Work.io: An Online Marketplace for Hiring Help

For small businesses looking to hire help or just outsource a few tasks, recruiting tools can often seem complicated, especially for businesses that aren't large enough to have someone who's specifically in charge of finding new talent. Work.io is a startup that aims to help connect companies with people who can help, but it does so in a new kind of way that may seem more familiar.

The site, which launched last week, positions the company looking to hire as the “buyer” and creates a sort of online shopping experience for professional talent.

Businesses can browse through the specific skill sets and experience they're looking for, whether it's legal research, lead generation, or anything in between. Companies can also specify whether they need quick help for one specific project, or potentially a larger workload.

Once companies use the Work.io template to specify their needs, the site then finds relevant matches in its database and pitches the job to potential workers. They can then respond to the posting, including information such as rate, skills, experience, and bio.

Companies can see who is responding and how many individuals they've reached with their posting in real time. They also have the opportunity to reach out and speak with anyone involved at any time throughout the process.

Anyone can create a profile on the site, but Work.io controls who has access to the actual site database based on how well their skills and expertise match up with demand from businesses. So instead of wading through classifieds or creating a post on a general recruiting site, users of Work.io have access to a sort of curated list of potential help.

For companies, this type of site could potentially simplify the whole recruiting process by turning it into a more familiar kind of user experience, like an online marketplace. But it could also be helpful for business professionals who want to market their existing skills to gain freelance or consulting work.  The constant stream of leads targeted to your experience could not only help freelance workers or very small businesses gain jobs, but it could also help create contacts in industries where you may continue to find work in the future.

However, this isn't the only site currently available that matches companies with new talent. Services like oDesk and Taskrabbit that help companies outsource certain jobs and tasks have been gaining some popularity and support in recent months.

But Work.io claims to have a more simplistic approach and fewer hoops for companies to jump through when looking to hire.

Ivana Taylor is Curious About Why People Buy

Some of us know what we want to do “when we grow up” from a young age. However, Ivana Taylor, President and Chief Marketing Officer of Third Force, took a while longer:

“I got into marketing the day I registered for classes at Penn State.  

I was there to register as a Chemical Engineering major and as I sat and waited my turn, I realized that I wasn't nearly as passionate about engineering as I needed to be.

As I flipped through page after page of the different majors I landed on Marketing right when they called my name!”

She's been immersed in marketing for the past 25 years â€" and loves it.

Curiosity Fuels Her Business

Whether she was working in a corporation doing marketing or running her popular DIYMarketers blog and community, curiosity has always been the driving force behind Taylor's marketing efforts:

“My curiosity and interest in how people buy and why people buy has never changed.  It's just grown.  I went into consulting in 1999 and when I had to convert my “jobs” into a service offer, I realized that my gift was in helping my clients become THE ONE their ideal customers choose regardless of price.”

Taylor focuses on helping small businesses with their marketing. Her clients tend to have sales of less than $1 million, and are overwhelmed with not knowing the best way to market their brands. She says she loves the commitment that small business owners have to build and create something that makes the world a better place.

“Tayloring” a Marketing Solution

Realizing that there was not one marketing strategy that suits all business types, Taylor recently launched a unique marketing style assessment that helps business owners choose their three best marketing strategies based on their unique marketing style on DIYMarketers. Once a visitor fills out the assessment, they are sent a customized report that helps them define their unique selling proposition and develop their brand to leverage the marketing strategies.

From Behind-the-Scenes to the Limelight

Taylor was heavily involved in coordinating the 2012 Small Business Influencer Awards, which she said was even better this year because voters had the opportunity to leave supporting comments and testimonials for their favorite nominees:

“My favorite part of the SMBInfluencer Awards is the focus on putting a spotlight on what I call the invisible heroes and influencers of small business.”

* * * * *

Editor's Note: This article is one of a series of interviews of key players in the Small Business Influencer Awards.

Real Estate Content Strategy: SEO And Your Blog

If content writers had cocktail parties, I imagine things would go along quite swimmingly for a half hour or so: interesting conversation would be peppered with the most random factoids that only content writers would ever know.  Then, somewhere around the bottom of everyone's first glass, I can envision some disagreements breaking out.

You see, we're not all of the same camp.

I'm imagining an argument about SEO (search engine optimization) developing.  The fact is, there are some copywriters who want to stuff their blog posts and static website pages with every keyword imaginable, over, and over, and over.  Then, there are others who will use a keyword twice, and pat themselves on the back for writing an essay worthy of Montaigne.

