Email Frenzy

by: Bryan Edwards

“I know that you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant”
RICHARD NIXON

According to the Radicati Group an estimated 183 billion emails are sent every day. That’s around 2 million emails every second sent by 1.2 billion email Users! Moreover, there are an estimated 516 million business email boxes worldwide. That’s a heck of a potential for mis-communication, misunderstandings, angry words, bad feelings and loss of productivity if the messages go wrong.

Communication experts say that email is good for INFORMATION and CONFIRMATION. However it’s not good for EMOTION or PERSUASION. It is very difficult to convey enthusiasm, empathy or sincerity via email. You can type the words, but one doesn’t get a sense of the way the words are conveyed, and therefore the message can be misinterpreted.

Here are some tips on email etiquette.

When sending:

•In character, e-mail is somewhere between an informal telephone call and a formal letter, but an e-mail can be easily kept as a permanent record – a phone call is more difficult. Avoid slang, careless writing, thoughtless comments, too many dots or exclamation marks.

•Consider the recipient – who really needs to know? Is it ‘nice to know’ or ‘essential to their job to know’? Consider using group names very carefully – it may save you time but does everyone on the group list really need that message?

•Talk to your boss about the types of information he/she needs to be copied in on.

•Beware of humour and sarcasm – unless you know the recipient very well.

•Where is the recipient? If they are in the same office area, why not talk to them instead? Think of how long it takes to ‘talk’ the message compared to having to write it out.

•Don’t use email as an excuse not to talk to somebody. Barriers in communicating with difficult people can be broken down by hearing your voice, or perhaps seeing you, to build better rapport.

•Never email in anger. Calm down first, or consider an alternative method – email can never convey emotion. Face to face can be a much more effective way of getting how you feel across to an individual.

•Indicate the subject of the e-mail, and the purpose, in the subject header, to help the recipient e.g. ‘Leadership Training: Joining Instructions below’.

•Keep to business issues, avoiding personal e-mails and gossiping.

•Include ‘pleasantries’ at the start of the email e.g. ‘Hope you’re having a good week’ or perhaps a ‘Thanks for doing that last project so quick’ before you launch into your reason for emailing.

•Emailing bad news can be seen as ‘the coward’s way out’ because you don’t want to face the reaction. Also you can’t guarantee when they’ll read the bad news.

•Re-read the message before sending, putting yourself in the recipient’s shoes – what is the tone like? What unintended messages could the recipient see? Am I being succinct enough?

•Be careful about criticising people and organisations by email. A hasty remark by phone will be forgotten, on email there is a permanent record.

•Avoid writing in capital letters (to some this is the equivalent of shouting, and it makes it more difficult to read) and be carefully about emboldening words.

•If you classify all your e-mails as urgent, people may gradually stop treating them as such.

•Be careful about copying the message to the recipient’s manager – some people may view this as untrusting and underhand.

•Break the email ‘tennis’ – it’s far quicker to pick up the phone than reply with an email.

When reading:

•Deal with e mail at set times of the day ONLY– two or three times per day is a good guide. The tendency is to open email as soon as one arrives – if it was that urgent, the sender would have picked up the phone.

•Turn off the automatic ‘incoming email alert’ facility.

•Remove unwanted e-mails regularly – one user had 350 e-mails in his inbox after 3 days holiday! Always question WHY you keep an electronic copy?

•Set regular times e.g. last day of the month, to review and delete your e-mails.

•Set up folders for recipients. Important people such as the boss, the boss’s boss, and key customers could go into one folder that you check more frequently.

•If you feel emotional after reading a message, give the sender the benefit of the doubt and assume there has been a misunderstanding. Have you read the message carefully? Are you quite sure you’ve understood?

•If it’s about a complicated topic, or it’s a request for ideas or opinions, consider replying by phone, or meet up with the person.

•If you are out of the office for a few days, set up an automated ‘out of office reply’, giving an alternative person’s name who may be able to help.

•Send joke emails to your home inbox for reading later.

Software Development: Outsourcing is the New Mantra for Success

by: David Jackson

They say profit maximization is the prime goal for any management team and those managers are successful enough who are capable of controlling their subordinates. In today’s web driven world, the role for managers has increased manifold. A project manager is not only responsible for bringing good amounts of projects, but also need to look after it besides making its final delivery to clients. The software industry has been going under severe competition presently and in order to sustain in the retrace, project managers are conceiving new strategies so that business goals can be achieved on the behalf of the organization without compromising on quality of deliverables. Most of the companies have chosen outsourcing as a means of achieving targets at without investing much on cost. In a recession hit economic scenario, outsource software development firms are still shoeing good amount of courage thus retaining clients.


