For example, lets say you always use “red” as your password. For yahoo.com your password would be yahoo.com_red. For google.com it would be google.com_red, etc.
Personally I like using the first letter of song lyrics. For example, “I went down in a burning ring of fire” would be Iwdiabrof.

The second half of the Ars article talks about personal examples where the author ran into issues with The Cloud. For me, these are just more personal examples of where The Cloud’s weaknesses have really been exposed. But the weaknesses like those mentioned in the article and the disasters we have seen over the years are why I don’t push my customers kicking and screaming into the cloud.

Most cloud evangelists, when you really push them, will admit that you have to look at every customer and every situation differently. Thankfully that is something I already knew long before the cloud buzz. When it makes sense, I use cloud services. When it makes sense, I use onsite. I think we are still a ways away from being able to completely ditch one or the other.

If you have questions about the cloud, feel free to get in touch with me and we can discuss the pros and cons for your business.

If you have any questions about Facebook and privacy, check out the article.

With this article, you of course have to consider the source, but the facts stand on their own. OS X is still vulnverable to the latest Pwn2Own exploit. Although there doesn’t appear to be a consorted effort to exploit this vulnerability, it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening on a smaller scale.

In the end, I still feel OS X is more than secure enough to use just as I feel that Vista and 7 are as well. (Windows XP is not secure enough to use on a daily basis!) Both OSX and Vista/7 are much better about having everything run in a user environment where you are prompted for elevated permissions. This helps take the human element somewhat out of the equation.

It doesn’t matter what OS you run. You still have to use best practices. This means not opening up attachments unless you know the sender and you expected that specific attachment. This means not clicking yes / ok / sure / whatever to every prompt that comes your way. Finally this means making sure your computer is udpated and that the updates don’t install extra crud like toolbars.

At any point along the way, you may just delete the message and move on to the next e-mail. But if you trusted everything so far, you may be tempted to open the attachment that came with the e-mail. But at this point, you must ask yourself more questions. First, were you expecting an attachment from this person? If you weren’t, reply back and ask for some kind of human verification that everything is ok. It takes a few seconds for both parties but can save hours of torment.

And it is because of that torment that you must also ask yourself “Is it worth it?” “Is seeing a funny video, looking at these pictures, or opening this document at this time worth the potential risk?” Most of the time, the answer is “No!”

To put it simply, Windows 7 is fantastic. There are so many features that make every day computing easier. There are also numerous behind the scenes changes that you may never notice, but you are grateful those changes have been made.

I am suggesting, advising, and pushing everyone to Windows 7 as soon as possible. Staying on Windows XP and Vista when there is something this improved available is just silly. The only thing holding me back are various 3rd party application providers. Despite Windows 7 having nearly the same requirements as Vista and the incredibly long development lead time for Windows 7, some major companies with major programs were still not ready for the Windows 7 launch.

I am keeping a close eye on all of the software that my current customers use as well as bugging anyone that will listen to get their programs up to Windows 7 snuff.

As a general rule, unless you are 100% certain that you trust who sent you the e-mail and you know the link that you are clicking, you should not click links in e-mails. It is just too easy to direct you to a malware infested site in one click and it is not worth the risk.

As for getting E-Mails about upgrades, etc. please note that any e-mail I would send out would be a personal E-Mail and would not be in such a format. Plus, I would never have you click on a link to take further action or anything silly like that.

Just delete e-mails like that and move on.

Over the years I have advised many of my clients that they simply do not need a website, and I stand by that advise. There are those that will try to tell every single micro business out there that a website is a must have part of their business and that is simply not the case. And for many years, it was not the case for me.

2009 has been a busy year of growth and new challenges. I wanted an easy way for my wonderful clients and prospects to see the services that I offer. I wanted to make contacting me as easy as possible. I also wanted to leverage multiple contact methods so that I won’t ever miss someone’s smoke signal. Finally, it was getting kind of silly that I offered web design but didn’t have a site myself.