Surely there's a medium, wouldn't you agree?

The Perks of SEO Focus

When it comes to real estate, there are many reasons why you might want your content to be SEO heavy.  The truth is 94% of homebuyers begin their search for a new home online.  96% of first time homebuyers begin their search online.

Are you getting excited?  Or, are you freaking out because you don't have an online presence?  Hang with me here!

When that many people are looking for a home online, it's inevitable that the search engine terms they use are going to be all over the map.  “My Title Guy” says that 50% of Google searches will happen once, and are never performed again.  Wow!

So how do you combat those daunting statistics?  The SEO camp would say you stuff your content with keywords in an effort to grab onto all the Web traffic you can.

But What About Quality?

If you're like me, you might be feeling just a little bit uneasy about that approach.  Sure, you want to get traffic, but you also want to have a little style… a little flair, right?  Well, you can.  If you're new to this wonderful world of real estate content marketing, then there's one thing you've got to know about:

Landing Pages

Landing pages are the hubs that take your visitors from the busy streets of Google into the quiet, nicely decorated rooms of your house.  They're kind of like the threshold.  Your guests can see inside, but the street is also within earshot.

What am I talking about?  Let me put it this way… your landing page is where you load up on keywords.  Everything from “six bedroom house in Omaha with pool” to “Nebraska high end real estate.”  You throw everything you can out there onto your landing pages, and you spread these terms out over multiple landing pages, each with their own specific niche focuses.  It might not be pretty, but it brings your visitors to your home.

Your Real Estate Blog

Next, your landing pages have a call-to-action that brings visitors into the comfort of… your blog.  Your blog is where you can share valuable information.  This is not the SEO-heavy, keyword-centric content.  This is the meat: the juicy pieces that your visitors can savor.

If you're curious to know what a great real estate blog looks like, I'm happy to recommend you the Zillow blog.  Zillow does a great job with their blog because they're largely non-promotional.  They focus on being a valued resource, realizing that their audience will convert to customers as they consume more and more content.

Here are some great examples of Zillow's non-promotional blog posts:

These posts are completely different from one another, but they both offer valuable content (albeit, of totally different natures).  Also, check out how non-promotional they are.  Then again, notice how slyly that second post encourages the reader to link through to additional resource pages.  Perfect.

Your Real Estate Content Approach

So what will your real estate content approach be?  Do you see major issues with either side of the SEO spectrum?  Or, do you believe there's a better way to reach a happy medium?

Do you have any thoughts on what a good real estate blog should do?

SEO Photo via Shutterstock

Read Impact Equation to Help You Harness Your Social Media Message

Pssst.  Don't tell anyone, but I must be one of the few people engaged in the social media and Internet marketing space who hasn't read Chris Brogan (@ChrisBrogan) and Julien Smith's (@Julien) first New York Times best seller, Trust Agents.  It was a Reader's Choice for the Small Business Trends  2009  Business Book Awards, but I just didn't get to it at the time.

That's why I was very happy to receive a review copy of their newest book The Impact Equation: Are You Making Things Happen or Just Making Noise?

In the introduction to the book (and in several of their online interviews) Brogan and Smith say they never wanted to write a sequel to Trust Agents, but it seems like that's what their audience wanted.

So, if you're one of those people who read and loved Trust Agents or who were left with a little something missing after reading Trust Agents â€" you will want to pick up a copy of The Impact Equation.

The Impact Equation Focuses You On What Matters Most

I'd say that this is really a book about how to effectively communicate in today's world.  Now that you have several solid years of social media under your belt, what would you say is missing for you?  You might struggle with this question because you're overwhelmed by the mountains of online media channels and the myriad ways of how to use them effectively.

Brogan and Smith did this work for you and decided that what was missing was â€" IMPACT.  And to tie their concept together, they created the following equation that serves as the platform for the book:

Impact = Contrast x (Reach+Exposure+Articulation+Trust+Echo)  or
Impact = C x (R+E+A+T+E)  - If you're like me and didn't catch the cool acronym it's Impact = Create.

The authors are adamant that this book is NOT about social media â€" while being about communicating using social media.  It's a tough distinction to get across and I have to admit, I was a bit confused at first.  I think the analogy that cleared it up was this one:

“Saying that this book is about social media is like saying that Moby Dick is a book about boats.”

Ok â€" I think I get it now.

The Impact Equation is about CONTEXT and not about CONTENT.  What they are trying desperately to get across is that you should be approaching your online communications from the context of making an impact â€" a difference in the world.

