The Microsoft Malware Protection Center reported a security hole in all versions of Internet Explorer, with 50% increases in reported infections in just one day.

The vulnerability, which exists in all versions of the Microsoft browser, including IE5.01, IE6, IE7 and IE8 Beta 2, has so far been exploited only by attack code that targets IE7, the most widely-used edition.

The best defense to security issues is

•    You should always exercise caution when browsing and try to go to sites that you trust.
•    Always to keep your browser versions up to date by going to “Windows Update”
•    Use virus and spyware scanners regularly.

Once you are logged into your Google Analytics account, click the “View Report” link in the Website Profiles, Reports section.  You will now be directed to your Dashboard page. The Dashboard page contains all of your website’s statistics. These statistics are categorized into specific data “reports”, such as, Site Usage (page views, bounce rates, average time on site etc.), Map Overlay (visitor stats by region)and Traffic Sources (page views directed by search engine, referring sites etc.) to name a few. To view your statistics, click on “view report” on the report summary box. Here you will be able to view each report in its entirety.

You can customize your Dashboard page by adding and removing reports or rearranging the page layout. To add a report to your dashboard, navigate to that report and select the “Add to Dashboard” link at the top left of the page. To remove a report, click the “Remove” link on the report summary page. To rearrange your Dashboard page, simply click on the grey top boarder of each report and drag it to its new location on the page.

For more information on Google Analytics, check out the following topics:

What Are Webpage Bounces?

Most Viewed Websites

Internet Seminar Series for Business Managers, Owners & Executives

A recent study found that online surfers logged on from the following locations;

• 75% from Home
• 43% from Work
• 32% from Other Locations

But more surprisingly, the average time spent online by Internet surfers is 14 hours a week.  (Harris Interactive, Oct. 2008).

14 hours is a lot more time than people would admit. 14 hours is a full day on the Internet.  This really shows us a few things; people are really becoming addicted to the Internet, the Internet has come of age, and communications are being conducted online.

So for a business or organization, that means you should focus on adding relevant content to your site, so that surfers are provided with quality and effective communications. 

Website’s can provide this communication in a number of ways; passive page content, informational content, call to actions, directions/help files, ticketing systems, instant messaging, blogging, and email.

Recently, blogging has become the most asked about product; many of our customers have continued to ask, “How do Blogs work, why they are powerful, and what are advantages of having people comment on our posts?”

We have had a few customers tell us that they are seeing an increase in the amount emails sent to their Everyone.net SPAM box.  In some cases this seems to be internal mail from the same domain.

We don’t have any specific answers about why the SPAM folder is grabbing clean email, but we can tell you how to manage your SPAM, so that it is in your control.

When you log into your online Everyone.net account (xxxxx.mail.everyone.net) you can control some of the settings of your account. To specifically manage your SPAM, click on “options” button on the left, then “SpamShild Pro” on the bottom of the center column.

You have a number of options; including turning the service off, increasing or decreasing how strict the service is, and approval and blocking of senders.

I have been touting the wonderful world of Google books for a few years.  I was originally interested in the subject when it came up in a master’s law class I was taking, discussing the copyright implications. I regularly use Google Books to search for quotes and books for my own articles, a long with helping a few of my client’s get their works published on Google for promotional reasons.

The argument against Google scanning all of the world’s books, making a digital copy, and placing them online publically, was pressing the bounds of “fair use.” “Fair use” in copyright is when you allow people to browse (look at it in a bookstore or library) or sight information from a copyrighted work.

The fair use to browse a book isn’t that big of a deal in a library or bookstore, because you flip the pages never really intending to read or use the copyrighted work, only to check it out.  An online book becomes more susceptible to being read cover to cover, thus cheating the authors out of their monetary gain because the book was not sold.  Google had previously placed a certain number of restrictions on the use of browsing, most notably limiting the number of pages you could view.  But, never the less the publishers of the books thought that there was a real loss of revenue, and they sued Google in 2005.

The second part, of “sighting information” was the more interesting issue.  With the lawsuits being brought against Google as a part of browsing a book and loosing revenue, there was a side challenge against sighting work.  If Google or other venders were not allowed a certain amount of fair use of copyrighted work, the whole academic world would come to a stand still, because the publishers would have literally protected their authors work to the level that no one would have been able to sight or quote another’s work with out permission.  Currently, anyone can sight another’s work, quoting the authors copyrighted material to support or challenge a position, and this is protected under “fair use.”  If it was removed, authors, especially in academia or journalism would have to get permission to print a quoted statement.  If you as the author were against the use of your work, or wanted to prevent criticism, you would simply not allow your work to be quoted.  The removal of fair use would shatter the way our copyright law and intellectual growth are achieved.

Luckily, Google outsmarted the publishers.  Google fought to create honest and transparent measures that would allow for “fair use” along with the proper promotion of books, management of sales, and protections of copyrights.  Today, Google announced that they had come to what they call a “historic” settlement that the company said clears the way for online book publishing” (1).

“The owner of the most popular Internet search engine said today’s agreement will enable it to expand the Google Book program to include millions of copyrighted and out-of-print books, allow users to buy them and provide free access from U.S. libraries.

“The tremendous wealth of knowledge that lies within the books of the world will now be at their fingertips,” Google co- founder Sergey Brin said today in a statement, calling the accord “historic” (2)

This agreement was not cheap, $125 million will be used to “create the registry, provide compensation and cover legal fees, according to the company(Google) (3).”

