Mailing List Mayhem
Let’s assume you are managing a mail distribution list with more than 50 people on it for a church or business and currently you are handling it in Outlook. Why not assume it is for a newsletter or bulletin…
Some of the problems you face are as follows: ( AKA the Top 10 Reasons to Switch to Email Marketing)
10. This is just too confusing and time consuming (see reasons 9 through 1 below)
9. Sending large emails with pictures or PDF attachments to dozens of people can slow your mail server to a crawl and take all day to send.
8. You have to manually add and remove each recipient, which is time consuming and is prone to human error (typos, accidental deletion of the wrong people).
7. You have no way for people to add themselves via a link on your website.
6. Subscribers are not verified, they have not opted-in. (Read more about the CAN-SPAM Act).
5. You have no way to see if your email was actually OPENED, or see which links were clicked on in your email.
4. Your mail distribution list likely has only the email address of each person and no idea of who happygirl1977@gmail.com really is.
3. You do not have a list of which addresses are bouncing, unless you compile it yourself from the actual bounced messages.
2. If you are sending newsletters, you may be just constructing your email inside Outlook and it may be text based, with no real consistency in appearance.
And the number one issue faced by those using Outlook to manage a mailing list/newsletter: You are sending a large number of emails from your account, which may appear to recipients and mail servers to be junk mail, which could ultimately result in your mail ending up in the spam folder, or worse, certain mail servers could see traffic from you as unsolicited email and flag your IP address as suspicious, resulting in the inability to send to that domain again until it is cleared up. In some cases, you could be blacklisted and placed on a real-time block list (RBL) and that would affect all mail sent from everyone at your business or organization to many mail servers around the world. (Those types of problems can take a while to get cleared up, and some RBLs hold you hostage and make you pay a fee before removing you).
The solution to these nightmares is to make a small monthly investment and use one of the many mailing list managers that are designed for email marketing and newsletters. They address all of the issues above, and give you an easy template based interface which allows you to create well structured newsletters, and send them to your subscribers without fear of blacklisting, and without the hassles of manually editing distribution lists. You can place a signup button and form on your website, and anyone who is interested can subscribe themselves to your list!
As an added bonus, you can see how many of the emails went out, how many were opened, which links were clicked on and other analytic information that will assist you in determining what content is “interesting” to your subscriber base. You also see how many bounced, without having a dozen bounce messages in your inbox!
You are probably thinking that this must be expensive and there is no way you can afford it. Quite the contrary, you can get started for FREE by signing up for an evaluation. After the trial period, you can then subscribe for a few dollars per month. I personally opted for MadMimi (see link below) because it is the most affordable, however, any of the three are awesome!
If you would like to subscribe to our mailing lists, or see what the subscription form looks like, click here:
Subscribe to our mailing lists
Try these out for free:
One last thing – Using these solutions you do not have to have a Publisher, or even Office loaded. It does not matter if you are on a Microsoft Windows machine, Apple Mac, a netbook or even a tablet or pad computer, you can create your newsletter with just about any computer with a web browser!
If you have questions or need some assistance, just let me know, I will do what I can to help!
Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010
Do you have a blog and tire of entering your entries through the WordPress web interface? Sure, some people post using Outlook and email their blog entries, but using Word to publish is another great weapon in your arsenal.
Using Microsoft Office 2010, you can simplify your life a little by composing the posting in the familiar Word editor and then publish to your WordPress blog!
How do you do this? Easy as pie…
Step 1: Get a blog! Oh wait, you already have one or you wouldn’t be reading this.
Step 2: Get Microsoft Office 2010 (or 2007).
Step 3: Write your blog entry in Word and when ready to publish, select “File” from the pull down, then “Save & Send” and finally “Publish as Blog Post”
Step 4: The first time you do this, you will be prompted to “Register a Blog Account”… Select “Register Now”
Step 5: Select the type of blog you have, such as WordPress, Blogger, Windows Live Spaces, SharePoint blog, etc… I’ll go with WP from here on….
