Gary Hamel writing on the Wall Street Journal blog blasts corporate IT departments for enforcing technology standards with a post titled; Why Don’t IT Departments Give Employees More Freedom? The premise is that if the best tool for the job is something that an employee provides themselves, or downloads from the Internet, so what? In Mr. Hamel’s words;

How is it that employees can be trusted to take care of important customers, safeguard expensive equipment and stay within their budgets, but can’t be trusted to use the Web at work, choose their own IT tools, or download programs onto the workplace PCs? Do IT staffers really believe that conscientious, committed employees turn into crazed, malicious hackers when you give them a bit of freedom over their IT environment?

Sounds Great In Theory -But Tell Me, Who Pays?

When it comes to business computers, the actual total cost of ownership of an IT asset can be as high as five times the purchase price, no not one time – annually! And a significant portion of that cost is supporting that IT Asset. Support is defined as direct, an example being technical services staff paying a visit to fix something, as well as indirect support. This latter support is when you spend your time helping a neighbor (or they help you) trying to figure out why that mail merge is not working properly.

Now, in my smaller business, we are pretty relaxed about people utilizing their own tools of choice as stated by Mr. Hamel. But in the past three or four months – that choice has cost me over 10 grand to do it. (more on that later)

Who Fixes What? (Or When I Just Go Home!)

Just in the past few weeks, I recall reading  about a larger organization (if I find it again I will update with a link) that has allowed its employees to provide their own computers or laptops. With the caveat that corporate support would not be able to help them if they chose the non-standard devices. In other words – you are responsible for getting it fixed if it breaks.

OK, So what happens when it does break?

In larger organizations, if a notebook or PC software or hardware dies, it will be either re-imaged with clean versions of the software, or new PC dropped into place with the corporate tools pre-loaded. Job done. In fact this type of computer support can often be done remotely.

So if I chose to forgo the corporate supplied PC, and provide my own Mac, and it dies. Lets see, I unplug it and trek off to my repair outlet of choice. They tell me it will be back to me by Wednesday.

OK. Do I sit twiddling my thumbs until Wednesday?

Maybe call my my clients and say; “Hey – can’t help ya until next week, will call you back then!”

Somehow I don’t see that going over well with your clients. So the question is;

If staff supplies their own IT assets, and they are responsible for repairing them, what productivity loss do you face when they don’t have their machine until next Wednesday?

Next: How About The Cost of Security?

Leaving hardware failure out of the picture, lets assume we allow everybody to install their software of choice on business computers. Read the following quote from an Information Week article by Avi Baumstein after  audits found peer to peer file sharing software on PC’s;

The results were shocking and scary–loads of confidential business documents and enough personal information to ruin any number of lives and create PR nightmares for quite a few companies. Among the business documents were spreadsheets, billing data, health records, RFPs, internal audits, product specs, and meeting notes

As smaller businesses, we are not immune to this either!

In this previous post, I wrote about a small business owner that was fired by three network support vendors.

And why did three IT Services companies fire this customer?

After every abusive , screaming support call, the service providers found the affected PC to be riddled with viruses and spy ware from the kids playing on business PC’s. His attitude was that he should never have problems in spite of his own irresponsibility.

My Personal Experience

At the beginning of this post I mentioned above the 10 grand dollar value.

As an organization, we are pretty liberal on what people do with their PC’s. And of a staff of about 20, three of them use that advantage more than others.

And yes. I have to rebuild or fix those three users computers every couple of months. In fact I just finished fixing one again that took a few days to repair. But lets leave out those softer productivity and labour costs for a minute. After all, maybe you don’t consider these type of things as costs. (but you should!)

How about hard dollar accounts payable costs? Does that strike a nerve?

One of these three individuals configured a three way data synchronization with our email server, his iPhone, and his Google calendar.

Immediately after he did this, I started getting errors on our e-mail server, all coming from his account!

Even after removing the e-mail server part of this synchronization, the errors rapidly escalated in severity and number.

Articles and support notes suggested completely deleting this individuals email account, taking the server off-line and running certain database repair & diagnostic tools.

To avoid bringing critical e-mail to a halt during business hours, I planned that work for late on the next Sunday.

Unfortunately – my e-mail server did not last until the next Sunday.

That Friday morning was nothing but a complete nightmare of error messages and failures that completely crashed the server. The crash completely corrupted all message stores, the file system, the works. At one point we could not even get that e-mail server to actually run the operating system.

After a few hours of work, I contacted one of my preferred vendors who specialize in this type of disaster recovery. It still took myself and two of their experts 3 days to get a complete rebuild of that server, a restore of all that data from backup tapes, and then use the database tools to clean up the corruption.

Three days and a 10 grand service bill

The SMB Takeaway

It is easy to say; let everybody use what they want.

But you better be willing to pay for the excess costs! Because somebody has to pay them.

