the sephone blog

Wireless Sign

We are located in Eastern Maine (Bangor) and have a variety of clients located out of state that have a vacation home in Bar Harbor or have local clients with limited time for meetings. Hence the “lunch meeting.”

Considering the fact that practically EVERYTHING we talk about (after the personal stuff), is something that can be easily explained, viewed or demonstrated on the internet we enjoy going to places with wireless internet.

In fact recently, I went to a restaurant over the weekend and the owner said to me, “Hey where have you been, we haven’t seen you in a while?’

I said, “Well, I need connectivity to the internet during most lunches.”
He said, “Most times you can pick it up from the hotel next store.”
I said, ” Not today and not the last time I was here,” as I glanced down at my iTOUCH.

I love this restaurant and it actually has a location in Bar Harbor also and what a great way to introduce someone to it when they are meeting with their all time favorite web company! Yes we have iPHONES and Blackberries, but how long can you look at a tiny screen at a website that may not be really optimized for a mobile device.

The service at this restaurant is excellent, the atmosphere is perfect and the menu selection is vast. AND it is locally owned.

Call me old fashioned, but I support my customers businesses first and local businesses that may not be my customers (yet), next.
Loyalty is important.

Now some restaurant owners might say, “If I have wireless, then people will come in and drink one cup of coffee and plug up the place.”

True that could happen, but not bloody likely when you handle it right. I know I choose to take a client(s) to a $35-$50 lunch JUST BECAUSE of wireless being available.  And offering wireless is not an expensive proposition.  A few customers coming to your place and spending $50 will pay for your monthly fees in addition to paying for that one time $60 modem.

Wireless is a reality as a business expense, you all ready have a great menu, great staff and you aren’t some loud no name place that lacks the local flavor of the place people are visiting.  Work with it, tell your customers and it will more that pay for itself!

The technology community on the web has been abuzz over the last few weeks over a couple of new hacking cases on well-known sites. What’s this mean to you, the everyday user of the web? Well, it serves as a reminder that security online is just as important as locking your door at home.

We know online security can be overwhelming, so in this post we’ll provide you with two simple things you can do to add an extra coat of armor online, right now.

1. Strong passwords are the key (or the lock)

What would you think if the combination to the safe at the bank was ‘12345′? Using your first name, your username, or words like ‘password’ as your password is the online equivalent of a bad safe password. The one most effective step you can take to secure your accounts online is to use secure passwords.

At Sephone, we encourage our customers to use passwords that are at least six characters long and have at least one capital letter and one number. I’ll be honest: some of our clients are frustrated at first when we tell them our policy. Believe us, committing a new password to memory is a lot easier than what can happen if your password is discovered.

Bonus tip: Hopefully your house key, your car key, and your office keys are all different. Make sure your online keychain is the same way by using different passwords on different sites. If a hacker discovers the password on one service and feels like searching, using the same password is an open invitation to explore the landscape.

2. Pick a good secret question

Remember back when hackers managed to find their way into former governor Sarah Palin’s email? Yahoo – the service where her mail was hosted – is one of the many sites online that use a “secret” question feature to help you remember your password if you forget it. Her email hackers found the answers to her “secret” questions online. As more information is posted online (birth dates, death dates, and yes, even mother’s maiden names), these password recovery questions become less secure.

What can you do to prevent this? If the service allows you to type your own question, create a question that only you would know how to answer. (This could be anything from “What make of car did Andy’s father buy from Dad when we were kids?” to “What was the code word to our snow fort?”) If it doesn’t give you space to create your own question, lie with an answer you’d remember. If the question is, “What street did you grow up on?” and the answer is Summer Street, answer Winter Street. The service never checks the validity of your answers, so create an answer that only you will remember.

Online security can be a hassle, but with a few short steps you’ll be much more secure than ever before. What else do you do to beef up your online security?

Photo by Steven Tom, released under Creative Commons.

One of the greatest challenges in web development is the need to cater to a number of different web browsers when developing a site. Although all the major browsers do essentially the same thing, each tends to have its own… well, quirks.

It’s difficult to paint a clear and accurate representation of the browsers people currently use. We can’t very well ask every site visitor, “Hey, you there! What browser are you using?” (Not everyone knows the answer to that question.) It’s important for us to know, though, because it shows us what people use to view our sites and how the trend may be changing over time.

Luckily, Google Analytics, a tool we install on many of our sites, provides a fairly good picture of browser usage. For the sake of transparency, I’ve gone through six of our largest sites and looked at browser usage among them. While this information may not be helpful to you personally, it allows developers make key decisions about the sites they build.

The data below is from six Sephone sites in June 2008 and June 2009. These sites appeal to a general population and include real estate, tourism, news, education, and other markets.

We hope to do this periodically to establish a better perspective of browser trending over time. Developers: are you seeing the same trends? Business owners: have you considered a browser switch?