Category Ask The Answer Guy
 
Brent - Is there a service that stands out above others for broadcasting voice messages to my clients?

Take a look at CallFire. Their platform specializes in fund raising, collections calls, emergency notices, political campaign advertisements and many other similar situations. There are many companies that do a good job with phone campaigns, but CallFire seems to be the easiest to use. Their website allows you to sign up for free and test the service with free minutes. If you like what you see, it is just a matter of funding your account, creating phone lists, recording a message and blasting away. The entire process of importing numbers, creating your message and sending it out shouldn't take any more than ten minutes and having such a smooth experience makes CallFire worth it.


There is also a great reporting system that comes with this service. Phone menus can be used to allow recipients to be placed on a do-not-call list and you can track all activity and outcomes of each batch of messages sent out. You can run detailed reports that total the number of calls answered, went to answering machine, got a busy signal, got a bad number error etc. Head over to CallFire.com and watch some of the information videos and learn how their service can customize itself to fit your business needs.

Posted by Keith Lancaster At 3:51 PM Location Reseda, CA | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category It's Free!
 
Most Wikipedia articles lack integrated media content; regardless of what you are searching for, you will be lucky to find as much as a link to a place where you can see pictures or watch videos that relate to the topic in question. Navify is a new on-line encyclopedia that not only incorporates the much-needed images and videos with Wikipedia articles, it provides a comments section to each article to allow for public discussion. Having just launched as a public beta last week, Navify is already a handy tool that really does a good job consolidating the information we are constantly looking up.

Test it out yourself: Search Wikipedia for anything you like and then perform the same search on Navify. The convenience of having all of the information you need on the same page is what makes Navify stand out.

Posted by Keith Lancaster At 12:32 PM Location Reseda, CA | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Security Corner
 
From the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team:

Why are chain letters a problem?

The most serious problem is from chain letters that mask viruses or other malicious activity. But even the ones that seem harmless may have negative repercussions if you forward them:

* they consume bandwidth or space within the recipient's inbox
* you force people you know to waste time sifting through the messages and possibly taking time to verify the information
* you are spreading hype and, often, unnecessary fear and paranoia


What are some types of chain letters?

There are two main types of chain letters:

* Hoaxes - Hoaxes attempt to trick or defraud users. A hoax could be malicious, instructing users to delete a file necessary to the operating system by claiming it is a virus. It could also be a scam that convinces users to send money or personal information. Phishing attacks could fall into this category (see Avoiding Social Engineering and Phishing Attacks for more information).
* Urban legends - Urban legends are designed to be redistributed and usually warn users of a threat or claim to be notifying them of important or urgent information. Another common form are the emails that promise users monetary rewards for forwarding the message or suggest that they are signing something that will be submitted to a particular group. Urban legends usually have no negative effect aside from wasted bandwidth and time.

How can you tell if the email is a hoax or urban legend?

Some messages are more suspicious than others, but be especially cautious if the message has any of the characteristics listed below. These characteristics are just guidelines-not every hoax or urban legend has these attributes, and some legitimate messages may have some of these characteristics:

* it suggests tragic consequences for not performing some action
* it promises money or gift certificates for performing some action
* it offers instructions or attachments claiming to protect you from a virus that is undetected by anti-virus software
* it claims it's not a hoax
* there are multiple spelling or grammatical errors, or the logic is contradictory
* there is a statement urging you to forward the message
* it has already been forwarded multiple times (evident from the trail of email headers in the body of the message)

If you want to check the validity of an email, there are some web sites that provide information about hoaxes and urban legends:

* Urban Legends and Folklore - http://urbanlegends.about.com/
* Urban Legends Reference Pages - http://www.snopes.com/
* TruthOrFiction.com - http://www.truthorfiction.com/
* Symantec Security Response Hoaxes - http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html
* McAfee Security Virus Hoaxes - http://vil.mcafee.com/hoax.asp

Posted by Keith Lancaster At 3:38 PM Location Sherman Oaks | Permalink | Comments (0)