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Please check it out.

There has been a flurry of activity on the CVAC board with others who have either had similar things happen to them or friends and family who have.

GPS
A couple of weeks ago a friend told me that someone she knew had their car
broken into while they were at a football game. Their car was parked on the
green which was adjacent to the football stadium and specially allotted to
football fans. Things stolen from the car included a garage door remote
control, some money and a GPS which had been prominently mounted on the
dashboard.

When the victims got home, they found that their house had been ransacked
and just about everything worth anything had been stolen.

The thieves had used the GPS to guide them to the house. They then used the
garage remote control to open the garage door and gain entry to the house.
The thieves knew the owners were at the football game, they knew what time
the game was scheduled to finish and so they knew how much time they had to
clean out the house. It would appear that they had brought a truck to empty
the house of its contents.

Something to consider if you have a GPS – don’t put your home address in it.
Put a nearby address (like a store or gas station) so you can still find
your way home if you need to, but no one else would know where you live if
your GPS were stolen.

MOBILE PHONES
I never thought of this…….
This lady has now changed her habit of how she lists her names on her mobile
phone after her handbag was stolen. Her handbag, which contained her cell
phone, credit card, wallet… Etc…was stolen.

20 minutes later when she called her hubby, from a pay phone telling him
what had happened, hubby says ‘I received your text asking about our Pin
number and I’ve replied a little while ago.’

When they rushed down to the bank, the bank staff told them all the money
was already withdrawn. The thief had actually used the stolen cell phone to
text ‘hubby’ in the contact list and got hold of the pin number. Within 20
minutes he had withdrawn all the money from their bank account.
Moral of the lesson:

Do not disclose the relationship between you and the people in your contact
list.

Avoid using names like Home, Honey, Hubby, Sweetheart, Dad, Mom, etc….
And very importantly, when sensitive info is being asked through texts,
CONFIRM by calling back.

Also, when receive a  text from friends or family to meet them somewhere, be
sure to call back to confirm that the message came from them.

It came across my desk again this morning and it was such a welcomed addition to my email. Sometimes we all need a refresher.

I loved this and think it is so valuable so thought I would share:

Big Rocks

By: Unknown Author

One day an expert in time management was speaking to a group of business students and to drive home a point, used an illustration those students will never forget.

As he stood in front of the group of high-powered overachievers he said, "Okay, it’s time for a quiz," and he pulled out a one-gallon wide-mouth Mason jar and set it on the table in front of him. He also produced about a dozen fist-sized rocks and carefully placed them, one at a time, into the jar. When the jar was filled to the top and no more rocks would fit inside, he asked, "Is this jar full?"

Everyone in the class yelled, "Yes." The time-management expert replied, "Really?" He reached under the table and pulled out a bucket of gravel. He dumped some of the gravel in and shook the jar, causing the pieces of gravel to work themselves down into the spaces between the big rocks. He then asked the class once more if the jar was full.

By this time, the class was on to him and said, "Probably not."

"Good," he replied. He reached under the table and brought out a bucket of sand and started dumping it into the jar.

The sand went into all of the spaces left between the rocks and the gravel. Once more he asked if the jar was full.

"No!" the class shouted. Once again he said, "Good." He grabbed a pitcher of water and began to pour it into the jar until the jar was filled to the brim.

Then he looked around the room and asked, "What is the point of this illustration?"

One eager beaver raised his hand and said, "The point is that no matter how full your schedule is, if you try really hard, you can always fit some more in."

"No," the speaker replied, "that’s not the point. The truth is that this illustration teaches us that if we don’t put the ‘big rocks’ in first, we’ll never get them in at all."

What are the ‘big rocks’ in your life? Time with your loved ones, your faith, your education, your dreams, a worthy cause, teaching or mentoring others? Remember to put these ‘big rocks’ in first, or you’ll never get them in at all.

Tonight or in the morning when you are reflecting on this short story, ask yourself this question: "What are the BIG ROCKS in my life?" Put those in your jar first today.

This person emailed back and stated, that she had found my information on the BWNA (Business Women’s Networking Association) directory.

I immediately, emailed back and very politely asked if she could please remove me from her list – simple request.

