At the end of the day, anyone can take a group of people, put them in a controlled environment, tell them exactly what to click on and have them be impressed.  Now take that new operating system and put it in a real environment with hundreds of computers and several operating systems and see how it performs.  Or perhaps the lack there of.  Hopefully in the next few service packs they’ll work most of the issues out and turn out a stable operating system.

So how do you compete with that? First it helps to have a descriptive domain name. Also make sure that you site doesn’t do the common taboos. Some taboos are keyword spamming (more than 10% keyword to content ratio), having duplicate title tags on pages, duplicate meta content (title, keywords, description), duplicate content, entry pages that don’t have unique content or only point to your main domain.

Some good things to do once you take care of the bad are new unique revolving content, rss feeds, a sitemap.xml file, signup for web master tools on Google, Yahoo, Live (MSN) Search.  In addition you need to increase your sites popularity. Spread the word on popular forums that relate to your site.

Some software that is available that will help you avoid the taboos and help you create the good stuff are Drupal and Wordpress. Both of these programs have modules and plugins to help you spread the word and make your site search engine friendly.  Drupal is a content management system (CMS) and Wordpress is blogging software.  You’ll notice that our site uses both. You’ll also notice that we have page 1 rank for “Southern Utah Computer Consultants”.

Obviously I haven’t told you all of our tips and tricks but if your site is in need of some SEO give us a call at 435-572-4849 and we can work out a plan to get you to the top or at least on page 1.

So it’s now Oct 2008 and would you believe that Qwest is still to resolve this problem or contact me.  My client ended up just sending the information to a different email address.  Oh well.

[/EDIT]

[EDIT]

Well instead of 2 days I’ve given it 2 weeks and guess what?  That’s right, not even a peep from Qwest in the form of a response to my emails.  So now I’m just really frustrated with the incredibly poor customer service of the Utah telephone monopoly.

[/EDIT]

So one of our customers was having issues sending email to a qwest.net email account.

Here’s the error that she received:

SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO:<*******@qwest.net>: host mx2.qwest.net [207.109.18.197]: 554 5.7.1 Service unavailable; Client host [**.**.***.***](My IP Address) blocked using bl.qwest.net; IP **.**.***.*** (My IP Again) is locally blacklisted

So I first tried calling Qwest’s general support number. That was my first mistake. The incompetence level of tier 1 is astounding. If it doesn’t show up on their screen and there buddy on chat can’t figure it out their pretty much useless and instead of escalating you, try to blame the problem on somebody else.

Eventually they came to the conclusion that this was not their problem and told me that I needed to contact the people over at Qwest Office support. So I made the mistake of believing them and contact Qwest Office support. Per their instructions at http://www.qwestoffice.com I first tried sending an email to support@qwestoffice.com to which I of course received no reply. At least the message didn’t bounce though. Then I tried calling 866-881-3689 their 24 hour support number. I explained the problem to them and they told me that mx1.qwest.net is maintained by the DSL department and I would have to contact them with the problem. I was then transferred to DSL Support.

At this point I’m really getting frustrated. Nobody like to be bounced around.

After some time reexplaining the problem again to the people over at Qwest DSL they respond that “That problem is because that address has been ported over to Qwest Office and that’s what’s causing the error and that if I contacted the Qwest.net customer and had them place a support request that the problem could then be resolved.”

Great finally at least an answer albeit a terrible one. Why should I have to contact my client and have them contact their client just to have the qwest.net customer have to spend 2 hours on the phone trying to troubleshoot with qwest a qwest problem?

Well the story doesn’t end here. Being the astute administrator that I am, I think that answer that they gave me makes no sense. I wasn’t getting an address not found error. I was getting your server has been blacklisted error. So I get smart and send the qwest.net customer an email from my Gmail account. Would you believe that the message went through. OH MY GOODNESS, TIER 1 WAS WRONG AGAIN!!!! What a surprise that one was.

This post is really getting long. But I think that’s the point that I’m trying to make. Why doesn’t qwest have a page that google can spider so I can actually find a way to contact the qwest internal blacklist adminstrator. Hopefully that’s what this page turns into.

So now I call up my trusty Qwest Sales Rep. He of course doesn’t handle the support side but told me to try the live chat help line on http://www.qwest.net site. So that’s what I’m doing now while I’m writing this post. Here’s how that went.

