Tips and Resources | Dangerous Common Sense

Your Best Holiday Gift

Boris and Svetlana are in their seventies. Supplemental Security Income, their only source of income, is not enough to pay rent on their Richmond apartment, utilities and buy food. — San Francisco Food Bank

When I help serve breakfast to men sleeping at my church during the February homeless shelter, the breakfast food — like the dinner ingredients — comes from the San Francisco Food Bank.

When 90 children from poor Tenderloin and Western Addition families get afternoon snacks while attending the free Up On Top after-school program, the food comes from the San Francisco Food Bank. I’m a volunteer for Up On Top, and I appreciate being able to feed hungry kids.

When friends distribute groceries to neighborhood families at the Interfaith Food Pantry, the food comes from the San Francisco Food Bank.

Three of the outreach activities that my friends and I are involved in are sustained by the Food Bank. The Food Bank touches me personally, but I am not alone.

In fact, a network of over 200 food pantries get their supplies from the food bank. An individual earning $14,079 a year is only eligible for $14 in Food Stamps monthly. Folks like that need additional support from pantries.

Over 300 non-profit agencies “shop” at the Food Bank. Some of the city’s largest meal programs, including Glide, St. Anthony’s and Project Open Hand, receive the bulk of the food they need to serve their clients from the Food Bank.

Charity Navigator, an independent monitor of non-profits, gives the San Francisco Food Bank 4 out of 4 stars for its efficiency and for money going where it’s supposed to. 97% of the Food Bank’s budget is dedicated to program expenses. Only 1/2 of 1% of its budget goes for administration.

The Food Bank provides badly needed support to a lot of local people. It’s well run. It uses money for the right purposes.

At this holiday time, I give money to the Food Bank.

Will you please join me in helping hungry people get food?

Donate in the holiday spirit. Donate for the charitable deduction on your income taxes. Donate because it will make you feel good.

Donate Now! Please.

By Ozdachs|2010-12-12T06:35:23-08:00December 12th, 2010|Tips and Resources|0 Comments

3 Ways to Track Visitors to Your Site

Now that you’re the proud owner of a web site, the obvious question is “Does Anyone Care?”

Here are three types of tracking services for small and medium web sites. Each has their pros and cons in how they tell you who is visiting your web site.

Statistics from the Web Hosting Service
Web Hosting Service Statistics

Some form of statistics information comes with most web hosting packages. Typically, the types of information that can be retrieved is limited and based on log files which are at least a day old. A limitation in the report above, for example, is that the information is returned for calendar months. You cannot do any analysis based on weeks or quarters without doing your own calculation. On the other hand, the service is free (included in your hosting costs), and you get the most important information such as the total number of visitors and how they got to your site. You also don’t have to do anything to start collecting statistics. They’re generated automatically from the hosting service’s log files.

To access your free statistics, you log on to your site’s hosting control panel and look for the link to “visitor traffic” or other similar wording.
Google Analytics

Google Analytics

Google provides free tracking information about visitors to your site which generally provides a bit more flexibility than your hosting service. Their service lets you select specific date ranges and it gives you more insight about the number people who just view one page and leave and what the most popular entry and exit pages are.

Installing Google Analytics is pretty simple. You register for the service at Google and select one of the ways Google gives you to verify that you’re the owner of the site. Our favorite verification method is to install a dummy web page of a specific name that Google picks.

There are a few shortcomings with Google’s service, though:
- Google’s statistics are a day old. So, if you are an active advertiser you won’t be able to see up-to-the-minute results of your ad campaigns.
- Google isn’t giving a complete picture of site activity. Their page-to-page in-site tracking is just being beta tested, and their information on referring sites, search terms, and other details is tabular and not easily deciphered.
- Google tracks your visitors from your site to other sites. If your visitor goes to one of your pages about a topic like “cameras” when that visitor later goes to another site that displays Google’s ads, Google may display “camera” ads to them. This means that when you use Google Analytics, you may be helping your competitors advertise to your potential clients.
You access Google Analytic statistics by logging on to your account at Google.

HitsLink (or other 3rd Party) Tracking Service

HitsLink Statistics Display

I use HitsLink, a third-party statistics reporting package, for my clients who have the most demanding reporting needs. The reports are detailed, flexible, and delivered in both tables and graphs. The information is also reported in real time: visit your own site, refresh the visitor report, and you’ll see the counter go up by 1.