You can get updates to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

Photo Credit peppergrass via flickr

I just discovered a white paper titled 5 Social Media Marketing Best Practices for B2B on one of my favorite sites btobonline.com.  Two of the recommendations really stood out to me:

1. Be transparent to win customers
2. Be a listener, not a policeman

The first and the most important to me is a reminder that you don’t want your brand known as disingenuous. Remember people buy from companies they know and trust. Today’s savvy social media users have been know to ferret out companies that are being dishonest in their communications.  The white paper gives the classic example of Wal-Mart making the mistake of hiring bloggers to travel around the country visiting with Wal-Mart customers and employees and blogging about their experience.  When it came to light the bloggers were working with Wal-Mart’s PR agency the campaign was quickly dubbed a “flog” (fake blog).

Another  example of this  is Mazda’s blogging misstep when they tried to develop a blogging persona (think Betty Crocker) as reported by David Kirpatrick and Daniel Roth in a January 10, 2005 Fortune article, “Why There’s No Escaping the Blog.”.    They got caught when they tried to pass off professionally in-studio developed videos as ones taken off public access TV by a friend of their blogger. After several days of blog bashing they deactivated the blog. These examples show how important honesty and transparency in this new media world have become.

The second best practice is smart advice on how to handle the inevitable discussion that may not  align with your brand messages or your marketing goals.  How you handle negative feedback and comments is as important as the messages you are delivering. Think of it as an opportunity to turn a negative into a positive and to re-educate the public on your brand messages.

By proactively monitoring and listening to how customers and prospects converse on social media sites and taking part in those conversations you become a brand advocate ensuring you are delivering valuable content and insights.

If you’d like a copy of the complete white paper her’s the link:

5 social media marketing best practices

Susan Frederick

twitter.com/sueafrederick

Great to see these instructions!  If you follow this, it will work.  Click here to read.

I was recently talking with the president of a SMB, and during that conversation he mentioned some technologies he was thinking about implementing to improve some of his internal processes.

It is a constant refrain.

Technology Takes Last Place

Technology should be a distant last place in your considerations.

Technology is a tool that can be used by people.

A tool used by people to generate business results by following business processes.

Read these two reviews by John Caddel, and Bob Sutton referencing the same study on improving medication processes in hospitals. To quote Mr. Caddel;

I’ve seen both these situations in action: the ability of front-line personnel to understand and fix problems with the processes they use, and the effectiveness of often-overlooked simple and low-tech solutions.

The SMB Takeaway

Technology tools can help standardize, they can help speed up existing business processes. But if those processes don’t even exist right now. Don’t think (or let vendors convince you) that a software tool will be a magic bullet that can do it all for you.

You can get updates to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

Photo Credit bunchofpants via flickr

There are many situations that require you to restore backups to different computers, other than the one from where the data was originally backed up from. In the case of Apple’s Time Machine the restore procedure to different machines is not very intuitive. You have to use the “secret” option key…

There is a supported way to restore Time Machine backups of other computers using the “option-key” click on the Time Machine menu. If you want to use it just do the following:

1. Connect the Time Machine disk to the Mac you want to restore the files to
2. Set the “Show time machine status in the menu bar” In System Preferences -> Time Machine.
3. Click the Time Machine icon in the menu bar and keeping the mouse button pressed, press the “Option” key.
4. Select “Browse Other Time Machine Disks”
5. Select the disk you want
6. click Use Selected Disk

The Time Machine will open with the selected disk and you can use it to restore the files.

If, like me, you are using a non supported Time Machine configuration, where the backup disk is mounted using SMB or AFP (see this post on how to enable that) then the procedure above will not work directly. In my case I backup to my Buffalo TeraStation NAS, and the “Browse Other Time Machine Disks” window shows up empty, with no disk to select.

In order for this to work you need to first mount the Time Machine disk by hand in using the command line.

1. Mount the shared folder where your Time Machine backups are stored
2. Open a Terminal window and cd to the Time Machine volume. in my case I called it backups

   sudo cd /Volumes/backups

3. use hdiutil to mount the specific Time Machine .sparsebundle file

   sudo hdiutil attach <time_machine_file.sparsebundle>

Now you should be able to see the mounted volume in Finder, with all the backups listed as folders, and you can copy any files directly from it. Remember that mounting the disk may take some time due to the size of the disk and network connection speed, especially If you do this over a WiFi network.

Another option is to repeat the supported Time Machine procedure  outlined in the beginning of this post. You should now see the mounted disk as a Time Machine disk. Select the the disk and click “Use Selected Disk” and Time Machine will open on the selected disk just like with a Time Machine supported back up disk.

Personally I like to copy them directly from the Finder but your preference may vary so I document both ways of achieving this goal. Hope this helps.

]]> http://elliotross.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/why-your-product-demo-may-be-worthless/ Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:13:32 +0000 elliotross http://elliotross.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/why-your-product-demo-may-be-worthless/

For B2B vendors that are in the business of selling software, One common method of driving customers to your product is providing a time limited, demonstration version of that product.

This can be a great way to let prospects try before they buy. When done correctly and simply, It can give prospective customers a real world look at the basic features and functionality of your product.

While there is nothing wrong with providing demonstration versions of your software;

If you don’t do it right, don’t bother!

A story of the the demo that can only be used by experts.

