the sephone blog

If you have been watching my Facebook posts or tweets I have been in a technology nightmare for more than a week.  You never really know how much you depend on something until it doesn’t work now, do you? Just like everything else!

Some bad person or robot  decided to use my Twitter address to SPAM my followers by sending them a direct message about some quiz I wanted them to take.  My followers (I have only 800 or so) started sending me notes because they knew I don’t do that.  So I go in to my Twitter account and changed the password.  Then I believe that same robot kept trying to get into my account (using the old password) and I got locked out of Twitter when I tried to log in.  It also effected my Tweetdeck Account. Twitter is such a great tool for me, when I couldnt use it, it completely threw me off guard and my schedule just flew out the window. AND I had to wait for Twitter and Tweetdeck to unlock my access, which took a lot longer than I thought it would.  If you are looking for any help like this on Twitter, click here.

THEN, I tried to synchronize my Blackberry using Desktop Manager. Unfortunately, because I had tried a trial version of MissingSynch earlier this year and didnt like it, I decided to never used it again. Couldnt figure out how to uninstall it. When I tried to synch using Desktop Manager it kept bumping into MissingSynch which kept telling me to buy it for $39.95 and wouldn’t allow Desktop Manager to synchronize for me.  SOMEHOW, as I looked over at my Blackberry I noticed that I had this spinning hourglass on the screen that was all it did, spin and spin.  When I “Googled” the error code it was horrible news.  Google sent us to Crackberry.com. At first glance it looks like a store, it is more than that! There are helpful forums and here is a link to them. So I learned then my whole operating system was history.  I still don’t know exactly how it happened, but with the help of Central Maine Wireless and my business partner Scott, I was able to get a loaner Blackberry and uninstall MissingSynch (the uninstall file was missing, so we had to be cautiously creative to remove it!) I will never recommend this application to anyone, even though I am not sure what happened in my situation but I am very leary of it.

The good news is, I have a copy in a secure cloud of my stuff that didn’t get effected.  The bad news was, I didn’t dare synchronize it with my loaner because I didn’t want to risk anything else happening! So finding people’s phone numbers and other information that I had in my original phone has been problematic.

Maybe it has been the full moon or just technology gremlins, but when it happens to you, take a deep breath and know the world isnt over, it just has slowed down a bit!!

Every penny counts. And even before the latest economic challenges, I can say those of us up here in the Pine Tree State are famous for doing more with less, we drive our cars longer, we fix things instead of buying new, so being thrifty, green and recycling isn’t a new concept for us, it is a necessity and a way of life.

This goes the same for businesses. If you are a business owner (or a Marketer that has been sent to the Principal’s office because “nobody cares about your website”), then here are three questions you need to ask yourself:

1. When you built your web site did you have an objective in mind?
2. Were there expectations that were set for what things the web site was to accomplish? Save money, make money, sell your product worldwide?
3. Do you measure the traffic and view those numbers regularly? (Do you know what the numbers mean?)

At beginning of 2009, this blog was posted for statistics on the internet for 2008.   Click here. The highlight being, the number of websites on the Internet in December 2008: 186,727,854. The number of websites added during 2008: 31.5 million.

If “nobody cares about your website,” do you know why? Has your site been online and not changed for a while?  If you are doing the 3 things mentioned above, then perhaps some tweaking to the construction, the background keywords or some content in order to make sure that today’s search engines are finding you.  If you answered “No,” to the above questions, perhaps you might sit down and think about it or call “someone in the business” to help out.  After all you are competing with 186,727,854 and 31.5 million of them were built recently. As daunting that these numbers may sound, remember these are from year end 2008!

For another post on this subject, click here.

If you watch the Today Show, Glenn Beck, Anderson Cooper or other TV news shows, you may have heard about Twitter and Facebook going down last week.

And more recently, a Business Week Article of the same.

DDOS attacks have not been confined to just Twitter and Facebook but have been responsible for many very high profile sites falling victim to this type of activity. A Fact:  25% of all web servers online are currently vulnerable to these types of attacks and that number is growing every day.

How can that happen?
What happens is a “flurry” of messages that go to a web server that are irrelevant lines of code. This confuses the server. When we say “flurry” we mean, tens of thousands in a matter of seconds or minutes that continue until the web server raises a white flag and surrenders.

