Four Easy Ways To Prevent Spyware
June 22, 2008
How would you like to prevent spyware and adware from getting into your computer? You need to stop adware and spyware before it gets into your files. That way you’re protecting your private information such as passwords, credit card numbers and other documents that you don’t want to share with anyone.
Spyware and adware removers are important because they clean your computer of malicious files. But the best thing you can do is prevent spyware from ever being installed in the first place. Here are four ways to help prevent spyware and adware from getting into your computer.
Keep Your Windows Software Updated
One of the best ways to prevent spyware and adware from getting into your computer is to keep your Windows operating system software updated. Microsoft Windows update addresses security fixes that are constantly updating so your computer won’t be vulnerable. Windows update is a free download from Microsoft at: http://update.microsoft.com/windowsupdate/v6/default.aspx?ln=en-us
Use Computer Firewall Protection
One of the most effective ways to stop spyware and adware is the use of computer firewall protection. Computer firewalls put up barriers to keep any malicious programs from being downloaded without your knowledge when you are on the Internet.
What You Must Know About Spyware Right Now
June 21, 2008
Spyware is like the new technological nuclear weapon on the internet. Spyware can not only damage the health of your computer but it can also steal your personal identity other personal information. Spyware is software that is hidden inside legitimate downloads that you come across on the internet. An example would be the growing number of file sharing programs and free mobile ring tone advertisements that you come across on the internet. If you have teenagers in your household, it’s imperative that they know the dangers of using these programs as what takes 2 minutes to download and listen to, can take a good few hours to remove the damage left behind after being infected with spyware.
Spyware can slip past anti virus programs and firewalls as it is created to look exactly like an innocent part of the download you just requested. This low down trickery allows the spyware publisher into your computer. Once the spyware has installed itself on your machine it can reap havoc in many different ways. Spyware can cause your computer to crash and attack other programs on your computer similar to the way a virus does. Spyware’s most common task is to record and report back you internet surfing habits, like what sites you visit, how long you spend on the sites, what you download etc. One of the most frightening aspects is that spyware can actually record what information you type into your internet browser, this includes your credit card details, user names and passwords. Having access to this information allows the spyware publisher to commit identity theft pretty easily.
Microsoft CRM USA Nationwide Remote Support
June 20, 2008
Remember old good days when your company probably had Great Plains Dynamics? If you are in San Francisco Bay Area ? you had local Great Plains Software partner consulting company, who served you basically coming onsite and charging you four hours minimum, even if the problem deserved 5-min fix? This was at the end of 20th century and remote support technologies were not very advanced ? Citrix was making good progress and taking market over from Symantec PCAnywhere. Today, when Microsoft Terminal Server and Citrix are remote support standards and IT department uses them to host application server for nation-wide and world-wide users, you should probably be thinking of getting remote support for your ERP and CRM systems. In this small article we’ll take a look at Microsoft CRM remote support, customization, reporting, implementation and integration.
? Why Microsoft CRM Remote Support? Microsoft CRM market niche is still narrow and MS CRM consulting companies do not have enough clientele in their respected locals markets: Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York ? even in these hypermarkets. In order to survive Microsoft CRM VAR went to nationwide and even international markets to get clients base.
Microsoft CRM for Corporate Business ? Working Offline
June 19, 2008
If your company has regional and worldwide operations, you might already realized that it is very hard to get decent internet connection in your remote locations. In this small article we will try to give you highlights on how to implement Microsoft Business Solutions CRM for worldwide operations with restricted internet connection.
? Outlook Client. This was very bright idea from Microsoft side to have outlook client as a presentation for Microsoft CRM data. Outlook has such nice features as synchronization and then working offline. If you have outlook client for CRM ? you can download your customers, leads, contacts, and event properly programmed custom features, then work with them and finally synchronize them back to MS CRM database
? MS CRM Integration. As the task itself it is not difficult or challenging one. You can deploy MS SQL Server linked server to show your third party or even heterogeneous data on MS CRM screens. However, when we are talking about enabling working offline ? we should get different approach. Your third party system should feed data into MS CRM database ? through MS CRM SDK custom utility. In CRM itself you should stick to MS CRM user defined fields. If you take this direction ? MS CRM custom features will be taken by Outlook client and synchronized with local machine. Your third party data could reside as it was mentioned in heterogeneous platforms: Oracle, DB 2, Sybase, Lotus Notes Domino, SAP, Pervasive SQL 2000, Ctree or any ODBC compliant database.