I have been looking for a particular software tool for my organization. The market and vendors in this tools competitive space has hundreds of products, so it is not as if there is zero competition. In my research I found one vendor that had a product that looked to have the features I was looking for, and it also had a demonstration version of the product. My first thought was great!

I downloaded that demo and then looked on their web site for installation instructions. None.

I extracted the downloaded package and searched it all for installation instructions. None.

I called their sales team for instructions. None.

Let me give a little bit of background, this tool is not a stand-alone product that you double click the SETUP file and follow the bouncing ball until it tells you to click FINISH.

This software is a departmental tool that can be configured to use a few different Web Server products for the front end portions that people interact with, plus several different database products for the back end data storage. The installation and configuration of this type of software gets a little more complex as you have to get the pre-requisite components  (web server and database server) properly configured and set up first.

What happens?

I start the application installation, then get some cryptic error message that kills it dead.

Now, unlike my my previous rant about graphics and tutorials, at least software and servers are in my skill level!

So I have been able to overcome the errors and blow ups one by one to determine what is happening after the installation dies! I fix that one piece, try again, it dies again, I track down that reason, try again….

You get the idea. frustration. Hours of time wasted and I am not even at the stage where I can actually evaluate the product!

Would everybody keep doing this trial and error install? For a demo version of software? Probably not!

Who is the audience of your demo?

If the target market of your demo software is senior marketing, sales, or operations staff. Would they be able to try it on their own? Do they even have an IT team available for the hours of what I went through?

Or will this type of frustration have them just saying forget it?

The three choices; easy, difficult, and the hard way

The easy way to provide a software demo is to ensure that it is entirely self contained, no external dependencies at all. Everything your software needs is installed automatically.

A little more difficult is acknowledging the dependencies mentioned above, but at the minimum having explicit warnings and instructions on what is required, and what will be expected.

The hard way is the trial and error that I have been going through.

If you are planning your demonstration software the hard way – you probably have killed any benefit of your demo!

You can get updates to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

Photo Credit Doug Becker via flickr

I recently volunteered to become a member of our local chapter of SCORE, a national non-profit organization that mentors and trains small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs just starting a business. SCORE volunteers have a diversified collection of business knowledge and skills. Volunteers come from all walks of life including retired business owners, corporate executives and professionals who donate more than 1 million hours of service annually.

SCORE is helping build America’s economic future one small business at a time.  It is evident how important that service is today when job creation is a priority for our nation. Today, SCORE has 12,400 volunteers in 364 chapters around the United States.

If you’re a small business owner who’s looking for business advice or you’re ready to do your own thing and don’t know how to get started I encourage you to take a look at SCORE.  Start with the national web site www.score.org it’s packed with information, training videos, online counseling support and success stories.  You can also find your local chapter if you want face-to-face counseling or to attend local training seminars.

For 45 years, SCORE volunteers have been helping small businesses start-up, grow and succeed.  But it’s also an opportunity to applaud the entrepreneurial spirit that helps drive our economy.  Can you hear me clapping for you?

Susan Frederick

Twitter.com/sueafrederick

One common method of driving customers to your product or service can be a little freebie teaser to get prospects interested in talking to you. That type of freebie content could include case studies, white papers, and the topic of this post; The Tutorial.

While there is nothing wrong with providing context specific tutorials in principle;

If you don’t do it right, don’t bother!

The purpose of utilizing that tool is to demonstrate what you can do for me, increasing the likelihood of me purchasing from you.

If you just frustrate the hell out of me, you fail at that. Big time.

The Tutorial (not) for dummies

Yes, I am a tech manager. But one thing I know squat about is graphics and graphic software. Whatever your graphics software of choice is, I won’t be able to use it – trust me.

Anyway, I was pointed to a tutorial that would enable beginners (Me!) to use a pre-built template to add a particular graphic theme to a background image. I thought the idea was great, and downloaded the instructions and template.

The tutorial may have been perfect for someone with a graphic design background (not that anyone with that background would likely need a tutorial) but it pissed me off because it neglected the first, and most important part;

Step number one!

Yup.

Step number one was missing in action.

This tutorial assumed that my uber-excellent graphics skills would enable me to insert my graphic image of choice into that template, and that I could then joyfully follow along with the remaining steps in the tutorial.

I failed at step one. It did not tell me the basic information needed to get started. Namely how to put my image into their nice magic template. Finally in frustration I just deleted the thing.

When doing a tutorial, you cannot assume that just because you know step 1, that everyone does. In fact, if you are going to assume, assume the opposite, that we are all idiots and need it spelled out in capital letters.

But what if???

Of course!

If your tutorial has an implicit understanding that it is only of value to those with existing PhD’s in aeronautical engineering, just say it!

You will save the rest of us frustration and time because you are defining your audience right up front.

un articolo di Paolo Attivissimo

Windows 7, il nuovo gioiello di Microsoft, debutta col buco. E che buco, stando al suo scopritore Laurent Gaffié: è possibile paralizzare Windows 7 (e anche alcune versioni di Windows Server 2008) semplicemente inducendo l’utente a visitare un sito Web appositamente confezionato. Niente schermo blu classico, ma un blocco completo: il computer cessa di rispondere ai comandi. E’ quindi necessario riavviarlo, con conseguente perdita dei dati non salvati. Imbarazzante.

