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A Look Back at 2007

It’s been a great year for McAfee, and I’m already looking forward to 2008. A couple weeks ago during our internal holiday celebrations I told our employees that if you gathered 1000 CEOs of technology companies in a room, you’d have a hard time finding one as proud as I am about the company I am privileged to lead. I’ve spent 22 years in technology and have never been at a place with such an inherently noble cause. We are 100 percent dedicated to protecting people around the world from the bad guys—and that is awesome. Every day I get to work with brilliant, motivated people who are truly passionate about their jobs, which is why McAfee is such a rare and special place to work.

As we say goodbye to 2007, I wanted to share with you just a few highlights of how McAfee has made a difference over the past year:

We made it safer to surf the Internet—especially for children. A specific example of this is our partnership with Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who used our software to identify, track down and put 95 child predators in jail. A couple months ago I had the honor of presenting Mr. Abbott with the inaugural McAfee Cyber Crime Fighter Award, and as the father of three daughters, that moment was one of the most fulfilling of my career.

We protected more than 100 million customers around the world from viruses, malware, Trojans and all sorts of bad things that bad guys use to steal valuable information from individuals and organizations—from Social Security numbers to home addresses to online banking passwords. The bad guys are smart, but we are smarter.

After years of intensive research and development we launched ePolicy Orchestrator 4.0, which allows enterprises to centrally manage not only McAfee products but our competitors’ products, all in one place. The platform is essentially a “manager of managers” for network, systems, data and compliance security optimization and allows you to understand what is happening across your entire security ecosystem at a glance. No one in the industry comes close to offering anything like it—not by a mile.

We introduced our consumer 2008 security suites, featuring the industry’s first “Triple Play” of PC, Web and mobile protection. The latest suite is easier to use than ever, runs faster and lighter, and is always current with continuous, automatic updating. We also acquired SafeBoot, whose innovative encryption technology protects data on mobile devices, and ScanAlert, the world’s leading provider of ecommerce security services.

We pushed—and will keep pushing—for Congress to toughen laws on cyber crime, and we are being recognized more and more for our commitment to leading the global fight against this malicious industry. We are a founding partner of the National Cyber Security Alliance, and in 2008 we pledge to do more to educate our politicians about this extremely important issue. The Cyber Security Enablement Act is on the Senate floor right now, and we need to get this important legislation passed.

We helped our communities. Our generous employees around the world donated their time and money to important causes such as Project HELP in Silicon Valley, Cystic Fibrosis in Plano, CRY India in Bangalore, the COPE Foundation in Cork, Ireland, and the Prince’s Trust in the U.K. Many have also come to me and asked about or offered suggestions for McAfee’s environmental or “green” initiatives. We’re looking forward to getting all of our employees involved as we roll out McAfee’s Green Strategy in January and beyond to help make sure our children and grandchildren inherit from us an environment of clean water and healthy air.

Happy holidays, and here’s to a safe 2008.

Cheers,
Dave

Working with Flex, AIR, and SQL

Search Engine Technology Defeated by Underscore?

I just finished reading Gerry McGovern's excellent book, Killer Web Content.

In it he recommends using hyphens rather than underscores to break up words in URLs for SEO purposes. This is because search engines don't recognize underscores as spaces and so run all the words together into an unintelligible jumble.

It struck me that given how technologically advanced search engines are supposed to be these days, surely they have the ability to recognize an underscore as a space as easily as a hyphen?

Or have they just not got round to overcoming this particular obstacle?

The 500-Mile Email

There's a neat story that's been around the 'net about a North Carolina University System Administrator who faced a problem where emails from a particular system would only work if the recipient was less than about 500 miles away (see The Case of the 500-mile Email).  There is a good set of comments that follows that describes other considerations that could have been incorporated into the story.  These comments reflect a good understanding of how TCP works and how that impacts applications, which is the point of today's blog entry.

My experience in designing and running big networks has taught me that there are a relatively small set of common problems that affect networks.  Like the 80/20 rule, they account for 80 percent of network problems.  The small set may depend somewhat on the type of network design you have chosen.  So a switched network will have a different set of problems than a design that pushes L3 to the wiring closet.  Even still, there will be a sub-set of problems that will occasionally come up, like the one about an OS 'upgrade' in the story above.   If you have a good understanding of how networking operates, you can use that understanding to troubleshoot many problems.  In the story above, a network engineer who can do a packet capture would see that the connection is taken down using the standard TCP connection close mechanism.  This means that the mail servers are taking down the connection and that it isn't a network problem.  A less intelligent system administrator than Trey Harris (see FAQ with Answers about the 500-mile email) may have said 'The network is broken.'