The social media tools that they talk about throughout the book are really nothing more than vehicles to help you achieve your goal of making an impact instead of just noise.

How To Get The Most From The Impact Equation

As I mentioned before, I had a bit of a challenge “getting into” the book.  I started reading and felt somewhat overwhelmed by the content.  I just didn't get where they were going with this at first. That's when I turned to the table of contents and spent a little bit of time just digesting it.  I'd recommend you do the same.

You'll notice that the book is divided into four parts:

1. Goals
2. Ideas
3. Platforms
4. Network

Brogan and Smith then broke up the Impact Equation into each of those parts:

The Goals section contains the introduction of working with the Impact Equation.  This is where they introduce the concept and explain each element.

In the Ideas section, they discuss Contrast and Articulation.  In other words, Contrast and Articulation are what you have to do with your ideas.  In order to accomplish this â€" you need a clear idea; one that can be contrasted and articulated via a variety of channels.

My favorite section in the book was the one about Platforms.  In this section, they discuss Reach and Exposure.  It's my experience that people really struggle with platforms.  And if you find yourself wondering which platform will help you achieve your goals, you'll want to read this section more than once.

Finally, they get into your Network.  Inside this section, the authors get into what it takes to build on the Trust component and the Echo component of the Impact Equation.  As much as they try to avoid getting into the details of social media tasks, you will find them there and I think that these examples and their advice only add to the relevance of the book.

How To Tell If Impact Equation Should Be On Your Reading List

First of all, if you're a Chris Brogan and Julien Smith fan, you'll want to read this book.  It will give you all the things you love about them and then some.

If you are an online publisher, blogger or small business that has social media and internet marketing as a core strategy, reading The Impact Equation will help you to tighten up your message and your communication style online.

Just as an example: I visited Chris Brogan's Facebook page and my Facebook page (the personal ones) and I can definitely see the difference.  Chris' Facebook page not only features his personality and personal life, but seamlessly integrates his professional brand as well.

One task I'm taking on is to make my Facebook page posts more intentional, deliberate and purposeful as I move forward.  As you read through the book, you'll find yourself doing much of the same thing; reading, checking online, comparing and creating some new strategies for yourself.

Small business owners who are still a bit confused or overwhelmed by the entire online and social media marketing space will benefit from reading The Impact Equation.  My only advice would be to not read a few pages and throw it down in disgust because you're not getting it right away.  Give yourself time and space to process the information.  Put it down for a day or two and pick it up again.  I promise you will see the content differently.

Overall, The Impact Equation is slated to be one of those books you have to read if you're in the social media space.  Ignore it, and you'll likely feel left out the next time you're chatting Internet trends and social media.

LinkedIn Releases One-Click Endorsements for Professional Skills

Have you suddenly been receiving a lot of endorsements?  There's an explanation for that.

LinkedIn recently launched a new feature called Endorsements. The feature allows LinkedIn users to endorse their connections on a specific skill or area of expertise with one click, instead of needing to write a whole review.

And visitors are prompted to leave endorsements as soon as they go to the LinkedIn site.  Here's what the new feature looks like:

The result?  It's now super simple and fast to endorse your connections.  And it is now more likely that YOU will receive endorsements.

How the new LinkedIn Endorsements works

When you visit the LinkedIn profile of one of your connections, you will see a big blue box prepopulated with a list of their skills (examples: entrepreneurship, or online marketing).  You just click to endorse one or more of them.  It's also just one click to remove any skills you don't wish to endorse (click the little x next to the listed skill to remove it from the endorsement box).

If you know of other skills the person has that aren't listed, you can type them in manually. Then that person can accept those suggestions and add them to his or her profile page.

LinkedIn already has a Like feature that lets users give a one-click thumbs-up to posts in groups or status updates. But the Endorse feature is meant specifically for skills.  Unlike status updates or posts, it stays on your main page instead of being pushed out over time as you add more status updates.

When you receive an endorsement, you'll be sent an email as well as a notification on LinkedIn. All of the people who have endorsed you will be visible at the bottom of your profile page.  Their thumbnail picture appears next to the skill they endorsed you for.

The pros and cons of LinkedIn Endorsements

This move creates even more opportunities for LinkedIn users to connect with one another and add credibility to their profiles.