Microsoft sta già lavorando all’aggiornamento per turare la falla, ma nel frattempo le dimostrazioni dell’estrema facilità con la quale si può sfruttare il difetto cominciano a circolare in Rete.

La prima dimostrazione, naturalmente, è quella dello scopritore, che l’11 novembre ha pubblicato poco responsabilmente tutto il codice Python da usare. Per questo ho aspettato inizialmente a diffondere la notizia (il mio primo accenno pubblico è del 17), ma ora che tutti i dettagli sono disponibili nei principali siti di riferimento per la sicurezza (nella mailing list Full Disclosure, per esempio) è inutile mantenere ulteriormente l’embargo.

Come funziona la falla? E’ abbastanza semplice. Il software Microsoft che in Windows 7 gestisce il protocollo SMB (Server Message Block), quello utilizzato normalmente nei computer Windows per la condivisione di file e stampanti, non gestisce adeguatamente eventuali incoerenze nei dati trasmessi nell’ambito di questa condivisione. Specificamente, Windows 7 si blocca completamente (va in loop infinito) se riceve l’header di un pacchetto di dati SMB che dichiara una lunghezza diversa da quella reale. E’ sufficiente un singolo byte di differenza, secondo i test di PraetorianPrefect.com. Se succede, l’unica cosa che si può fare è premere il pulsante di spegnimento del computer e poi riavviare.

Un malintenzionato non deve fare altro che predisporre un server sul quale gira il codice pubblicato da Gaffié, lasciarlo in ascolto e indurre la vittima, tramite un qualunque espediente psicologico (mail allettante, invito in chat), a visitare una pagina Web contenente un link speciale che rimanda al server ostile. Quando la vittima contatta la pagina Web, si attiva una connessione SMB che manda il pacchetto malformato a Windows 7, che si paralizza. Ci sono anche altri metodi (un comando dir \\indirizzo ip\risorsa condivisa fasulla dalla macchina della vittima), ma questo è probabilmente il più pernicioso.

Microsoft ha pubblicato un advisory in inglese, in cui raccomanda agli utenti Windows 7 di bloccare le porte TCP 139 e 445 al firewall e di bloccare ogni comunicazione SMB da e verso Internet. Di norma dovreste già essere configurati in questo modo (se avete dubbi, chiedete a un esperto fidato di controllare per voi), per cui la falla sarebbe sfruttabile solo dai vostri colleghi dispettosi.

L’advisory di Microsoft indica che Windows XP e Windows Vista non sono affetti da questa vulnerabilità e sottolinea che per ora non sono noti siti che la sfruttano e non è possibile sfruttarla per eseguire codice o prendere diversamente il controllo del computer della vittima: il peggio che vi può capitare, insomma, è trovarvi con il computer improvvisamente bloccato. Proprio come ai vecchi tempi.

Fonte: http://attivissimo.blogspot.com

Free is still the most powerful marketing word any business can use.  Well maybe.  If there is real value attached to the offer then indeed it becomes even more powerful.  If there is no real value attached then it’s going to be discovered pretty quickly. In today’s connected world customers share the good, the bad and the ugly. Either way, you can expect to have a light shown on the offer as fast as the swine flu virus spread.

Fellow marketers in my network share links to free ebooks, white papers,blogs, events etc, they have reviewed and know I will also like.  In the same manner they are quick to discuss and share their opinion about what they consider of no value.

Best advice if you’re not sure your free offer has perceived value is to beta test it with a few trusted customers.  One of the marketing gurus I follow recently sent me an email just for that purpose.  Not only was I flattered to be a tire kicker (great relationship building initiative) but she unveils her offer with more confidence that she won’t be doing future mea culpas. It takes a lot to build your brand why risk denting it with the wrong “free” offer?

Susan Frederick

twitter.com/sueafrederick

Can be defined as doing the same thing, the same way every time, and expecting the results to change. (try W. Edwards Demings’ red bead experiment!)

Building a process oriented business is not a set it and forget it operation. It is defining and monitoring the desired outcomes. And identifying that if a desired outcome does not happen, that you have an opportunity for improvement.

In other words, if the desired outcome fails, what can we do to reduce the risk that it will fail next time?

In talking about process, you need to look specifically at what breaks. You need to look at the why, and the how of what went wrong. Is it a people problem? A process problem? or a system problem?

(within the context of ITIL I give some samples starting in this post titled; ITIL And The SMB Part 3; Incident Management)

Although please note that you do not need to go the ITIL route to become more process oriented.

It can be easy to overlook;

When something fails, there is an associated cost. That cost could be rework, lost time, maybe even lost business. Costs can be soft as well, for example, reduced customer satisfaction.

