Proactive Networking Blog

I have found it interesting that Dell has an “Acquisition Department”.  Their job is to find new business for Dell.  We used to buy components from Supermicro and then build the servers that we supply to our clients.  At one point we quoted a client a Supermicro server and they shared with us the price they got from Dell for a similar server and we were stunned.  His cost was about 10% less than what our cost was to build a Supermicro.  Our client gave us the name of his Dell rep, who I then called. 

The rep interrogated me on whether we were already selling Dell, as he wouldn’t compete against another rep.  He then set me up with an account and we started getting prices for all of our new server business.  The pricing was always very aggressive and we sold about thirty units over a six month period, which I am sure is small potatoes for Dell.

After six months we were unceremoniously informed that we were being moved to a different group, one that would be “better able to cater to our needs.”  The bottom line ended up being that pricing was no longer competitive and service was non-existent.  When we had worked with the “Acquisition Department”, quotes were returned to us in minutes, and pricing was always at least 5% below what our parts cost was for Supermicro, and at least 10 – 15% less than the unit priced on Dells website. 

Pricing with the new sales group was just a few percent less than what you could get at Dell’s website and service was lackluster.  Quotes took days to get, orders were ignored, and four phone calls still wouldn’t get a rep to call back.

I called my initial rep back to complain and he stated that we could continue to work with him but only if the units were shipped directly to our customer and Dell would have to charge sales tax.  He could not sell to us for resale.  His department is only there to acquire new customers with great pricing and great service and then move them on to Dell’s standard reps.

Been running off and on for a couple of years with an iPod.  Never have been impressed.  I always have experienced a rhythmic loss of treble as I run.  It sounds similar to when I used to run with a cheap Walkman playing cassette tapes.

Yesterday, I finally broke with what seemed like an unbreakable protocol and stuck the right earbud in my left ear and left ear bud in my right.  Unbelievably, the sound is now perfect.  I guess the fit of the buds was pressing against my ears and cutting of the sound as I ran.  I’m astounded that it took me this long to figure this out.  I would think that I would have at least put them in the wrong ears by accident once.

When I see R & L, I figure there must be a reason and I never questioned it.  I guess I need to see what other inviolable rules I need to break.

In the space of a week I noticed three different laptops and a desktop (all different brands, and all with XP) that appeared to be off and then without me doing anything they turned on!  I thought there must be some new Microsoft update that must be causing this odd behavior.  After a bit of research, I realized they were only doing what they were told.  In the “Power Options” in “Control Panel” they were all set to “StandBy” after 20 minutes and “Hibernate” after 45 minutes.  I had just happened to come across all four of these machines when they were waking up from StandBy to move into hibernate mode.

I’m embarrassed to report that I fell for a Phishing email a month ago. It happened when I signed up for a new Yahoo! Search Marketing account. I signed up for the account and ten minutes later I had an email similar to the following email in my inbox:

There is an obvious part of this email that should have tipped me off immediately that I was about to be taken.  The email is not from yahoo.com.  It is yahoo-inc.com.  Close, but close will get your bank account drained.  The challenge for me was that I had signed up for a new Yahoo Search Marketing account just prior to getting this email.  I was in a hurry and just blindly clicked the link, figuring that Yahoo was requiring me to confirm my email address and since I had just signed up for a new account it must be legit.  The link lead me to a page that looked exactly like this:

This is the actual Yahoo Marketing Solutions homepage.  The page in the link in the email I received has been taken down. (See below)  The only way to have known I was in the wrong spot would have been to look at the url.  This one is correct - http://marketingsolutions.login.yahoo.com.  The one I clicked through to said - http://liveadsmscenter.com/adui.  other than that, the web page looked exactly the same.  Again, I was in a hurry and just saw ads and center in the url and didn’t think.  I had just signed up for an account, so it made sense that I do this, and I had other things to get on to.

The next day I got a call from my credit card company.  They wanted to know if I had made three $3000.00 charges to Yahoo!  I didn’t think so.  I had approved $100 per day for ads on Yahoo.  I could see one $3000 charge, but not three.  I logged in to my Yahoo Search Marketing account and instead of seeing all of the keywords I had put in, I saw dozens of keywords relating to mortgages and the ad spend had been raised to $3000 per day.

I quickly called Yahoo and  they locked the account.  They promised to refund the $9000, which they did in about a week.  At first I figured that I wasn’t stupid enough to have been caught in a phishing expedition as Yahoo suggested.  It became more apparent that I had when Yahoo support said that they did not send out emails to verify a users email account.  It became even more apparent over the next month when I proceeded to get an email almost every other day purporting to be from Yahoo Search Marketing.

It appears to me that the phishers send out so many emails that they are bound to catch someone at just the right time that it’s easy to end up a phishee.  If I get a notification from a bank where I don’t have an account, it is easy to tell there is trouble.  If I get an email that appears to be from my bank about a password problem, and I have recently changed my password, it would be easy to be distressed, and without thinking click on the link to fix the problem.

The obvious lesson here it never click on a link in an email.  Always type in the address of where you want to go, or use the link in your favorites.

I have been reporting the further phishing emails that I get to Yahoo and amazingly enough, the phishing site in the latest email I got was taken down within 48 hours of my reporting it to Yahoo.

If you want to continue answering mindless emails while you’re away on vacation, keep a few things in mind.  First, make sure you have access to webmail.  If you have POP email, you’re going to be frustrated.  Almost all hotels are blocking sending outgoing email from your POP account now.  This would be the time to talk your boss into RPC over HTTP email which is generally unaffected by firewalls as it talks over the same port that you surf the web over, and your hotel is probably not going to block that. (This type of setup requires you to bring your own laptop, use Outlook 2007 or 2003, and for your company to have a Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 or 2007).  In my opinion this is the slickest way to do email that there is.  It also has the nice feature of seamlessly syncing your Smartphone, your laptop, your desktop, and Outlook Web Access, when all else fails.  You delete an email on your phone, it’s gone from your laptop and the rest of your devices.