I've seen similar problems in the past and have included them in network engineer interview questions.  One example that tests a candidate's understanding of TCP and the ability to work through a problem goes like this:

You have two ground stations that communicate over a 10Mbps link via a geo-stationary satellite, stationed about 24,000 miles above the earth.  A file copy operation needs to occur daily over this link, copying a 1GB file.  Your boss says that it will take about 1000 seconds (16 minutes, if you allow for some overhead).  The systems running TCP are using a standard implementation.  Do you agree with your boss?  Explain your analysis.

These are the sorts of problems that I find interesting and is why our products use built-in rules to look for them.  As a network engineer, I rarely have time to look around for problems - there's typically a backlog of problems waiting to be solved.  It would be great to be able to identify many of these problems and fix them before they get added to my list of tasks.  The end result is a much more smoothly and efficiently running network, which means that the business operations that rely on the network are also more efficient and is how networks become a strategic part of the business.  Networking departments who realize this are able to move themselves from being 'information plumbers' to sitting at the executive strategy meetings.

  -Terry
 

Speaking At Books & Co In Dayton

End of Year RIAForge Stats

How to Access Non-Drupal Folders on Your Drupal Website

WordPress 2.3.2

WordPress 2.3.2 is an urgent security release that fixes a bug that can be used to expose your draft posts. 2.3.2 also suppresses some error messages that can give away information about your database table structure and limits and stops some information leaks in the XML-RPC and APP implementations. Get 2.3.2 now to protect your blog from these disclosures.

As a little bonus, 2.3.2 allows you to define a custom DB error page. Place your custom template at wp-content/db-error.php. If WP has a problem connecting to your database, this page will displayed rather than the default error message.

For more detail on what’s new in 2.3.2, view the list of fixed bugs and see the changes between 2.3.1 and 2.3.2.

Special thanks to Alex Concha for his help on this release.

Stay Warm, WordPress Hoodie

A least for those of your in the Northern hemisphere, it’s been a little chilly recently. If you’re like me you’re thinking, “WordPress keeps my servers running hot, couldn’t it warm me too?”

Yes, it can.

You can now buy hip WordPress hoodies in our store so when you’re not blogging you can loiter around the neighborhood like the people in the picture above. As before, we ship locally and internationally.

If you find you’re still in the Open Source Hoodie mood afterward, you can check out this cool Firefox one from our friends at Mozilla.

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“Keep Everything Clear of the Doors”

As we wind up 2007, I thought I'd share with you an emailed security communiqué sent last week by Ed Gibson, Chief Security Advisor at our Microsoft UK office in Reading, providing a gentle reminder to take the necessary precautionary measures to ensure you're safe when using the Web.  As Ed mentions, if you're running Windows Vista, you already have numerous tools at your disposal to help keep your PC and data safe when you're online.  Nevertheless, it's always a good idea to ensure those apps and tools are up-to-date, and now is as good a time as any.  So until 2008 ... 

"Keep Everything Clear of the Doors"

You've seen it, read it, heard it so many times you've blocked it out...routine, mundane...but instinctively you take the necessary precautions.  And the idiots who think they can beat the doors for gosh sakes...some make it, most don't...when will they learn.  Even though, I suspect the next time you hear this spoken over the intercom in the Underground, or read the warning label on the inside of the carriage you'll take just that extra second to really make sure everything is clear of the doors.  "Why?", you ask.  "Because you've just read this!"  No different than the many times you've looked at your watch, and then someone else asks you what time it is; you can't remember, so you look again.

Unremarkably, the same applies when it comes to being more safe online.  This past year you bought a brand-new state-of-the art, 2g of RAM, 600g hard drive PC that will hold more stuff than you or I could ever fill up in a lifetime.  It's loaded with free anti-spam, anti-virus software and everything is going very well, so well in fact that you don't update your software (Windows Vista has 'updates' turned on by default, so unless you mess with it, you're okay), run a periodic anti-malware scan, and the wireless is working fine so no need to check that.  You've read about the [UK] Government's GetSafeOnline.org campaign that e-Bay, Microsoft, HSBC, Home office, SOCA, and others participate in, you've seen the constant news articles about loss or theft of data from the largest of companies and government agencies (and if you're a victim of HMRC 'datagate', you have every right to be angry) but hey, you've not been affected...why do anything.  Victims of online crime...not me, happens only to those people who go to the 'wrong sites'...who tried to make it thru the doors for gosh sakes, they should have known better.