As an example of improving process efficiency, the large package delivery companies load their trucks in a first-in, last-out manner based on the drivers delivery route. This simple step reduces the amount of time finding the correct packages for offload at each stop, and reduces the risk of missing something. And of course missing packages can negatively affect customer satisfaction.

The More Things Stay The Same

When you start building a process oriented business (not just as an IT function) there are two critical pieces to start with;

1) Define the optimum outcomes. A process is nothing without a business outcome. This defined business outcome is also the measure that you can use to improve and monitor your processes.

2) Continually monitor and improve your processes. There are always opportunities for improvement. There is an old saying in music, that the spaces between the notes are just as important as the notes themselves.

The SMB Takeaway

Like the spaces between the notes, process optimization often comes hidden in the areas as work migrates from one individual or group to another.

Improving them, or identifying why something did not work, you need to understand – you need to look at the what the why and the how of what you are trying to perform.

Was it a person error? a process error? a system error?

You can get updates to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

Many people come across stories in the media with regard to large corporations announcing quarterly dividends, stock reports, etc., (or governments trying to budget for the coming year) and believe that these conglomerates are the ones that need to plan and budget — not you.

All you have, you think, are some retirement accounts, checking, and maybe savings. Nothing to plan, right? Too daunting?

Wrong. The stories in today’s Daily Dimes show that small businesses and vertical businesses use the same principles to budget that you and I should.

This press release off of PR Newswire gives small businesses practical tips to utilize when preparing a budget for the coming year. This article gives those in the hotel and hospitality industry guidelines for proper budgeting, as well.

Here are a few of the tips from each of these articles, and my translation in parentheses:

• recognize what a budget is for (have personal finance goals in mind you’d like to achieve by budgeting);
• start now (stop procrastinating);
• zero-base every line item (justify all of your discretionary expenses);
• use lean Six Sigma (determine where you could streamline some expenses and save money);
• understand cash flow (know how much you’re spending … and on what);
• improve cash flow (find ways to either save money or make more);
• plan for contingencies (leave yourself a cushion in case of an emergency); and
• regularly compare actual results to budget (have some specific goals in mind when creating your budget and ensure you’re working toward those when you review your progress).

Sound familiar? The expenses and amounts of money may differ, but the basic principles of budgeting are the same — whether you must justify your practices to shareholders or to yourself and your family. Get in the habit of budgeting your money today, and it can pay off down the road … professionally and personally.

Professionally you ask? Think of it this way — say you’ve been practicing sound budgeting practices and found real cost savings in your personal life. One, congratulations! Two, if you are in a position to impact spending and investing at your job, you could take those principles to make some legitimate suggestions to help save your company money and become more profitable. And what company isn’t looking for that nowadays?

This post is the next in an intermittent series looking at your smaller business web site from a marketing perspective -  When you don’t have marketing staff!

This series started with this post, IT In Marketing? here and covers looking at real world web site improvements that SMB’s can make that don’t require major work or extensive help from experts. Stuff that can be typically done by a smaller business either by themselves, or in some cases just basic tech staff assistance.

In the previous post in this series, I wrote about the importance of adding a Site Map to your Web Site. That post also links to a full definition of what a Site Map actually is, and what it does as well.

I wanted to dig deeper into this topic for one reason; When it comes to a Site Map on your Web site, you actually want two of them!

Your Web Site is collection of pieces of content broken down into various pages. These pages could include Contact Us information, products and services you provide, case studies The works. That can be a lot of content scattered over many web pages. These site maps simply ensure that it is easy for visitors to find the information and content that they are looking for. Because if they don’t find it quickly, odds are that they will just go to the next web site.

The first Site Map; For Humans

The first Site Map that you create is for those of us in the human category. It is simply a hierarchical set of links that ensure that people that are on your Web Site don’t get lost. If they find themselves in unknown territory and get lost trying to find the information they were looking for, the site map is a quick way to ensure that they stick around.

Similar to a table of contents, the site map is a link that when a user clicks on it, takes them to a page that gives a quick summary of all content, and the links to all that content on your Web Site, it could look similar to this;

About YourCompany

* Overview
* News
* Our Philosophy
* Why Choose Us
* Our Staff
* Careers

Services & Solutions

* Overview
* Product_name
* Solution_Name

I am confident you have seen those type of links along the side, or bottom of other web sites. Again, need a quick check of where you are in that web site? The above sample tells you quickly and easily.

The Second Site Map; For Computers

More specifically, this second Site Map is a computer readable format that allows the search engines to quickly and efficiently index all the content that exists on your Web Site. You want to ensure that all content is properly indexed so that if some one searches the Internet for; “Who sells this widget in my town?” your information can appear in their search results.

This second map looks a little different, and after you create it, humans don’t see it. The data for this machine readable site map is in a data format called XML and sits in a file called Sitemap.xml right at the root of your Web Site.

This XML site map can be created manually (ugg) but there are also tools that can do it automatically for you. Note that the tool I used to generate this sample is shown in the second line below.