Software development firms generally need huge investments. Resources are getting costlier and all are asking for huge pay hikes. In such a scene, outsourcing has turned into a nice way of meeting the clients’ project requirements without spending much on labor cost. Outsource software development India is now one of the biggest and most trusted software development destinations in the entire world. Compared to the USA or the UK, labor comes cheap here and companies can earn significant amount on profits keeping quality of work intact. Apart from India, China, Philippines and Thailand have now emerged as good venues for outsourcing for the European software firms.


Outsource software development firms are the best choices for all types of software development products. They have also proved to be reliable and less costly resorts for custom software application development projects. So, be it industry specific software development or application development for iPhone, outsource custom software development service providers are here to stay for a long time for sure. In the coming days, their offers and reach would be multiplied – that’s a guarantee. You just watch and see!

Stop Spyware From Invading Your Privacy

By: David H. Urmann

The perfect way of combating spyware is to not install it. Spyware is a bigger problem for consumers than viruses. Though viruses can do much damage on computers, spyware are more prevalent and leads to identity theft.

For some time, it may look like the computer technology reached its pitfall with the prevalence of spywares that invade the privacy of personal computer users. But there are controlling factors determined to eliminate spywares completely. As more and more new spywares are being developed, the developers of anti-spyware programs are also active in their crusade.

Installing anti-spyware program has indeed become a crucial part of computer security. A number of anti-spyware laws have been passed to combat the growing threat of spyware. A handful of spyware software crossed the boundaries of legality. Variants of Trojan-Downloader.Win32.INService and Zlob.Trojan were reported of displaying child pornography, cracks and popup ads known to break copyright and child pornography laws.

Various methods of preventing spyware infection have been developed as the threat continues to worsen. These techniques include running software created to block or eliminate spyware. A number of helpful user practices are proven in minimizing the chance of spyware infection on computer system. However, spyware is still a serious and costly problem. When a system employing Windows has been infected by multiple spyware software, the simplest remedy would be backing up important data and have the operating system reinstalled.

Spyware can come from shareware software available for download. Some Internet Service Providers resort to using web proxies and employing network firewalls in denying access to websites believed to install spyware.

Be sure to read all disclosures as well as license agreement including privacy statements before installing any application. There are instances that the inclusion of unwanted program in some software is documented. Carefully read everything because it is usually found at the end of such End User License Agreement or privacy statement.

Install a firewall. Most spyware come in package with other programs or secretly installed to user’s system by malicious website. Only a very few spyware software can be remotely installed by hackers to computers.

Update software regularly to help stop spyware and some unwanted programs. Make certain that Automatic Update is turned on for system with this option. Download all the newest critical and security updates.

Adjust security settings for Internet Explorer. The recommended setting for the Internet zone is Medium or higher. This setting regulates the information users are inclined to accept from websites. This is set to Medium by default for system using Windows XP SP2 and Internet Explorer as primary web browser.

Install anti-spyware software. Windows Defender is a good protection against spyware. It comes with the new OS Windows Vista. Windows XP Service Pack 2 users can download it free of charge.

Observe safe Internet surfing and downloading always. Always download only from trusted websites. Spyware developers will not stop in deceiving computer users. As a tip, when closing doubtful sites, refrain from hitting the X mark on the top right window. This sometimes leads to other sites instead of closing down. Instead, hit Alt+F4.

Change the setting of your computer, such that nothing will download automatically without your permission. Set your browser to ActiveX control.

Update regularly your anti-spyware programs because new types of spyware are being developed practically everyday.

Spyware Software a Critical Threat to Computer System

By: David H. Urmann

Spyware is any program employed or installed without the consent of the user. Spyware channels personal information to a third party. It can badly damaged computers and should be eliminated out of the system.

Spyware is a program subtly installed by spyware developers on computer systems without arising suspicions from the user. Spyware is malicious software designed to manipulate the computer by intercepting or interfering with the user’s control and interaction. The purpose of spyware simply surpassed unauthorized monitoring of user’s computing behavior. Spyware can be compared with viruses because they are harmful in nature.

Spyware programs are secretly employed to watch the user’s activity. It records and accounts on that victim’s online movement. They can trail all information related to the user such as personal, psychosocial and demographic details. Spyware also reports on specific website the number of times a user visit that particular site. The information is then used to gather ad impressions target.

