1. He Calls Himself a “Webmaster”

Any web guy that calls himself a “webmaster” probably isn’t a master of anything. The term “webmaster” has become a translation for the word “amateur.” The web has diversified into so many different realms that webmaster is no longer meaningful (was it ever though?)

2. He’s a FrontPage Expert

Any developer / designer with a degree knows that Microsoft FrontPage most definitely isn’t a professional tool. FrontPage will pass for Mom and Dad who want to create a website dedicated to their dogs, not someone who’s trying to do business. I’d argue that a solid Web Developer should work at code level.

3. He’ll Submit Your Website to [Inflated Number Here] Search Engines

Submitting your website to hundreds of search engines would be great…10 years ago. Websites are indexed by relevant search engines by how rich their content and keywords are. Search engine optimization is big business and submitting sites to search engines simply isn’t the way to get to the top of Google.

4. He Wants a “Designed By ….” Plug on the Bottom of Every Page

You’ve paid this person to create a marketing tool for you — not a billboard for him. Your website is a launch pad for your business and Poindexter McScooner is simply the man behind the curtain — keep him there.

5. He Created a Cool Website for [Insert Family Member / Friend Here]

Your business needs someone who’s been there before. The most common answer to my “Who was he and what business did they work for?” question is “Oh, he did a website for the CEO’s daughter’s [insert lame organization here].” I honestly hear that friend-of-a-friend story all the time. Choose someone with a sizable portfolio that can provide references.

6. He Can Make You a Great Splash Page Flash Animation

Translation: “I can spend dozens of hours wasting your money to create something that will take too long to load and will be skipped more times than dessert at a bad restaurant.” Consistency and website flow are important to web design — not meaningless animations that waste visitors’ time and your money.

7. He Mentions He’s a HTML Expert

Who isn’t? I would argue that dropping any language acronym on a customer (PHP, Ruby on Rails, ColdFusion, etc.) unless they ask is meaningless fluff. A mechanic could use a banana on my car if it would fix it. Keep your tools, especially HTML, to yourself — the customer doesn’t care.

8. He’ll Fit a Cool Counter on Your Site

You’ll add an ugly relic of the early internet on my site so that my competitors have an idea of my web stats? Sweet!

Counters make a website look as unprofessional as possible — don’t use them.

9. He’ll Place a “Best If View in…” Message on Your Website

Any real Web Developer knows that he doesn’t make the rules. Follow standards in the initial build and then fix it in Internet Explorer — that’s the flow. No responsible programmer would place a “best if view in…” message on the front-end of a website.

Note: I pulled this off of a copy of a mirror to a site that had crashed. I’m not sure of the original author (not me), but I’ll credited it when I find him. Otherwise I thought it was good advice. Yes I know that part of what TCG does is web design, but if there is something more important than web design to us, it making sure that web design is done “the right way” regardless of who does it.

BONUS 10. Charges for your site by the Page/Picture

This one is my own personal pet peeve. It encourages people to design pages that are too long and don’t work. Website design and hosting should ALWAYS be priced on a “per-job” bases. The fact is that a text only site with 50 pages where the client hands you all the text in Word Docs on CD is easier to do than a site with 5 pages full of images where the client hands you a manila file folder full of Kodak slides that need to be scan.

Understanding Malwared-Ware, Spy-Ware, and Viruses

By: McKinley H. Tabor, August 5, 2005

Fully 70% of my practice now involves problem with, or stemming from, Ad-ware, Spy-ware, and Viruses, (collectively called Mal-ware, for “Malicious Software”). However, with a few simple steps you can make sure your computer is free of these modern technology scourges.

The Culprits:

To understand how to avoid mal-ware, some back ground on what mal-ware is might be helpful.

Ad-ware, is a program installed on your computer that an advertising company will use to send you advertising. Most often this is done via the dreaded “Popup” window. The most aggressive forms of Ad-ware even monitors your keystrokes and web searches so as to custom tailor it’s ads to you. For example you may go to Google and search on the work “travel”, and an ad for a travel company will pop up. Normally ad-ware is just an annoyance rather than a destructive force. (it would be counter productive for an advertising company to disable your computer). But a large infestation of ad-ware on a system will cause it to crash simply because of the load that the program puts on the system. Furthermore, some types of ad-ware programs are not compatible with each other, as a result they will crash the system when run simultaneously, jut like any two other legitimate but incompatible program will.

