Computer Solutions in the greater brisbane area.
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How Google can hurt your business
This story is developing as I write this, so mainly this post is just a place to collect my thoughts, and broadcast them to the wider community, of which hopefully I can find some help in resolving the problem. Google thus far have not been helpful.
Today a client of ours rang to ask us to help them sort out a serious problem. When you visit their website, http://actioninspections.com.au, you get a warning that their site is probably going to harm your computer. (I’m worried now by linking to it Google might block us too, but we’ll see)
The Google Safe Browsing page for the problem said that Google had never found any malware on the site of any kind. So you can imagine how my frustration started to rise at this point; Why block a site that is perfectly safe?
The suggestion was to use the Google Webmaster Tools to check into it, but there too, I was told there was nothing wrong with the website; The aforementioned safe browsing page suggested I could use the webmaster tools to request a malware review, which would seem to be the way foward, but because Google never found any malware, there is no option to request a review!
A scan with the AVG Website Scanner reveals no malware present either.
Internet Guru @northirid (via twitter) pointed out that there was some spurious javascript being called from kollinsoy.skyefenton.com; That’s clearly the problem that tripped the warning in the first place, but we are still left with no way to have Google stand down, despite having fixed the problem.
Hours after Google began blocking access to the site, it’s tools are only now reporting that in fact there IS malware on the site (even though right now, there isn’t). Now we have access to the Google review process, but we can only guess how long it will take before someone fixes the problem;
Despite that progress, the Google system never tells you what the malware is, or where it was found. It seems pretty stupid not to give people that information, as larger sites could have thousands of pages and take days to check each one. If Google were serious about helping people, this information would be immediately provided.
Updating your ESET Anti Virus
Here’s a short video that shows you how to put the ESET username and password into the software if you already have it installed; If you need to download the software, get it from ESET Australia.
Facebook Privacy Settings
Ensuring your privacy is well protected when you use facebook is very very important. Most users assume that Facebook protects their information, and go ahead and post quite revealing and personal information and even photos of themselves, that they wouldn’t really like to be made available to the world at large.
The issue is even more important when children are involved. Most parents aren’t even checking what is going on with their kids on facebook, and in many cases, their kids are leaving themselves wide open for all sorts of abuse, from cyber bullying perpetrated by other kids, or attack by child predators that can easily locate the kids using the information on their Facebook profile.
Should I just delete my Facebook account?
No, I don’t believe you should. Facebook is a great way to stay in touch with more friends and family more often, and while I still think a good get together every so often is important in any relationship, I believe Facebook can be a great tool. If you are someone who just can’t be bothered logging in every so often to see whats going on, then by all means, delete your account. There is no point having it if you don’t want it, and you might as well take that final step.
If you decide this is for you, then after you have logged into facebook, visit the delete account page, and you can say goodbye to Facebook forever.
Where do I set my privacy settings?
UPDATE: Use this website; http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/facebook to check your privacy settings.
UPDATE: Good post from Mashable walking you through some common issues;
Take a look at the image I took from my own Facebook page; The account settings are currently at the top right of the page, and after you click, head down to PRIVACY SETTINGS.
You should go through all the different areas of facebook that are listed. There are quite a few, so this will take you a few minutes, but it’s well worth the trouble, as you will see that some of the settings are probably set to EVERYONE. You should change them all to a setting you are comfortable with; The default ones are;
- Everyone – The whole world will see it.
- Friends of Friends – Anyone your friends have made friends with on Facebook will see it. Do you know all of your friends friends? No, so this is almost as bad as “everyone”
- Friends – Only people you
- Customise – More on that next….
Can I have more control than that?
You sure can. One of the great features of Facebook is that it lets you group your Facebook friends, and once they are grouped together, you can set privacy settings for the group as well.
If you click on the FRIENDS link on the left side of your Facebook page, there will be a button at the top that says “CREATE A LIST”. Click that, and you can make a new list, and add specific friends to it. A good use of this would be to create a WORK list, and add your co-workers to the list. I have a “KIDS” list, so that all the younger people on my friends list can be separated out;
Then, when you go back to your privacy settings, you should choose the CUSTOMISE option. From here, you can go one of two ways;
First, you can choose friends (or groups of friends, if you have setup lists as we just talked about), and exclude them from seeing things the rest of your friends can see. Just add the list, or specific friends, to the “HIDE THIS FROM” list.
Alternatively, you can choose to set the main privacy to “SPECIFIC PEOPLE”, and then choose exactly which friends, or lists of friends, can see that part of your profile.
Using lists, rather than selecting specific people, makes organising this much easier; You just add new friends to the right list(s), and they automatically are restricted the way you want.
Facebook Photo Albums are tricky
You will want to check this from time to time, because Facebook sets your photo privacy separately for every photo album you have on Facebook. This can be a good thing, of course, because you can let everyone see your nice nature photography, but the drunken party pics of you in a nurses outfit can be restricted to your nearest and dearest friends only.
What about my kids Facebook use?
