2010 Year-End Look At Email

First, here's my all-time favorite spam email of the year, from early December 2010...


Hotmail
Hotmail is now one big Microsoft Silverlight object, like their Webmaster Tools. Silverlight is a Flash-like plugin used on some sites for playing videos. Some browsers handle it better than others, to put it nicely. Sad. There was a massive Hotmail account hijacking over a few weeks in November, which sent spam to all contacts, with links to malware sites. There may have been password theft from elsewhere. My account wasn't hacked. Hotmail works fine if you are gentle.

Gmail
Google continues to merge every product they have into one. No longer can you just have a Gmail account, you now have a "Google Account" that instantly sets cookies to log you into everything Google owns, from Blogger to YouTube, whether you like it or not. They thrust Buzz right into the mail interface, and insist you create a public "Google Profile" so they can continue brutal attempts at building a "social network" for some reason. Gmail itself is decent, I wish they'd leave it alone. Google already reads the actual content of your emails in order to show you ads. And while they may not directly "rent, sell or share" that data, they don't seem to care about the theft of it. I'll have no problem dropping Gmail in 2011 if it gets any more intrusive.

Yahoo
Yahoo has a simple and fast email system. When Hotmail was redesigned into the current Silverlight interface it basically stole the clean look of Yahoo Mail. Not much to say, other than Yahoo is struggling financially. There are rumors Yahoo may sell Flickr and/or other businesses it owns, but it's unlikely anything will change with their email. It's not like an email platform is worth money in itself.

Excite
I've been using Excite email for many years. It's been through overhauls, outsourcing, and some scary interface changes, but has come through it intact. (Parent company IAC Media also owns Ask, Dictionary.com, Vimeo, and a ton of others.) A bit slow to load, but an acceptable free email service.

Other
Will Facebook messages kill email? Nope.

Five Last-Minute Gift Ideas - Under $50

1) USB stick (thumb drive) - Here's the idea: how about personalizing the gift by pre-loading with music, movies, and/or pictures? 8GB drives have recently been on sale for around $10. Good for backing up data, moving files between computers, or swapping stuff with friends, 8GB is a real bargain for just $10.

2) Webcam - The totally free Skype version 5 now includes 10-way video calling (update - this is a PAID service), and other sites like Ustream and Livestream offer live video broadcasting or private chats with virtually unlimited numbers of people. Most laptops have built-in cameras, but quality webcams go on sale incredibly cheap this time of year as well, around $20 to $30 (regular about $50 to $80).

3) Antivirus - Norton and McAfee internet security & antivirus software has been on sale for around $40, good for installing on three computers. If you know anyone using (horribly slow) free software, do them a huge favor. Or just pitch in with 2 friends and split the cost, a great deal.

4) Car power adapter - Most 12v to 120v car adapters now also have a USB charging port. They can be used for powering laptops, GPS units, and charging cell phones & mp3 players. Not meant for large appliances, but perfect for most electronics. Get a 100-watt or higher model, usually about $30 to $50.

5) Laptop stand - You can get a mesh or plastic laptop stand for around $20 to $50. Overheating is one of the most common causes of laptop failures and crashes. A stand that lifts the laptop off the surface allows better airflow to prevent overheating, because most laptops draw air in through the bottom. For a few extra dollars you can get one that has a fan(s) built in for even better air circulation. Some models are also adjustable, tilting to make the laptop more comfortable to use.

(For any of the above products, compare prices at Tiger.ca, Staples, Walmart, etc.)

Best Digital Camera Ever - Fuji Finepix S1600

I don't even know where to begin, because there are so many reasons you should buy this camera right now, either for yourself or as a gift. But there are two things you should know: 1) I don't write product reviews, and 2) I spent a lot of time comparing features and prices before buying this camera. It has impressed me so much that I genuinely want to tell you about it.

The Fuji FinePix S1600 Digital Camera is the most amazing digital camera you'll ever get for a couple hundred bucks. It has features found in professional SLR (single lens reflex) cameras costing thousands, yet an amateur like myself can turn it on and start taking pictures. (Other cameras at this price have none of these features.)



This camera is perfect for beginners not only for the price, but for the simplicity. The Fuji S1600 is like a photography course in the palm of your hand. I just wanted a decent camera and ended up with a powerhouse that makes photography really fascinating.

You can use the point-and-shoot mode if that's all you need, but if you mess around with other settings you can learn tons about photography without even trying. As you explore various settings you'll discover fun things to try. Of course the manual explains everything in detail, but if you're like me then much of the language is meaningless until you start taking pictures and see the results. Then you'll be stunned to realize what you're holding.