• Validation of your skills - An endorsement from another user you've worked with in the past can help validate the skills you've listed for yourself.  It shows potential employers, partners, or clients that others recognize you're good at core skills.
• Data for employers to screen during recruiting - Likewise, if you are a small business owner or manager who is recruiting potential employees or partners, it gives you another data point.  If one person has 5 endorsements for a skill or capability you consider crucial, versus another person who doesn't, you may decide to reach out to the one with the endorsements.  It's just one more data point signifying that the person actually has the necessary skills and expertise he or she has listed.
• Forge stronger bonds - Endorsements can forge stronger bonds with connections who endorse you.  After all, it's a nice shot in the arm to receive an endorsement, and know that your connections recognize and appreciate your skills.  You probably will get a warm feeling whenever you think of someone who cared enough to endorse you.  And after you receive an endorsement you will be asked if you want to reciprocate - again, another opportunity to forge a bond with that person.

The downsides?  The biggest downside is that the new Endorsements feature doesn't lend itself to much depth.  But consider the new LinkedIn skills endorsements as a starting point, rather than a replacement, for employment screening  or a full recommendation.

For now, LinkedIn Endorsements as a feature is just available in English across the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and India. Endorsements are expected to roll out to all users and all languages over the next few weeks.

Check Out This List! Small Business and Entrepreneur Contests

We are back again with our bi-weekly listing of small business and entrepreneur contests and awards.  Check it out!

Dell $100M Innovators Credit Fund
Ongoing

Dell has launched a $100 million Innovators Credit Fund, with the purpose of helping entrepreneurs “maximize potential for innovation, speed to market and job creation.” The credit fund will offer both funding and technology resources with IT support, depending on what each start-up needs.

To be eligible, you must have already received some angel funding or venture capital before you can apply. Start-ups can get up to 10% of its current funding or up to $150,000 with limited credit terms. See website for details and application.

The Big Reboot
Multiple Contests & Entry Dates

Toshiba, Intel and Staples have teamed up to help small businesses share their stories and win thousands of dollars in new technology. Throughout 2012, they will award $10,000 technology makeovers to American businesses and free Intel-powered Ultrabooks to the people who support them.

Categories include Powering Knowledge, Powering Innovation, Powering Service, Powering Products, and Powering Good. See website for details and entry guidelines.

Best Places to Work in Connecticut
Enter by October 5, 2012

To be eligible for consideration, companies must meet the following criteria:
Be a for-profit or not-for-profit business or government entity
Be a publicly or privately held business
Have a facility in the state of Connecticut
Have a minimum of 15 employees working in the state of Connecticut*
Must be in business a minimum of 1 year

MillerCoors Urban Entrepreneurs Series
Enter by October 26, 2012

The 2012-2013 MillerCoors Urban Entrepreneurs Series (MUES) business plan competition is now open and accepting entries.

Since 1999, MillerCoors has invested more than $1.7 million in the dreams of entrepreneurs. This year brings new opportunities for entrepreneurs like you. Enter your business plan for a chance to vie for a $50,000 business grant and potentially become a MillerCoors supplier.

 

StartupNation Home-Based 100 Competition
Enter by October 31, 2012

The fifth annual StartupNation Home-Based 100 Competition is now open and accepting entries. The Competition is a ranking of outstanding home businesses and the amazing people behind them. With more than 18 million home-based businesses in the United States, StartupNation's competition is aimed at celebrating the most successful businesses in this important segment of the market. Entries are accepted until the end of October. The 100 winners will be published in mid-December 2012. Winners can receive priceless exposure in the media and be positioned to take their business to the next level.

The Small Business Challenge
Enter by October 31, 2012

The Small Business Challenge is a way for companies to compete for up to $50,000 in cash & prizes, while creating new jobs in the USA. Starting September 1st, you can register, nominate or vote for your favorite small business & help create new jobs in America.

Eligible Small Businesses can compete for $25k prize value (1st Place), $15k prize value (2nd Place), and $10k prize value (3rd Place) to help create new jobs in America.

FedEx Small Business Grant Contest
Enter by November 24, 2012

Grow your business with a small business grant of up to $25,000.
Entering is simple. Click the contest registration button below and submit your business story and photo by November 17. Once your application is approved, you can vote for yourself once a day â€" and get all your friends, customers, and associates to vote as well â€" through November 24.
Winners will be chosen from the top 100 companies in the contest based on how compelling your story is and how many votes you can get for your business. So tell us your story today, and you could walk away with up to $25,000 to invest in your business.

