May 2009
In this issue:

● How Strong are your
Passwords?
● Software Piracy
● Get Email Addresses
Legitimately
● Cool Computer Tools

7 Ways to Get Customers’ E-mail Addresses (legitimately)
By Monte Enbysk
Reprinted with permission from the Microsoft Small Business Center

If you’re like most small-business owners, you need a generous supply of potential customers’ names and e-mail addresses to effectively market your offerings online.

The good news is you don’t have to deceive or spam people into getting them. The bad news is that too many others have already taken that route, giving online marketing a shady reputation.

Unlike the offline world, where consumers get junk mail daily and simply toss it into the recycling bin, unwanted e-mail messages offend people and trigger nasty replies. People are more protective than ever of their e-mail addresses.

“Spammers have made it bad for the rest of us,” says Derek Scruggs, founder of Escalan.com, a Boulder, Colo.-based marketing consultant. So you shouldn’t be one yourself; there are enough already out there.

Scruggs is an expert on permission-based e-mail marketing, and has written a separate article for Microsoft Small Business, “10 rules for successful permission-based e-mail marketing,” which I refer to in this article. (See link under “Related Articles.”)

So, after following Scruggs’ permission-based rules, how do you build your database of names and e-mail addresses? Here are seven tips to consider.

Just for Laughs

Quote of the Month

Buy land.
They’ve stopped
making it.

– Mark Twain

How Strong are your Passwords?

Most people don’t realize that computer security starts with them. An easy way to hold off trouble is to use strong passwords that you change every so often.

What is a strong Password? It is a password that is easily remembered by you, contains uppercase letters, lower case letters, a number or two, a special character and is at least 8 characters in length.

Sounds hard, but it’s really easy when you use things you are familiar with.

For example, if I grew up at 245 Lucky Street, I might make my password Lucky245& Notice I’ve used Uppercase and Lowercase Letters, I have 3 numbers and a special character.

Here are some variations on the above password luCky24%, LuckY245$, luckY245* You can come up with a bunch if you just think about it a little bit.

Another example might be something you like, like Ice Cream, you could change it to 1cecr3@M Notice that I changed the first I in ice Cream to the numeral 1. The second e is represented by the number 3, sort of an E in reverse. The “a” became an @ sign.

Why go to all this bother?
It’s almost impossible to break strong passwords. Passwords that are easy to break are common words or names (like Mike, Jump, Secret, Car, Emily, or, my favorite, and yours, Password).

Don’t think for a minute that someone is actually sitting somewhere on the globe thinking about your password, they’ve automated all that. They start a software program that goes after known vulnerabilities, or specific targets that contain a lot of valuable data, like Credit Cards, Personal Identification, such as Social Security numbers, date of birth, etc. The software does the work for them.

Why do we need passwords at all? Simply put, it is a matter of Authentication. Are you who you say you are, or are you someone who is pretending to be someone else? When a you are pulled over by a police officer for speeding, the first thing he asks you for is . License and Registration. The License authenticates who you are via the photo, signature, basic information about you like eye color, date of birth, height, weight, address, etc.

The registration authenticates ownership of the vehicle. (Passports are a very good form of Authentication as well) The bottom line is this, if you don’t want someone else looking at your data, use strong passwords to protect it.  Here’s a good article on the Microsoft Website: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc756109.aspx

Mike
mikego@sf-it.com

Rid Your Business of Software Piracy: 7 Tips

Pirates still roam freely in the ocean of software out there, but if your business is among the pirates, it could end up costing you literally and figuratively. You may very well be a smart, community-minded business owner. But if your company is using pirated software — and you condone it, you aren’t aware of it or you don’t really give a rip — you’re not a responsible business owner. And you are taking unnecessary risks.

No, you’re not alone. In the United States, about one-fourth of the software programs used today by businesses are illegal copies, according to the statistics from the Business Software Alliance (BSA), an active industry group. For U.S. small businesses, those with 100 or fewer employees, the piracy rate is even higher: about 40%. While those numbers are bad enough, the piracy problem worldwide is worse — although software piracy worldwide has decreased since 1994, some $13.08 billion was still lost in 2002 due to pirated software.

Indeed, software piracy continues to generate negative publicity, especially for those busted for it. But that isn’t stopping a lot of good people from doing it (or supporting what has become an underground industry, run similar to drug trafficking).

Obviously, there’s a moral argument for avoiding casual copying and taking the time to get your software licenses into compliance. Here it is: You are ripping off an industry that feels the same way you would if your products were illegally copied and then sold or distributed in the marketplace, robbing you of revenues and profits.

But there are business arguments for it, too, even if pirating software — or supporting the black market by buying counterfeit software at dirt-cheap prices — is helping your business make it through tough times. Here are the dangers of using pirated or counterfeit software:

You aren’t going to get the product support you need when a problem occurs. You aren’t going to get upgrade information or special (legal) deals that might come in handy. Without genuine software, you can’t be sure what you get won’t be infected with viruses or tainted by broken or incomplete code.

You likely aren’t managing your software inventory very efficiently, especially if you mix legal with pirated software and can’t account for which is which, or whether employees have only the software they need or use.  You’ll have to do some creative accounting for tax purposes if, say, you bought 10 new PCs in the past year and only one set of software applications.

Last but not least, you are breaking the law. You could conceivably get caught if a disgruntled employee reports you to the BSA, which has a vigorous piracy watchdog program. Getting caught could mean fines of $150,000 or more, plus a hit to your “community-minded” image. If you want to make this the year you bring your company’s software inventory into compliance, here are seven tips

Cool Computer Tools to Make Your Life a Little Easier

Here’s a cool computer tool we’d like you to know about because it can save you time and money: PDF995 is simple to use FREE software that converts documents to PDF (Portable Document File) format.

What is PDF format? “PDF is a file format that captures all the elements of a printed document as an electronic image that you can view, navigate, print. . .   or forward to someone else regardless, of the computer. . . program it was first created in.” (Source: UCL Learning Technology, London, England).

Why is it important? Suppose you’re sending an e-mail and you want to share a certain file or document. Your recipient might not be able to open your attachment unless they’re using the same version of the program you used to create it in.

PDF format allows them to open it. It also prevents other people from making changes to your original document. How do I create PDF files? PDF files are created using Adobe Acrobat Capture, or similar products such as PDF995. You can download it from http://www.pdf995.com/download.html.

You can also download complete documentation for converting PDFs using this cool tool from the resources on our website.

Finally, to view and use the files, you’ll need the FREE Acrobat Reader, which can be easily downloaded from www.adobe.com.  Once you’ve downloaded the Reader, it will start automatically whenever you want to look at a PDF file.