Here's the deal:
- standard point-and-shoot mode
- 12.2 megapixels, giant 3" display
- panorama mode, dual image stabilizer, tripod mount
- face detection, blink detection, red eye removal
- "micro" mode lets you take clear pictures as little as 2cm away
- true HD video with sound (choose from 1280, 640, or 320)
- true 15x optical zoom for amazing close-ups
    (avoid "digital zoom" - that just stretches your picture)
- shutter speed up to 8 seconds (take pics in total darkness)
- 16 automatic modes for situations like night, snow, fireworks, etc.
- if you dare: full control of shutter speed, aperture, white balance...
- use any SD or SDHC card
- software for Windows 7, Vista, and XP

I'm going to stop talking now because this could go on forever. This is the most brilliant camera under $1000, period. If you need a camera for yourself or a gift for someone else, this is it.

You can get the Fuji FinePix S1600 Digital Camera at Tiger Direct dirt cheap. Shipping is normally 2-3 days.

URL Expander Add-on For Firefox

We all know that the shortened URLs found on Twitter and other sites can sometimes lead to malware, spamware, trojan, and hacking sites. Most of the time it is intentional, but it can also be accidental. By way of example, an official city tourism site that I follow on Twitter recently posted a bit.ly link that took me to a porn site! They were stunned when I brought it to their attention, and thanked me profusely.

I've always felt that posting links on Twitter and blogs is very helpful, and try to do it often for my followers. Knowing the risks of shortened URLs, I actually make special efforts to post links that I can embed directly without having to shorten. I want my readers to see clearly exactly where any click will take them. Of course the problem is sometimes I want to link to something with a web address that's a mile long. Blog posts are definitely annoying to link to. Most blog platforms turn the entire blog title into the corresponding URL for that post, resulting in extremely long addresses full of dashes, and sometimes adding the date to make it even longer.

There isn't really a solution to the underlying problem - some sites have short URLs and some have long ones. The best you can do is protect yourself when clicking on someone else's link.

Thus I recently installed a Firefox add-on called Long URL Please. It automatically reveals all shortened URLs on every web page, with no need to do anything. It works with all the typical shortener services. Some comments from users on the Firefox plug-in site mention slow load times and system hangs, but I haven't encountered either in the week I've been using it. It works fine, and has removed any concerns I used to have about shortened and masked links. I can finally tell which links go to affiliate sales pitches and which ones go to news stories and blogs, it's fantastic.

I recommend it or a similar add-on to make your online travels safer. (... and I naturally assume you are using Firefox in the first place!)

Credibility Checklist For Business Web Sites

1) Eliminate All Typos And Poor Grammar: Spelling mistakes, incorrect use of punctuation, incorrect use of words, and other grammatical errors are more than embarrassing. Don't minimize the importance of this. Visitors who are literate can find this almost unbearable, regardless of the industry you are in. This sort of thing is particularly inexcusable because fixing this type of mistake should take a webmaster just minutes.

2) Correct And Up-To-Date Content: Your site must be accurate and current. Any changes, updates, or redesigns can easily be created offline and posted in one shot. You should never have to say "Sorry, we no longer offer that product/service", or "We just haven't put up the new prices yet", or "We're in the process of updating our site".

3) Prove You Are Real: Have photographs of key employees, photos of your office or facility, photos of products, photos of you with clients. Give real contact info, phone numbers, and street address. (Never reveal too much personal information about your people or your other clients.)

4) Prove You Are Legitimate: Make prominent use of client testimonials, employee credentials, courses, awards, community endeavours. Mention past accomplishments of employees and/or management. Tell how you created specific tangible results for a previous client.

5) Educate Visitors/Potential Clients: Giving free advice, free articles, free videos, useful internet links, and/or a routinely updated blog are all good for establishing credibility. If you can help your visitors learn or discover something new, it will stick in their mind and set you apart as an authority on the subject.

See our Articles page at Second Glance Digital Media for more good stuff.

Our Three Latest Web Design Clients

Like most web design companies, we get some clients who have thoughtful ideas for their sites, and others who give us raw material and tell us to call them when it's done. It's the variety that makes it interesting.

Sometimes we get clients who are just fun to work with. Our latest three web design clients were actively engaged in the design of their sites, and all three were fun in their own way. (And of course each one of these is now a top-10 ranking site in their market, since that is our specialty at Second Glance Digital Media.)