A “DDOS” can also be a result of a malicious attack on software or operating system vulnerability on a given server.   Kind of like leaving your back door open and someone you don’t know comes walking into your kitchen.

What does this mean to you?
If you are a website owner it means your site is very slow to serve or perhaps it doesnt serve at all. So online you are hanging out the CLOSED sign or in geek speak you get “404 page not found” message on your screen.

As a web application and service provider, we need to say we have been victims of these attacks ourselves and it is very challenging.  In fact,  we had one recently. During this attack, one of our servers fell prey to the maliciousness effects of the hacker.  This caused the server and all sites on it to stop operations. To fix it, Sephone technicians worked at all hours going to the backup and then rebuilt a new server so the sites could be re-hosted and work properly. But  every situation is different and the troubleshooting is vital to learn the root cause and fix the actual PROBLEMS and not just the symptoms of the problem.

Hackers are very busy writing scripts and setting them loose on the web-just for the fun of it. It doesn’t seem to cause any long term damage to the website or application, but it does create a huge short term inconvenience to your business and to ours.

In our goal is to be a consistent and conscientious web service company. We are always looking to see how to provide the best service, how to stay on top of things to combat the what seems to be countless people from IP addresses located in far off countries like Russia, Phillipines, China, etc. with little or no regulation or laws.

There also are many blogs and stories on line about this and other types of malicious hacking activities. Most all of them more technically written than this post. Here is an example. But it has always been Sephone’s policy to try and explain things in a meaningful way as opposed to using words that can be confusing or words only “geeks like us” understand, because we want YOU to understand.

We thank you for being our clients and trusting us with your online presence. When you thought the “WWW” meant “World Wide Web” it really can mean “Wild, Wild, West” at times and we will continue to fight our fight, providing you the best service at a fair price while remaining vigilant in the cause. We will recommend new technology – when it makes sense and always keep our eyes open for the best ways to do things within the always changing internet environment.

If you have any questions, remember we are right here on the other end of the phone!

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!

In today’s online world, search is essential. How many times per day do you head to Google to find something on the web? Google’s reign on the search market is pretty clear: the site handles roughly 75-80% of U.S. search traffic. But is Google always the answer?

Over the last couple of months, the search landscape has really caught on fire. New services are trying to chip away at Google’s lead by offering a different set of results for search queries. Here’s a brief look at three of these sites that may help you find the information you need more quickly.

Bing

Microsoft recently launched a massive rebranding campaign for its Live Search, renaming the engine to bing.com. Bing follows in the footsteps of other mainstream search engines of Internet past; in addition to general web results, Bing also provides local, image, and refined links based on your search. Microsoft has held one of the top three search spots for quite a while, and Bing is the corporation’s latest attempt to grab a bigger slice of the pie. Here’s a search for Maine on Bing.

Twitter Search

Looking for something a little more recent? Twitter Search may be what you need. A Twitter search will yield results posted by Twitter users over the last month or so. It’s a great way to know what people are saying about something in an up-to-the-minute way. We’ve previously offered some Twitter searching tips if you’d like to try a search or two. Here’s a search for Maine on Twitter search.

Wolfram Alpha

If you’re looking for data, check out Wolfram Alpha. Wolfram Alpha will give very context-sensitive results: everything from statistics to graphs to maps, depending on your query. Here’s a search for Maine on Wolfram Alpha.

What are your favorite ways to search the current landscape of the web?

Technorati Profile

When the economy is shaky and all you hear is bad news around you, you begin to question yourself.  That’s normal.  Then something comes along that is intriguing and it sounds like it is positive and happy so everyone picks up on it.

Remember the horror of 911 and then shear joy of watching the firefighter that sang the Star Spangled Banner? It was covered on all networks – we heard it over and over.  It gave us hope. People still traveled to New York City for visits, people dealt with inconvenience related to air travel, we picked ourselves up by the bootstraps and moved on, though we never forgot.

So now we are in an economic slump. This is no 911, for sure. But searching for some GOOD news out there, some hope, some light at the end of the tunnel is human nature in any crisis.

Considering there are so many news stories about Social Media today you gotta wonder, “Is this my silver bullet?”  “Will this solve my business downturn?”  Everybody is jumping on the band wagon. Media professionals are pretending to be experts, when truthfully learning about this is ongoing for everyone.  Even the “experts.” The reason you are hearing about it, is because it is a “Marketing thing” and Marketers talk, and talk and talk – sometimes until it comes true.