Step 6: You need to enter the path to your xmlrpc.php, such as: http://www.yourblog.com/wordpress/xmlrpc.php
Step 7: Enter the user name and password you use to log into your blog and select “OK” (Select “Remember Password” if you trust nobody is going to use your computer and enter silly blog posts for you)
Step 8: Profit… Uhmm okay, maybe not… Let’s try that again… Step 8: Post something interesting to the blogospher for the rest of us to read!
If you have not tried out Microsoft Office 2010 yet, you can download a free trial, or you can purchase from your favorite Microsoft Partner, like US! Call us at 864-990-4748 or email info@homelandsecureit.com for additional information.
One lightning strike can ruin your whole day...
This last week has been a bad week for computers in Greenville & the Upstate. I don’t know what it is, but we have had computers come in with fried power supplies, toasted motherboards and hard drives, and a call from a potential client this morning with a dead PC and a destroyed hard drive.
Power protection experts estimate that over half of all dead power supplies could have been prevented if an UPS / Uninterruptable Power Supply had been used. That’s a lot of power supplies! And more importantly, that is a lot of money that consumers could potentially save.
While the power supply itself is not expensive, usually costing less than 100 dollars on most computers, the damage that a power supply can cause to the PC can be much greater. We have seen entire motherboards ripped apart and even fires on the extreme end of the spectrum, and lesser damage such as zapped memory, processors, and hard drives on the other end. At the very least, a power supply that fails will cost you in terms of time and inconvenience.
Should a hard drive be damaged by one of these power events, you could potentially lose everything on the drive, or need to send it out for recovery if you don’t have backups. What? You don’t have backups? Please try our FREE trial of Servosity Online Backup before it is too late….
What can you do to protect yourself? Install an UPS! We are proud to be Eaton Power Advantage partners and can offer the full line of Eaton products. They have an UPS for every application, from your small home system, home office, small, medium and large business, all the way up to enterprise and data center solutions! Don’t forget about your expensive Apple Mac systems, CCTV and VoIP systems, they need protection too!
Please check out the Eaton Product Showcase at http://www.homelandsecureit.com/Partners/Eaton-Power-Products.html
Or, call us for more information at 864-990-4748 – email info@homelandsecureit.com
Homeland Secure IT Alert
These are from CERT and affect Microsoft & Oracle. There are patches available.
Microsoft Releases July Security Bulletin
added July 13, 2010 at 01:25 pm
Microsoft has released updates to address vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows and Office as part of the Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for July 2010. These vulnerabilities may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code.
US-CERT encourages users and administrators to review the bulletins and follow best-practice security policies to determine which updates should be applied.
NOTE: To summarize, these updates Microsoft Windows desktop and server OS, and Microsoft Office – Please apply updates ASAP.
Oracle Releases Critical Patch Update for July 2010
added July 13, 2010 at 04:03 pm
Oracle has released its Critical Patch Update for July 2010 to address 59 vulnerabilities across multiple products. This update contains the following security fixes:
- 6 for Oracle Database Server
- 2 for TimesTen In-Memory Database
- 5 for Oracle Secure Backup
- 7 for Oracle Fusion Middleware
- 1 for Oracle Enterprise Manager
- 7 for Oracle E-Business Suite
- 2 for Oracle Supply Chain Products Suite
- 8 for Oracle PeopleSoft and JDEdwards Suite
- 21 for Oracle Sun Products Suite
US-CERT encourages users and administrators to review the July 2010 Critical Patch Update and apply any necessary updates to help mitigate the risks.
If you require assistance applying these patches / updates, please do not hesitate to call us at 864-990-4748 or email info@HomelandSecureIT.com
Homeland Secure IT Alert - Contact Info
iPhone Switchvox app lets you take your office phone with you!