Aside from collecting personal inputs on user’s Internet browsing habit and websites that been accessed, spyware can intervene with the computer control such as installing other software, rerouting web browser activity, diverting income from advertisements usually to the spyware’s author, and blindly and randomly accessing malicious websites.

Spyware can easily change a user’s personal settings of a computer leading to slow internet connection speed, various home pages and worse, loss of internet access or other applications. It weakens the computer’s defense making the system vulnerable to attacks of viruses, Trojans and other dangerous threats.

They can be unknowingly downloaded from websites, instant messages, email attachments or messages, and file-sharing networks. Spyware can be inadvertently got by accepting a EULA or End User License Agreement from a legitimate software manufacturer.

The term spyware according to record was used on 16th of October 1995. Spyware then meant a hardware used for spying. Nevertheless, during the early part of the year 2000 Gregor Freund of Zone Labs used the term spyware in a press release to denote a rogue application. Since that time, the definition changed.

A survey conducted by the National Cyber-Security Alliance and America Online in 2005 brought about some important figures to the fore.

First to note is that 61% of surveyed computers had spyware. Also, 92% of surveyed users convey they were unaware of the spyware in their computers. And last, 91% accounted that no permission were granted for the installation of the spyware.

Spyware has been one of the leading menaces to computer systems on Windows operating system as of 2006. Computer whose main browser is Internet Explorer are at great risk for its tight consolidation with Windows permits spyware to invade all important components of the operating system. It is also the OS of choice for majority of users.

Users’ naiveté about malware and the Internet Explorer’s presumption that all ActiveX parts are safe contributed to the widespread of spyware. Prior to the release of Internet Explorer 7, the browser would always display a window for installing any ActiveX component that a site required to install. Spyware also targets the defects in Internet Explorer, Windows and Javascipt to install secretively.

Spyware does not reduplicate or spread like computer worms or viruses do. A computer infected by spyware does not transfer the infection to other; however it breaks through a system by deceiving the user or taking advantage of software glitches. Spyware delude victims by piggybacking on good software or by camouflaging as anti-spyware software or security program, tricking the user to install them.

Spyware by nature uses affected computers for financial profit. Usual tricks to meet this purpose are delivery of unwanted pop-up advertisement; stealing financial information particularly credit card number; tracking of Internet surfing activity for advertising purposes; or directly routing of requests of HTTP to advertising websites. Its distributor normally offers the application as an important utility—like for example as a “Web accelerator” or a useful software agent.

How to Write a Network Security Policy

By: Derek Rogers

Keeping your network up and running is a hardware issue. Keeping your network under control is a sociological one. What used to be the purview of a select group of security professionals and their adversaries has turned into a set of recipes for breaking into, defacing, or stealing information from various computer networks. With the internet, one does not need to be a genius to be a cracker or computer criminal. One needs a certain amorality and access to Google and the wits to follow a step-by-step tutorial. Sadly, targets abound for them.

Fortunately, your network needn't be one of them. No network can be made perfectly safe, but a well-constructed network security policy can weed out the majority of threat vectors. Network security is fundamentally about tracking log files, accounting for logins and user activity and auditing anything that looks suspicious.

Like all things dealing with security, the significant trade-off is security versus ease of use. Anything that's more secure will be intrusive, and one of the most compromised vectors for network security is the human element. If your security policies are onerous, and keep people from doing their work on the network, they will be circumvented by members of your organisation who will resent the put down on their time.

Communication with your organisation's members is important. A good network security policy addresses the human factors in securing your data. It needs to explain what your organisation's policies are, regarding proper use of computer and network equipment, and what procedures must be followed. It should have a clearly listed response chain for security incidents.

Some basic tips:

1) Be very clear in explaining why certain policy decisions have been made and what their costs are. Make people understand why they have to go through strange procedures, or have computers with no optical drives.

2) Understand that one size does not fit all; one of the worst examples of a network security policy is one that presumes that everything needs the same heightened level of security. In addition to driving productivity to a standstill, it often results in worse security, as people attempt to get their work done and leave classified documents out in the open rather than check them in and check them out every time they go to the rest room.

3) Evaluate your hardware as part of the policy. Do triage - what can you live with and live without? What absolutely needs to be restricted access, what needs off site backups to maintain organizational continuity and if an asset were lost, how much would it cost to replace? Will you spend more in employee time than the replacement costs, or are the replacement costs catastrophic?

4) Next, identify possible threats. What ways can someone access or distribute your data?

Once these have been identified, consider aspects such as physical security; who has access to the computers and the facility?, network security; who is to have access to which data sets, and authentication; how do you determine the right level of access per person and that the right people are using their pass codes?