Spy-ware comes in two flavors. While the term “spy” my conger up images of dark forces collecting secret information about you, this is only one flavor of spy-ware, and is actually very, very rare. Most spy-ware is actually just sisitiscsal gathering programs, used to track the computing habits of many hundreds of thousands of people. Unlike ad-ware, these programs can do real harm, not to your computer, but you personally. Some types of spy-ware are used in conjunction with “Phishing” scams, and try to collect data from you such as passwords, credit card numbers, and personal identification information like driver’s license data and social security numbers.

Viruses are and old threat with a new twist. Back in the mid 1980s the first computer virus was found “in the wild” (meaning not in a lab or a test center). Oddly, it was the old world Macintosh which first fell victim to viruses because of it superb multitasking operating system. Back then viruses had to be spread on floppy disks. Now in the Internet age, the most common way for a virus to spread is by e-mail. One of the most annoying types of virus (at least from a system administrators stand point) is the “worm”. This is a type of virus which moves form computer to computer infecting a system, then reaching out to other system to try and infect them. This movement from computer to computer almost always comes about from a flaw in the software which that computer runs and the method of movement can be either from a direct connection, or through an email set out to everyone in the computers address book. An infected computer is at the whim of whatever the virus wants to do. Sometimes virus do little more then spread themselves, with little or no negative effect on the computer they are on. Some viruses are used by malicious computer experts to co-op an infected system to help the malicious expert attack an internet site, or spread “Spam” (unwanted advertising e-mail). Some viruses are used to get ad-ware and spy-ware on a system.

How Mal-ware gets on a computer.

Ironically 99% of all mal-ware is put on at the user’s request. This is because Mal-ware writers and distributors are very cunning in how they move their “product”.

Also 99% of all mal-ware installs take advantage of security holes in the popular web browser “Internet Explorer”. These security holes in IE often will allow software to be install from the internet with little or no warning to the user, and can be start be just one click. Sadly, Microsoft is reluctant to fix these holes because it is the same security holes when used properly by reputable companies that allow for online updates to legitimate software, certain types of online databases, and some online banking programs.

Nothing is “Free”.

A lot of mal-ware is installed when a user installs a bit of “free” software from the internet. Most of these “free” software programs are paid for by adverting, is the form of ad-ware. Popular programs for things like, weather, e-mail customization, desktop enhancement, similes, emoticons, chatting, search toolbars, and music downloading (the worst) all support themselves by ad-ware.

“You’re a winner”

Most, if not all of the flashing “winner” banners are way to lure people into installing mal-ware. Furthermore some of these “winner” banners or “do this, and win a prize” games are used to collect personal information which can be used in Identity theft.

Bait and Click

Some popup windows come right out and asks if you want to install something “yes” or “no”…. but if you click “no” it will install anyway. (remember, the IE hole can install software with only one click, doesn’t mater what you clicked on in the window) ALSO, many more popup are putting images that look like real Windows XP objects, such as the close X, and Notification Windows. Thus a user can be “tricked” into clicking on a part of the IE window which looks like part of Windows XP, and hens install software.

E-mail attachments

The most common virus/worm movement is through e-mail attachments. You may get an e-mail form someone you know, but it’s really from a virus, so if your not expecting the message, don’t open it. Also some new e-mails don’t have attachments, but have Web hyper links in them, which satisfies the “one click” to install flaw.

Guerrilla warfare

The term “Guerrilla” warfare has come to represent a covert war fought in irregular ways. The term “Guerrilla” originally comes from the Spanish, and means “Little War”. Having said that, there is open warfare between the writers of mal-ware software, and the writers of anti-mal-ware software, and the add to the confusion there are even confects between the various mal-ware writers.

There are (at the time of writing this) about 30 to 50 thousand different and specific type of ad-ware and spy-ware. These however come from only about 1,000 different “firms” which write and spread these programs. (There are of course many, many little independent shops that do this as well) Anti-mal-ware programs try to detect and remove mal-ware based on what and where it is installed. Naturally, mal-ware writers are always changing that they do and how they do it to stay ahead of the anti-mal-ware people.

But mal-ware writers also know that if there are too many bits of mal-ware on a given system, the user of that system will be more inclined to spend money to remove ALL the mal-ware. But if there is just a few mal-ware programs, most users will tolerate the ads, not knowing any better to remove them, or not pestered enough to pay for software or services to remove a small announce. Hens, most of the major mal-ware writers are also in the business of removing the mal-ware of there competitors. This is where you get the “you have ad-ware/spy-ware on your computer, would you like us to remove it for free?” popup. This most often is a mal-ware writer trying to remove all but their own mal-ware.

Mal-ware writers will so make their products friendly with each other. Meaning that once you have a bit of mal-ware on your system, that mal-ware could allow other bits of mal-ware from the same company onto your system, even going to far as to seek out and download other program totally outside of the users awareness.