User Jon Heaton has entered room

Qwest Analyst Donny has entered room

Analyst Donny(Mon Jun 23 12:56:07 MDT 2008)>

Thank you for contacting Qwest QuickAssist - DSL Technical Support. My name is Donny and my tech ID is DH1. I apologize for the issue you are having. That is something I can help you with and I’ll attempt to get this resolved for you as quickly as possible.

Can you please provide me the following pieces of information so that I can begin a ticket as well as gather network information on your issue:

Your DSL phone number and email address.

Jon Heaton(Mon Jun 23 11:58:12 MDT 2008)>

I don’t have a DSL phone number. I am a Web Hosting Server administrator and my customers are having difficulty trying to send emails to qwest.net customers. Your server is bouncing my emails back saying that my server has been locally blacklisted.

Jon Heaton(Mon Jun 23 11:58:23 MDT 2008)>

This is more than likely a Tier 3 support problem.

Analyst Donny(Mon Jun 23 12:58:36 MDT 2008)>

I would be happy to try to contact Tier 3 if you believe it’s a Tier 3 issue, however it may be some time before I can do that for you. Here in chat we work with several customers all at the same time and making calls to Tier 3 often takes time. If you would like to wait, I would be happy to work on that for you. Otherwise, I may suggest calling into us directly and have a tech work directly with you.

Jon Heaton(Mon Jun 23 12:00:16 MDT 2008)>

I would be happy to wait. I’ve already spent 2 hours on the phone today with Tier 1 support and I’m tired of dealing with them

Jon Heaton(Mon Jun 23 12:00:27 MDT 2008)>

At least this way my ear won’t get sore.

Analyst Donny(Mon Jun 23 12:59:28 MDT 2008)>

I’m in Tier 1 sir.

Analyst Donny(Mon Jun 23 12:59:35 MDT 2008)>

I see.

Analyst Donny(Mon Jun 23 12:59:42 MDT 2008)>

I’ll be with you as soon as I can.

Analyst Donny(Mon Jun 23 13:14:49 MDT 2008)>

Here is the response from Tier 3 regarding your issue: Analyst David(Mon Jun 23 13:07:17 MDT 2008)>He can send an email to postmaster@qwest.net with examples — the headers will be helpful as well & our postmaster group will remove him from the blacklist if apporpriate & reply to let him know

Jon Heaton(Mon Jun 23 12:17:17 MDT 2008)>

ok just a minute I’m sending the message.

Jon Heaton(Mon Jun 23 12:19:37 MDT 2008)>

The message appears to have been delivered. Do you know approximately how long it should take for them to process the emai from me? Or to respond to me?

Analyst Donny(Mon Jun 23 13:18:51 MDT 2008)>

It can take up to 48 hours.

Jon Heaton(Mon Jun 23 12:21:17 MDT 2008)>

Ok. I’ll let my client know that it is Qwest’s fault that they cannot sending their advertising proofs to their client for up to 48 hours from now while we wait to have this request processed. I’m sure they won’t be happy with this but I guess there is nothing more I can do about this.

Analyst Donny(Mon Jun 23 13:20:29 MDT 2008)>

Is there anything else I can assist you with today?

Jon Heaton(Mon Jun 23 12:21:46 MDT 2008)>

That’s it thank you.

Analyst Donny(Mon Jun 23 13:20:48 MDT 2008)>

It has been a pleasure working with you today. Please bookmark the High-Speed Internet site at http://www.qwhelp.com You can also download the QuickCare program from there.

Order all of your new services such as DirecTV, Cellular Service, VoIP, or Telephone Services at http://www.qwest.com/residential/refer/index.html Use the REFERENCE CODE of ‘dxhans5′ and you will be offered the best deals and promotions running right now on all of our services.

Again, my name is Donny and my tech ID is DH1. Thank you for contacting Qwest QuickAssist and have a good day.

I really liked the sales pitch there at the end. So I’ve sent the email to postmaster and am now patiently awaiting 48 hours for the reply. What do you bet I won’t ever see a reply just like the support request to Qwest Office? Oh well. I hope I get this figured out and this is at least useful to somebody else later.

Now on to the topic. With computer security and online identity theft such a concern today, Dominik Reichl has come up with a really handy Open Source (FREE) utility to help you keep all of your vital passwords safe. It’s called Keepass. Keepass (according to their web site http://keepass.info) is “a free/open-source password manager or safe which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key-disk. So you only have to remember one single master password or insert the key-disk to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish).”