The only drawbacks to HitsLink are modest:
- You have to add code to each web page you want tracked. The script is provided by the tracking service, and you cut and paste it into each source page — they have a utility that will update all of your pages, if you’d like.
- The service costs approximately $10 a month.
You access HitsLink statistics by logging on to your account on their site.

The Bottom Line

Most small business and people with personal sites are going to be happy with the free choices from their hosting service or Google Analytics. Free is an unbeatable price.

On the other hand, if you are competing for clients on the Internet you may want up-to-the-second visitor information. Or, you may not want Google to send your competitors’ ads to your hard-earned visitors. In that case, opt for HitsLink or another service you pay for. (More information on HitsLink)

By Ozdachs|2010-11-06T11:32:39-07:00November 6th, 2010|Tips and Resources|0 Comments

Sexy Bodies, Sex, More Sex, and Backups

Okay, okay, reading about backing up your data files is not exciting and I am trying to trick you into taking action. Sex sells.

But, if you’re not enticed to action by the thought of hot juicy backups, let me revert to the other sure-fire sales technique: fear.

Everywhere I went on vacation over the summer I ran across people who were in trouble because they have no effective backups of the information on their computer.

Here are some conversations I had:

One friend has created a huge iTunes music library on her laptop PC. She’s spent hundreds of hours feeding CD’s into the machine. She’s now getting strange errors when she runs her five-year-old laptop and she thinks its disk may be going bad. What will happen to her music if the disk crashes?
A fire destroyed 11 homes in the town I was visiting. A client said she regularly backs up her financial information to an external hard drive. But, she wondered, how she could recreate her data if the flash fire had burned her home to the ground.
Another client was very proud how she backed up all of her digital photos to her home computer. She said she unloads the camera every time she returns from vacation. The fire got her pondering how many memories she’d lose if her PC picture depositary was incinerated.

Be Very Afraid

The short, succinct take-away from all these situations is that if you do have a copy of your music, financial information, or photos physically distant from your home, you are at risk of permanently losing important data or memories.

That truth isn’t sexy (unless you’re turned on by disaster scenarios). But, face it. Your information could be irretrievably lost if you don’t have a remote backup of your files.

What Can You Do?

A basic solution is to do regular manual backups of all of your data and store them in a safe deposit vault or with friends or family in another town. Buy a couple external disk drives, copy the information, and then ship a disk to your remote storage location. Do it again next week, and have your friend ship you back disk #1. This is a very workable solution, but you have to back up regularly and stick to your schedule.

Why this solution didn’t work for me was that I needed to create a list of files to back up, and I had to keep adding and modifying the list as I changed information on my computer. In addition, the manual process required me to be in front of the computer. I had to drag the files to update and wait for them to copy. Then I had to the same thing for the next group of files. Finally, I bought a backup program that let me synchronize the files on my internal drive and the external drive, but then I had to do that backup manually, update the file list, and manually run that back up. Ugh.

What Should You Really Do? — Mozy

Try Mozy

Fortunately, a couple years ago the cost of backing up files over the Internet fell a lot. I investigated a couple services and am now recommending Mozy.

Here’s why:

It backs up all data files on a computer for a fixed price. Out of the box it backs up files in the default locations (like “MyMusic”), and you can specify any folders or individual files on your internal disk.
It backs up files in the background. If you’ve changed a bunch of files, Mozy will upload them overnight or whenever you’re not using the computer. You don’t have to do anything to start your back-up.
It backs up files to its remote site over secure connections on the Internet. Your data will survive even if your PC is burned, damaged in an earthquake, or stolen.

The cost is pretty cheap, too. First you can try it out and backup 2GB of data for free. Then, it’s $5.99 a month (price updated 9/2012) for up to 50GB or $9.99/month for 125GB.

Mozy has features like allowing me to go get a single file from the backup. So, if you accidentally delete a file, you can retrieve it easily. Plus, Mozy keeps old versions of your files for 30- days.. The versioning feature will save your life you when accidentally update a Word document — say, erase the whole contents — and stupidly save the new version. Just get the original document back from Mozy.

What’s Not to Love? Or, Why Wait?

I know your disk drive won’t go bad today. Your home isn’t going to explode in a molten mess this week. And, the 7.1 destructo earthquake isn’t due this year.

But, if your reading this and you don’t have a backup of your photos, music, or Quicken/QuickBooks data that is less than 7 days old, just stop it! Stop denying that your data is at risk. Try Mozy. Or one of their competitors (contact me and I can give you more info). But, do something today.

Try Mozy with this link!

My fear is having to see your face you after your disk drive has crashed, your data is gone, and it’s too late. Please do your backups so I can sleep soundly at night.