Robin Walton, freehand illustrator and artist (RobinWalton.ca) - Being a freehand artist, Robin had given much thought to the look of her site and had made some custom drawings for it. All we needed to do was translate her ideas into a functioning site. This was fun to build for a few reason: she's an independent freelance artist, and we love putting people on a small budget in the top-10 search results; she came prepared with great ideas and custom content for the site; and she asked good questions about what could be done, what might look best, and responded immediately to mock-up approvals.

Inside Security, about the new Ontario security guard course and test (InsideSecurity.ca) - Inside Security also came prepared with tons of content. There's nothing better than good content. It makes site design easy and search engines love heaps of real information. We spent some time acquiring images to supplement the predominant text, but much of it was simply building the site and getting layout approvals from the client. It's a straightforward design, very clean and easy to read. There's nothing cute or artsy to distract from the solid text content of this informative site.

Heritage Natural Beef, drug-free local beef (HeritageNaturalBeef.com) - Another case where it was rewarding to put a small business in the top-10 search results. They actually had a site for several years but it couldn't be found in searches, and I mean you couldn't find it no matter how hard you intentionally tried. It hadn't been banned or anything, it was basically just lacking every possible element of correct design. When we were done they ranked number two, only behind the long established industry leader.

Google Wave Revisited

Chatting with a friend the other day about the demise of Google Wave inspired me to find my original post about it. Turns out it was one year and one day between my post (Aug 03, 2009) and Google's acknowledgement (Aug 04, 2010) that it was a failure.

Here's my original post about Google Wave, no need for further comment.

And here's Google's official blog post ending support.

Stats: Operating System Usage

This post we look at the operating systems used by visitors to our sites.

XP still has a massive lead over both Vista and Windows 7. Businesses and consumers despised and rejected Vista from day one, and Microsoft acknowledged that failure. But it did ship on new computers for quite some time, so takes the distant second place.


One would have to assume that people are only moving into Win7 with the purchase of a new computer, rather than buying it to install on a current computer. And computer purchases must be slim, since Win7 has been shipping on new computers since around Christmas 2009. I was shocked at such a low percentage of Win7 users, as it has gotten fairly good reviews from techies. Although when you look at it another way, there are more Win7 users than Mac users, and Mac OSx has been around for a heck of a lot longer than 9 months. So Win7 certainly has market share.

The other/unknown browser category include some iPhones, Win2003, WinNT, network servers, and search engine crawlers. None of them accounted for more than a few percent each.

Stats: Javascript Enabled or Disabled

Another stat about the visitors to our highest traffic domains.


Javascript is generally enabled by default, but can be disabled within your browser settings. It is often used to determine which ads to show on a web page, set formatting and layout styles, and gather information about user activity.

So why would it be enabled or disabled?

Disabling it can considerably speed up web page load times, prevent piles of third-party advertisers from tracking things, and eliminate spyware & trojan risks.

Java is a two-way street, it sends data back to the server about the settings and usage of the browser and computer being used. Simply by looking at a web page without clicking on anything, Javascript is running.

"Java exploits" are currently being used quite often to piggyback trojans into computers. (Cell phones and PDAs are at risk too, because they are powered by Java and it can't be turned off. Blackberry/iPhone/cell hacking has become a new goldmine of identity theft because everyone stores all their phone numbers, contacts, emails, account logins, photos, and other personal info on them.)

We've also made the interesting observation that sites offering higher-ticket specialty products and services have noticably higher rates of Javascript disabled (upwards of 30%). Should we assume these people are more security-aware in general, and/or more tech-savvy?

Are the above stats surprising? Higher or lower disabling than you'd expect?

Stats: Browsers Used By Visitors To Our Sites

Here's a current look at the browsers being used by visitors to the heaviest traffic sites that we operate. No big surprises with Internet Explorer leading the pack, followed by Firefox.


Without saying too much about our clients, trust me when I say this traffic is very broad in scope. These statistics reflect traffic to sites in many unrelated industries, with very different target audiences and user demographics (from highly educated specialists to random consumers, and from world-wide to Peterborough-specific).

Excerpt: Why Local Businesses Need Web Sites

Here's an excerpt from one of the articles on our site:
Why Local Businesses Need Web Sites.

"Local businesses serve clients who live or work physically near the business. Local businesses can be small or large, but the key factors that make them "local" are: they offer products or services that people need to experience first-hand (like eating in a restaurant), or prefer to try first (like trying on shoes or clothing before purchase), or are impossible to do at any distance (like getting your car fixed)..."