This person wrote back, quite upset that I had opted out of her emails and stated that was the reason people’s names were on the directory so that they could be contacted and to promote business. She then went on in a little tirade that she was quitting the group because of this.

I’ve actually asked quite a few people to stop sending me email that I didn’t sign up for (another two today) without this sort of response.

Now, I ask you, is it me or is this just plain rude to harvest names from a directory and start sending email, newsletters, beg for business, etc. especially when you have never met the person?

I had to post this video of the Hoyt’s, Dick and Rick. I hope it inspires you as much as it did me.

I found this neat little tool http://www.printgreener.com/ that lets you edit a document before you print it and best of all it is a free download.

GreenPrint scans print jobs and removes pages that it determines are a waste, like web pages with just one line of text, advertisements and unwanted graphics.

It resides in your printers folder so that you can use this with any program that you have on your computer.

You can preview your print job and remove pages or specific text and even print to PDFs.

Another neat feature is that it will track how much paper, money and greenhouse gases you have saved.

To learn more about GreenPrint, click here. or watch a demo of GreenPrint.

I came across this article in SEO News written by Mel Strocen, and thought it was really fascinating.

 Mel Strocen in Mel Strocen’s Blog

If you haven’t read Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2008 report, you should. The Blogosphere continues to grow in size and influence and the lines between what is a blog and what is a mainstream media site is becoming less clear with each passing year. The full report can be found at:

http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/

But here are some interesting highlights:

1. Most bloggers are male ranging from 57% in the USA to 73% in Europe and Asia,

2. A high percentage of bloggers are college graduates and have household incomes greater than $75K/yr.

3.  77% of active Internet users read blogs and blogs receive more unique visitors than Facebook or MySpace.

4. Most bloggers have been at it an average of three years and are collectively creating close to one million posts every day.

I must say, my favourite Browser is Firefox, but unfortunately I couldn’t get this little tool to install on this Browser. I did however find a work around for this as I have “view this page in IE” right on my toolbar. Now if there is something that I need to capture, I just click on the “view this page in IE” button and voila!

It is however, an invaluable little program that allows you to take clips of web pages that you visit. This is valuable to those of us who do research, who take notes on design ideas, and any other form of web research.

It copies multiple clips to a clipboard which you can then paste into Word and edit the information. It also lets you create PDF’s.

This is a great little tool that deserves to be checked out.

A word of caution, please don’t use this to copy and use  information as your own. Remember there are copyright’s in place for text and graphics on the world wide web.

It is true what they say about being a business owner, you spend more time working “in” your business and not enough time working “on” your business.

So today, I took a couple of hours out to do just that, work on my business, and updated my web site. It feels wonderful getting the few tweaks done that I’ve been meaning to get to for ages.

I hope that you will stop by and take a look.

This morning Scott sent through this article which he has graciously given me permission to use, thank you Scott…

Governor Palin’s Email got hacked…Is Yours Any Safer?

Governor Sarah Palin’s Yahoo Email account got hacked. That means someone got into it. Someone who shouldn’t have. And apparently it was relatively easy (especially for someone motivated to do harm) and involved using Yahoo’s password reset feature which asks for such information as your Birth date.

Lesson 1: Don’t use Email services like Yahoo, Hotmail or GMail for sensitive or business communications! Use a proper Email service…like your Business Email.

When I set-up passwords for my Clients, I usually get a look of disbelief when they see something like “3oL0B~vm$x”. “How am I ever going to remember that?!”

They’d much rather see something simple like “martha”. The problem is that when you use common words for passwords, they can be hacked much easier than “strong passwords”. Strong passwords are ones that are very difficult for humans (and computers!) to figure out. They have:

• at least 6 characters,
• use a combination of letters, numbers and special characters
• don’t repeat characters
• use a combination of upper and lower case characters

Lesson 2: I recommend that you use a separate strong password for everything; don’t re-use the same password.

There are many password utilities available to help you keep secure passwords safe. There is one really handy and FREE utility I use called “Password Tools Bundle“. Not only will it generate strong passwords for you, you can use it to securely store your passwords too.