Personally, I don’t think kids younger than 16 should use Facebook at all. Most parents let their kids use facebook, however, so you will want to make sure your kids take some basic precautions. Here are the top tips I would suggest for your kids using facebook;
- Make sure ALL their privacy settings are set to FRIENDS ONLY
- Make sure they only “friend” people they have met in real life, and that the account really IS their friend.
- Make sure they NEVER “friend” a celebrity. Celebrities setup their Facebook PAGE, which is not the same as a user profile. You “LIKE” a page, and that’s fine. Where kids run into trouble is people setup fake profiles to get kids to “friend” them, and once they do, they can see all the kids personal information.
Further Reading (or watching)
- The Huffington Post have a good little video that will walk you through the top 5 important settings in a quick, 2 minute video.
- A nice video from Sophos going through the way the current privacy settings work.
- This guy has stuff he doesn’t want shared with anyone; I would suggest simply not putting that information into Facebook in the first place.
- Another video showing you through the privacy settings.
McAfee killing PC’s with latest update
Here’s another reminder that we use and reccomend ESET Anti Virus;
Yesterday McAfee sent out an update to their virus definitions (update 5958), which caused McAfee to detect a critical windows file, svchost.exe as a virus; In many cases, this leads to the file being deleted, which, when you reboot, leads to your computer not working.
Of course, McAfee’s support forums collapsed shortly afterward under the weight of unhappy customers wondering what happened. The good news is that the problem will be fixable without a complete reinstall of your computer, but the bad news is, you’re probably going to need some technical help to make it happen.
If you are using McAfee, and your computer has problems, give us a call and one of our tech’s will get you back up and running, and while you’re at it, consider switching over to ESET.
Business owners should be thinking about SBR
Something small business owners should know about, is the federal governments initiative called “Standard Business Reporting”. Turns out this plan was announced by the Howard government all the way back in 2006, and like so many government ideas, it’s taken quite a while for it to move foward;
The basics of the idea is to simplify and standardise the communications businesses have with government, so that business owners don’t end up reporting the same information multiple times to multiple government entities, improve and simply the way business owners authenticate and encrypt their communications with government, and the big ticket item, moving the communication into the software businesses already use, even going so far as to make the reporting just a simple by product of natural business processes.
Pretty loft ideals. Considering how badly these types of upgrades can go, such as the Customs ICS upgrades that have been causing headaches for years (as far back as 2005 that I could quickly find via google), one could be forgiven for thinking this will turn out to be a giant headache for business owners. However, if we assume that after 4 years of planning and development it will work as intended, here’s what we can look foward to;
Business software such as MYOB will be able to put together the information for goverment forms, and even submit the data directly to the government agency. One imagines the first roll out will include such tedious things as BAS and IAS statements, as well as PAYG summaries at the end of the year (for those businesses that employ staff). What would really help small business owners would be the inclusion of reporting payroll information to Centrelink and the Child Support Agency.
MYOB (the software we use to keep the books here at Shift Computer Solutions) has not implemented SBR, despite launching new versions of MYOB only last month. SBR is being launched on 1st July, and we hope that MYOB will release a point update then to allow submissions via SBR.
Another big ticket item is simplifying the way businesses authenticate themselves when they want to transmit data to government agencies. Called AUSkey, the new system will eventually be a single sign on for ALL government agencies, but initially, will replace the complex digital certificate system currently used by the ATO. Because of this, we expect nearly all small business owners to sign up for AUSkey immediately, as the ATO represents the biggest reporting burden. Despite all these changes being in the works for years already, however, ASIC and other agencies are not expected to be on board for another two years.
One great bit of news; Provided you use AUSkey at least once a year, it will never expire. Anyone who has had ATO digital certificates expire will know how wonderful this news is!
It is unclear exactly what AUSkey really is, but from what has been published so far, it seems it will be a software solution, which you install on your computer, or a USB stick or even on your business server. We will do a follow up article after AUSkey is launched to provide more details. The ATO is saying AUSkey will be available from the 27th April, so we don’t have long to wait.
Further Reading;
Apple announce iPhone OS 4.0
News out that Apple will be releasing a new version of their iPhone software, version 4.0. There are some great new features coming when the software is rolled out in June, here’s a short list of the really exciting ones;
Multitasking
With iPhone 4.0, certain functions will be able to run in the background; For example, you might be listening to streaming internet radio through an app, now you can exit that app and do something else, and the streaming music will keep playing. GPS applications will be able to keep tracking your location while you check in with another app too.
Apple have done exactly the right thing by limiting full multitasking to those core functions that need it, while not letting everything do it. This way you won’t chew through your battery too quickly, and you aren’t likely to have the phone lockup or crash, which is a problem with other systems where full multitasking is running.
For applictions (like games, for example) that are not allowed to multitask, when you exit them their state will be saved, so when you go back, the app or game will be exactly where you left it. This is perfect for most apps as you can go back to where you left off (which is all you really do with most apps on a PC too), but while you are away, the app is not chewing up your phones battery and processing power.