Who Are the People That Need Computer Rental

By: Amy Nut

To the average computer user, renting a computer seems a little strange. Why wouldn't you want to own the machine? To the average household, renting a computer does not make much sense, but there are some organizations and individuals who can stand to save a lot of money with this option.

Entrepreneurs

The entrepreneurial among us often find the cost of starting their new enterprises to be the main thing that holds them back. One of the biggest costs associated with starting a new business venture is the cost of technology. Computers are not cheap.

Those interested in starting a new business but lacking the resources to purchase new technology can rent some instead. Once the business is up and running, bringing in income, they can start setting money aside to purchase their own equipment. This ensures that the business starts with excellent, up-to-date equipment, rather than the old computer the entrepreneur has been using at home.

Conference Speakers

Those who frequently travel to speak at conferences and seminars find the hassle of bringing their own computers with them to be too much to deal with. Not only do they have the added time it takes to get through security, but they also have the risk of theft, damage, or loss of their valuable equipment. Sometimes the seminar is best serviced by offering computers to the listeners as well as the presenter. Carting that many computers through an airport is almost impossible.

Computer rental gives these individuals the best solution. They can bring their presentation on CDROM, leaving the computer behind. When they arrive at the conference venue, the computer equipment they need will be waiting for them, set up, and ready to use. All they have to do is stick their disc in and they can start their presentation.

Trade Show Presenters

Those who frequently set up booths at trade shows can also benefit from computer rental. Like the conference presenter, trade show presenters struggle to carry computer equipment on the airplane or bus as they travel. Depending on the type of booth they set up, they may want additional upgrades like huge wide-screen monitors and extra computers for potential customers to use, and transporting these items without damage is almost impossible. A computer rental company can have the necessary equipment ready for the presenter when he arrives at the trade show venue.

Individuals Facing a Transition Time

Are you moving soon? Are you about to end one chapter of your life and start another? If you do not already have a computer, but wish to get one soon, renting during this transition time might be the best option. You will have access to word processing programs to brush up your resume and cover letter, the Internet to look for jobs, and email to keep others in the know about what is going on in your life, but you will not have to fork out hundreds of dollars to purchase a machine. When you are in a more settled position, you can look to buy that computer.

Computer rental is ideal for people who have a temporary need for quality computer equipment, either when traveling, in a transition period, or starting up a new business, but do not have the collateral necessary to buy a new machine. If you are in one of these situations, consider renting a computer.

Computer Software King is Microsoft !

By: Rajesh Chouhan

Software was all complicated when it initially stormed the market. Only computer nerds were associated with it, but a lot of things have changed today. Thanks to Microsoft, they have made everything very simple for users. Software has also evolved a great deal when it comes to daily usage.

A lot of things in the software field happened only because of Microsoft. For more details go to www.software-index-website.com Even though there have been many competitors in the field, they have ruled the roost. They have been least perturbed by the entry of other software corporations when it comes to software. Every day they are constantly working towards giving the world better software to use.

They made the whole world understand what software was all about. This is the greatest invention of the world till date, as it has made life very easy for everyone. From running businesses to shopping and other facilities, software has made everything possible. And Microsoft is responsible for all this.

They have made the world a smaller place, though there have been inputs from many other corporations. However one drawback that most users have with software is that it keeps changing often. This has also lead to piracy of software in a big way. Not much effort is being taken about this, as it seems pointless.

Software was all complicated when it initially stormed the market. Only computer nerds were associated with it, but a lot of things have changed today. Thanks to Microsoft, they have made everything very simple for users. Software has also evolved a great deal when it comes to daily usage.

The piracy industry is so vast that Microsoft is unable to keep a check on what is going on entirely. The software ranges from simple to complicated applications. However they serve the industries of the world in a big way. Software is also expensive, and this is one way that the company made money.

Software has revolutionized the ways of the world in many ways, and this has made life very easy for many millions of people around the world. A lot of intelligence is however required when it comes to development of software. For more details go to www.scripts-to-sell.com Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is known to have begun and grown the strength of the software he provides to the world, purely on merit.

Daily tasks can be handled with the help of software, from accounts to appointments. The whole aspect of the facility is very interesting. This will provide a great opportunity for people to make their lives systematic. People should contribute back by buying original software and killing piracy.

Software is also a very important part of many industries in various ways. All of this, thanks to Microsoft.

They have made the world a smaller place, though there have been inputs from many other corporations. However one drawback that most users have with software is that it keeps changing often. This has also lead to piracy of software in a big way. Not much effort is being taken about this, as it seems pointless.