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″ ?>
- <!– Created by Devintelligence.com Sitemap Generator
–>
- <urlset xmlns=”http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84″>
- <url>
<loc>http://www.yourcompany.com</loc>
<lastmod>2009-11-06</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.5</priority>
</url>
- <url>
<loc>http://www.yourcompany.com/about_news.asp#27Oct08</loc>
<lastmod>2009-11-06</lastmod>
<changefreq>hourly</changefreq>
<priority>0.5</priority>
</url>

As you see, this one is not pretty! but again, once you create it and place it on the root of your web site, humans won’t actually see it. The only time the you need to see it is if you add new pages to your web site, make sure the the site map gets updated as well.

The SMB Takeaway

For the human readable site map, you will most likely need the help of your web site developer, the second you can do yourself very easily.

The two of them together ensure that all content on your web site can easily be found, by people, or by computers!

You can get updates to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

     Nessa última sexta-feira 13 (data sugestiva), foi divulgado pela  Microsoft uma nova vulnerabilidade em seu novo sistema operacional Winodows 7, sendo a mesma classificada como uma falha de zero-day*, este bug encontra-se no Server Message Block (SMB)**, um protocolo criado pela empresa que forma o backbone de compartilhamento de arquivos do Windows. O erro só pode ser explorado para congelar o computador, não permitindo a instalação de nenhum código malicioso.

     Para se defender dessa vulnerabilidade basta bloquear as portas TCP 135 até 139. Já bloquear a porta 445 irá prevenir que tráfegos SMB externos entrem em sua rede.

     Com o firewall bloqueado, a ameaça ainda persiste dentro do seu sistema, mas os sistemas internos da rede devem ser mais confiáveis do que aqueles encontrados na internet. Você também pode bloquear as portas da rede interna, mas você pode ficar impossibilitado de acessar arquivos e pastas localizados nessa área.

     Com essas configurações básicas já dá para se ter uma segurança maior até que a próxima vulnerabilidade seja divulgada. Vale lembrar não existe sistema 100% seguro.

     *Server Message Block (SMB) trabalha como um protocolo de rede da camada de aplicação e tem como objetivo principal prover acesso compartilhado a arquivos, impressoras, portas seriais e outras comunicações entre nós (equipamentos) na rede. Ele também provê um mecanisco de comunicação entre processos de forma autenticada. Em grande parte seu uso se dá por computadores rodando sistemas operacionais Microsoft Windows.

     **Um ataque zero-day (ou zero-hour)  é uma ameaça de computador que tenta explorar alguma vulnerabilidade em aplicações de computador que ainda não são de conhecimento do público, nem mesmo dos fabricantes das aplicações, ou ameaças que ainda não tenham correções disponíveis. Os ataques zero-day são usados ou compartilhados pelos hackers (ofensores) antes que os fabricantes das aplicações saibam das vulnerabilidades encontradas nelas.

“What I began by reading, I must finish by acting“, (O que eu comecei lendo, eu devo terminar agindo), Henry David Thoreau

Este é o primeiro post de uma série em que pretendo apresentar algumas ferramentas que a internet oferece para nós, empreendedores e gestores de pequenas e médias empresas.

Essas ferramentas, ditas da nuvem (cloud), podem gerar valor para a sua empresa e, muitas vezes, têm custo zero ou muito próximo disto, se tornando uma excelente opção para quem quer dar um “banho de tecnologia”, pagando pouco por isto.

O único “senão”, para nós brasileiros, é que a maioria dessas ferramentas ainda não tem versão em português.

Neste primeiro post vou apresentar o MailChimp, ferramenta que uso para fazer campanhas de email dos meus serviços de consultoria.

O MailChimp é um serviço cloud especializado no envio de campanhas de marketing por email, que funciona assim: você se cadastra no serviço, abrindo uma conta para a sua empresa (ou uma conta pessoal, se preferir). Uma vez “logado” na ferramenta, cria uma lista de emails, escolhe um formato para a sua campanha (há um banco de formatos pré-montados), altera o formato escolhido com seu conteúdo, incluindo textos, logomarca, imagens e envia a campanha para toda a lista de emails, num clique só.

Uma vez enviada uma campanha, você pode observar o comportamento dos destinatários: quem abriu o email da campanha, quem não abriu, a taxa de cliques nos links da campanha, quais links foram clicados, quais links não chamaram atenção, a quantidade de vezes que o email foi reenviado para terceiros, comparar duas campanhas, entre outras estatísticas.

A ferramenta permite ainda que você publique aqueles formulários de cadastramento de emails (assinatura do serviço de newsletter) no seu site ou blog – os dados dos usuários que preencherem um formulário são gravados diretamente em uma lista da ferramenta. Uma vez cadastrado, qualquer usuário pode gerenciar sua assinatura, por exemplo, cancelando-a ou alterando seus dados.

Da primeira vez que você for usar o MailChimp vai investir umas horas aprendendo a lidar com a ferramenta – recomendo que envie um primeiro email de testes para um número limitado de pessoas conhecidas – pois há muita tecnologia que você pode optar por incluir ou não nas suas campanhas.

O melhor de tudo é que o serviço do MailChimp é gratuito até 500 assinantes e até 3.000 mensagens enviadas por mês. #free

Alexandre Ribenboim.