Not so fast Mr ItAin'tGonnaHappenToMe.  That 'other person' is going to be you if you don't take a few moments to make sure your operating system and software are up to date, that your firewall is turned on (both are already done for you if you are operating Windows Vista) your anti-spam and anti-virus software are installed and updated (don't forget to renew your subscription to the anti-malware software if it is about to expire).

Organized criminals are 'green', 'socially conscious agnostics', they want what is best for you - NOT!!  Just like machines, THEY DON'T CARE who you are, where you grew up, what kind of accent you have, whether you're beautiful (or like me, a face made for radio); they operate without regard to your sex or religious affiliations - I call them "THE EQUALIZERS".  They want what is yours - from your bank account, your identity, or even a bit of your bandwidth - oh yes, they can quite happily use your computer while you do and you may not ever know.

As we approach the Holidays, don't let the Grinch of Christmas Past ruin your holidays online.  Possibly, 'just because you read this', you will take a moment and run the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool, will visit GetSafeOnline.org, or possibly even give the most important cyber gift of all - a trip to the wild side, WindowsMarketplace.com (click on Security Downloads) for free anti-malware.  It will take you a few minutes; but a few minutes now might just save you months of hassle down the road.

Do you really want to be calling your credit card companies, bank, credit agency, DVLA, DWP, on New Year's Eve.  Or worse, worry whether someone will be showing up at your doorstep because you couldn't be bothered to spend a measly 10 minutes with your kids to talk to them about social networking sites (oh yea, they just told their friends on their Facebook site when you were going to be away)...and you didn't tell them how to prevent outsiders from accessing their pages.  Nor did you tell them in no uncertain terms that even when they close their site everything they put on the Internet IS THERE FOREVER.  Oh yes, some make it thru the doors, most don't...when will THEY learn.

I wish you a very happy holiday season - and a safe online journey.

Edward P Gibson
Chief Security Advisor
Microsoft Ltd-UK

A Stormy New Year

From: ccs@gotapco.com Sent: Friday, December 28, 2007 8:58 AM To: Larry Seltzer Subject: Happy 2008! Wishes for the New 2008 Year http://newyearwithlove.com/

Gmail Hack Leads to Domain Theft

BlogStorm

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GNS3 - How to use Putty for console access.

Hard Disk Enclosure Buying Guide

With so many information and entertainment now available online, it’s quite hard to delete those information in our hard drives once we reach their maximum capacity. We used to be content with 20GB of hard disk capacity and we even used to brag that we have a 40GB hard disk capacity. But now, 40GB is almost nothing if you’re a movie, music or TV buff. Although you can burn all your favorite shows on your CDs, it’s still better to have them all in your computer.

If you’re still clinging to your 20GB laptop or have just bought that cool ASUS EEE PC with less than 10GB hard disk capacity, you might want to purchase a hard disk enclosure and a hard disk drive to upgrade the storage capacity.

Hard disk enclosures are small boxes big enough for one hard disk. Sitting outside the computer or a laptop, it has the capacity to read the hard disk in your computer. Connecting this gadget to the computer or laptop is really easy since it uses USB 2.0. Depending on your budget there are different types of enclosures to choose from. The only common thing about these gadgets is that it connects to computers via USB and it can store files.

The basic form of enclosures allows you to store files only. That’s the most bareback of all products. Although some may come in fancy design, it’s just another storage device. But there are those models that upgrade a hard disk to the next level. Instead of reading the contents of the hard disk, the enclosure comes with complete connectors to your television. The result is, you have a media player that reads hard disks. Last but not the least is your ultimate mobile hard disk players. This type of enclosure comes with a screen that lets you watch movies and even listen to music. Some sell this as a photobank, but it is much, much more.

Before you can go out and buy an enclosure online or in your local computer store, always remember these tips:

1. Check the capacity of the enclosure. Unfortunately, a hard disk enclosure will always have a limit. Don’t just buy something online if they do not indicate its capacity. Usually their capacity could be from 80GB up to 600GB or even more. The higher the price, the bigger its capacity.
2. Format your hard disk – visit a computer technician so that he/she could format your hard disk as a storage device. If they are not properly formatted, computer will have trouble reading or transferring the information to your hard disk.
3. If possible, purchase an enclosure with a built-in hard disk – although this is rare, it certainly beats the trouble of inserting the hard disk inside your enclosure. You don’t even have to worry about format since usually they are already formatted to be read.

