Small Business IT Weekly

Browsers Bomb at Password Protection

Here's something for insomniacs to think about at two in the morning. Your web browser may be exposing all your passwords and other sensitive personal information to hackers.

The self-proclaimed Internet lockbox, Internet Explorer; Apple's untouchable Safari; open source choices, like Firefox and Google Chrome, vetted for security by the world? None of the above have bragging rights that they are keeping your most personal information safe according to a new study by Chapin Information Services.

The weak links are pretty universal falling into three areas:

1. Your browser is not checking the destination where passwords are sent.

3. Your browser isn't telling you when invisible forms are getting triggered and tapping into password management information.

For the record, Google Chrome fared the worst on the list. Safari came in at number two.

Would it Kill You?

I can think of many service industries that drive me crazy (lessee... banking, health care, insurance companies of any kind really, etc.). But few industries that actually sell tangible products can get away with frustrating their customers the way high tech does and with such wild abandon.

Here's my list of "Would it kill you..."

1. Microsoft, to admit Vista is a dud. Announce a new initiative to overhaul Windows with the top priority being to slim it down, make it crash less, startup faster and design security features so that users can easily customize it to their needs. As big as you are, I've watched you scramble over the years with major initatives to overhaul your direction. Try this one!

2. Apple, to get serious about lowering the prices of your Macs to compete with PC prices.

3. Google, to allow users to download Youtube videos to our desktops so that we can access them for presentations without Internet access. Here's an old list of cheats to work around it until they do. If Apple, through iTunes, can charge us .99 cents to download a copyrighted song for unlimited use, then why can't I download an amateur video of guys disco dancing on treadmills for less than a buck, as well?

4. Printer manufactorers, to lower the prices of your ink cartridges. At the very least, update your programs that notify us when the ink is low so that they are honest and the ink is really low. Yes, I know you make more money when we replace our ink cartridges when they are still 30% full. But, think about the landfills and all those businesses out there hanging on in a bad economy. Sometimes greed is not good, Mr. Gecko.

5. Security software makers, to rewrite all those popups screens in terms that make sense to the average non-techie user. What's the difference between low and medium risk, anyway?

5 Sure Signs From High Tech That We’re in a Recession

In case last week's unemployement report didn't convince you. Or the continued wrangling over the automaker bail out. Or the bail out of Citibank. Or....

Here are some signs from the tech sector that hard times are here:

1. Apple is rumored to be working on a deal to sell iPhones at Wal-Mart (I'm not making this up!).

2. It's December 11th and you can still find a Wii for sale in time for Christmas delivery.

3. Things are so bad, spammers are laying off employees (okay that time I was being a smart aleck).

4. VC money is now an oxymoron.

5. A year ago Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo! at $33 a share. It's now trading at $12 a share, Jerry Yang is gone and apparantly Microsoft could care less.

Apple Hype in a Gloomy World

What a difference a year and a scary recession make! While everyone is sweating bullets over just how bad retail sales will be this holiday season, I decided to take a break and think of something really trivial: MacWorld, which is coming up in January.

Usually MacWorld is highlighted by some fan-tabulous product launch that wows tech reporters, creates lots and lots of buzz and leaves Apple fans salivating and speculating over when said product will actually hit the shelves. Lawn chairs and other camp out equipment is brought out of the basement in anticipation.

You get the idea.

Can you see this making sense this time around, however?

Rumors are already bouncing around the techno-blogosphere about MacWorld. Apparantly, there are widespread reports Apple plans to announce a new product that is outside the usual devices (not an iPod, iPhone or Mac). Best guesses are that perhaps it's a tablet (iTablet?) or something to compete with Amazon's Kindle (iKindle?).

I would say both are good guesses. The tablet sounds more likely to me. However, Oprah endorsed the Kindle. When Oprah blesses something, we all know what that means (East of Eden goes back on the New York Times bestseller list after 50 years and Barack Obama becomes president.). That may be just enough endorsement to make Steve Jobs want to jump in the digital book reader market (Microsoft will realize it's a market 18 months from now and jump in late with something that is both inferior and succeeds anyway).

