Thankfully the exposure, according to the official news release, seems minimal. Only name and email address information has been compromised. Not our personal financial or related information (that we know of!), so undoubtedly we will start seeing an influx of new SPAM to our mailboxes.

But one other likely outcome of such a massive hack you should expect is a new round of what’s termed phishing attacks. This is when someone claiming to be your bank, your retailor, or similar trusted brand name, sends you an email claiming that your account has been hacked or a transaction is suspicious, and asking you to go to a web page to type in your account or personal information to “re-confirm” everything. Think of this as the low-tech way to steal your account and financial information… the thieves simply ASK YOU FOR IT! And when the email has that familar professional design and look of the real website, you think it really is from your bank.

BUT BE ON GUARD! Don’t fall for that. It’s too easy to send an email pretending to be someone else. And it’s even easier to make that fake email or website look like the one it’s pretending to be. And honestly, if your bank DID pull a stunt like that asking you to give them information they should already have on file, I’d seriously consider shopping around for a new bank!

2 simple lessons here:

• DON’T click any links in such an email request from your bank. Instead, open your web browser (internet explorer, firefox, safari, etc), go to your favorite search engine (Google.com, for example) and type the name of your bank and click from there. Links in emails can be deceiving.
• If you receive any emails or phone calls making strange requests or asking for things you are either uncomfortable providing, especially when they contact you first, DON’T respond to the email or the phone call. Instead, pick up the phone and dial THEM using a well published, trusted contact number. When in doubt always call them and ask, did you really send this? is this legit? But make sure YOU are the one phoning THEM to verify you’re talking to the right people!

All websites are at risk of compromise. You don’t need to be a major player in this internet game to become a target. Even this website sees regular hack attempts of one kind or another. Usually these are the spam attempt variety, but yes, even hack attempts to penetrate our database occurs, though as yet, none have suceeded. Not to say it couldn’t happen, but hackers know the easiest way to steal data about you is good old fashion trickery. Gaining your trust and then getting you to spill the beans about yourself is always the easiest way in.

So be cautious out there!

So simply insert the following line at the BEGINING of your CSR data:

—–BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST—–

And append a carriage return plus the following line to the END of your CSR:

—–END NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST—–

Save your file or select all and copy and paste your CSR with the above two lines and you should be good to go!

So I went out in search of an answer.  Haven’t found one yet, by the way.  So if anyone can help and point me in the right direction I would appreciate it.  I found who invented it and when it was first introduced, etc., but not how they came up with the actual idea for the invention…

But in the process of my research I also stumbled across an NPR news story about how two New York researchers are experimenting with cotton candy as a possible way to create artificial tissue for the human body.  yes you read that right!  can you believe it?  Cotton candy that might actually help save your life someday! 

Check out the full story here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100721500&ft=1&f=6851565

Basically this idea is still on the drawing board and not ready for testing yet, but the basic idea is to use cotton candy rather then nanofibers to help create the small tiny network of artificial blood vessels and coat it using a liquid polymer.  Eventually the candy disintigrates and you are left with one well developed network of blood vessels.  Pretty slick idea, eh?! 

So next time you visit your dentist office, bring in some cotton candy with you, sit in the chair and eat it in front of him or her and explain how cotton candy might not be good for your teeth but it might just be the cure for some certain other body parts in the future!

Well that was then.  Now almost 3 decades later the media scene has drastically changed.  MTV rarely plays music videos anymore.   Nowadays all the really cool media can be seen and heard first not on the broadcast media outlets but instead on  the internet.  Today, online media sharing sites like YouTube have replaced MTV as the medium of choice for aspiring bands and breakout artists.  

Forget email and online shopping.  To me this is the part of the internet that is really exciting.  Watching internet technologies and trends evole is like watching the birth of radio and television broadcasting a century ago.   The internet truly is it’s own unique medium. 