Related Business Directory Categories:

• Computer Hardware
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Presenting In The Flex AIR Pre-Release Tour

Is Unified Threat Management Possible?

In the article “Security Vendors Revamp Desktop Suites,” Andrew Conry-Murray presents a very interesting challenge. He states that the “ideal goal” of a unified threat management framework is “impossible.”

I would like to present an alternative view to Mr. Conry-Murray’s as presented in his article. I propose that helping clients proceed along a defined Capabilities Maturity Model, such as the SSE-CMM is not only a noble cause, but a desirable one. Each cycle towards maturity brings along not only improved security, but better data protection and operational efficiency. Such is the case with integration between individual products to yield a working solution.

As the security market has matured, we have seen a call for integrated suites, which is reflected in how the major analysts are now grading us. It is no longer merely an AV Magic Quadrant, or Wave, but rather an Endpoint Security or Desktop Suite that is being assessed as an integrated solution. The truth is that, properly configured and managed, the sum is greater than the individual parts that compose a suite. It is not mere bundling anymore. It is integration at the code level, with months of engineering cycles to achieve it, not just marketing hype.

When critical pain points are identified, the build vs. buy decision that McAfee makes mirrors that of our customers. The identification of data loss prevention and mobile security fueled the acquisitions of Onigma in October 2006 and SafeBoot in October of 2007. These acquisitions will create a new business unit that will focus efforts on meeting customer needs on this under-served market. Through actions and proper organization, we are working hard to protect what you value.

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Write Better: Online Readability Testing Tools Compared

There are a number of readability testing tools available on the web.

I was recently looking for a good online readability tool to use and as I was reviewing them I thought it would be helpful to write up my research. I found 12 tools worth checking out. My comparison of them is below.

I was especially interested to see how their results compared when analyzing the same text. I used the Gettysburg Address for my sample text (see "Conclusions" for some take aways).

I didn't comment on the UI of the tools as they were all easy to use and reasonably well presented. I haven't gone into detail on each of the readability tests either — it's all available on Wikipedia.

1. Edit Central

Summary

• Readability ratings calculated using 6 formulas.
• Color-coded scale makes interpreting readability scores easy to understand.
• Highlights complex words of 3+ syllables.
• Detailed content statistics, including average characters per word, syllables per word and words per sentence.
• Easy to use interface.
• Updates in real time without needing to resubmit (makes editing easy).
• Cannot check a URL — only pasted text.
• Provides demo texts for testing.

Sample Text Analysis

Readability:

• Automated readability index: 12.2
• Coleman-Liau index: 8.4
• Flesch reading ease: 69.1
• Flesch-Kincaid grade level: 10.3
• Gunning fog index: 13.4
• SMOG index: 10.3

Content Statistics:

• 268 words
• 18 complex words
• 350 syllables
• 10 sentences
• 1.31 syllables per word

2. Tests Document Readability And Improve It

Summary

• Check URL as well as pasted text.
• Provides a list of sentences which it suggests rewriting to improve readability.
• Results are clearly presented.

Sample Text Analysis

Readability:

• ARI (Automated Readability Index): 12.22
• Coleman Liau index: 8.40
• Flesch Reading Ease: 60.94
• Flesh-Kincaid Grade: 11.42
• Gunning Fog index: 13.41
• SMOG: 11.66

Content Statistics:

• Words: 268
• Sentences: 10
• Syllables per word: 1.4
• Words per sentence: 26.8

3. Juicy Studio Readability Test

Summary

• Test a URL for readability but not pasted text.
• Provides 3 readability formulas.
• Shows number of words with 3 and 4+ syllables ('difficult' and 'really difficult' words).
• Good place to start to learn about the different readability formulas.

Sample Text Analysis

Readability:

• Flesch Reading Ease: 59.99
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade: 11.55
• Gunning Fog Index: 14.45

Content Statistics:

• Sentences: 10
• Words: 268
• Words with 1 Syllable: 192
• Words with 2 Syllables: 51
• Words with 3 Syllables: 15
• Words with 4 or more Syllables: 10
• Syllables per Word: 1.41

4. Check Text Readability

Summary

• Cannot check a URL.
• Very limited statistics.
• 3 readability formulas.