How many times have you left your office while waiting for an important call to come in? What did you do? Set a special voice mail greeting? Forward all calls to your cell phone?
That’s what most people have done, until now. If you are lucky enough to have a VoIP phone system such as a Digium Switchvox solution and an iPhone or Blackberry, you can literally take your office phone with you now.
Your VoIP system is configured to allow mobile API, the firewall is configured to allow the proper ports through to your VoIP system and your phone gets the app loaded and configured. That’s it, you now have full access to your phone system. You can make and receive calls on your phone either from the cellular provider phone line, or via your VoIP system at your office.
You can call extensions, change your voice mail greetings, and any other function that you could from your desk phone. You would never miss an incoming call, and possibly more important to some, calls made from your cell phone while in the field, via the VoIP system, would never reveal your private cell phone number.
Another added benefit is that using the VoIP system will let you use your phone calling plan from your office, and bypass the phone plan on your cell phone entirely. This could save you hundreds per year!
Official apps are available for the iPhone and Blackberry, and some unofficial apps are available for Android phones.
If you would like more information about or would like to purchase a VoIP phone system, we are partners with Digium, Cisco and work with all Asterisk based systems in the Greenville & Upstate area. Please call us at 864.990-4748 or email info@homelandsecureit.com with questions!
Sure Homeland Secure IT is based in Greenville, SC, but we service the entire UPSTATE of SC.
Our service area includes: Greenville, Easley, Anderson, Simpsonville, Duncan, Greer, Taylors, Travelers Rest, Spartanburg, Piedmont, Pendleton, Clemson, Pelzer, Six Mile, The Cliffs area, Fountain Inn, Welcome community, Seneca, and the entire Upstate of South Carolina.
If you require computer repair, service or support and live in any of these great cities, call us! Services performed in our office, your office or your home. Everything from simple virus removal and cleanup, to system installations, software / application installations, Microsoft Windows & Server updates.
864-990-4748 or info@homelandsecureit.com – http://www.HomelandSecureIT.com/
Servosity - Now with continuous data protection goodness!
I’ve heard every excuse in the book for not backing up data. Too much trouble, too expensive, too time consuming, slows the computer down while the backup is running, etc. Until today.
I actually had a discussion in which the individual told me that backups were useless because they were not real-time, and that using a backup program like Symantec’s Backup Exec or even an online backup solution like Servosity was a scheduled backup and data had potential to be lost between the time you saved it, and the time it was backed up to the media or remote server.
Then, I dropped the bombshell… There is such a thing as “Continuous Backup Protection”. Symantec offers it of course, but this person was totally against a hardware solution that was on premise, so I told him about Servosity’s offering. Where you can have a regular backup taking place after hours, but for critical data, you could have that backup immediately when you save it! And, if you wanted, you could set it up to backup the entire system in near real-time! Kind of a mirror of your data, on a remote, secure server where each file that is saved or modified is synced with the remote system.
This is where cloud computing, or Software as a Service (SaaS) really shines! If you backup instantly, to a remote location, and a horrific incident occurs, say a tornado, fire, flood, or even theft of your equipment, you have access to it over the internet! A perfect solution for business continuity plans.
Servosity can protect a single workstation or a thousand, a fleet of mobile computers, your Mac OS X, Windows Servers, Exchange, SQL, Linux, and so much more!
If you would like more information about Servosity or other Continuous Backup solutions, please call us at 864-990-4748 or email info@homelandsecureit.com
Apple iPad being used more and more for business
My initial reaction to the iPad was that it was cute little toy, but then immediately after its release it became apparent that people wanted to use them for business as well as pleasure. First was the use of Remote Desktop (Terminal Services), which I wrote about and has been finding extreme popularity, then of course was Microsoft Exchange integration to get corporate mail and with that came ways to get connectivity without buying the 3G version of the iPad, using a MiFi from Verizon, and ultimately, hacking the iPad itself and putting a MiFi inside the iPad.