By Ozdachs|2012-09-27T16:42:05-07:00October 14th, 2010|Tips and Resources|0 Comments

How to Get the Internet Speed You’re Paying For

Do you think your connection to the Internet is much slower than what you’re paying for? Are you paying for a “high speed” DSL or cable connection, but getting to sites, downloading songs, and everything on line takes forever?

There’s a two-step fix that works for me every time.

Make sure the Internet is actually slow.
It could be you. Maybe you’ve had one too many lattes and the whole world cannot keep up with your mind. Or — more likely — there could be another issue with your computer that makes the Internet connection look slow.

Go to Speedtest.net . That site provides a free, anonymous clocking of your internet speed. See if your speed comes close to matching what the ISP says it will give you.

My ISP plan is for speeds of 12Mb download and 1 Mb upload. You can see from the graphic showing my test results that I am getting what I am paying for.

But, I wasn’t when I started off the morning.

In fact, when I first went to my keyboard iTunes was predicting that it would take 20 minutes to download a song, and browsing regular web sites was painful because I was having to wait for each graphic to draw itself into the page. When I first ran the Speed test my download speed was less than 1 Mb!

That’s when I went to the next step:
Turn off and Back On Your Router and/or Internet Modem

Your home router is a computer — although a specialized one — that sometimes gets confused. Or busy. Or something.

Just like an old Windows machine, sometimes the router goes off by a bit. And, just like an old Windows machine, the easiest (and maybe only) way to fix the problem is to reboot it.

Just unplug the router from its power supply, count to 30, and plug it back in.

This sophisticated, high tech solution works for me 99 times out of a 100. The other 1 time in 100, I have to unplug and plug back in the power on the cable modem and also reboot my PC. This combination has not yet failed to get me back to reasonable speed.

My home network is simple and uses a 2009 (fairly new) Cisco Router. I should not have to worry about the router causing speed problems. Really. It is annoying. However, rather than spend days debugging and talking to tech support at Cisco, I am happy to use the one-two punch whenever I think the Internet is slow:

1. Make sure the problem is real, and 2. Reboot the router.

Of course, if rebooting both the router and the cable (or DSL) modem fails to get your speed up to what you’re paying for, then it’s time to call that ISP and tell them that they have a problem!

By Ozdachs|2010-10-09T13:44:51-07:00October 9th, 2010|Tips and Resources|0 Comments

A Constant Contact Software Anomaly

I recommend Constant Contact to my clients for creating and mailing out electronic newsletters. I edit four newsletters, and another couple of clients write and send out their newsletters themselves.

Yesterday (June 4) Constant Contact updated their system with code that is suddenly incompatible with Firefox browsers running the AdBlock Plus extension. (Or, possibly, AdBlock Plus updated its logic rules.)

The symptom:

I logged into one Constant Contact account and searched for a user contact. The search returned no matches. I knew the contact was good, so I reentered the contact information and re-searched. This time, the contact came back. When I clicked on the link for the contact’s “Bounce History” I was dumped to a logon screen. I could re-login and repeat the process over and over, but I could never get the bounce information I was looking for.

I later found a problem with logging into Constant Contact and then clicking on “My account”. Instead of seeing subscription information, I received a “unknown error” message.

The trauma:

Constant Contact tech support and I spend a lot of time on the phone together. The problem occurred on all of my different machines using Firefox, but not when I used Internet Explorer. The problem did not occur on Constant Contact’s tech’s machine when she tried using Firefox. I was later told that Constant Contact was getting a number of calls from other Firefox users, but they could not reproduce the problem themselves.

The Work-Around:

Click on the down-arrow to the right of the Adblock Plus logo. Click on “Preferences” and then on the “Add Filter” tab. Add these three exceptions:

@@||ui.constantcontact.com^$document

@@||constantcontact.com^$document

@@||ccprod.roving.com^$document

These lines keep Adblock from interfering with the information contained in the Constant Contact pages.

Through trial and error, I discovered that green listing the Constant Contact URLs (by clicking on the Adblock option to “Disable” ad blocking) “fixed” the problem I was having. This disabling produced the exception lines I posted above.

I called Constant Contact back and told them what I discovered — the tech I was thankful. Now, of course, Constant Contact may take my information and change their latest update so as not to run afoul of the Adblock add-on. Or, they may have their users disable Adblock checking. Either way will keep me happy with Constant Contact!

By Ozdachs|2010-06-05T12:46:01-07:00June 5th, 2010|Product Recommendations, Tips and Resources|2 Comments

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