The Hidden Power of Online Manual
June 18, 2008
Writing software manuals is boring, isn’t it? We often think: "My software is easy to use. The user interface is intuitive. Why should I waste so much time for writing the document which nobody reads anyway?" Sometimes it’s true ? I’ve never read the WinZip or Internet Explorer manuals ? everything seems clear without explanations. Nevertheless, even if your manual doesn’t help to your software users, it may help to you. Publish your manual online and turn its hidden power into the real benefits for your business. Online Manual Makes Your Web Site Visible User manual is a huge bunch of words, the highly targeted words, which are specific for your software market. For instance, if you develop a database management system, its user guide will certainly contain such words as "database", "query", "transaction", "table", "record", and etc. On the other hand, people use these words in their queries when they are looking for a database management solution on the Google, Yahoo, or other search engine. Let the interested people to find your web site and your product. Upload your manual on your web server and make it available for indexing by search engine spiders. This area specific content will make your web site and your software more visible to potential customers. Making the user guide available online will increase your web site rank in relevant search results and will bring highly targeted traffic to web your site. Let the manual to work not only for your users, but for you as well. Online Manual Saves Your Time A picture worth a hundred words. Those who are engaged in user support know this for sure. When replying to user concerns, very often we have to write sentences like this "Open the Document settings dialog. Choose the External modules tab. Select the ‘ABC Spell Checker’ in the module list. Enter your registration key and verification code in the corresponding text fields which will appear at the bottom of the window. Then, press Activate". If your application is simple the user will likely understand you right and will do everything as you have explained. However, if your application is a complex system with lots of setting windows which behave differently in various modes, the user may be puzzled which window and which fields do you mean. In this case you risk getting into a long conversation by repeatedly explaining the same things again and again. The screenshot could be a very helpful illustration of your explanations. You may run your application, go to the certain window, open that tab page, activate the corresponding item in the list. Then make the screenshot of the window by using Alt+PrtSc key combination or another screen capture tool, save the picture in a file, and finally attach it to your message. Sometimes it’s also necessary to add callouts, annotations and other enlightenments to the screenshot picture. Thus, you have to launch your image editor and to manually draw all the elements required. As you see, it may takes up to a half hour to reply to a single message only. And how many messages are yet in the queue? Having the screenshots prepared is a good approach which may save your time. But having screenshots already prepared together with callouts, explanations, and annotations is a great approach which will save you much more time. Most likely, you have all that stuff prepared in your software manual but it’s not very polite to reply to the user: "Read that fantastic manual". User may have no idea where the manual is on the PC and on what page is the looked-for solution located. On the other hand, you may also have no time to manually cut particular pages with screenshots and related instructions from the manual and to attach them to each support message. The solution is easy. Put your manual on your web site in the form of HTML pages. Make all the pictures, screenshots with callouts, descriptions, and instructions accessible for every user. When you are processing another support request, simply insert an URL link to the appropriate page of your online manual and add just a few clarification words ? more words and pictures are already on that page. You will save much time and nerves because you will be sure that the user is looking at the same thing which you are describing. At the same time, the user will get a fast solution which is supported by clear pictures and neat instructions. Online Manual Makes Your Products Trustworthy Besides the users get the faster and more helpful support, they also see that you did this tedious job ? writing the handy and well structured manual with great screenshots and clear explanations. They know that this job is boring and developers don’t like to do it. Therefore, if you did it and if you did it perfectly, it means that you respect your customers, not only their money. Good manual means that you consider your business and product seriously yourself. This helps your business to look more credible and serious. So, make your manual available online and prove your respect to your existing and prospective users. Make them trusting in you and in your product before they even download a demo copy of it. Online Manual Brings Sales As we see, the software manual which is a part of your web site generates a targeted traffic. The people may easily find your product because online help makes your web site more visible in relevant search results on the search engines. Those new visitors get more loyal when they see a well done help system. Also, if a prospect experiences difficulties with your software and asks for technical support, you may easily resolve the issue by referring the user to a certain page of your online help. With just a one click the user will see screenshots and explanations which will help them to settle the case. So, you have a motivated and targeted visitor, who feels loyal to your company and products, and whom you can easily help in case of a technical problem. The probability of such visitor ordering a license is several times higher than of the average one.