This constant adding and removing of programs, especially those programs which operate “under the radar”, can case havoc with a system, leaving little bits of partially removed and partially installed programs all over the hard drive. Again, just like the damage you would do if you decided to install, uninstall, and then reinstall any program several dozen times.

How to dispose of Mal-ware and how to protect yourself in the future

The bad news is that there is no fool proof way to remove a bad mal-ware infestation. A system that is covered with mal-ware could take hours and hours to clean off, and you can never be 100% sure you got everything. Sometimes when approaching an infestation the easiest way to clean it off is to wipe the computer and start from scratch. Backup all of your data files, format the hard drive and reinstall Windows, your drivers, and your programs. It may take a couple of hours, but it’s better that twice that long trying in vain to remove something which will never come out all the way.

Once on a system mal-ware can be very tricky to deal with. For example, a bit of mal-ware may have two programs running at once. If you succeed in defeating program 1 (by stopping the program while running and deleting it from your hard drive) program 2 will simply restore program 1 while you are tying to defeat program 2. The same works in reverse.

Mal-ware will also hide in the shutdown scripts of the computer. So, just as soon as you remove the program, it will reinstall itself as you are shutting down. Mal-ware once on will also seek to cripple those programs which hunt it (more Guerrilla warfare). If the mal-ware program starts before the anti-mal-ware program starts, then the mal-ware can hide itself from the anti-mal-ware or worse the mal-ware and disable the anti-mal-ware all together, and the user is completely unaware of their lack of protection.

The best way to avoid mal-ware is to install anti-mal-ware software right from the start. Most of the blocking software packages also have a cleaning element which can be used to clean off small (and try to clean off large) amounts of mal-ware.

This however no one “Magic Bullet” software that clean and protects all types of mal-ware. Most people will use a “cocktail” of software to protect their system. They come mainly is three “styles” of software.

Firewalls, which watches your internet connection and keeps bad stuff from flowing in/out or malicious computer experts from getting into your system

Anti-Viruses, which scan computers looking for Virus and their virus components

Anti-Ad-ware/Anti-spy-ware, which looks for ad-ware and spy-ware, but also stop popup not caused by ad-ware, and stop legitimate programs from starting at boot time (which can slow down your computer), and stop legitimate programs from tweaking your system setting (again, not ad-ware, but very, very annoying)

Here are some of the software packages out there and what they do:

Norton Intern Security: This is the closest thing to a Magic Bullet out there, but it’s actually a collection of existing Symantec products. It has a firewall, anti-virus, but it’s a little weak on the anti-ad-ware side. Norton also has a history of being very invasive on a system, it takes also of system resources to do what it does, and bombards the user with windows tell him or her very detail of what’s going on (while this can be interesting and helpful for the first couple of days, after a few weeks the Norton popup are more of a hassle than the ad-ware popups). Norton also uses a “subscription” model for it’s software. You pay yearly for the software to work. If you stop paying the software loses most of its effectiveness.

Macafee: MacAfee has a history as good anti-virus and their firewall is also it has a subscription model as well, but is less invasive and uses less system over head. Like Norton, a long time player in the anti-virus realm, they too are weak in their anti-ad-ware department.

Microsoft: Mother Microsoft has two products, both for XP. First, XP service pack 2 contains its own firewall, thus rendering any other firewall as redundant. Second Microsoft has their own Anti-Ad-ware product, Windows Defender. On the up side, both products are free to XP users (which most of the world is). The firewall is integrated into the TCP/IP stack of the computer, which in a perfect world would mean that the firewall would be bullet proof. Because Microsoft also makes IE (the primary case of mal-ware) one would figure that its anti-mal-ware scanner/blocker would take full advantage of their own knowledge of the proprietary code of both IE and Windows.

Microsoft also releases updates to windows, IE, office, and all if their products on a fairly regular bases, just as other software vendors do. You should download these updates daily to help protect your system.

AVG: Avg anti-virus is arguably the best “free” anti-virus around today. AVG dies has a pay version they sell to larger customers, but their free product is not crippled in any way. AVG also has just as many updates to their software as Norton and MacAfee (remember an anti-virus not updated regularly is soon useless), but AVG is NOT subscription based. Like most other anti-virus programs it scans your e-mail (to remove viruses and worms not spam), and does a full system scan late at night (if you leave your computer on.)

