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Archive for January, 2009
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Tuesday, January 27th, 2009Rid your machine of malware
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009Recently there has been a huge increase in the number of malware infections our users are reporting. This can be caused by several factors but most commonly it is just the changing tactics of spyware/malware authors getting more and more ingenious in their attempts to infect your machine for their own purposes. I am sure many of you have seen emails which come in asking you to click on links, ex: ‘UPS Shipping’ email or the ‘You have received a greeting card’ email.
What happens here is the bad guys are expecting you to click on the link which directs you to an infected web site which then attempts to execute code on your machine which exploits known vulnerabilities. Once this is done you are in deep!
“Live sports at work? That’s much better than work at work”
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009We all expect the best from our employees. In my experience, most employees want to do a good job for their employers but let’s face it, sometimes work can be boring and some people goof off at work. Unfortunately, with more and more content readily available on the Internet it is easier and easier for people to find interesting (time-wasting) content while at work.
All DSL is NOT created equal
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009I often get the question, “Eric, why should I get Internet Access from you when I can get the same thing from AT&T or Embarq?” An excellent question, with an equally excellent answer. It is true that as an independent ISP we purchase wholesale access from AT&T and Embarq to provide DSL access and that the equipment that our DSL rides on is the EXACT same equipment that you would use if you got Internet Access from one of the incumbents. To make things worse we charge more for DSL than you can get it directly from the incumbents, but this is where the similarities end.
An interesting use of search data
Friday, January 2nd, 2009There are lots of uses for tracking search data, not the least of which is to gauge popular sentiment. When a particular subject is hot it tends to drive more and more traffic to websites based off of keyword searches in popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. If you want to know what’s hot you can take a peek at the top search terms and zero right in on trends in real time.
Google even provides real-time data on keyword trend at www.google.com/trends complete with rankings and ‘hotness’ scale. They even show historical search trends so you can gauge trends as they emerge. Google has also come up with one of the most interesting uses of search trends ever.