I use it in my company and in my home and I recommend that you do too.

Here is the download page: http://keepass.info/download.html

Making online access easy use for blind and other disabled users is gaining attention because of class actions against companies like Target

by Karen E. Klein

Amber Grant, 18, eats, sleeps, and breathes the Internet, according to her father, Garry Grant, CEO of Carlsbad (Calif.)-based technology outfit SEO Inc.. The company, which has 65 employees, often calls on Amber to use her prodigious Web skills to help with a vexing problem: checking to see whether its clients’ Web sites are accessible to the blind.

“I give her tasks to go onto clients’ Web sites, find a particular product, select it, purchase it, and get through checkout securely. If it takes way too long, or it’s difficult or impossible, I know we need to do some work,” says Garry Grant, whose daughter has been blind since birth. Amber is able to navigate the Internet using a “screen reader.” This is software designed for individuals who are blind, dyslexic, or have low vision. The software resides on the user’s PC and reads the text on the screen out loud, using braille-enabled keyboard commands rather than a mouse.

Read the Entire Story at: BusinessWeek

Additional Resources

World Wide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative

The International Center for Disability Resources on the Internet

Cynthia Says (free online evaluation tool)

By Phil Brisk
Phil Brisk is an advertising writer and creative director with over 20 years experience in broadcast, print and online media.

When you’re designing a web page, it’s easy to get sucked into the detail.

With your ‘design’ head on, concentrating on crafting and perfecting style elements, it’s easy to forget to step back and see things through the eyes of your users.

Your users aren’t interested in giving your design work marks out of 10. They just care about getting all the relevant information, in as little time as possible, and then moving on.

So how do you give your readers the stuff they need in the way that they want?

For a start, you can draw on the experience of traditional print designers.

After all, they’ve been tackling the same challenge for decades - in press ads, in brochures, in leaflets, in mailings. And over that time, they’ve established some pretty sound guiding principles.

1. Remember how brains work

There’s nothing our brains like so much as order and meaning. It’s what they search for from the moment they encounter anything new - and that includes your web page. If brains can’t find the sense and order they need, they soon grow exasperated and give up.

The best print designers know this. They’ve also learned that, the more elaborate the design, the greater the risk of confusion. That’s why they usually steer clear of fussy and showy designs.

Instead, their layouts have a ‘quieter’ feel, with all the individual elements directed at letting the page information unfold as easily as possible. Headlines, subheads, body copy point size, pictures, colours - all are used to ’signpost’ the route the good designer wants the reader to take through the material placed before him. A route that’s guaranteed to leave him feeling better informed, and better served, at journey’s end.

Does this approach make a difference? You bet it does!

In over 20 years, I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen a more restrained, reader-focused design for an ad or brochure outperform a flashier, supposedly more eye-catching alternative. In most cases, the content has remained the same. It’s just the way the content is laid out that’s different.

2. Remember how eyes move

In our culture, we’re trained from the moment we start reading to scan from left to right, starting from the top left of the page and working down to bottom right. We develop a natural rhythm as we do it, with our eyes moving swiftly to the end of each line, then skipping back to the start of the next.

Oh, and by the way, our eyes don’t like to have to constantly readjust their focus. It just leads to strain.

So far, so obvious. But it’s the obvious that’s often overlooked, particularly by designers who want to ‘create an impression’ by doing something radical, such as running the main headline around the page margin, or by making interesting shapes with the body copy.

I could go on, of course. I could talk about startling use of contrasting colours. Or reversing out large chunks of text. Or running it over a picture. Or experimenting with lots of different typefaces and point sizes. Or dotting illustrations all over the page.

All these stylistic touches may look really cool. And result in something you’d love to hang on your wall. But that’s not the goal, is it? Your aim is to make life easier for your reader. Yet, too often, the kind of visual tricks listed here do exactly the reverse. They disrupt natural eye movement. They strain the eyes by asking them to jump around the page, from element to element, with the need for lots of re-focusing along the way. They frustrate the brain in its instinctive quest for logical order and meaning.

I’ve seen many over-excitable, over-designed print layouts fail miserably when they leave the rarefied atmosphere of the design studio and enter the real world where the readers live. And, equally, I’ve seen genuine commercial wonders worked when those same layouts are placed in wiser hands.