Mozilla Firefox: This is the golden arrow of computer safety. As stated 99% of all mal-ware comes in because of security holes in IE, well if you stop using IE, your 99% safe. Firefox does just about everything IE will do in term as day-to-day surfing. Firefox will not connect to Microsoft to download updates and there are some online things which need IE to work, but you can keep IE just for that takes, and use Firefox for your general surfing. Firefox has build in non-mal-ware popup blocking and an integrated search toolbar for Google, Yahoo and other search engines. Is Firefox completely safe? No, nothing is, but it is far and away a better browser than IE. If fact, studies of the surfing habits of normal Internet users show that just with Firefox alone, you are better protected than using IE and the best anti-virus, anti-mal-ware, and firewall systems money can buy. Firefox is of course a free download.

Ad-aware: Ad-ware with the first widespread anti-adware systems available, and still one of the best. The free ad-aware product scans and removes ad-ware and spy-ware, and is updated regularly. If you want “real time” protection you have to buy the full product, but it’s not subscription based.

Spybot Search and Destroy: Another early pioreer in the anti-mal-ware group, this it of software is funded by donations, free to download, and works great for older system. It was a real-time protection system which blocks EVERYTHING even overzealous legitimate software

Hijack-this!: This is very technical program which defeats mal-ware by removing its ability to start. Once a mal-ware program fails to start, removing it with anti-mal-ware products becomes much easier. Hijack-this also give the user a read on all processes that start on the computer, giving the more knowable computer user the ability to better control his or her system.

I’m really enjoying working with Word Press. Long I have searched for a good CMS (content management system), and this seems to be the one I’ve liked best. Even though my team and I have work on our own in house CMS for now 5 years, I am seriously considering moving new web projects to WP. We can focus our design efforts on the visual front end, using WP theme system, and let clients manage their own data input through the page and blog system.

Some of the advantages of WP I’ve seen thus far are:

1. Fully installable on our servers, we (clients and us) control the content, no relying on third parties which may or may not be there a year from now
2. Highly customizable, both on a visual level and a technical level.
3. Highly extendable via plugins/widgets
4. It’s free and Open Source, no additional cost to the client
5. It’s LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), no Windows Server Complications
6. Very eye candy, for those who are impressed by such trivial things

The TCG Site is now fully under its management with our custom work. Let’s see how it works.

I’ve been working on an update to our local Hospice’s site, and I’m leaning to using WP for Article Publishing and Events Calendar Management. It will be a good test of the system to see if we can take a WP CMS site and “module” it into our existing home grown framework.

I Love My Job!

In my growing business, I am having an ever greater need to intercommunicate with the co-consultants in my firm. For years I have been a “one man” operation, and as such quickly discovered that all I need was my cell phone. If fact, after Local Number Portably came into effect, I ported my home number to my wife’s cell phone and promptly gutted the house of all telephone wires. For the past few years we have had a landline free lifestyle, so much so that my sever year old daughter looks for the “send” button on grandma’s house phone.

The cell phones that my consultants carry handle about 90% of their communication needs. Being Microsoft Windows Mobile 5/6 devices, these phones sync over the air with our Exchange server giving us access to our tasks, contacts, schedules, and email. Push email from Microsoft has long since surpassed the need for pagers and SMS.

There are however small, but annoying kinks in our communication armor. While cell phones are good connecting person-to-person, they are not the best platform for connecting client-to-office. They lack an innate ability to do features such as call transfer, call parking, automated attendant, and integrated messaging. While there are ways of shoe horning those features into the platform, such jerry rigging never really works as advertised. The most basic of Nortel or Avia phone system can offer these features, but the primary human interface for those systems, the desktop phone has not changed in 20+ years. It’s time for the desktop phone to evolve, but what does it need to do.

First, dialing phone digits is now very passé. 99% of all the calls made in my line of work are made to the same narrow set of numbers, be it clients or vendors. My cell phone (via of Outlook and MS Exchange) has all of those numbers, why should my desktop phone not have them? Better yet, why shouldn’t my desktop phone connect to Exchange and sync that data, just as my current cell phone does? Even better, voice dialing is almost a foregone necessity with your cell phone. Why look up a contact when you can push a button and say “Call Joe Client at work 2 …… yes”.

Next, if the internet has taught us anything it is that a device which does not integrate is worthless. So if my desktop phone is connecting to Exchange for my contacts, why not get my schedule, email, and tasks as well. It’s very handy to be able to look down at my phone and see when my next appointment is. While we may power on and off our desktop computers and/or notebooks, the typical desktop phone is on 24/7/365. Using it as an information screen seems like a perfect task for such a device. RSS feeds, pictures, email notifications can all be sent to that screen. Microsoft is even now playing with there ideal of “side show” the concept that would allow a Vista based computer to use a remote screen to display/run Widgets. While I have yet to see a practical applications of this remote screen technology, I can easily conceive of its use.