Observação: não estou sendo pago pela MailChimp para publicar este post. Contudo, sou grato pelo serviço gratuito que eles oferecem, assim como qualquer um pode ser também.

BtoB the magazine for marketing strategists just posted their recent survey on 2010 marketing budget expectations on their web site. The news is positive but more interestingly are the quotes mid-article:

“As marketers learned from marketing in a recession, nothing beats understanding the customer and marketing to prospects with a laser focus.”

“It is all about understanding the audience and understanding how they want to receive their information, then developing marketing programs that are targeted exclusively to their needs,” said Bob Meldrum, VP-marketing at TW Telecom.

And no, I didn’t read the article before I wrote my last post.  It just demonstrates that good marketing is  getting the basics right and building on that solid foundation with unique appealing promotions.  Of course, it’s always gratifying to see other marketing experts confirm one’s advice.

Here’s the link to the full article and research:

www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091116/FREE/311169985/1108/FREE

Susan Frederick

Twitter.com/sueafrederick

Magic has become my life ever since I learned it. I was studying before at Capitol University and I always go to GMALL for lunch and during my break-times. I met a lot of people there, schoolmates, shoppers and even those who work in that mall because I always show them my magic. I felt I became an instant celebrity because people knows me and anywhere I go there are people who called me, “Magic!”. That is the effect if you have done your show with good presentation and when you spent time with your spectators entertaining them every second.

One of the people I know there was a man that we shall call Garfield. We call him that name because he has huge bulging eyes, a small body with big head. He’s over the calendar day’s because he aged more than 40 years. I could be his son because Im only 23. I met this man who is also very fond of magic, he also showed me his tricks. Since the day that I met him, I already noticed a few discrepancies in his personality. He acts like a child compared to his age, he’s got no good manners at all, he’s irresponsible to his family because he has a daughter studying in high school and a wife he always scold and left in the house. I visited his house one night and he invited me to eat there. What I saw when I step in the doorstep is a messy living room and a noticeable smell that causes sinusitis. He then told me some stories about his family and boasting about some family backgrounds which I cannot remember because I don’t care even listening about it. I already notice these few many things which are good reasons that I should not take him as my friend. His uneducated personality, his conceit and pride and his crooked reasoning and thinking. But then, after that, we always go together in the mall.

I left Cagayan de Oro sometime and spent almost two months in Malaybalay City. When I came back to CDO, He invited me to join SMB (that is street magic breakers) , that he established together with the vice-pres and two other founding members. I didn’t hesitate to join them since I am a freelancer. I don’t belong to any other magic group that time. I always had a show in parties and some private or public occasions. There was a time when Kim, the VP, booked me in a show during the EB of the biggest organization of technicians in the Philippines. We went together with Kim without texting Garfield but I did inform him about the coming show. After that, a terrible war because of ignorance started, when the grassroot Garfield avoided us without any reason or excuse.

GMALL has become SMB’s base. We always meet there and do our magic on people who likes to watch us. We meet new friends there and learn few things. But one day we heard some bad news from the new friends we have, that the unreasonable ignorant Garfield is revealing our magic to the people and selling our tricks to them. He even spread out false tales about me and attacked me personally. I don’t know what his reasons are for doing that, I didn’t bother to give comment about him and I didn’t do anything but to shut my mouth. I don’t want to buy cheap stories from low class people. And besides, even though how many bad things he throws on me, on my personality, my action speaks louder than his words. Who would listen to his unprofessional reasoning? Only birds of the same feather, right?

The biggest scandalous event happened after we went to a trip to Valencia and Malaybalay. The SMB were present in GMALL the day after the trip and I didn’t go there because I want to relax first because we had a tiring journey back to CDO. That was God’s will because that time my friends told me that the police and investigators were waiting for me because Garfield reported to the police that I would break his body and crush his bones. And whose the star witness that I said those things? That crazy guy like him that the guards in GMALL always throw outside. He has tattoo all over his body and he lost some portion of his rationality, perhaps because of drugs. I cant believe that Garfield would buy such a gossip from his relative.

I am in King Motors when I heard the news about that. Then Garfield came and scold me with few litanies from the demon, calling me names and pointing a finger towards me. How should I handle this and how should I react? I cannot stop myself but give back answers to him. I ask him the reason for his childish, foolish, naïve attitude but he answered me few lines which are ignoratio adhominem. People from 2km away could hear him screaming. Well, his reasons are:

- I didn’t invite him in my show, even in text. We are one group and he is one of the founders, and I am being disrespectful to him as a founder.
- Why didn’t I give a little portion of the money to Kim, our vice-press who contacted me to that show and drove me all the way and to David who let me borrow his flaming wallet (because I traded mine with a coin-shl)?

These are the main reasons of his anger and I don’t want to include the minor ones because the main is already sufficient to describe his foolishness. My answer?