If a new Exchange Server is not in your budget, and you have a POP account on your laptop, take the address of your ISP’s webmail service or your company’s Outlook Web Access URL with you, at a minimum.   This will prevent you from spending your first hour of vacation getting IT support from the hotel desk clerk, or spending time on the phone with the hotel’s ISP.  If you like talking IT when you are on vacation, they can show you how to change the outgoing SMTP server on your laptop to their ISP’s server.  Change it back when you get home.

Connect to the internet with a wire whenever you can.  If your wireless connection is not strong, you will be annoyed.  A low signal strength wireless connection can play havoc with your ability to get anything done, and can make you think that your laptop is on the fritz.  Go to the lobby for the best signal, get your emails answered, and then get back and cannonball your kids in the pool.

Here are some links to free stuff to use on your business technology blog:

Kontactr is a one-click free contact form service. It is incedibly easy to set up and use, its simple, and they provide the code for you to cut and paste. The best part is that is has built in CAPTCHA Protection to protect you from spam.

Box.net is a web-based service that lets you store files online, share with other people, and collaborate on projects. There are 3 types of service; Individual offers 1 GB for free!

Vimeo is a video sharing community. Kind of like YouTube but more Web 2.0. Free HD on the web! You can actually watch it in full-screen without squinting to make out what it is you’re watching…Vimeo has a simple interface, an easy uploader, and the option to let viewers download your original file.

FeedBurner is feed-based content and advertising. Recently acquired by Google, it is THE app used for RSS on your blog. If you don’t know, now you know.

I am continually surprised that many people I talk to have little to no understanding of how the Google results page works.  If you know that Google’s own proprietary search results are shown on the left hand side of the page and paid search (advertising)  is on the right, you are doing well.  If you also know that the first three results on the left can be paid results, you are way ahead of the crowd.

I think it can be tough to remember that those first three results on the left can be paid results.  They are slightly highlighted and it says “Sponsored Link” to the right of the result, but this almost makes them  seem like a special links.  I find at times these can be pretty relevant links.  If someone has spent enough money to be at the top, they hopefully have spent the additional money it takes to have a good page that the link takes you to.  Just have to remember that you are looking at an ad.

Had to get a Windows XP Pro install down to as small as possible to deal with a small hard drive.  The smallest footprint I could get it down to (without going to heroic lengths) was 3.6GB.  This includes all Windows updates through today 3/25/08.  I turned off system restore.  Removed all unneeded Windows programs, and removed the update temp files.  Basically the only thing usable is Internet Explorer 7.

I realize Microsoft’s goal is not efficiency, but compared to Knoppix Linux at less than 650 MB and DSL (Damn Small Linux) at 50 MB; What’s all the bloat?

Had lunch with a friend of mine today.  Asked him if he was doing any marketing on Google for his mulit-million dollar business.  He was not and didn’t feel it was necessary as they are getting plenty of new business via word of mouth.  (In all fairness he works for a traditional company that has never needed the web for any part of their business). I didn’t argue with him as I am sure that he knows his business.

I can’t help but think that he is missing something though.  As the younger generation takes over more of the job market, an exemplary online presence for any type of business is going to become an absolute must.  A generation that has only known the existence of the web is going to have  zero patience for businesses that don’t make great efforts to market to them on the web.  Already, if someone tells me word of mouth that some company is great, the first thing I do is research it further on the web.  If I can’t find further corroboration on the  company’s site - such as their up to date, Web 2.0 site, it is unlikely that I am going to look any further at them.  The fact that a company took the time to put up a pleasing looking site that answers any question I might have about them, shows me the love.  The lack of such, surely slaps the face of anyone under 30.

In the first years of the decade we did a brisk business with upgrades to XP and Server 2003. I could easily find compelling reasons for clients to upgrade. So far with Vista, I am at a complete loss. Everyone at our office switched to Vista last year and (almost) everyone switched back to XP. I had Vista on my laptop and my desktop for three months. It was the most inefficient three months of my working career. Between long boot and hibernate times, and slow processing times, I couldn’t take it. This with fast dual core processors, 4 gigs of ram, and state of the art video cards. What kind of horsepower do you need to run this beast? Then the constant frustration with all of the settings being moved. Microsoft says that they moved things to make more sense, and that it is what their customers wanted. I’m wondering who these people are, because it just seems like change for changes sake.

What about features? Can anyone fill me in on what your average business user will gain by a Vista upgrade? I would love to be able to tell all of our clients that they need to upgrade, but I can’t come up with reason one. Sure, the aero glass is nice, the widgets are cool, and the new wallpaper is very slick. I’m serious here, I would love to be missing something.

An upgrade to XP, Office XP and Exchange 2003 got you RPC over HTTP. The holy grail in my mind. The ability to seemlessly sync your phone, laptop, office desktop and home desktop pc email. All of your contacts, mail, and tasks, constantly sunk, with whatever machine you happened to be at. Outlook Web Access even took care of you when you were at someone else’s pc. This feature I could sell, even if it was more complex than necessary to set up. Remote desktop of your XP Pro pc was also a very strong salable feature.

Unified Messaging with Exchange 2007 seems to hold some promise. Just don’t install any updates. Everytime we install any of the updates, someone has to spend the next four hours figuring out what the updates messed up. Of course, this has been my experience every time I have delved into a Microsoft 64 bit product.

Can anyone clue me in? Bill?