Google+: big companies can cause big problems

Monday, July 25th, 2011

In its first three weeks of availability, Google+ reportedly attracted 20 million users. That’s a pretty impressive launch – especially since it’s been accompanied by what can only be described as a negative marketing campaign. Even as millions of users have poured onto the service, Google has insisted on calling it a “limited field trial”. At this rate, by the time they officially make it available to the public, everyone will already be on it.

Everyone, that is, except for Mr Matthew Brock of Swiss Cottage. I have it on good authority that the gentleman in question, an old friend of mine, is giving Google+ a miss. (more…)

What LulzSec logins reveal about bookworms

Thursday, June 16th, 2011

Today the hacking group LulzSec posted 62,000 hacked email usernames and passwords online. But don’t panic: I’ve been through the list and I can confirm that none of my details have been compromised. So far.

Not everyone has been so lucky, though. As I write this, unscrupulous voyeurs around the globe are sifting through these compromised email accounts looking for… well, whatever they can find. We’ve heard of people finding login details for social-networking sites, online-dating services and even porn sites.

Here at PC Pro we can’t condone such behaviour, fascinating though it would doubtless be to gain such an insight into a stranger’s private life. Happily, the email addresses and passwords themselves are quite revealing.

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Waiting for the Epsilon email attacks to start

Thursday, April 14th, 2011

You’ve already doubtless noticed that email marketing outfit Epsilon had fallen victim to a data security breach. US-based Epsilon, a third-party marketing company that sends out emails to customer addresses supplied by well known businesses all over the world, admitted on 30 March that its email database had been hacked.

While only customer names and email addresses were compromised, and then only concerning around 2% (or 50 companies in total) of Epsilon’s client base, the ‘your email address has been compromised’ warnings have been rolling in thick and fast: Hilton Worldwide, Mothercare, Capital One, Barclaycard and Marks and Spencer to name but a few.

But while the security breach itself is serious, it’s tempting to think that the fallout won’t be. After all, what can someone do with your email address and name? The truth is that I expect the Epsilon email attacks to start coming thick and fast, just as soon as lists of names and email addresses tied to specific retailers and businesses have been compiled and sold on the underground criminal market.

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If you’re drowning in email, try Gmail Priority Inbox

Thursday, September 16th, 2010

New research says that modern office workers are suffering from information overload and email is the counter-productive cause. Yet not only is getting to grips with email not rocket science as far as the average small business is concerned, it doesn’t have to cost you anything either.

In research which covered more than 1,000 workers from a number of UK-based businesses, OnePoll (on behalf of salesforce.com) concluded that “unnecessary emails are the bane of the modern office, with seven out of ten workers complaining about being sent irrelevant emails or being copied on emails of no interest”.

To be specific (with my specifically sarky remarks in parenthesis) the research suggested that the average office worker receives 43 emails per day (yay, I’m above average in the amount of email I get: 500 per day here) and some 11% get between 51 and 150 emails per day (hah! still above average). That 38% complained about suffering from information overload is the statistic which blew me away. Not because I think it’s one of the big problems facing the average small business today, but exactly the opposite.

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WordPress.com: from dream to nightmare

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

I’m regularly asked about the best way to go about building a modern website and recently I’ve been recommending those looking for the simplest/cheapest route to check out WordPress by signing up to WordPress.com. WordPress.com has been running the latest 3.0 release (see my WordPress 3.0 review) for some time now complete with new default theme and custom menu handling, which makes it far better suited to creating traditional page-based websites as well as post-based blogs.

The beauty of WordPress.com is that it makes exploring what WordPress has to offer so painless. Essentially all you need is an email address and, within a couple of minutes, you can be creating your first posts and pages, changing your theme, monitoring your stats and so on. If you like what you see, you can either stick with WordPress.com’s default free hosting package, upgrade to get your own domain name ($15 a year), redirect an existing domain ($10 a year) or, most powerfully, switch to an independent WordPress host where you’ll be able to extend the framework’s capabilities via third-party plug-ins.

