A few key items to note as you read through the article – they give some good information about what you can do when you receive text spam:

1. Forward the offending message to 7726 (SPAM – alphanumerically) along with the phone number it was received from.
2. Report the spam to the FCC.  Yep – that’s a link to their page on Text Spam.
3. Ask your wireless carrier to block messages from the Internet.
4. Ask your wireless carrier to block the phone number the spam came from.

If I can add in my own 5th point, which should really be a first point – never respond to, answer or follow a link from a text message from an origin that you don’t recognize.  As with most things, a little common sense goes a long way in covering your rear-end and avoiding information theft and scams.

Text Spam might not be a huge problem now, but it can become one quickly.

Now maybe text spam isn’t affecting your life or your community as negatively as a mailbox full of credit card offers or the telemarketers that still call you despite your number being on a no-call list.  However, here in North America our wireless industry is still relatively immature compared to wireless services in most developed Asian countries.  As pointed out in the article, in China they have had unlimited texting plans for much longer than North American service providers have offered them, and right now a good one-third of all text messages received in China are of the spam or phishing variety.

I do find it humorous that the article states that the big two in America, Verizon and AT&T Wireless, claim they are doing all they can to stop spam, despite taking such actions actually has a negative revenue affect on their bottom lines.  The data being sent costs them little to nothing, where as people still on limited text plans (since the major carriers plans in themselves tend to be way more expensive than options in other countries) end up paying more because of spam received, and the technology required to adequately and accurately detect and remove spam texting would cost them quite a bit. 

Don’t expect your wireless carrier to have an effective solution to text spam any time soon, and as text message spam becomes increasingly easier to send the volume of spam will grow.  The best action for us is to take the steps listed above and start fighting it now instead of relying on the historically not proactive and only interested in profits wireless companies to combat it from their side.

How is Text Spam Affecting You? is a post from: @ Blog

The information age ushered in affordable desktop computers, which have quickly become smaller, faster, more powerful and even more affordable.  The advent and popularization of the Internet has furthered the use of this technology for both business and to enhance our personal lives.  Now you can’t go anywhere without seeing people connecting to work, to websites, to music and entertainment – it is everywhere.  Cloud hosted platforms coupled with portable, powerful devices that can access information at light speed have transformed our world.  How easy was it twenty years ago to get information from one side of the world to another in real-time?  For most people and even businesses, it was a challenge at best.  Now it can happen in seconds via email, even if you’re in an airport, coffee house or in the park playing with your kids.

Fifty years prior, a high percentage of homes in America didn’t even have a telephone.  Now the majority of Americans can send and receive important information, documents and other digital files via a phone in their pocket.

Umm.. ma'am it works better if you turn the monitor on...

These are amazing developments.  But what are the costs?

The first cost is a very familiar one to all of us – the loss of domestic jobs.  If you can use technology to easily transport and disseminate information, then it doesn’t matter where that information goes or originates from.  Thus, so many major corporations have moved information handling to countries and hired employees that can handle the basics for a fraction of the cost of having domestic workers to perform the same tasks. Additionally, voice command telecommunication response systems can further reduce the need for human workers by transporting requested information without the need for a person to find it and provide it at all.

The design was to make life easier – but in many cases, it has made life much more difficult. Large businesses think deploying technology is the key to better worker productivity.  Computers and multiple software packages are provisioned to every employee in the company – many times without enough attention being paid to how the employees will be using the systems provided.  Inadequate hardware for the required software, applications and systems developing and growing faster than the business is willing to life-cycle hardware and other dependent systems all combine to make the day-to-day experience for the employee frustrating, if not futile.

On the flip-side, small businesses that begin to reluctantly accept the need for technology try to adopt technology solutions with a “this is a necessary evil” attitude resulting in them not putting resources toward creating a technology infrastructure that will truly be productive and beneficial to their environment.

In both cases, businesses are short sighted and often do more harm than good with their technology endeavors.

Other factors are also frequently ignored.  Data protection, both from a data loss and data security perspective is usually a back-burner item for small businesses.  Larger businesses roll-out highly advanced data security measures that their infrastructure isn’t even equipped to properly handle creating desktop and network latency that wastes hours of productivity each day.  Meanwhile, both sides ignore basic fundamentals such as power back-up right down to the desktop level – a comparatively inexpensive protection measure that can save many times its buy-in value in productivity and data retention costs when a problem does arise.

The cost to these problems goes beyond the price tag of what it takes to properly implement the solutions.  The cost is felt even more by people.  The time technology is meant to save very often being wasted while waiting for the technology.  Time wasted by duplicating tasks.  Time spoiled by the expectation that with technology people can do more than the very human limit of time permits, thus creeping in and taking more and more of an individual’s time regardless of compensation.