All that being said, who can think about new product lines at Apple in this economy?

Thought question of the day: in today's economy would the launch of the first iPhone or iPod have made it?

‘Tis the Season to do Site Testing

Actually every season is the time to do site testing! That being said, how long has it been since you bought something off your own site or ran some optimization tests of any kind?

With less than 20 shopping days to go until Christmas, now is the time to doublecheck your shopping cart for bugs, etc.

January is not the time to find out there's something klugy going on with your site.

At the very least do this:

1. Buy something off your own site. In fact, buy three things and ship them by different methods (overnight, two to three day shipping and ground). Find out how long they really take to arrive. Find out where the buying process gets most frustrating. Have someone outside your company buy something. You know your site a little too well. See what it's like for a new visitor finding their way for the first time.

2. Run some basic site analytics. Where are you losing them?

3. Look at last year's sales figures. Yes, the economy is worse. But, it's not always the economy to blame for low sales. Look at what's moving and what's not and how your site may be a factor.

Do it today. Reminder: December 12th - 15th are generally the biggest online shopping days of the year. Those are the days most people figure it's the last chance to order in time for holiday delivery.

No pressure!

Another Kind of Corporate Leadership

Props to Intel! They have found another way to deliver when the chips are down (pun intended).

Intel set a goal this year to donate one million employee volunteer hours and this past Friday they announced they had hit it.

How appropriate that it was also the the UN's International Volunteer's Day.

Intel set this as a goal to celebrate it's 40th anniversary this year. What a great way to celebrate - by giving back!

This was truly a company-wide effort. Some 47,000 Intel employees around the world participated.

We hear a lot about volunteerism and giving to charity this time of year. What impresses me is that this was a year-long effort. It's easy to forget that there are a lot of people in the world who need help those other eleven months a year.

So your company has only one hundred employees or ten? You don't have to be an Intel to give so generously. Set a goal and make the bar high in relation to your company. Consider it the Intel challenge.

The irony doesn't escape me that Friday was also a day that the new unemployement figures came out announcing another 500,000 jobs lost in this country.

It's going to take more than Intel to ease this kind of pain. Let's get to work.

Going Dutch Courtesy Big Blue

If you want a hint at what may be the "next thing" in tech, just keep an eye on recent filings at the U.S. Patent office.

Of course, most of the ideas submitted for patent protection never see the light of day. Time will tell on this one. But, who hasn't been in this position. You're at a business dinner (or a match.com date) and then there's that squirmy moment when the check arrives. Who will throw down their plastic first? Perhaps a split check down the middle? What about the guy who orders three cocktails and an appetizer with a steak compared to the woman who orders a ceasar salad with a little chicken on top and just water, please?

Big Blue has heard your cries. Enter patent application #7,457,767. IBM is proposing a tableside device that would allow all parties to individually tick off their share of the tab until the bill is totaled out to zero; calculating tax and tip, of course. I wish I had one right now.

There's no guarantee this will ever make it out of the R&D department. For the duration, HP still makes some fine calculators.

IT Jobs of the Future

For today's IT workers, all those Microsoft certifications may not even be worth a mention on your resume by the year 2020.

Here's why:

Cloud computing is more than just the favorite buzz term in technology this year. It's for real. All the big players are moving in that direction (Amazon, IBM, Google, etc.). For the small to midsize business, especially, it means accessing a level of computing power that would otherwise be cost prohibitive and just impossible to implement in terms of network infrastructure.

The Open World Forum has just put out its 2020 Floss Roadmap that predicts in that year 40% of all IT jobs will be related to open source computing due to the popularity of cloud computing.

The report is long and requires signing up with the forum to download it for free. Don't let that scare you off investigating. It's a worthwhile read that covers seven key areas of IT (publics policies, innovation, ecosystems, cloud computing, IT governance, careers and FLOSS in an open world), plus recommendations.

FLOSS by the way stands for Free/Libre Open Source Software.