Generally the response has been amazingly enthusiastic – “the difference is night and day” – especially from those owners of existing sites who had previously been paying a fortune to traditional web designers whenever they’d needed to update existing pages.

Recently, however, for one correspondent the dream descended into a nightmare…

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How to keep on top of email

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

I admit that I’m a little obsessed by email. Not only have I previously blogged on how I use Outlook, I also wrote a feature on How to Master Outlook for PC Pro last year and interviewed the man behind Getting Things Done, David Allen.

Now David Allen is a man I admire greatly, and I’m sure there are thousands of people who have converted to his way of doing things with huge success. But he advocates a “system”, a complete change in your habits, and the brutal reality is that most people can’t change their ways. And that includes me.

Instead, I seem to have arrived at a way of doing things that can be best thought of as a kludge. It doesn’t always work and it has its faults. Sometimes I drown in so much email that I want to scream, and sometimes I forget things. But in my mind it’s a 20% of the effort with 80% of the result kind of approach, so for better or worse I share it here.

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In search of the world’s most ridiculous email address

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

This is inspired by a friend of mine who has surely the world’s most ridiculous email address. She works for the local government here in London, and due to the convoluted logic involved – and no doubt some exciting regulations – her email goes something like this:

firstname.portman-early-childhood.westminster@lgfl.net

Just imagine for a second that was your email address. Would you ever attempt to tell people what it is? You can’t even hand out a business card as it would need to be double-width (note that my poor friend isn’t even given a business card… and only gets access to the work email computer once a week).

Anyway, I’m open to alternative suggestions. Have you ever met someone with a worse email address? Or is your own more ridiculous? And while I’m at it, has anyone got a shorter email address than my nice, succinct editor@pcpro.co.uk?

(Obviously, don’t quote your address in any way a bot can harvest it.)

Should you be sacked for sending SHOUTY email?

Friday, September 4th, 2009

This week it was reported that a New Zealand woman was sacked from her job as an accountant at a healthcare company after colleagues complained that her emails were too “shouty”.  This was because of her tendency to write her emails in CAPITAL LETTERS.

Perhaps understandably, she thought that by using capital letters, her fellow employees would PAY MORE ATTENTION to her missives than if she used regular, lower case.

An employment tribunal also heard that Vicki Walker behaved “provocatively” by highlighting the REALLY IMPORTANT phrases in bold or red.  In one office-wide email presented as evidence she had typed in bold blue letters: “TO ENSURE YOUR STAFF CLAIM IS PROCESSED AND PAID, PLEASE DO FOLLOW THE BELOW CHECK LIST.”

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The bizarrest email I’ve ever received

Monday, August 24th, 2009

I was having quite a bad day, if I’m honest, but then this dropped into my inbox:

Hiya – This is a slightly odd question, but I’m hoping you may be able to help me…

Can you tell me whether a full computer hardrive weighs more than an empty one ? And if it does what does the extra weight comprise of?

Again, I know it’s a strange question, but I would be v grateful if you could shed some light!

Names and email addresses removed to protect the innocent, needless to say.

But it does raise the important question of whether spreadsheets are, metaphorically speaking, heavier than word-processing documents. Are TIFFs heavier than JPEGs? Is Windows heavier than Linux?

Answers on a postcard. And if anyone’s received a stranger email than that, I’d love to hear about it.

The problem with mobile broadband

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

I’m a big fan of mobile broadband. In theory. The idea of a connection wherever you go, the promise of lower costs than fixed broadband, the possibility of even higher speeds than fixed! The reality, which I’m living through right now, remains frustrating.

For the last few days, I’ve had to “rely” on mobile broadband as I wait for my broadband connection to go live in my new house. The trouble is, it doesn’t work at all well. The first problem is reception: I don’t live in central London but in deepest Bucks, and that means I can only get a GPRS connection. (more…)