And what of Software? To survive, the desktop phone will have to do more than talk, or even sync contacts with Exchange, it will have to be an open platform to allow for third party software development. Need a task/job timer, get it from Handango. Need a program to set your in/out office state, get the free version from Rasco. If you base the phone off a current processor with Windows CE, there is already a ton of apps which could be ported to it. Unlike most Windows Mobile/CE devices, it will most likely stay in one location, so giving it tone of storage space as a shared folder on the network should not be an issue.

Connectivity. We have too many wires already. Make the unit wireless or at least Ethernet connectable, forget this 1,2,3 pair Cat.3 stuff. VOIP is not a passing fad, it is what phone systems will be in 5-10 years, embrace it now. Most phone systems already have SIP compatibility. Remember once it’s on the network with an IP address it doesn’t matter if you get you dial tone from one server and your sync data from another. It doesn’t matter if you’re sitting in a temporary office in Nashville, while your home office is in London, it’s all IP, and it’s all good. With Power over Ethernet the wire needs drop even more and not battery powered gives developers one less thing to worry about.

Finally, give your desktop phone some helpful features, like Bluetooth, a Camera, and descent speaker. While I feel that one-to-one video conferencing is rather silly, a camera could be use for that, or for security at the table top. A Bluetooth headset, is a must have for anyone wanting to have conversation, type, and avoided serious neck injury at the same time. A speaker could steam office music, your MP3 library, or the BBC.

Basically, a current cell phone can do all of this, why not have a current desk phone which can do the same?

To that end, I really feel that there is a market for full sized desk phones running Windows Mobile. The irony here is that my tinny HTC Excalibur (T-Mobile Dash), does almost everything this dream desk-phone would do, it’s just too small. With this being off-the-shelf technology there’s no great leap of development here.

One of the reoccurring themes in my life has been, “The technology exists NOW, so why can’t/aren’t we doing it NOW”. What this means is that there are things we are all doing RIGHT NOW that are inefficient and counterproductive, yet we keep doing them because a.) we’ve always done them that way, and b.) No one has implemented current technology to do it better. What really chaps me about these “inefficient things” is that we do not have to wait for new technologies to fix them, we have all the tech we need now, we just are not using it.

I’m in business, I use a cell phone. As a consultant I use my cell phone all the time, everyday, everywhere. In fact 4 years ago I decided I had had enough and went exclusively cellular, dropping my landline in my business. When the Local Number Portability Act finally forced my small local teleco to give up numbers, I ported my home phone number to my wife’s cell phone, and then literally pulled all of the copper communication wires out of my house.

I’ve been using a MS Mobile cell phone sync with exchange for some time now, and I love it. I had used ActiveSync with my old Ipaq for years to keep track of numbers. When Microsoft got into the phone market, I jumped right in, it seemed dumb to waste my time looking up a number on a PDA just so I could hand dial it into the phone. They then went further and with Windows Mobile 5 AUK2 added over the air syncing with push e-mail. (Yes, I know you could do over the air syncing with exchange before WM5 AUK2, but let’s not cloud the issue).

Now that my operation is growing to have more than a few employees, I have a need to better intercommunicate with them. While our cell phones and Outlook are ideal for talking to clients, talking to each other, doing email, and collaborating schedules, there are just some features which we need.

1. The Auto Attendant effect, i.e. “Thank You for calling the Tabor Consulting Group”, for McKinley press 1, for Aaron press 2,…”
2. Call Passing; I’m on the phone with Client A. I think that Client A could be better served if he talks to Consultant B. With our cell phones it not real easy for me to “pass” Client A to Consultant B.
3. Those silly little things that make being on a phone tolerable for the incoming caller: music on hold, phone tree, etc

Also for as much as I love my cell phone it does have its shortcomings:

1. Battery Life
2. Speaker Phone is so-so
3. For what it’s worth, when I do have to “dial” a phone number it’s not always easy to hit those little buttons.

For what I do, a desk phone and a business phone system are almost irrelevant. While I know that I am on the cutting edge, I can now see a time when the desk phone is going to have to evolve, or get out of the way. But how should the desk phone evolve?

Fortunately, we have current technology that can bring the desk phone into the 21^st century.

Integration, Integration, Integration. If the internet has taught us anything it is that a standalone device is useless. The modern desk phone must integrate with our current operating business lives. But what does integration mean? The most obvious feature is that it must integrate a business’s communication platform, i.e. Microsoft Exchange. My cell phone goes out to get my contacts, email, and calendar, why not my desk phone?