Take YouTube, for example.  Today when I want to watch a certain music video, I need not stare in front of my MTV screen all day waiting for it to play (like they actually play videos anymore anyway!).  Instead, I type in what I seek on YouTube’s website, and viola!  there it is!  I can even create my own personal playlist and listen & watch all my favorites to my heart’s content.  Not only that, but chances are that you will also find a lot of “amateur artists” posting videos of their own renditions of your favorites.  Some you may like, others you may not, but it does make for an interesting outlet to discover new “talent”.  Who knows, you may discover your next favorite performer online!

Lately I’ve been hooked on watching and listening to music videos on YouTube.  This is the version of MTV I always wanted.  Play what you want when you want it, and get recommendations for and discover new favorite songs & artists in the process! 

So I say, away with my MTV.  Just give me a fast internet connection and I’ll be a happy man. 

Over the years I’ve tried a few VoIP offerings, including Vonage (hated ‘em!) and more recently ViaTalk (liked them until they sent me a $50 disconnect bill!). What is with all these disconnect charges the phone industry charges, anyway??? But I digress …

Since launching a couple of new side ventures, I needed full fledged PBX capabilities, not just a seperate business phone line. By PBX, I mean I needed the ability to create a press 1 for this, 2 for that type of Auto Attendant. And the ability to forward calls to different numbers accordingly.

In this era of hosted “software as a service/cloud computing” offerings, PBX systems are no exception.  Rather than purchasing all the telephone gear outright (which can cost thousands of dollars, not to mention the supporting phone line capacity to support the call volume you expect to receive as you grow) you can literally sign up with a web based service that hosts the PBX phone system and supporting infrastructure for you,  and automatically scales as you grow.  Then you simply program it via your web browser.  At signficantly lower cost as well. 

But most of the Hosted PBX (or Virtual PBX Providers) that I have found charge not only a monthly service fee (in the neighborhood or $30 per month and up) but they also charge a per minute rate for phone calls.  If I was making a lot of money from my new side ventures, this would not be a problem to pay, but being a startup, and a side venture startup at that, those unknown costs are rather scary.  When all other phone charges are moving toward a flat rate system, why can’t a Virtual PBX provider as well? 

Well, guess what?  I found one that does exactly that! A flat rate whether you choose a local number or a toll free number for your business.  And get this — the rate is a mere $15 per month!  Now that’s a number I can afford! 

The company is called Toktumi (pronounced “Talk to Me”, clever, ain’t it?!) . Toktumi  offers powerful office phone features including call waiting, call transfer, caller ID, call forwarding, and an auto attendant that truly forwards calls without the need to “announce” each call.  (This is a key differentiator as well for me.  When I tried to transfer a call with most of the other Virtual PBX companies, they do so by first announcing the call and expecting the person answering the call to dial 1 to accept the call.  This is more commonly termed “virtual assistant”.  But in my case I need to transfer calls to various outsourced call centers, which could be answered by their own auto attendent (and not a live human initially) that asks the caller to “press 1 for this, 2 for that, etc”.  So I need the call to be transferered directly and not wait for someone to confirm acceptance of the call. )

You get a softphone as well to make and receive calls.  (A softphone is software that runs on your computer, desktop or laptop, that turns it into your virtual office phone!)  They even allow you to create instant conference calls for up to 20 people — and with the softphone you can even record your conference calls for future reference. 

All this with no hidden fees, no contracts, no equipment required. One low monthly price gets you everything. Toktumi customers get it all for just $14.95 per month.  Finally, someone is speaking my language!  Thanks Toktumi!  Now if only they offered private labelling of their service, it would make for yet another great new side venture …. !

HAND SANITIZER

You should be able to get all the above ingredients from a local pharamacy, with the exception of the Vegetable Glycerin, which you should be able to find in a crafts store.  Put mixture in a bottle or jar, and presto!  You’ve got your own hand sanitizer ready to go!

Instructions courtesy of KRON 4.

The truth is most people DON’T perform regular backups of their data. Even most technology professionals like myself don’t do this even though we all know how costly it will be to try to recover that lost data.

