billso.com

This article first appeared in my old blog at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/wsodeman?id=269

http://www.informationweek.com/industries/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196603857

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/13/technology/13skype.html

Skype had been offering free VoIP calls within the United States and Canada since May 2006.

In 2007, users will have to pay a $30 annual fee to make unlimited SkypeOut calls to landlines and cell phones in these two countries. The current SkypeOut plan charges users about 2.1 cents per minute.

Calls outside these two countries will still incur the usual Skype fees.

Skype is offering a special until January 31. The US$30 fee is reduced to US$14.95 and includes 100 minutes of SkypeOut service, which can be used for international calls.

Skype has been working with mobile phone and computer manufacturers to offer Skype services on mobile handsets. This service makes sense when the handset has 802.11 features, as I discussed on November 27. The mobile phone network is still too slow to support Skype’s VoIP services. Next year, Skype is partnering with Google and Yahoo to offer a Skype WiFi phone.

Still, analysts are wondering how Skype fits into eBay’s corporate strategy. eBay spent US$2.5 billion to purchase Skype in October 2005. Given Skype’s roster of 136 million registered users, eBay paid about US$18 per user.

This post was first published on my old blog at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/wsodeman?id=266

This scam uses social engineering and a homemade trap to retrieve an innocent customer’s ATM card and PIN. A strap is slipped inside the card slot of an ATM. An accomplice waits near the machine, and offers to “help” the victim retrieve their ATM card from the jammed slot.

The victim won’t see their card again. The criminals need is the victim’s PIN, because the accomplice will use the hidden strap to pull out the card after the victim leaves. The strap is sometimes made from discarded X-ray film. (Snopes.com, Hoax-Slayer.com, Brama.com)

This article was first posted on my old blog at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/wsodeman?id=265

I enjoyed reading this article in today’s Honolulu Advertiser. There are several examples of worst and best practices in business writing.

It’s good to see that a few leading business schools, including Notre Dame, are including writing and communication courses in their programs. Students at my university, which has a large international enrollment, would benefit from a similar program.

Tom Clark, an entrepreneurship professor at Xavier University, summed it up well:

“Young people are wrapped up in the speed with which they communicate rather than seeing writing as a reflection of their best selves.”

Clear writing is important for any business student, no matter their age. I’ve always believed that learning how to become a lifelong learner is an important part of graduate school. E-mail, blogging, and text messaging make writing well a daily challenge.

If employees don’t understand the message, what’s the point?

If supervisors and managers must struggle to understand a subordinate’s report or memo, something is wrong. Here’s an poor example from American Savings Bank. The company and its parent, HEI, are now involved in multiple investigations and two lawsuits regarding a bank officer’s misappropriation of over US$600,000 in customer funds. I doubt that senior vice president Abel Malczon, Connie Lau or Bert Cormiel ever believed that poor writing could land them in civil court.

This article was first posted on my old blog at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/wsodeman?id=264

There’s much more spam slipping through filters and into e-mailboxes these days. The graphic from Yahoo’s article has some good basic tips.

This New York Times article has additional details.

I get a lot of unsolicited e-mail, because I have a few Internet e-mail addresses that are over 10 years old. Somedays I think every newbie spammer on the planet has my address in one of their databases. More than a few students have passed my e-mail address along to a spam list. It’s part of the teaching job.

I don’t use Outlook or Outlook Express or any mail client at all. Frankly, I think Outlook is a memory-hungry hog of a program.

Web-based email seems to help me keep the spam under control. I love the spam filters in Gmail and Yahoo.

I check links in my e-mail messages very carefully before I click on them. eBay, Google and Yahoo’s toolbars have some anti-phishing features to detect bad links.

Responding to spam is a bad idea. It does little more than tell the sender that you read their e-mail, and they’ll just resell your address to other spammers. A “live” e-mail address is worth money.

Don’t send e-mail that has been formatted with stationery or HTML code. Plain text looks boring, but HTML code is used by spammers to do all sorts of interesting things. I actually set my accounts so that they won’t display the HTML formatting at all. That’s better than blocking HTML-formatted e-mail, which I’ve seen a few servers do.

Don’t respond to chain letters or resend funny e-mail messages.

No reputable software company will send out virus warnings or software patches in an e-mail message.

Check Snopes.com, your software vendor, and other sources before you resend a warning, rumor or urban legend. You can subscribe to Snopes.com and various antivirus and software RSS feeds in Bloglines or any other RSS reader. That’s a great way to receive updated information about these messages.

If you read this far, here’s a special one-time only extra credit offer. Take a screen shot of your RSS reader, showing some if the feeds that you’ve subscribed to and e-mail it to me, and I’ll add 10 points to your final exam score.

This article was first posted on my old blog at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/wsodeman?id=255 

‘Tis the season… for miniature CD and DVD disks. A friend of mine received a miniature audio CD in the mail, and decided to try it in their computer’s tray-loading CD drive.

It never played. In fact, the miniature CD is probably jammed in the drive between the spindle the tray. There are two possible fixes:

1. Remove the desktop computer’s front panel and press the balky drive’s emergency eject button. This is a flat black button that is built into the front of the optical drive. Usually this button is hidden behind the computer’s plastic or metal case. If the miniature disc isn’t jammed into the spindle, and it’s resting on the drive tray, it may come out when the tray is ejected.
2. Replace the drive.

Sadly, I think the drive will have to be replaced. Miniature discs tend to jam a sliding drive tray.

A standard-size optical disc is 120 mm wide. Miniature discs are smaller, and they work because the data track or spiral of a compact disc start from the inside of the disc, near the plastic spindle hole.

According to Wikipedia, a standard-size compact disc has a data spiral that is 5.38 km or 3.5 miles long!

I’ve seen miniature discs that are shaped like business cards. In fact, I picked up a disc from the Central Intelligence Agency last week. The disc promoted job opportunities at the Agency. Perhaps the disc itself was an intelligence test!

I’ve also seen hardware devices that shipped with mini CDs. The CD contained some device drivers.

There are some digital cameras that use miniature discs to record photos. Sony’s Mavica line is the model I’ve seen most often.

Never ever try to insert a miniature optical disc into a slot drive. This is the style of drive found on most Apple computers, and I’ve seen this style on several Windows-based laptops.

There is no drive carrier tray at all, and these slot drives are build to accept standard-size optical discs. The eject mechanism in the drive usually cannot push a miniature disc out of the drive.

The only fix is replacing the drive, and that’s not covered under Apple and other manufacturer’s warranties.