worse than their material counterparts. Online friendships are just another form of friendship, friendships not limited by geography. In the same way many of us had pen pals when we were young, we now have friends we can talk to daily on the other side of the planet. And we don’t have to wait for a snail-mail reply. An online friendship can be just as close, just as fulfilling, just as beneficial as any we may have in real-life. The medium doesn’t dictate the degree of friendship, the participants do. You control the breadth and depth of all your friendships.

Will Google+ replace Facebook as the most popular social network or will they co- exist, each serving a unique purpose and audience? I think it’s too soon to say. But I do know this, social networks in one form or another will be on the web for years to come, perhaps until the day science figures out how to provide us with an implant that allows us to instantly communicate with each other without the need to use computers.

AV or No AV?

2011-05-12T14:59:00.000-07:00

Just today I read another computer user state that they don’t use any anti-virus protection because they “refuse to pay for AV software”.

Some people no doubt consider it a matter of personal choice or preference. If someone doesn’t care if their computer becomes infected with a virus or worm that’s their problem. We shouldn’t be concerned.

Yet that thinking is as wrong-headed as thinking you can survive a day on the internet without some form of anti-virus protection. Anti-virus protection performs a greater function than the protection of your personal computer, it also provides protection for the rest of us who may have cause to interact with you through email, forums, blog comments or chatrooms.

Personally I couldn’t care less what you do to your own computer. Don’t put anything in folders, have files scattered everywhere throughout your system, delete your entire C:/ drive. None of that affects me in the least. It’s your computer, treat it as well or poorly as you want.

But when you go onto the web and send me an email or provide a link in a forum, I want to know that your computer isn’t a spam or virus zombie, a computer taken over by malware in order to infest my computer with whatever your unprotected machine picked up on its travels. I want to be able to trust you not to harm my computer, and I can’t trust you if you don’t make even the most basic effort to protect your computer.

Not all anti-virus applications are created equal. Some applications are huge resource hogs, some provide too many false-positives. Some are even false-front programs written by malware developers in order to spread their garbage. Before you install any program, visit its home page to see what they say about their product. Google the name of the application to see what other users have to say about it. Due diligence requires a little effort but provides a good return on your investment of time.

Not all anti-virus applications are expensive. If you have a Windows computer you can at least avail yourself of Microsoft’s free and well reviewed Security Essentials. It’s produced by the same people who developed your operating system so you don’t have to worry about compatibility. There are other free offerings you can find by searching for “free anti-virus”. Just be sure to do a little research before you consider installing one.

Non-free anti-virus applications are not always that expensive. Some cost less per year than what you spend on coffee or snacks and do far more good. The advantages of paying for an annual subscription to an anti-virus provider include regular updates to protect you against recently released malware, support, coverage for more than one computer in your home and a forum where other users and the company’s staff can answer questions. Companies like Norton, ESET and Sophos all offer decent packages to protect you from the hazards out there just waiting for your unprotected computer on the world wide web.

If you own a Mac or run a Linux computer you may feel you don’t need any AV protection, since there aren’t that many people writing malware aimed at those operating systems. But consider the day you encounter the exception to that situation. How will you protect an already infected system? Will you even know you’ve been infected? And what about the Windows users you interact with? Are you positive that the malware their computer might be harboring and passing along can’t infect your system? Does your computer matter so little to you that you’re willing to take that risk? At least one company, Sophos, offers free AV protection to Mac users running Tiger, Leopard or Snow Leopard on a PPC or Intel machine. Is free too much to spend for peace of mind? I run this on both a PPC G4 and a Macbook running Snow Leopard. I haven’t noticed any unacceptable slow down of my system. And I like knowing I’m doing what I can to avoid spreading something I wouldn’t appreciate getting from someone else.

If you never use wireless or plug in an ethernet cable, if you never go online, if you never install a program from a disk, there’s little need to worry about having anti-virus protection on your computer. But if you do any of those things, you owe it to the rest of us to protect your system against malware. Do it for us, if not for yourself.

Using Facebook Credentials on Other Sites

2011-04-12T10:37:00.000-07:00

The Registration plugin allows users to easily sign up for your website with their Facebook account. The plugin is a simple iframe that you can drop into your page. When logged into Facebook, users see a form that is pre-filled with their Facebook information where appropriate.

https://developers.facebook.com/docs…/registration/

Many sites are incorporating a plug-in that allows you to register using your Facebook account. Essentially the intent is to make your Facebook identity work as a passport to the web. One username, one password, web-wide access.

Image via Wikipedia

This is a dubious development in the eyes of security professionals. Having a single point of validation to your online identity is like having a single key that unlocks and starts your car and opens your house doors. If you lose that one key someone can gain access to nearly everything you own and try to keep secure.

Yet it can’t be denied that people are becoming overwhelmed with login credentials. Just off the top of my head I can think of one credit union, 3 forums, 2 blogs and numerous websites that I regularly log into, each with its own requirements for a username and for which I have unique passwords. I do use a password manager that requires its own username and unique master password, but should that become compromised again all my info is at risk. It has become a single point of (potential) failure.

So what’s your opinion of this growing move to make a Facebook account your single login for nearly every site on the web? Will it make our online life easier and less complicated or will it become a major target for spammers, scammers and crooks? Do you use your Facebook account to log onto sites that allow it? Do you think it’s a good or bad idea?

I side with the security specialists. As cumbersome as it is, having unique identities for each site gives me greater control over what information each site has access to as well as greater peace of mind when I read about yet another site’s database being compromised and user credentials being exposed.

Turn Consumers into Investors

2011-03-08T15:23:00.000-08:00

If you sell a product or service, whether on-line or in a a brick-and-motor shop, your primary mission is to gain consumers for your product or service. Having something to sell is pointless without people to sell to.

Once we have determined what product or service we intend to sell, the next step is finding, winning and most importantly retaining consumers. There are many methods to do this. Advertisers earn millions of dollars a year making consumers of those with hopes of attracting consumers of their own. There are hundreds if not thousands of websites giving advice on how to attract consumers, how to provide excellent customer service, how to practice SEO on your site to increase its visibility in search engines.

Today I’d like to address the final part of the equation, retaining consumers. How do we keep the consumers we already have?

Again, there are many methods to ensure retention. You can sell subscriptions to restricted content if you have a website, you can hold raffles and give-aways if you run a store, or initiate a frequent-shopper reward program.

Rather than address methods, I’d like to talk about the mindset you should develop that will motivate all your efforts to find, win and retain consumers.

Too many sellers regard the people who buy their products and services simply as a source of revenue. Their primary focus is separating the consumer from their money. Little if any regard is paid to them after they’ve paid there money. This might be a way to make quick profits if your consumer base is large. But it’s a lousy way to treat those who are financing you and will most likely come back to bite you in the form of customer disloyalty and poor word-of-mouth advertising.

A more productive method is to turn your consumers into investors.

Ask any stock or bond investor. They may not even be consumers of the products the company they invest in produces. Still, they care passionately about the health and condition of that company and are concerned about its growth and success. Why? Because they stand to benefit directly if it does and they stand to suffer if it doesn’t. In a real sense they are consumers of the health of the companies they invest in.

Not every company sells stock, but every company or individual selling a product or service can develop investors.