Adding Exciting Features to Your Website

Just a couple of years ago, if you wanted to add more sophisticated features to your website you had 3 choices:

1. Pay a programmer to do it, usually a very expensive option
2. Find some appropriate code on the web. This was less expensive (sometimes even free), but you had to live with the code you found -- if it didn't do things the way you liked, tough.
3. Do without.

Today, much of that landscape has changed. The key is the contract service website. Want an interactive calendar on your site? There are several sites that will let you enclose theirs on your site (see http://www.cyberartisans.com/calendar.asp). Calendars.net hosts calendar code that you can incorporate in your site for free (if you don't mind a few ads for their website) or for a very nominal fee if you'd prefer it ad-free.

How about video conferencing with whiteboard capability, document viewing, and application sharing? Several sites offer it (http://www.raindance.com, http://www.webex.com, http://www.genesys.com, http://www.macromedia.com). Fees are as low as $0.25 - 0.35 per minute per user and you only pay for what you use.

So if you want to add new features to your site, ask us about it -- it might cost a lot less than you think.

Sp*m Blocking Two Months Later

Note: Because many ISPs now have (not very smart) filters on their email servers, we are substituting an asterisk (*) for the "a" in the word "sp*m" in an effort to avoid getting caught in these filters.

If you've been following along in these newsletters you know that we've been struggling with the Sp*m problem along with the rest of you. We've tried several free Sp*m blockers and while all of them work, they all feel like a kludge (for those of you unfamiliar with this word, it's a techie word meaning "A clumsy or inelegant solution to a problem") and they all trapped an uncomfortable number of emails we really wanted to receive.

As we have noted in the last two newsletters, we have been testing a Sp*m blocker called SafetyBar (http://www.cloudmark.com). Our free 30-day trial finally ran out during December and we signed up for a year's subscription. Here's the reason we signed up: In over two months' use (one month free trial and one month paid), on two computers using 4 email addresses, which together receive about 600 Sp*m emails per day and 50-75 legitimate emails per day, SafetyBar has not misdirected a single business or personal email from an individual. The only "false positives" we've seen have been online catalog emails. Once we caught those and told SafetyBar to deliver them in the future, the false positives dropped to virtually zero.

It does let a few Sp*ms through, but so few that it's really just a few second's work to get rid of them, and it doesn't know how to deal with the few emails with no subject and no From address. But it's a real luxury knowing that we could simply delete all the Sp*m that SafetyBar catches without having to fear deleting an important message. No, we don't do that yet, but we're thinking about it.

SafetyBar has 2 drawbacks: (1) It costs $40/year, and (2) it only works with Outlook and Outlook Express.

Safety in a Mac?

After our December issue listing all the ways to protect your PC, one of our readers emailed to suggest a much simpler solution: Buy a Mac. And while we are dyed-in-the-wool PC types, we have to grudgingly acknowledge the validity of that suggestion. Macs do have fewer (known) vulnerabilities and are attacked by fewer viruses and spyware.

The reason for that is a hotly contested question. Mac users contend that the Mac is inherently better built and less vulnerable. The PC crowd says that the Mac is attacked less because they are a less-attractive target to virus/spyware writers -- there are fewer of them and Apple has a better public image than Microsoft. Of course, whatever the reason, the fact is that the Mac has fewer such problems right now. If we all switched to Macs, in a couple of years we'd know whether it's inherent or not.

As with everything in the world of computers, there are some caveats. While most of the programs you know and love have a Mac version (yes, Microsoft has been building a Mac version of Office for years), some programs do not. Usually, however, you can find something that does roughly the same thing, although the interface will be different. And of course even if you plan to use the same software, you will usually have to shell out for a Mac version (we have seen one or two that deliver both a PC and a Mac version on the same CD).

And finally, be prepared for some websites to look different on a Mac. Web developers struggle constantly with this problem. The latest versions of Internet Explorer for the PC and the Mac, for example, display many sites quite differently. One of the tasks we include when estimating the cost of building a website is checking for, and ensuring, browser compatibility.

Thanks for joining us this month. See you next month.