Among the important benefits to higher education are: (4)
•  Free full text access at public libraries around the country
•  Free preview and ability to either find the book at a local library or through a consumer purchase;
•  A first-ever database of both in-copyright and out-of-copyright (public domain) works on which scholars can conduct advanced research (known as the “the research corpus”).
•  Enabling the sharing of public domain works among scholars, students and institutions.
•  Institutional subscriptions providing access to in-copyright, out-of-print books;
•  Working copies of partner libraries’ contributed works for searching and web services complementary to Google’s;
•  Accommodated services for persons with print disabilities - making it possible for persons with print disabilities to view or have text read with the use of reader technology;
•  Digital copies of works digitized by Google provided to the partner libraries for long term preservation purposes.

By Jon Burgess.  Copyright 10/28/08

(1),(2),(3) - Google Settles Scanning Suits, Clears Way for Online Publishing, By Susan Decker and Erik Larson, Blomberg.com, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aRLa5npN4Dj4&

I have about 7 current clients and many in the past, where their PageRank was stuck at a low rank.  They had nice sites that should have been ranked higher.  All changes, additions, tweaking to content did nothing to improve the website’s position.

The common thread – they host their site on an internal server.

Hosting internally is becoming one of the major hurdles in obtaining any reasonable Page Rank.  I don’t have any hard answers why, I suspect it could a number of issues; connectivity, ports, hops, network issues, security, firewalls.  I would strongly suggest moving the public domain to a hosting farm; you can keep the corporate programs/services in-house.  I would actually go so far as to say, it would be a huge waste of time and money working on SEO until the site is moved, because there is NO guarantee that any changes or additional content will get rid Google’s concerns.

As a business owner, remember a website is about communication and marketing, it should be treated like a marketing project, not a technical program.

As an I.T. professional you should remember that the website is a hassle and has nothing to do with your core tasks, let the website go, remembering that the site is a target for hackers, so why worry about your network attacks because you have some open ports or vulnerable services running.

As for cost, hosting is a commodity, you can host for less than $20 a month just about anywhere.  Having a server, network, programs, and time to manage an internal server is $1000’s of dollars a year.  There is no tangible benefit to hosting your self if you are reading this post.

So SEO, is really a bad term. It means Search Engine Optimization, but what Google really wants to see out of websites are “Experts, not Optimized sites.”

Client’s continue to ask about “META-KEYWORDS”… my response is, “adding keywords to meta-tags is like washing a dirty car, then entering that car into a race.”

Why would you race a clean car, if it is some regular old car?  When what we should be thinking about is building a car that can be in the race, make it 198 laps, then wash the bugs of the windshield (add in keywords to the meta-tags, that beat your competitor ranked #1, when you are #2) so that you can win the race in the last 2 laps.  Meta-Keywords have a much higher chance of hurting your page then helping the page when your site has a low rank.

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To Check STATUS of Jobs

Go to “Email & Marketing”

Pick “Job Status” in the drop-down.

You will see the jobs, you can click on the Undeliverable and Opened emails to look at the details.

To Look at the CLIENT COUNTS

Click on “Clients”, you will land on a search page. You can search anything from here, but the best way to clearly see your list counts is to scroll down to the bottom of the page. There you will find your Autoresponder/Newsletter groups, that you can “check” then hit “search” to see the details of the groups.

SEO increased 62% last year! According to the American Marketing Association’s Marketing News Magazine, in an article by Paula Andruss, half of all online advertising dollars are spent on services such as web content development, pay-per-click, and search engine optimization. While we build SEO into our sites, it is a job that is never completely finished, primarily because search technology changes frequently and requires content development and expansion. We have seen much greater interest in SEO this year, and expect the trend to double in the next three years.

We consider our success with SEO research and implementation to be among the very best in the Inland Empire. Some of our SEO projects have resulted in world-wide ranking for select client keywords, and because SEO is really the understanding of Google, we are most proud of the fact that we are ranked #4 in the world on our popular article,

How Does Google Work?

 We certainly do not recommend that you look to SEO-only consultants - who charge rates of $100 per page - to enhance your site. Most of you already have respectable SEO built into your sites, and only need fine-tuning, rather than a very expensive rebuild. Be wary of the many SPAM offers and heavy advertising that you will see offering SEO services this year.

We want to assure you that we strongly believe in integrated marketing messages. This year, RedFusion Media will assist clients in the use of newspaper, direct mail, video, Local Target Marketing pay-per-click on the Internet, online display ads, PR, and radio ads in our marketing campaign. All methods will be carefully crafted to push visitors to our websites.

When you have a Google calendar set up for your “Events” page you will need to access and manage the content. These notes will enable you to add events from your office by signing in to Google website.

When you (our we) sign up for Google Calendar for your website, you will first be sent a confirmation email. Please confirm with Google by responding to the email.

If we set up the calendar, please let us know once you’ve confirmed and we will add the calendar code into the page.

Manage your Events

Once we have added the calendar to the Events Calendar page, you can go to www.google.com and click on “Sign In” at the upper right of the screen.

Enter the following information:

Email: YOUR EMAIL

Password: YOUR PASSWORD

Once signed in, click on “My Account” at the upper right of the screen. On the next screen, click on the calendar icon in the list of tools. If you don’t see it, click “more tools” or “more products”. You will now be taken to the calendar screen. Try adding some events and getting familiar with it. Don’t worry, you can’t mess anything up.

Let us know if you have any further questions regarding this set up.