New Vista Exploit On The Way

ZDNet has just released information on a possible new attack vector for Microsoft Windows Vista.

[It] provides a clear roadmap for hackers to plant malware or open backdoors on Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and 2 as well as Windows 2008 SP1 server

This puts Microsoft in a bind, since its scheduled “patch Tuesday” isn’t for another two weeks. Do they issue a special patch?

In the meantime Microsoft has released a workaround. Or, to do it yourself you can follow the directions in the workaround section found here.

Vista users take heed..
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Small Business and Windows 7 Recommendations

In this post I’ll cover my recommendations for upgrading and/or purchasing Windows 7. But first, let me confess that I don’t use Vista – never have. Our hardware is fine running XP and we haven’t needed to upgrade, so there was no reason to run out and upgrade hardware just to use a lousy operating system.

Vista is bloated, slow and a pain in the neck to use. Windows 7 is cleaner, faster and uses less power.

So the first recommendation is – which version? There are basically two choices… Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional. The Starter (for tiny netbooks), Home Basic (not available in the U.S. or Europe) and Ultimate (more money for not much gain) are essentially irrelevant.

Here are the extras you get with Windows 7 Professional:

• Only the Pro version can act as a workstation on an internal domain (server)
• Can add a network file/folder as Always Available Offline – Win7 Pro will cache it on your computer, synchronize it and make it available even if the network is down
• If you use Windows Backup you can store a system image to a network drive
• Includes a Windows XP mode to make it compatible with older apps or hardware
• It has a Connect to Network Projector option, which allows you to to mirror your portable PC’s display on a projector connected to a network
• It also has a Presentation mode that automatically kicks in when you connect to a projector and shuts down your instant messaging program, disables your screen saver, and suppresses system messages
• Remote Desktop host service – allows you to connect to the computer remotely without 3rd party software (pcanywhere, GoToMyPC)

So, for small businesses I recommend Windows 7 Professional on all new computers, even laptops. If you need a new computer now I recommend waiting til October 22 when Windows 7 makes its official debut.

Read more.
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A Good Time For Print Ads

While we tend to focus on online marketing, don’t forget about print media for your ad campaigns. According to Entrepreneur.com’s Print Ads: A Bargain for Buyers there are deals out there now for newspaper and magazine ads.

Their main advice? Haggle over price the same way you would when buying a new car…

The best time to get a deal is the day before the deadline. Ad sales staff will be ready to bargain then, knowing they’ll be running unpaid public service ads or house ads for their own services if they don’t fill all their space.

And the deadline is rapidly approaching for the holidays if you want to get your ad published in a magazine, which usually has more of a lead time for their issues.

Included in your ads should be a toll free telephone number and your website address. Both of these should be ‘qualified’ or tracked so you can determine the return on your advertising dollars.

That may mean a special landing page on your site with a bonus or coupon so you can tell which ad is being responded to. By using your web address in the print ad you can spend less on the ad and feed prospects into your online sales funnel.

Which magazines do you use? When doing your original business research you should have subscribed to all of the magazines in your product niche. Start with those, but there are other options.

In Dan Kennedy’s Marketing to the Affluent, he mentioned a top of the line playground equipment maker advertising in magazines like Upscale and Billionaire. Executives felt guilty about missing time with kids or grandkids and didn’t think twice about spending $25,000 on a play set for them.

It can pay to think outside the box..
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Cut Costs With Technology

Most of the Wall Street earnings reports coming out these days show a decrease in revenue, but an increase in profits. How is this possible?

By cutting costs. By lowering company expenses, lower income still generates a profit.

We always try to instill cost savings measures when dealing with small businesses. Why spend $400 for Microsoft Office when you can use the free OpenOffice? Why travel on a business meeting when you can teleconference? Why pay long distance phone charges when you can use VOIP?

Several cost cutting measures using technology are outlined in a PCWorld post. They cover things like online phone services, freelancer web sites and offsite file storage and backup.

One tool they cover is ClearApps Network Inventory Advisor. It’s one of those time-saving tools you come across every so often.

Let’s say you have a small business with up to 25 computers and no IT department – how do you keep track of all those computers? For $89 (higher for more than 25 computers), ClearApps will survey all of them, showing you all of the hardware and software (including version!) on each computer, plus give you alerts, like anti-virus not installed or turned off, low hard drive space, etc.

This is a great tool for office managers or computer servicing companies.

Another interesting tool they came up with is called Egnyte. It’s an online file storage/backup service with an interesting twist. For an extra $10/month, you set up an old computer or a hard drive as a file server for your office. By adding Egnyte’s software, it continually backs up all of the files to their server.

That way you have ready access to large files locally, but they’re all backed up offsite. If you lose your Internet connection, no problem. The file server will reconnect and synchronize whenever the connection is restored.

If you just have a single computer, you can opt out of this service and just map a virtual drive to Egnyte’s server for file storage and offsite backups. It’s a little more expensive than, say, Mozy, but it’s worth investigating..
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Affiliate Marketing Trade Firm Helps Amazon

Who knew affiliate marketers had a lobbying firm?

