CyberArtisans Newsletter Vol 4, Number 9

Welcome to the September 2005 issue of the CyberArtisans monthly newsletter!

Our goal is to present information that will be useful to you as a website owner and as a user of the web. If these newsletters are useful, please forward this to a friend. To unsubscribe, follow the directions at the bottom of this email.

This Month's Topics
Basic Security
ZoneAlarm Fix
TinyUrl
Rates Going Up

Basic Security

We are often asked how Internet users can best protect themselves from all the worms, spyware, keyloggers, and other nefarious software that exists today. We recommend a simple 7-step program that is relatively easy to follow and provides good (but not perfect) security:

1. Install, update daily, and use an antivirus package
2. Install, update daily, and use either Microsoft's AntiSpyware package (free) or Sunbelt Software's CounterSpy ($20/year/computer)
3. Install and keep updated a software firewall (we use ZoneAlarm, but see the next item)
4. Install a hardware router even if you have only a single computer and make sure its firewall settings are on
5. Update your operating system and other software weekly. If you are a Windows user, use Microsoft Update
6. Turn off the preview pane on your email (Outlook and Outlook Express). The preview pane opens the email, which in some cases can unload a virus into your system without any further action on your part
7. And most important: Back up your system regularly. No protection system is perfect, but a backup will ensure that you will have your files as of the last backup (no longer than a week apart!)

ZoneAlarm Fix

Last month we mentioned seeing a problem with the latest version of ZoneAlarm and said we expected to see an update from the ZoneAlarm folks in short order. Sure enough, ZoneAlarm issued version 6.0.667.000 last week. We installed it and it has run fine. However, the forums at ZoneAlarm indicate that others are still having problems. The only definitive fix if you really have trouble seems to be to uninstall version 6 entirely and reinstall version 5.

TinyURL

Have you ever wanted to email a URL to friend only to discover that the URL in question looks like this:

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?ovi=1&mqmap.x=300&mqmap.y=75&mapdata=%252bKZmeiIh6N%2
52bIgpXRP3bylMaN0O4z8OOUkZWYe7NRH6ldDN96YFTIUmSH3Q6OzE5XVqcuc5zb%252fY5wy1MZwTnT2pu%
252bNMjOjsHjvNlygTRMzqazPStrN%252f1YzA0oWEWLwkHdhVHeG9sG6cMrfXNJKHY6fML4o6Nb0SeQm75ET
9jAjKelrmqBCNta%252bsKC9n8jslz%252fo188N4g3BvAJYuzx8J8r%252f1fPFWkPYg% 252bT9Su5KoQ9YpNS
j%252bmo0h0aEK%252bofj3f6vCP

The solution is simple and free: Highlight and copy the URL, go to http://www.tinyurl.com, paste the URL into the box on their home page, and click the Make a TinyURL button. TinyURL will convert it to something like http://tinyurl.com/6. For users of IE4+ and Windows it even puts the miniaturized URL into your clipboard automatically. You can use it anywhere and it doesn't expire.

Rates Going Up

Our hourly rates have been the same for several years, but we are now, reluctantly, raising them. Starting January 1, 2006, our rates will go up about 10%. This will bring our HTML hourly rate to $105 and our programming hourly rate to $135. If you have been thinking about a website, now is the time to do it. Any website started before the end of the year will be billed at the old rates, through the end of the project. And, of course, all current projects will continue at the rates that we quoted in our proposal.

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

Want to see back issues of this newsletter? Go to http://www.cyberartisans.com/newsletter and select an issue.

Jonathan Spencer
CyberArtisans Web Developers

http://www.cyberartisans.com/
617-965-4110