Sample Text Analysis

Readability:

• Flesch Reading Ease: 46
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade: 13
• Gunning-Fog Index: 20

Content Statistics:

• Syllables per word: 1.59
• Words per sentence: 26.3

5. Readability Index Calculator

Summary

• Provides readability formulas for multiple languages.
• Only one readability formula for English text.
• No text statistics.

Sample Text Analysis

Readability:

• Flesch Reading Ease: 45
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade: 14

6. Readability.info

Summary

• Provides 7 readability formulas.
• Can check Microsoft Word documents and URLs.
• Unable to get document upload feature to work.
• Cannot check pasted text.
• Includes paragraph data in analysis.
• Shows ratio of long to short sentences.

Sample Text Analysis

Readability:

• ARI (Automated Readability Index): 11.0
• Coleman-Liau Index: 8.0
• Flesch Reading Ease: 73.3
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade: 9.7
• Gunning Fog Index: 12.8
• Lix: 37.6 (school year 5)
• SMOG-Grading: 9.5

Content Statistics:

• Words: 267
• Syllables per word: 1.26
• Sentences: 10
• Short sentences (at most 22 words): 60% (6)
• Long sentences (at least 37 words): 10% (1)
• Paragraphs: 5
• Sentences per paragraph: 2.0
• Passive sentences: 50% (5)
• Longest sentence: 86 words

7. Text Content Analysis Tool

Summary

• Provides very detailed text statistics, including 'hard' words (3+ syllables) and a word frequency cloud,
• Cannot check a URL.
• Free membership provides access to more advanced text analysis, including breakdown of words by length and graded analysis which highlights difficult words.

Sample Text Analysis

Readability:

• Coleman-Liau Index: 9.52
• Gunning Fog Index: 12.81
• Lexical Density: 52.24

Content Statistics:

• Words: 268
• Different Words: 140
• Sentences: 10
• Words per Sentence: 26.80
• Syllables per Word: 1.34
• Hard Words: 19

8. SMOG Readability Calculator

Summary

• Only provides one readability formula.
• Cannot check a URL.
• Resizes your browser window on pressing submit which is incredibly annoying.

Sample Text Analysis

Readability:

• SMOG Grade: 10.75

Content Statistics:

• Words: 268
• Sentences: 10
• Syllables per Word: 1.38
• Syllables per Sentence: 37
• Letters per Sentence: 115.2

9. Readability Analysis Tool

Summary

• Cannot check a URL.
• Provides 7 readability formulas.
• Provides very helpful interpretation of readability results.
• Calculates number of 'difficult' words (3+ syllables).

Sample Text Analysis

Readability:

• Automated Readability Index: 13
• Coleman-Liau: 10
• Flesch Reading Ease: 53.2
• Flesch-Kincaid grade level: 12
• Gunning Fog Index: 17
• Linsear Write: 5
• SMOG-Grading: 13

Content Statistics:

• Words: 263
• Sentences: 10
• Syllables per word: 1.5
• Difficult words: 29

10. Topicalizer

Summary

• Check a URL or pasted text.
• Support for multiple languages (not tested).
• Provides a very detailed statistical analysis including longest word and sentence, most frequent words and phrases, and paragraph-related data.
• Provides 3 readability formulas.
• Includes lexical density analysis.
• Not clear how 'average readability' formula is calculated or on what scale it is based; therefore, it is not very useful.
• Lots of statistical data makes the useful information harder to see.

Sample Text Analysis

Readability:

• Automated Readability Index: 3.89
• Coleman-Liau Index: 0.63
• Gunning-Fog Index: 12.88
• Average readability: 5.8

Content Statistics:

• Words: 268
• Distinct words: 108
• Words per sentence: 24.36
• Words per paragraph: 53.6
• Paragraphs: 5
• Sentences: 11
• Sentences per paragraph: 2.2

11. TxReadability

Summary

• Check readability in English, Spanish and Japanese.
• Check a web page or pasted text.
• Provides tables to help you interpret your readability scores.
• Couldn't get readability interpretation functionality to work.
• Provides a lot of background information on readability.