In one case, for instance, a loss-making full-page press ad featuring a large slab of reversed-out body copy was transformed by the simple act of running the text in conventional black on white. The freshened-up ad - with nothing else changed - then brought in over a quarter million pounds-worth of orders on its very first outing.

On another occasion, I saw a product brochure achieve a 543% - yes, 543% - increase in response after a design ‘re-vamp’. The main changes were to switch from a sans serif to serif typeface (easier to read) and to remove a number of small pictures from the right margins of the pages (on the grounds that, in this position, they might be distracting the reader’s attention at the wrong moment and preventing his eye from returning back left to start reading the next line).

“Fine,” you may think. “But that’s print. What’s it got to do with designing for the web?”

Actually, everything. Because what’s been happening design-wise in print - the successes and the failures - is being repeated right now on-line. Just take a look at a dozen or so web pages, selected at random, and I think you’ll see what I mean.

3. Above all - remember you’re here to communicate, not decorate

If you only want one guideline, make this it. Because, frankly, for all the reasons already given, there really is nothing more irritating to readers than design for design’s sake.

This isn’t to say your web page shouldn’t use all the design elements and special touches that create style, pace, flair, excitement, intrigue, emotion. Of course it should! But these elements must always be relevant and appropriate, and not distract from a clear, coherent whole effect.

Remember this, and you’ll vastly increase your chances of creating effective online design - a design that draws attention to the message, not to itself - a design that will serve your web site visitors rather than dazzle them.

In my experience, this is good business sense. Especially if you want to turn those visitors into customers. Because they can’t give you money while they’re rubbing their eyes or scratching their heads.

Originally published under a Creative Commons License.

Here are a few things to consider when you want to backup your important data:

1) Try to store your data in a central location.

If you are running Windows, Microsoft has made this somewhat easy for you. All of your data related to you is in your Profile Folder. (Desktop, My Pictures, My Documents, Bookmarks, Addresses) Some of these things are harder to track down than others. If you’re like me and don’t like to clutter up your My Documents folder with work related things and keep some data right on your hard drives root then make sure and back up that folder too.

2) Don’t backup your data to the same drive.

I know this seems like common sense but it must be said. A drive failure causes all data on that drive to be lost. Data storage is very inexpensive these days. (This is where the prevention comes in) Get yourself a second hard drive. The easiest way to do this is an external hard drive. Slightly more expensive but can be really convenient.

3) Smoke alarms save people not data.

It’s been said, “if your data doesn’t exist in three places, it doesn’t exist.” Guess where the third place should be? Any other building that is not where your computer is located. If your data is at the office, take it home. If it’s at home take it to the office, if it’s at the office take it home. Remember that external Hard Drive you just bought? While your ordering that why don’t you make that two. Once a week swap your two backup drives. This way if building burns down, is broken into, or suffers an explosion you won’t be up a creek without a paddle.

There are many software backup solutions out there. Some with more bells and whistles than others. If you are looking for something simple, Windows has a build in backup utility. You can find more information about it here.

Company wide backups are a bit trickier. (Warning: Shameless plug ahead!!!) Southern Utah Technology and Design LLC can help you in that department. We offer advanced company backup systems that will give you automated incremental (Save Changes to individual Files) backups of your data.

With all that said remember, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

1. Increase password length – Most web sites and software programs require a minimum of 6-8 characters. This is a safe bet but having a longer password makes cracking the password more difficult.
2. Use numeric, capital letters and special characters – By using numeric numbers, capital letters and special characters it eliminates certain types of password attacks such as dictionary attacks where common words and phrases are used to determine the password.
3. Avoid writing the password down – By writing the password down and displaying it on the monitor or desk it makes it assessable for anyone walking by. This defeats the purpose of the password in the first place.
4. Changing the password – Changing your password every so often say monthly or every few months helps eliminate someone from using old or previously used passwords to gain entry to current sensitive information.
5. Have multiple passwords – Having multiple passwords can reduce what an attacker can gain access too. One concern for an individual is remembering all the passwords. A good way to do this is to use a password locker. A password locker is a digital filing cabinet, which stores your passwords in an encrypted file. You then only have to remember one password.
6. Use the first letters of a phrase – An easy way to create an easy to remember password is to use the letters of a phrase with easy to remember numbers. IE: ILtWomC23 (I Love to Work on my Computer 23)

Password security is vital in protecting company’s digital assets. By using the above tips, possible violation can be avoided.