- Why should I invite him when I am also invited and I don’t know anybody from that occasion. They were technicians from around the Philippines. I didn’t invited him but I told him that Im having a show. He should blame our VP for that because they were very close to each other and he is the one who contacted me for the show. I respect him but he is not respecting me. He is much older than I am but I am more matured than him. Why didn’t he told me on the first place about his feelings and why tell other people about the problems within our circle? If he is a founder, he should be a good one to handle his members so that in return we will respect him.
- Why is he commenting about money when its OK with Kim? Maybe I was wrong because I didn’t give a little tip to them but if he told me openly about that then I would be happy to buy them some snacks and apologize? We are a team and we should be open to each other and besides I was the one who teach him magic and introduce him to the magic world. I am the president of the organization by the vote of the majority of our members. And besides, I told Kim that I cant give him something for now because the money is just enough for me and I wanted to buy some items for my next show in Corpus Christi School. He agreed!

Well, this is a lesson for me and for anybody to be choosy of friends. To be careful about whom we go with. All the members of SMB lose their respect for him and all of us throw him out of the organization and didn’t recognize him as one of our member. An order for all magicians to ban Regie Linaac, a.k.a George because of offenses done against the whole magic society.

We all know the adage that the three most important things in real estate are location, location, location. In marketing, especially for small business and small budgets it’s all about focus, focus, focus.  And the first rule is know your customer.

If you haven’t written out a description of your customer yet, do it.  It’s never too late and it’s a tactic to help you focus marketing efforts.  Start with demographics that include age, sex, geographic location, etc and add in psychographics such as  likes, dislikes, and other personality traits.  Never lose sight of this description and from time-to-time as your business expands make sure it’s still an accurate picture.

During the discovery phase try to learn how your customers prefer to receive information. This should include when as well as how.  For instance, let’s say your customer base is primarily married couples between the ages of 25 and 40.  Both parents work and they have children.  They have median incomes and own their own homes.  They are technology savvy and have cell phones, laptops and gaming systems.  You might assume that electronic marketing is the way to go but the key here will be when and how often and which electronic marketing tactics?  Obviously, while connected, these are busy people already likely feeling time-deprived.  You’ll need to understand how they like to get their information and what are the best times to reach them so they’ll see or hear you’re message.

So don’t forget to ask them.  Invite them to participate in telling you by offering alternatives (think email, social media,  direct mail, telemarketing, etc.) and letting them sign up for the method they prefer.

One retail outlet I frequent asked for permission to call me prior to in store sales.  Easy, they call and generally leave a message (I purposely gave them my home number not my cell).  I pick up this message at my convenience.

While marketing tactics are alluring don’t get distracted.  First, know your audience, second have a strategy, third work the plan.  When growing your business you need to focus, focus, focus.

Susan Frederick

Twitter.com/sueafrederick

When we look at the service offerings of IVDesk, our focus is on making sure that systems are as smooth as possible and that service is much better then expected.  We look at the running of systems, providing server resources, helpdesk, all the other items that are needed as back-office systems, as things a company should want to do.  Companies want to run their organizations, support their customers, provide their services, not run IT shops.

You can think of this providing the details and environment as someone taking out the trash.  It needs to be done, it’s important because if it’s not done, things really stink, but, it doesn’t add value to your business.  It just doesn’t.

But, companies create services for “taking out the trash”, and take care of these things so you can focus on what you’re good at.  You don’t run electrical plants to provide electricity for you lights.  You don’t run phone networks to provide connections for your phones, why get stuck providing IT services when you only really want them to work.  The answer is, DON’T!

Let us at IVDesk focus on getting your systems glass smooth and providing support for everyone.  Work from everywhere, get 24 x 7 real support for every employee, don’t spend you capital, and get back to your business.  Give us a call to get started today!

Thanks
Bill Sorenson
CEO
www.IVDesk.com

(Let me guess – You have that complaint as well?)

What are repetitive problems? And what is so bad about them?

Repetitive problems are IT service issues that either do repeat on a regular basis (eg. Jane Can’t print) or seem to occur on a regular basis (eg. The Internet is dead).

In both cases these issues will both suck the life out of your staff, and leave a lasting perception that IT staff or suppliers are never meeting expectations in the quality of IT service and support delivery.

The Quick And The Dead

Sure you want IT related issues and problems resolved rapidly. But it is important to understand that rapidly must be balanced by permanently.

You do not want IT staff or suppliers fixing the same problem again and again. Avoidance of these repetitive problems comes down to investigating and communicating the root cause of that IT service or asset failure. Identifying and communicating this root cause permits a reasonable discussion and decision on mitigating that possible repeat of that failure.

In some cases, it may not possible or desirable to permanently kill all repetitive issues. As an example, perhaps your current budgetary considerations make replacing that defective printer a low priority. But at least having that decision agreed upon and documented can remove that vague perception that your IT staff or supplier is not delivering adequate service.

The SMB Takeaway

I have talked with many SME business owners and managers over the years, and a common theme in complaints about their IT service staff or outsourced service providers is when failures occur in the same IT service or asset consistently and repeatedly. So the discussion must be held on that root cause, that why?

These type of Repetitive problems must be avoided and killed where ever, and when ever possible.

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Photo Credit donnjmck via flickr