Sample Text Analysis

Readability:

• Flesch Reading Ease: 50.27
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade: 16.18

Content Statistics:

• Words: 268
• Sentences: 11
• Syllables per 100 words: 1.37
• Words per sentence: 40
• 1 syllable words: 199
• 2 syllable words: 45
• 3+ syllable words: 24

12. The Blog Readability Test

Summary

• Provides a nice looking graphic showing your readability level.
• IMPORTANT: Be careful when using the HTML provided to embed the graphic as it includes an advertising link at the end. Just delete this link or save and upload the graphic to your server.
• No information about what formula is used.
• No text statistics.
• Can only check a URL and not pasted text.
• Could not get it to check any pages on my site (PHP problem?)

Sample Text Analysis

Not available.

Conclusions

I was surprised at the variation in the readability scores across the tools. For example, the Flesch reading ease score varied from 45 to 73.1 and the Flesch-Kincaid grade level from 9.7 to 16.18!

The tools couldn't even agree on whether there were 10 or 11 sentences. To be fair, one sentence is broken up by a colon, which may have caused some tools to treat it as two sentences.

I was also surprised that the number of 'difficult' or 'complex' words (3 or more syllables) varied from 18 to 29.

Based on this variability, the key to measuring the readability of your content on an ongoing basis seems to be to choose a tool that you are comfortable with and use it consistently, especially in multi-author environments. Switching between tools will cause differing results and confusion in comparing the readability of different content.

That being said, the tools provided differing levels of statistical analysis, so it might be worth using multiple tools to get a complete breakdown of your content (for example, to include paragraph-related as well as sentence-related data).

Public Service Announcement: Check You Free Annual Credit Report

The Heart of McAfee

In the midst of the holiday season and heading toward a new year, as many focus on giving back to others in need, I’d like to share a few examples of how our employees are making a difference in their local communities.

Across the United States, McAfee employees took part in our November “Virtual Food Drive.” For every dollar donated to a food bank, they can use that dollar to purchase up to $25 in equivalent food purchases (through bulk and wholesale purchasing). Through the Virtual Food Drive, our employees contributed the food donation equivalence of up to $143,750 to local food banks in North Texas, Silicon Valley, Beaverton, Oregon, Orange County, California and New York City.

In Silicon Valley, our employees took part in several community initiatives recently, including participation in the annual Family Giving Tree toy drive, an effort that delivers approximately 75,000 gifts to children in need in the Bay Area. This involved both toy donations and employee team volunteering at the Family Giving Tree warehouse. Our holiday party even included a children’s book drive, through which our employees donated several boxes overflowing with books for children in San Francisco public schools, through the San Francisco School Volunteers program.

In Texas, our employees have been busy in the local community. In November, they supplemented our Virtual Food Drive by participating in a traditional food drive to collect food donations and gift cards to benefit Samaritan Inn, Collin County’s only homeless shelter. In December, our Plano team took part in a holiday toy drive, which collected 238 toy donations to benefit WFAA’s Santa’s Helpers. The organization collects toys for children throughout the Dallas/Fort Worth counties of Dallas, Tarrant, Collin and Denton.

Several other offices in the U.S. and Canada also have given back to their local communities this season. In the Pacific Northwest, our employees in Beaverton, Oregon participated in the Family Giving Tree online toy drive to benefit the Bradley-Angle House, Portland Public Schools Head Start, Goose Hollow Family Shelter and Trillium Family Services. Our Miami, Florida employees donated boxes and bags of toys and gifts to benefit Toys for Tots of Miami. Finally, the employee team in Waterloo, Canada participated in a Holiday Food Drive to benefit the Food Bank of Waterloo Region, an organization serving the 47,000 people living below the poverty line.

We always talk about how our employees are the brains and the heart of McAfee. I’m sure you can see why.

Best wishes from McAfee for a Happy New Year!

5 Tips On Branding Your Website

Branding livestock goes back to around 2700 B.C. Even paintings in the tombs of Egyptians show hieroglyphs of people branding oxen. This branding confirmed the ownership of the livestock. You may not be branding livestock, but this certainly applies to your website. It needs to be brandable so people will connect your website with a product, service, or other type of value.

Do you know how many people call HostGator and refer to us as GatorHost? A good number of people, but its our logo that people will never forget, this is just another part of branding yourself. If you surf the internet on any given day you will see the HostGator logo at some point. I can almost guarantee you that because it has been established across the internet. There are many aspects to branding your business besides the obvious sometimes. With that in mind, the following 5 tips will help you get on the right track to branding yourself better on the internet.

1. Branding With A Domain

   Have a domain which describes the name of your business as best as possible. Shorter domains are easier to remember. People can return to your website if the name is catchy and memorable. Avoid long domain names if possible, which detracts from the professionalism of your business.

