August 7th, 2009 by James "Rick" Dragoo, Jr.
We are always suggesting that businesses update their websites to stay current. Updates enable a site to increase its presence on search engines and let visitors know that the site is not dead.
Well we took our own advice and gave our site a complete overhaul. We reworked the design and even matched the new design to the blog to add even more consistency and brand awareness.
www.blainehilton.com
What do you think of the new design for the site and blog?
Now that the site has a fresh look we are now updating the content.
Tags: new design, update, web content, website
Posted in Business, Web Design and Development, marketing | No Comments »
July 30th, 2009 by James "Rick" Dragoo, Jr.
A vulnerability has recently been discovered in the iPhone. Apparently by sending a single character text message or a series of blank messages to an iPhone will confuse it and open it up for attack.
Many people use their iPhones and apps for many aspects of their lives so if their iPhone were to get hacked it could be detrimental. The attacker could get everything from contacts to personal and financial information.
As of right now Apple has not released an update to fix this security issue. It is not perceived as a serious threat at this time but iPhone users who want to be safe can simply power down their iPhones for now until an update has been released to deal with the issue.
Tags: cell phones, hack, iphone, vulnerability
Posted in Internet Security | No Comments »
July 24th, 2009 by James "Rick" Dragoo, Jr.
You may have been hearing a lot lately about the cloud. Even some IT professionals aren’t really sure what the cloud is. Well in basic terms it is sharing servers to run your applications and storing data as opposed to using a server located in your office.
You would sign up with a cloud provider just like how you have an Internet provider. You would then access your servers via the Internet and access your data and run applications remotely from their servers.
Now that you have a basic understanding of what the cloud is and how it works we come to the important issues: the advantages and disadvantages of the cloud.
Advantages
The main advantage of using the cloud is cost. You do not have to pay for and maintain your own server in your office. You essentially lease access to the cloud providers servers. Because these servers are shared by many other customers of the cloud provider they only charge you a fraction of the cost for the servers and they maintain the servers.
These cost savings can be reallocated to other areas of your company such as operational costs etc.
Disadvantages
There are a few disadvantages of using the cloud. Since you are leasing remote servers from another company they are in control of your data and applications. This is not necessarily a disadvantage. You just have to do your research before deciding on a cloud provider.
Make sure and find out that they have the applications that you require installed on their servers and you have access to them. Also be sure that you still own your data that is on their servers and that if you decide to leave, you can take it with you. Also you should have the option to remotely backup the data to your own internal systems such as office computers or flash drives etc. Even though you can usually make your own backups be sure to ask about their data integrity. Do they make backups of data? How often? What do they do if there is a system failure of any kind?
The bottom line is it is your decision. Do your research and decide what is the best solution for you.
Most IT professionals agree that the cloud is the future of IT.
Tags: advantages, cloud, disadvantages, servers, web
Posted in Business, IT | No Comments »
July 17th, 2009 by James "Rick" Dragoo, Jr.
In the business world you can get in big time trouble for false advertising or falsifying testimonials and other marketing materials. The web is no different. Many companies think it is OK to make up a testimonial here or there because on the web no one is going to know the difference. That is not the case anymore.
The company Lifestyle Lift was recently fined $300,000 in New York for Astroturfing on the Internet. Several memos were discovered that encouraged employees to pose as satisfied customers and post testimonials on forums, social media sites, and their own site.
The company was also found to have created additional sites appearing to be not affiliated with them. Many of these were forum sites but negative comments about the company were deleted from the site to skew the opinions to favor Lifestyle Lift.
The moral of the story is do not falsify your testimonials, online or offline. The backlash from people finding out could be much worse than any of the so called benefits.
Tags: astroturfing, false advertising, testimonials, unethical, web content
Posted in Business, marketing, web content | No Comments »
July 17th, 2009 by James "Rick" Dragoo, Jr.
YouTube recently announced that they will soon discontinue support for Internet Explorer version 6. Media rich sites like YouTube had to accommodate for IE6 in the form of specialized code. This is because IE6 is not as standards compliant as FireFox, Chrome, and Safari. Anyone that goes to YouTube using IE6 will soon be greeted with with a screen stating that they must upgrade or change their browser.
Internet surfers should not be too worried however as the usage of IE6 is very low. Microsoft was pushing out IE7 and the recently released IE8 as an automatic windows update. Also about 65-70% of Internet users use non IE browsers like FireFox. IE6 only accounts for around 5% of Internet users. If you do have IE6 simply visit microsoft.com and download Internet Explorer 8 or visit firefox.com to download Mozilla FireFox. Google also has their new Chrome browser available to the public.
Tags: chrome, firefox, google, ie6, internet explorer, YouTube
Posted in Social Media, web content | No Comments »