Online PowerPoint Presentation ? Convert PowerPoint to Flash
June 18, 2008
Although we don’t know whether Microsoft ever envisioned such a big market about PowerPoint on its first release. Today this software is impacting profoundly on education and corporation’s activities in the way that nobody could ignore. With a wealth of visual and audio effects people rely on it to express their ideas, plans more intuitively with more effective communication outcomes.
One of most wildly PowerPoint application exists in education. With the booming of Internet, traditional education approaches have been eclipsing by various new emerging ways. And in spite of heavy promotion of supposedly new television educational approaches in recent years, from my point of view, the real innovation and revolution is taking place somewhere else: on the Web, where I truly believe the advantages of PowerPoint will be fully exerted again.
Another great application undoubtly is for entertainment. PowerPoint2003 provides great transition effects and flash movie enable, narration record functions, people are now in favor to use it to make all kinds of brilliant slideshows as a way to store and highlight their precious memory. For businessperson, it’s been an exclusive way to make their conception live for many years.
Did You Ever Want to Completely Erase Everything on Your Computer?
June 17, 2008
Did you ever want to erase everything on your computer? This is a program I found that does that for you quickly and easily.
Active@ KillDisk is a hard drive eraser and is powerful and compact DOS software that allows you to destroy all data on hard and floppy drives completely, excluding any possibility of future recovery of deleted files and folders. It’s a hard drive and partition eraser utility.
If you use FDISK, FORMAT utilities, or DELETE standard operating system command for data removal, there is always a chance to recover deleted data (using undelete file or some data recovery software) and use against the owner’s will. We highly recommend you to run this FREE utility for the hard and floppy drives you want to dispose of, recycle, re-use, sell or donate to somebody.
Active@ KillDisk conforms to US Department of Defense clearing and sanitizing standard DoD 5220.22-M. The most secure Gutmann’s data destruction method is also implemented. You can be sure that once you clean up with Active@ KillDisk, sensitive information is purged out forever.
Microsoft Great Plains & CRM in Transportation & Logistics ? Overview
June 16, 2008
Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains and MS CRM (client relation management system) are very popular in various industries and market niches. In previous article we described Microsoft Great Plains implementation for transportation & logistics company. Having more material, we would like to share with you how you can leverage Microsoft Business Solutions products to automate your business. We’ll try to be both technical and business processes specific and be laconic to comply the rules of tiny article.
? Cargo/Shipment Tracking System. Transportation & Logistics industry is pretty mature and you more likely have industry standard (like Efreight) or custom system. So, if you plan to implement new ERP ? it should be tightly integrated with your cargo tracking system.
? Customer Base. This is the question of the core application. If you have to sell to a large number of prospects and track their relatively small shipments ? you should first consider Microsoft CRM, which has Sales and Service modules. In this case ? you should enable shipment status lookup from MS CRM screens. In the case when you ship to limited number of large customers ? you are focusing on the profitability of the shipments and looking at Great Plains as the core system.
My Experience - Making a Vision into Reality
June 15, 2008
Disclaimer: All the thoughts expressed are my views only! Your perception might differ…
1. How different is product development?
2. What are the fundamentals of building a product?
3. How do I know that I’m at the wrong end of building the product?
4. Will you start building two products, if given a second chance?
5. All of a sudden I go blank, what should I do?
6. But my project is running on a delayed schedule, what do I do?
7. Pitfalls in putting out milestones?
8. Testing? what?
9. Do I make the team work 7 days a week?
10. why this faq?
1. How different is product development?
For starters, they are completely orthogonal! I can hear you mumble “C’mon building a product cannot be different from building a framework.” I learnt it the hard way! Yes, though they seem to be very much related, the subtle differences place them far apart!
Exactly What Does FTP Stand for and What Can it do for Me?
June 14, 2008
FTP stands for “file transfer protocol”. FTP is basically a way of sending files over the Internet.
An FTP program can help you with uploading information from your computer to your server and vice versa. All you do is drag the information from one window to the next.
If you have a website, then you want to use FTP and are probably already doing so without knowing it. Once you create your website, you have to get it to the server in order for it to be available online and the best way to transfer these files is by FTP.
Handling your file transfers with FTP only requires that you have an FTP client that provides you the software necessary. This type of client is available free online for personal use or educational purposes, but for business purposed there are plenty of good programs that are affordable and offer free trials as well.
Most of the time you will need to create a password and user ID for your FTP account and then all you have to do is sign in and start transferring.