I’m not sure they’re registered Lobbyists in Congress yet, but the Performance Marketing Alliance has weighed in on the ‘Amazon.com v. New York’ Appeals Court by filing an amicus brief on the side of Amazon.

If you’re no sure what’s going on I’ll give you a little background. In early July I posted about Amazon terminating affiliates in certain states.

New York State had passed a law saying that an “affiliate” in New York (some poor guy like you with an affiliate product link on his web site) of Amazon.com, Overstock.com, etc. constituted a “physical presence” in their state and was subject to New York State sales taxes that the companies had to collect and pay.

Incredibly, Amazon lost the court case against this in New York. While waiting for the Appeals Court, several other states jumped in with the same kind of laws, causing Amazon to simply terminate affiliates in those states.

Who loses? The affiliates. Also, the states no longer collect income taxes from the profits of those affiliate sales. And of course, the online retailers lose marketers who drive their sales.

Who wins? No one.

Which brings me back to the Performance Marketing Alliance. It’s a not-for-profit trade association that attempts “to connect, inform and advocate” on behalf of affiliate marketers, which they estimate at about 200,000 people.

If you are an affiliate marketer take a look at the Performance Marketing Alliance site. They’re just getting off the ground, but have some basic information and a fall special on memberships..
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Your Solution To Scareware

Been under the weather for a few days but I’m back in tip-top shape…

I’ve written a few posts on scareware recently. The folks at ZDNet have just come out with an in-depth look at scareware that goes into recognizing, avoiding and reporting scareware. They also include 57 photos of scareware examples.

This problem has grown much bigger than I originally thought. ZDNet, actually Ryan Naraine and Dancho Danchev of their Zero Day blog, say that scareware has “emerged as the single most profitable monetization strategy for cybercriminals”.

This is not just pop-up come-ons, but legitimate looking sales pages for anti-virus software.

The problem is that people who are susceptible to these scams don’t read ZDNet warnings about identifying the hazards.

Here’s your solution.

Buy a reputable security suite. We use ZoneAlarm. It doesn’t take over your computer. It does its job efficiently and, lo and behold, you can actually, manually, shut it down if you need to. The license covers three computers for a year. Renew it annually.

Symantec’s Internet Security Suite is supposedly improved over previous versions, which is when I gave up on them. I’ve never liked McAfee. There are others out there. Buy one. Install it on all of your computers. That’s it.

Now you won’t be tempted to buy something like ‘eAntiVirus Pro 2008′ or ‘Antivirus 2009 Protection’. Once you are familiar with your suite you won’t be tempted by pop-ups claiming to have scanned your computer and found malware.

If you are in business on the web, your business is through your computer. Spend the 60 bucks a year to keep it safe..
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SBA Offers Loans, Banks Won’t Participate

As part of the 2009 Recovery Act the Small Business Administration (SBA) “designed a deferred-payment loan program to help small businesses make payments on existing debt”.

Called the America’s Recovery Capital (ARC) Loan Program, it’s a Federally guaranteed, deferred-payment loan of up to $35,000, no-interest, no payments for 12-18 months, then paid off over the following 5 years.

The program was funded with $255 million but only $65 million has been spent.

Why? Banks are just not signing up for the program, that’s why.

Small business owners in Florida are complaining, according to the St. Petersburg Times. Commenters on the article complain that they can’t get a new loan.

First, let’s read the fine print – a must with any government program. The ARC says it’s for “existing debt”. There may be other programs for new small business loans, but the ARC is for alleviating already incurred debt.

Others ask why should the banks participate when they don’t make any money on a no-interest loan?

While the loans may be no-interest, they are guaranteed and the banks still make money because the “SBA will pay monthly interest to the lender at reasonable rates throughout the term of the loan”. In other words, the taxpayer pays the interest.

So, again, why aren’t the banks signing up? One reason it put forward by Jim Parrish of the University of South Florida’s Small Business Development Center in Tampa.

Parrish said he understands banks’ reluctance, citing a report from the U.S. Governmental Accountability Office that estimated 56 percent of the borrowers may not repay the loans.

“The banks don’t want to fool with these loans that, truthfully, they don’t make any money on,” he said. “Because of all the handling costs, it’s not profitable … and they might turn around and half of them could go bad.”

(St. Petersburg Times)

So the interest paid to the banks barely covers the cost of the paperwork administering the loans, and doesn’t cover the added paperwork of getting reimbursed when half the loans go bad.

Still, according to SBA stats more loans are going to less populated states than places like Florida, New York and California.

If you are a small business owner and are interested, check out the specifics at the SBA’s American’s Recovery Capital Loan page..
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WordPress Blogs Under Attack

A recent release from ZDNet says that outdated versions of WordPress are susceptible to attack from a worm.

It only affects those with WordPress installed on their own servers, not wordpress.com blogs, and it’s only for versions 2.8.2 and earlier.

WordPress 2.8.4 is out now and all you have to do is log into your WP admin area and at the top of the Dashboard choose “Please update now” as shown in the picture below…

I recommend that you backup your blog prior to the update as a matter of caution prior to the upgrade, then after selecting “Please update now” choose “upgrade automatically” and you’re done.

WordPress has made it much easier to update and now is the time to use it to your advantage..
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