Here is a post from Mark Collier that I found after I had written this blog post. He figured this out last August and I am just daring to write about it now!  I am no expert, I like to call myself a “student” as situations and options evolve I am always striving to learn about them.

Social Media and all the “faces” it takes, Facebook, MySpace, Stumble, Digg, Twitter (the list goes on and on), can really feel overwhelming to any business owner.  In addition to the fact that JUST when you think you have it figured out, Google shows up and we need to change something again.

Remember, YOU know YOUR business.  YOU know YOUR business better than ANYONE.  What you need is a solution that works for YOU and YOUR business.

If you feel you need more traffic to your website and that will grow sales, great.  If you need more people to come to your retail store and that will grow sales, great. If your website is getting traffic but people are ditching it on the first page, not so  great. Each business has a unique set of criteria of how they succeed.

What the “experts” need to do for you is “LISTEN.”  LISTEN to what your goals are, LISTEN to your challenges, come up with measurable tasks and help you decide what your strategy is to accomplish these goals. WHICH tools should you use?

Social Media is not a “silver bullet,” nor does it have to feel like “mumbo-jumbo” and just like anything it is a means to an end. While some words spread quickly, other words more slowly, the important thing is to get started and you don’t have to do it alone. Spreading the word is great, but getting people to act, to buy, is most important.

Social Media does not change the fact that you still are the expert about your goals and when we listen we can help you get there.

As you may have heard some web companies are dropping support for Internet Explorer 6 (ie6 as it is often called).  37signals and google’s gmail have announced they are no longer supporting this browser.  Others like Apple’s Mobile Me just don’t list Internet Explorer 6 as a supported browser.  Still others like facebook, politely ask you to upgrade your browser.

But I use Internet Explorer 6

If you happen to be a user of ie6, you are not alone.  As of today, Sephone sees slightly less than 20% of web surfers using ie6.  We do recommend that you upgrade your browser to more modern one.  There are several good ones to download, install and use.  This is relatively easy to do and they are all free.

• Firefox
• Safari
• Internet Explorer 7

How do I know if I have ie6

Most operating systems and browsers have a menu item that tells you, try clicking Help than About.  On the right, you can see a screen shot of a help menu from Internet Explorer 6.  You can clearly see that it is Microsoft Internet Explorer and then the next line it says version 6.0.2800.1106.  You don’t have to worry about the .0.2800.1106 part, if it says 6. anything, you have ie6.

Why are people not supporting ie6

This version was released in 2001.  That is a long long time ago in web years, it’s very old.  As a web development shop, ie6 has been a source of numerous headaches and frustrations.  Web developers need to do extra work to make sure to works with these older browsers.  Internet Explorer 6 also lacks some of the features that are needed by the modern web developer such as PNG alpha channel, box model, standards compliance and XMLHttpRequest (XHR).

Does sephone support ie6

While we do recommend that you upgrade your browser, Sephone does offer limited ie6 support on some of our products and services.  We are slowly phasing out support though.  As we do more and more development we are supporting ie6 less and less.  The browsers we do support are firefox version 2 and up, Safari version 2 and up, Internet Explorer 7 and 8, and Google’s Chrome.

Okay being honest, I am the least technical person of our partner group – I don’t mind saying so, in fact if you ever look at my own blog, “Techno-Trapped in my 40’s” it covers all kinds of things from cell phones, iPods, blogging, myspace and btw I am always looking for content. Certainly email ideas to this address and I will try to get it posted! Or, if you know someone that may find it useful please pass it on!

So that being said, I believe I may be in the minority in my company, but in the majority among random business folks. I often say around the office, “I need to know what time it is, please don’t tell me how to build a watch!”

The next time you want to know anything – especially when it comes to technology – go to (drum roll, please)….YOU TUBE! Stop laughing, it is true. Have you ever tried to call Google and ask a question about something? I am sure the Google folks are wonderful people, but the technical support from many of these think tank geek companies generally is comprised of a help website where you have navigate through your topic and pray you have picked the right keyword, then after a few curse words you are served up several hundred options of brilliance that you need to wade through. You may find it easier to true You Tube first.

For example: If you go to You Tube search for “How to set up email in Outlook Express” you get a 4:50 second (not great quality, but it works and it is easy to use) video that someone made with screen shots and you got right there! It takes me 10 minutes searching through most “techie” software websites just to get frustrated and not finding the answer.