Now that some time has passed since the release of the iPad, we see that many companies and even government organizations have adopted them for real business use. Case in point, the Ontario, CA City Council has begun using the tablet computers and that alone shows how a new technology is changing the way we do business.
I’m seeing more and more interest in these highly portable devices from business users and as more manufacturers develop and release their products, we may see a tablet computing revolution, where the day planners, notebooks, notepads, and even post-it notes go in the trash in favor of this digital ink. And the SaaS (Software as a Service) model will make a lot of providers wealthy.
Businesses who want to get in on this phenomenon should talk to their IT provider to see how easily this technology can be integrated into their networks. Your computer service provider can help you get your pad /tablet computer linked to your corporate Microsoft Exchange mail, setup clients that allow you to remote to your Microsoft Server and much more!
If we can be of any assistance in the Greenville / Upstate area, please call us at 864-990-4748 or email info@homelandsecureit.com
The Android Wars Are Coming
The tablet computer wars are coming… The awesome little Apple iPad will soon have serious competition from some big names in desktop, laptop and notebook computers….
Cisco, Lenovo, Toshiba, HP and LG, to name a few have either made plans to release pad / tablet computers, or have actually got a product to offer. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
No longer will you have to choose an Apple iPad, you will be able to select tablets based on the Google Android operating system, which will instantly provide you with tons of apps from the Android scene, and when HP gets their WebOS based system out, which was really part of the Palm lineup, that will be yet another platform for the tablet market. We shouldn’t forget about Microsoft (which some of you would love to), as they have an OS that is working on tablets also.
So how will you decide which is the best solution for you? It may come down to dollars and cents for some, while others may select based upon devices they already own. I was sure that most Mac and iPhone users would opt for an iPad out of owner loyalty to the brand, but the Android offering seems to be getting a lot of attention among the current Apple owners, enough so that they are holding out for the Android pads to hit the market!
Only time will tell who will come out on top, but my money is on the consumer in the end, as they are going to get many choices and the competition between brands and platforms will help bring the prices down!
There may be a few of you who want to be early adopters of the Android tablet and purchase an imported product. Buyer beware here – they may not support the new Android OS due out later this year…
Homeland Secure IT offers tablet computers built on the proven Windows platform currently, and as soon as HP releases their WebOS based product, we will offer that as well as any other products which are suited to business use mainly, like the Android Powered Cisco Cius tablet. Please contact us at 864-990-4748 or email info@homelandsecureit.com for more information
Today, at “High Noon” in Falls Park, a group of people, made up of men & women of all ages and from all walks of life, and even children, met up at the first “Flash Mob” that I am aware of in Greenville… To shoot each other with water guns! To the casual observer, immediately before noon, there was very little sign of anything significant taking place, just a group of people, who happened to be wearing Google’s colors of Red, Blue (The best one of course), Yellow and Green, to represent the color they liked best, or maybe the color of the letter they were in during the #GoogleOnMain event….
At “high noon”, cooler lids opened, and a fountain of Mentos activated Coke sprayed high into the air… Suddenly, the group pulled out (water) guns and began firing on each other! Some people had modest little water guns, others had fully automatic hydration systems shooting 25+ft. Then the bombing began! Water ballons were launched and many participants were instantly drenched with the barrage of ballons, again in the colors of Google’s famous logo.
Until the video is released, I can’t say for sure who won, but I have a feeling the Blue beat out of the rest =) (They may feel otherwise, but that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it)
The brainchild of Susan Sebotnick / @BitTyrant and Aaron Von Frank / @AaronVonFrank – they thought it up on Friday, made it happen today by using social media to alert a couple thousand people… Due to the holiday, many were out of town though. Still, the turnout was terrific for Noon on a Monday!!!!
Some photos from James Akers Jr. / @JamesAkersJr are available here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=187731&id=507966821#!/photo.php?pid=4889169&id=507966821