2. Create A Logo Thats Memorable

   Make or have someone create a logo for you. This is also key for branding yourself. Remember, A picture is worth a thousand words. A logo, or image on your website will help connect customers, as well as potential customers with what your website is selling or promoting. You want to brand an image in peoples minds so they think of your business first when there is a service or product they need, or that their friends need.

3. Have A User Friendly Website

   Make your navigation simple and easy to use. A lot of people don’t realize that the user friendliness of a site is a part of branding. When you go to a website that is disorderly as well as looking and feeling complicated, would you rather stay and figure it out or find another resource that is simple and user friendly? If your website is simple and easy to use to purchase something, then people will come to you first over your competitors.

4. Coin A Phrase

   A motto is another great thing to be known by. Almost every large company out there that you can think of has a motto. The HostGator motto is, “We eat up the competition”. This phrase just makes perfect sense, and connects people with the HostGator image. If you have a Logo for your website, then it might be a good idea to create a motto that is easy to remember as well.

5. Set Yourself Apart And Specialize

   Setting yourself APART from the rest really encompasses everything from the last 4 tips. Make sure to be different from your competition. Know what you want to be known for. What aspect of your company do you want people to recognize when they think of your business? If you are selling a wide variety of power tools, would you want people to recognize you as a leader in the industry of drills? That would certainly be easier as a niche than competing with larger companies which offer power tools as well.

From the last 5 tips, you can see that branding is huge! If you are starting an E-Commerce site or have one already, but are lacking the success, then this is one of those things you have to take a serious look at and ask yourself, “why would people come to my site over my competitor”. Until you think like your potential customers, you may find that your business is lacking. If you follow these tips on branding, you will be building upon something that will have a lasting effect far into the future.

Add us to:

Microsoft Releases XNA Game Studio 2

Merry Phishmas To You!

How To Shrink A Virtual PC Virtual Hard Disk

1. Power up the virtual machine.
2. Clean up the drive (empty the Recycle Bin, get rid of temporary files, and so on).
3. You may even want to defrag the drive.
4. Then, locate a file named virtual disk precompactor.iso (it should be in c:\program files\microsoft virtual pc\virtual machine additions), and capture the ISO image (right-click on the CCD icon to do this). This will start the precompactor program which zeros out unused space.
5. Then shut down the virtual machine.
6. And finally, run the Virtual Disk Wizard which should shrink the virtual disk, removing all zeroed out space.

Merry Christmas!

I’ll be speaking at Sharkfest ‘08

(cross posted from my blog)

I’m giving 2 talks on using Wireshark to expose VoIP problems at Sharkfest ‘08 (schedule). Details are sketchy, I think one of the talks is more of a hands on lab, the other is me talking. I’ve expanded on my techniques from the Linux Journal article I wrote on the topic.

Some other fascinating topics going on at the same conference, especially wireless analysis and performance monitoring. Hope to see you there.

Post from: CCNP Recertification

WebKinz - How NOT To Cater To The Young

How to Save a File with Notepad Without the TXT Extension (FAQ)

Review: Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

Vertical Scroller Magic Update

Updates VSM to fix a drag bar issue that only effects pages on which you have both a Vertical Scroller Magic and Horizontal Scroller Magic components.

Vertical Scroller Magic Update

Updates VSM to fix a drag bar issue that only effects pages on which you have both a Vertical Scroller Magic and Horizontal Scroller Magic components.

CNet: Adobe Helps Enliven Open Source

ClearType rendering forthcoming for Safari on Windows?

Dave Hyatt has recently checked in to the WebKit repository some basic support for using the ClearType text rendering system, which uses a different algorithm for subpixel anti-aliasing than the current CoreGraphics libraries do. Windows users will find that this makes text in Safari look similar to text in other web browsers and elsewhere on the system.

To experiment with this, you need to download the latest WebKit nightly build for Windows and set Safari’s ‘WebKitFontSmoothingType’ preference to a value of ‘4’. The preferences are stored in an XML property list file in the folder /Documents and Settings/username/Application Data/Apple Computer.
There are many caveats though, as this is clearly just the first step of a work-in-progress. At present the ClearType code path doesn’t support the opacity, text-shadow, -webkit-text-stroke, or -webkit-text-fill CSS properties, amongst other things. Let’s hope this development dampens down the recent heated debate on font rendering.

Out of office this week