App Folders
Realising that apps are the big reason so many people are switching to the iPhone, Apple are making it easier to organise them with a folderu system in iPhone OS 4.0. Now you can group similar apps together in a folder. The first thing I’ll be doing when I get the update will be putting all my games into a folder, so I won’t have to troll through them all to find other apps.
Local Notifications
The new OS will let applications send notifications internally, rather than just from an external server as it is now. This means, for example, you could be cooking a recipe using an app, which allows you to tell it when you put the food in the oven; Instead of you having to time it yourself, you could close the app and go do other stuff, and when the time is up, the app can notify you the food is ready. This will be great for apps that upload stuff to facebook, flickr and the like too, so you can close them and do something else while the data uploads, and the app can let you know when it’s done.
New Mail App
The Mail application has been ugpraded too, so now if you operate multiple email accounts, you can see all your email in a unified inbox. Another welcome addition is mutliple exchange accounts, something that we will be using extensively as soon as it’s available.
Custom Backgrounds
Not a big deal, but something a lot of people would like, is the ability to set a custom background image for the entire phone experience, not just the lock screen. Well, soon, you will be able to.
There are plenty of other minor adjustments and updates, and we think that iPhone OS 4.0 will ensure the iPhone is the lead smart phone for at least another year or so; If Apple manage to release another hardware update later this year, the competiton will have to do plenty to close the gap all over again.
Using Facebook to Promote your business
Facebook is a great way to engage with your customers; With a Facebook page for your business, you have a public profile where you can share news about your business, and pass on valuable information to your clients; Your clients can also share your insights with others, driving more people to look into your business and become its customers. Facebook pages are also indexed by Google, so having one means you have another avenue to drive search traffic to you and away from your competitors.
Step 1. The Page
The first thing to do is login to your own personal Facebook account, and set your business up with it’s own page; You always use your own login to manage it, but your business has it’s own facebook identity, completely separate from yours. If you are already logged in to Facebook, just click through here and setup your business right now! Facebook also have a help section about creating and using pages to promote your business.
Step 2. The Profile Icon
You are going to need to upload an icon that will be displayed against all your business posts. This can be a little tricky, because in most instances, Facebook are going to show a square thumbnail rather than what you upload. To keep it safe, have your design guru create your icon 200 x 200 pixels square, and ensure that all the important stuff that needs to show in the thumbnail is in the middle, and no bigger than 176 x 176. Taking some care here will ensure your brand is properly displayed to your clients and prospects alike.
Step 3. Engage with your fans
Engagement is the big buzz word at the moment, and with Faceboook, it’s really the only one you need to remember; make sure you are regularly posting news and information to your facebook profile. Sometimes you can link to articles you write on your own website, and other times, post links to things your customers will be interested in that you digg up on other websites. You don’t need to flood Facebook with 20 messages a day, but you should update at least every few days, with something useful. Once you do, people will start suggesting your page to their friends, and your brand becomes exposed to so many more people.
If you are creating products that photograph well, make sure you regularly post photos of your best work. Take a look at Vanilla Lilly Cake Design, these guys are doing Facebook the right way, and reaping the benefits.
Step 4. Offer promotions
A good way to push your Facebook page foward is to offer special discounts or competitions to your facebook fans.
Step 5. Think about your URL
If we are looking after your website, we can setup facebook.yourdomain.com.au to point to your facebook profile; Doing so provides you with an easy to remember address to find yourFacebook presence, and makes advertising it that much easier.
Camera Plus Pro for the iPhone
Owners of iPhones should take a look at Camera Plus Pro; We’ve embedded App Judgements iPhone camera replacement episode so you can check it and several other apps out; Currently in the Australian App Store Camera Plus Pro is $2.49, which is apparently a discounted price for a limited time.
They just added video support to the app, so I’m guessing the plan to hike the price, so now would be the time to pick this one up.
Dr Seuss for your iPhone
Dr Seuss, author and illustrator of such children’s classics as The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham and Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!, would be 106 years old now, and to celebrate, there are some great Dr Seuss apps available for your iPhone or iPod Touch;
In fact, all the Dr Seuss apps are $1.19 today! If you have little ones, now would be a great time to stock up on these classics.
These are the Dr. Seuss-branded apps currently available:
- The Cat in the Hat e-book
- Dr. Seuss’s ABC e-book
- How the Grinch Stole Christmas! e-book
- Dr. Seuss Camera – The Cat in the Hat Edition
- Dr. Seuss Camera – The Grinch Edition
- Grinchmas! kid’s game
Take notes on web pages
Users of firefox may already know that you can add all sorts of widgets to it that enable all kinds of useful extra features. We’ve just found a great tool that will make your life so much easier;
Add this to Firefox, and it allows you to put a sticky note right onto a webpage, that will be there when you revisit it. A great use for this is where you lookup a few different websites, and need to ring the companies behind them and get more information; Just use this extension to take notes during each phone call, then those notes are saved right on the webpage, so you can refer back to them quickly and easily.
Give it a try!