So the best backup solution is really one that occurs regularly and automatically without any intervention on the part of the user. And to be be a true disaster recovery type solution, your data should be stored offsite, and not on some external hard drive in the same building. Afterall, all it takes is a fire or similar disaster to wipe out not only your data, but your backup media to boot!

Thankfully with the internet, such a solution does exist.   One example of such a service is called Mozy and as a regular customer of theirs for the past few years, let me tell you, it is an awesome internet based backup service!  Not only do I now use them personally, but I have referred countless clients and friends to them as well. 

Mozy comes in two flavors: a personal/home version and a business version called MozyPro.  They both essentially use the same configuration software it’s just a matter of what you are trying to backup up.  To backup servers, you’d use the MozyPro version; to backup personal home computers, sign up for either the FREE or PAID MozyHome type account.

What I like most about Mozy is how easy it is to setup and get running.  There is a lot of advanced configuration choices for pros like me, but for even the novice, the software makes it easy to select the type of data you want backed up. You don’t need to know where your Outlook Personal File Folder (PST) files are, for example. With Mozy, select Outlook Mail files and the software backs the default location for you! So the novice user should be able to go with al lthe default choices and rest assured that his/her data will be backed up properly. The software can be set to run automatically either on a daily schedule or whenever the computer is idle. Best of all, all backups are stored on Mozy servers encrypted, so you can rest assured you have a good offsite backup of your data in the event of the worst scenerio.

In a few months I will post a more thorough right up of various data backup options for the home user or small office… everything from using an external hard drive as a backup device, to installing a full blown dedicated backup server solution such as Veritas Backup Exec or CommVault. But for now, if you don’t have any backup solution currently in place for your computers, I highly recommend Mozy. Once installed and configured it should require very little maintenance … just check it occasionally to verify it is working as expected. Mozy is a great solution for anyone without in house computer support staff, and it can also serve as a complimentary secondary backup solution as well. More on that later. For now, if your most precious data is without a safety net, give Mozy a try! If you do, be sure to let me know your experiences and feedback.

Yes you need a landline for DSL service but no you should not need to actually have landline voice service. The two do run over different parts of the circuit. I believe the industry term for what you seek is “dry loop” — in this case, DSL without voice. But before you cancel your voice line, I caution you to consider another advantage of keeping your voice service … 911. I’m a big fan of landline phone service, both for the superior voice quality, but also because of the technology behind 911. If you or your family were to ever have an emergency that required dialing 911, personally I’d rather do it from a landline phone, than a cell phone. From a landline, the 911 operator instantly knows the address from which you are calling from. This is not typically the case from a cell phone although that technology is supposedly coming down the pike. Also, 911 from your landline routes to your local emergency agency (local fire or police station, typically). Cellular 911 is either answered by specially trained personnel of the cell phone company, or routed (more commonly) to the State Police of Highway Patrol. (For my area, for example, that Highway Patrol office is more than 20 miles away!) The dispatcher then has to figure out where you are, what you need, and transfer your call to the appropriate local agency closest to your location. This can sometimes take a significant amount of time. I no longer dial 911 from my cell phone unless I have no other options. Instead I now dial the agency I need directly. (Yes I store them as speed dial numbers in my cell phone!) In my opinion, cellular 911 just doesn’t measure up to landline 911. So dialing 911 from a landline is ALWAYS the best option.

Here’s a writeup I did for my hiking group 3 years ago related to this:

http://hiking.bondon.com/FAQMain.cfm?page=Msg&Email=110

So, in your case, if you decide to keep your landline for at least receiving calls and as an insurance policy should you need to call 911, my suggestion is to switch to measured rate service (cheaper than flat rate if you don’t make too many local phone calls). AND think about getting rid of long distance service on the line as well so you’re not paying the $5/mo interconnect fee and associated taxes that go with it. Then you’re monthly phone bill should be less than $10/mo, including taxes and fees (probably under $5/mo if you qualify for Universal Lifeline Phone service.)

But if you do decide to get rid of your landline, I suggest you program in your local police and fire numbers into all your cell phones and train your family to phone them direct. Believe me, you’ll get thru MUCH faster!