I am shocked there have been only 1700 views and generally speaking most of these “HOW TO’s” dont have a lot of views. This is what led me to do this post in the first place. I really don’t think many people know how to use You Tube in this way, but it is terrific.

IN FACT, when you call our office, we can help our customers, but have started using these You Tube tools and they really like them. They can see as they go and these tools are accessible 24 hours a day!

Getting the most bang for your buck is the goal of almost every expenditure that a person or company makes. Web development is no different. One of the keys in working with a development firm is communications. Properly relaying ideas back and forth is very important. Nearly all of the tips below involve some form of communication.

Have a clear idea with distinguishable goals

This means, more or less, knowing what you what. You don’t have to have everything spelled right out, but you should be able to, in a few sentences, say exactly what your project goals are. When thinking about project goals, always think about the end result.

Think about what you want your site/application to do when it’s done. Try to relay the idea of how this helps your business to your developer as well; this may help them have a better understanding of what you want.

Example goals:

1. ‘Our website should list all of our dealers and be searchable by state,’
2. ‘We need to be able to schedule appointments with our clients and collect this information from them,’ or
3. ‘Our web application should track all of our customer inquiries.’

Feedback goes both ways…

Throughout the course of the project, the development team may have questions for you. Be as responsive, informative, and decisive as you can be. This will help the developers know what you want and will allow them to work as effectively as possible. Continually starting and stopping on a project makes it more difficult for developers to stay focused. Be prepared for their feedback as well. Most projects have several check-ups or milestones along the way with decisions to be made before you can move on to the next step.

Ask questions

Don’t be afraid to ask plenty of questions. You should understand what your developer is doing and why. That way, when a development company has a question, you will better understand why they are asking and the context of what they are asking. If you don’t understand what your development company is asking you, then ask them for more detail, so you can make an informed decision. Asking questions and discussing them also helps ensure that everybody is on the same page.

Let developers develop

A lot of times your web development company might have some ideas you hadn’t thought of.  Just like you have experience doing what your business does, web developers work on a lot of sites and might suggest some things they think will make your project better. Clearly communicate the end goals and anything that is crucial for your site to do, and let your development team work out the nuts and bolts of your site/application.  When you see a development version of the site, again, give feedback and ask any questions you have.

Keep it simple

When in doubt, always err on the side of simple. New ideas or features can always be acted upon later. It’s harder to fix a project that is hard to use, out of scope, over time, and over budget, then it is break up a project into several phases. Almost always, it’s better to have half the features fully implemented, than all of the features half-implemented.

You may have just seen an email that was from barracuda_notice@ sephone.com recently.  If so, you are probably wondering what it is.

If you are, well let me share.

Sephone knows that SPAM is the number #1 P.I.T.A.* of all e-mail users.  SPAM stinks.

As a means to fight SPAM, Sephone acquired SPAM Firewalls from Barracuda Networks-  Customers wishing to enhance their SPAM filters from the included services with all our hosting packages are able to subscribe.  There is a small monthly fee per account.
Call or email us support @ Sephone.com for more details.

The service was initiated in early 2008 for a small test group and over the last several months we have been adding new subscribers as they inquire on how they can improve their SPAM filters.  Until now, we have been providing the services to help train the filters- BUT NOW-  all subscribers to the barracuda can have access to their own quarantine lists.

Every day you will get an notice from barracuda_notice@ sephone.com IF you have anything in quarantine.  From the email you can go directly to the account and manage your queue.

• So if you dont get that important email you have been expecting-  login to your quarantine account and see if the message is in there.
• If it is, then mark it as “Not SPAM” and let it be delivered.
• If you see mail in there that is “unknown” , take a few minutes; look at it, if it is SPAM, mark it as such, if it is marked as SPAM and you want it delivered, mark it “WhiteList” Or NotSpam and now when ever email is received- from that sender-  the Barracuda will let it thru instead of quarantining it.  This is also “Training”.

Sephone is pleased to offer this service to help rid you of SPAM.

To learn more about fighting SPAM or to subscribe to this service contact us at support@sephone. com.
To learn more about Barracuda Networks, visit http://www.barracudanetworks.com

Fees are for each email account that you wish to be protected.  Aliases are included.  Additional Domains and associated email accounts are extra.  A small set up fee may apply depending on the number of domains and accounts to be included.

*P.I.T.A = Pain in the A$$