When you think about it, our lives revolve around local businesses: dentists, realtors, accountants, lawyers, optometrists, auto dealers, repair shops, hair salons, etc. The funny thing is many of these businesses and professionals don't understand the benefits of advertising their services, including having a proper web site. Some of them will happily run ads in the local newspaper, yet never spend a few hundred dollars to have even a simple site built. Hard to believe.

This is a fairly long article, designed to help business owners and managers understand the value of a web site. Pass it along or leave a comment if you find it helpful.

Over-Reliance On Portable Devices

Over the past few weeks I've been hearing stories of stolen laptops and iPhones. And extremely worried victims were asking what to do. Some people entrust virtually all their personal data to their portable devices, and a theft can be very traumatic. The list of emergency measures is often huge, and can require taking a day or two off work to get done.

One person had his iPhone stolen out from under him. He'd grabbed an armful of things from his car, taken them to the house, then returned for the last couple of things. In that minute or two, someone stole his iPhone from the car. What was on it? Pretty much every important detail of his life, both personal and work.

You better pray that you can access your data from somewhere within minutes of a theft. Log in to your email accounts, save everything, and close the accounts before thieves delete it or send spam... turn off Facebook and Twitter updates... tell banks and credit card companies (and possibly cancel cards & close accounts)... tell all your friends, family, work associates, clients... tell your ISP... tell your workplace network admin... cancel your iTunes account... and so on. This post isn't about the endless number of things you may need to do in case of theft. Just stop and ask yourself - What kind of nightmare would it be if your device was lost or stolen?

The problems start with how people use portable devices:

1) Usernames & passwords stored on the device. Do you have usernames and passwords stored so you can access email, bank accounts, Facebook, Twitter, iTunes, or other sites quickly? Within minutes, thieves can delete your accounts (or keep them and change the passwords), message your friends, and rack up charges like you wouldn't believe. You are much safer using passwords you can remember, typing them in each time.

2) Phone numbers, including friends, family, work. If you use one-touch dialing, or use a contact list/application, thieves just got a list of everyone important in your life. For indentity theft, prank calls, or to keep for later.

3) Email stored on the device. For the record, I've never in my life used a "storage" type of email service on any computer, like Outlook or Mac Mail. Web-based email, like Hotmail or Gmail, doesn't need to store anything on any device. If someone stole any of my computers, they wouldn't have a single email or piece of data about any of my contacts. In fact they wouldn't even know what email services I use. Plus if one of my computers caught fire 2 minutes from now, I could access my email using another one and nothing would be any different. I suggest either a password-protected email program on your device, or using a web-based email service that stores nothing on your device.

These are just some of the bigger security problems with portable devices, all caused by how people use them. The list of issues and solutions is really endless, but your headaches will be in direct proportion to how much data you store on your device in the first place. Portable devices can be handy tools, but they can also be lost or stolen in the blink of an eye. And keep in mind that some of the best security tips are equally useful in cases of a device freezing or crashing.

Back Up Your Files

This is a public service announcement. A reminder of something you already know.

You need to back up important files regularly. How often will depend on how you use your computer. For instance, I create tons of original code, graphics, and notes every few days. Because of this, I make a backup a couple of times a week, or risk losing days and days worth of stuff that I'd have to create all over again. You may not need to back up this often. Think about what's on your computer. Maybe there are things that could be downloaded again if something bad happened, but what do you have that is truly priceless? Pictures? Home movies? Graphic design? Email? School work? Business contacts? How often do you create or save new things on your computer? These questions can help you decide how often to back up.

Here's how to make backups fast and easy:
  A) All you need is a thumb drive or a couple of rewritable CDs/DVDs.
  B) Keep all your files organized in one main folder. Use your name or something simple, then make separate sub-folders inside it for pictures, videos, music, school work, or whatever. A backup requires nothing more than saving this one single folder, because all your files are somewhere inside. It couldn't be easier than that. Macs are generally set up like this by default, while Windows has a whole bunch of places it saves files. But there are programs on both operating systems that put files in strange places, so do what you can to override this and keep all your files somewhere within your top-level folder. Especially with Windows, pay attention every time you save anything, because your files may end up on the Desktop, Documents folder, Program Files, or a hundred other places, making backups a headache.
  C) One more suggestion - For really important data, store backups off-site. If a fire destroys your computer, and the backups are sitting on a shelf in the same room, you've still lost everything. You could use an online storage system, or keep copies in another physical location.