In the case of the small business, it is self punishment.  As we have said before, technology is rarely a do-it-yourself game.   Manufacturers and box-pushing retailers like Best Buy, Office Max, Staples and others try to advertise it that way, then attempt to sell outrageously over-priced and under-experienced services to help you when the DIY route inevitably fails.  The folly is that they don’t want to spend money to do it right, so they do it wrong, then over-spend for someone to help them do it…  wronger.  The end result is less money and less time for themselves, stealing a bit more of the life they hoped to have extra of by being in business for themselves.

Working by a lake might seem nice. Not working and enjoying that lake would be a lot nicer...

For the employee in the larger corporation, technology means either a daily struggle to cope with what they are given, which is usually totally inadequate for their job – or losing their job entirely to a technology solution when the big business does decide to spend the money to modernize.  The first dilemma often results in added overtime requirements for the underpaid, front-line worker or even worse, time stolen from the salaries middle-manager employees as they are placed “on-call” and tethered to their technology via a Blackberry or VPN connection at all times.

Even at home or on vacation.

And again, because these technology solutions are designed to store, move and deliver information, every job is dependent on the solution not being advanced enough to not do it on its own without human intervention beyond the development, deployment and maintenance level.  Or in the usual cases, the customer set being important enough that the company simply doesn’t off-shore the human side of the equation to a country where people are bought and sold for less.

That is the human cost of everything.  Our only resource we really own to trade for what we need.  Our only resource we can never replace or replenish.

Time.

The very thing technology is meant to save for us – but the human side of technology is that it is often used against us in a battle between efficiency and time.  The best way to combat this is to realize there is a time for work, and a time for us to be ourselves.  To unplug from technology for those purposes and properly use technology within its own and our own limits when work needs to be done.

Of course that doesn’t stop the issues of out-sourcing and automation, but it is at least a good place to start.

Want to know how to use your technology more efficiently?  Contact your friendly neighborhood IT Consultant, such as me, and we will help you get the right pieces of the puzzle into the right spots so you can have more time for yourself, and less time figuring out your *bleeping* computer.

Breaking Down the Human Side of Business Technology is a post from: @ Blog

Yes, the software giant headed by one of the world’s wealthiest men is an easy target for bashing whenever we’re faced with issues involving our Windows based personal computers.  How many times have you exclaimed or heard someone exclaim in frustration, “Windows SUCKS!” whenever a computer runs into a problem?  It is probably a pretty frequent occurrence – I know in my line of work I hear it constantly.  The complaints that Microsoft can’t make a decent operating system.  The complaints that Windows just doesn’t work right.  The complaints that Windows crashes all the time….

I know a number of people that have sworn off Windows based PC’s and moved to Apple – adopting both their standard desktop O/S and their newer mobile device O/S as the base for all of their personal computing.  Unfortunately what I also hear are the complaints about these platforms as well.  Every piece of technology has its own list of pro’s and con’s.

Trust us, a hammer doesn't fix it...

The one thing that the now gadget champion Apple does get right and always has is the basic principle of – software runs better on good hardware.  In recent years, Apple has moved away from their old Motorola based RISC processing hardware sets to more industry standard and PC-friendly Intel processing platforms.  Yet, they still build their products on a more robust and sturdy hardware set and charge a premium for it.  Honestly, is their operating system and software set worth the $1799.00 starting price tag for a 15-inch MacBook Pro?  Not for the software alone – no it is not.  But they base their software ALWAYS on a robust, high-end hardware set.  Not just the latest names, but actually good, quality hardware.

Is that laptop with all the bells and whistles that you got on sale for $299.00 at your local big box store built on a robust, high-end hardware set?  If you think it is, I have some magic beans you might be interested in…

So if you’re not running Windows on good hardware, can you definitely say for certain that Windows itself is what is failing you, or could it be any one of the thousands of complex chips, devices or resident applications that have to run within Windows, dependent on that same hardware, that might be failing you and causing those blue screens?  Should Microsoft really be responsible for making their operating systems to ensure they work with every piece of hardware that comes pressed together by $.12 per day workers in Asian 3rd world countries?

I say no.

After all, Windows XP Pro has been running on my IBM ThinkPad for 4-years now and daily, I have no complaints about how my laptop works.  My desktop in my office runs constantly and is rebooted less than once every other week and is error free daily.  Solid hardware = good O/S performance.  Windows is Windows regardless of the PC you put it on; the hardware makes a huge difference.

Why are graphics workstations so expensive?  Because they are based on some of the must rugged and well made hardware in the industry.  Why do they need to be?  Because multimedia application for video, audio and graphics editing are brutes when it comes to system resources.  High-memory allocation and repetitive tasks that tax the hardware even more than the operating system.  This is the same reason Apple systems are lauded as being ideal for graphics professionals.

Getting the picture?  No pun intended, of course.

So the next time your computer blue-screens, before you start cursing Microsoft Windows as being the ruination of all things computing, think about the computer you’re actually using.  And if it was a discount special from your local big-box store, remember your current feeling of frustration the next time you go out to buy a new computer.

You don’t have to spend $1799.00 just to get quality – but if you spent $299.00 I can assure you, you got the level of quality you paid for.

The Easiest Target is a post from: @ Blog