Infusionsoft Battle of the Apps
Enter by December 31, 2012

Do you have a great idea for an Infusionsoft App, integration or plug-in that will enhance the Infusionsoft user experience? Then you have a shot at being crowned the Kick Apps Champion in the Battle of the Apps 2013. First prize is $10,000. See website for details.

Shopify Build-A-Business Competition
Enter by December 31, 2012

Shopify has teamed up with four world-class entrepreneurs to
help you build a million-dollar business in just months. Come up with a product to sell, open your online store and pick a mentor. The Shopify community and your mentor will give you great advice and guidance along the way. At the end of the competition, the four stores that sell the most over a two month period will each win a $50,000 investment from their mentor.

The list of awards and competitions is brought to you by Small Business Trends and Smallbiztechnology.com.

To find more small business events, contests and awards, visit our Small Business Events Calendar.
If you are putting on a small business contest, award or competition, and want to get the word out to the community, please submit it through our Small Business Event and Contests Form (it's free).

Please note: The descriptions provided here are for convenience only and are NOT the official rules. ALWAYS read official rules carefully at the site holding the competition, contest or award.

Bank on app alert

Don't upgrade your iPhone software, Kiwibank customers told>

Kiwibank was forced to text its customers asking them not to upgrade to the newest iPhone software - because its app couldn't handle it.

And it wasn't the only Kiwi company that stumbled at the hurdle when the new software was released last week; accounting software firm Xero had the same trouble.

Kiwibank spokesman Bruce Thompson said the problem affected businesses worldwide.

"A late change in Apple's rollout of its new operating system iOS6 on Wednesday night changed the way Safari caches web services - and it had a global effect," Thompson said.

"It meant that customers who had upgraded their Apple device to iOS6 had customer experience issues with cached balances and some authentication problems."

He said there was no financial risk to customers.

"Once we noticed the issue, we got in touch with all affected customers and gave them a workaround, and put in a full fix on Friday. We also got in contact with customers using Facebook and Twitter over those couple of days. There are no further issues with our app on iOS6."

Xero spokesman Matt Vickers wrote on the company's blog: "Unfortunately, iOS 6 appears to have caused some problems with the most recent version of Xero Touch, which is affecting access via the iOS app and via the browser.

"We'll be submitting an upgrade to fix the problem as soon as we can and it will be available as soon as Apple approves it." An update was done that did not require a release to the App Store, but customers were told to reinstall the Xero Touch app if they were still having trouble.

Apple referred queries to the companies themselves.

FWeb developer Iain Spanhake, who was not responsible for the Kiwibank or Xero apps, said it was likely an error by the software giant.

"By the looks of it, it is Apple's fault as the bug is 'embedded' within the new version of their Safari web browser, so it is an error that Apple needs to sort quickly ... An update should be posted in the App Store shortly so when people update, the problem should be fixed."

He said most apps tried to send and receive multiple data "packets" at once, but the bug allowed only one at a time, causing delays.

"A lot of people have been complaining of seeing a little spinning icon on their screens - that's the web app trying to talk to the server, but only sending and receiving one data packet at a time."

By Susan Edmunds | Email Susan

Internet scan finds thousands of device flaws, system weaknesses

LOUISVILLE, Ky. --- A scan of the Internet over 20 days has yielded terabytes of data and also some alarming weaknesses including misconfigured routers, vulnerability riddled databases and more than 1,000 exposed passwords.

The Internet has gone from this nebulous scary thing that's hard to map to … something that you can gain lot of interesting insight by analyzing information like this.

HD Moore, Metasploit creator, CSO, Rapid7

It's a project that HD Moore calls his hobby. The Internet-wide survey looked for open TCP ports, SNMP system descriptions, MDNS responders, UPNP endpoints and NetBIOS name queries. At the DerbyCon security conference here, Moore told a packed room of hundreds of attendees that the project has resulted in a treasure-trove of data that is continually being analyzed. Computing power has increased and costs have come down to enable mapping projects and data correlation, Moore said.

"The Internet has gone from this nebulous scary thing that's hard to map to … something that you can gain lot of interesting insight by analyzing information like this," Moore said.  "Resources have caught up with scalability of how we use computers."

Moore, the creator of the popular pen testing platform Metasploit and currently chief security officer at Boston-based vulnerability management vendor Rapid7, has been railing against misconfigured systems and remote access weaknesses.  Internet-enabled devices such as routers and video conferencing systems are often deployed at home or in enterprises with default passwords and configurations that can often be a weak point for attackers, he said.  

Moore described some of the results of the project in a blog post in June which highlighted a number of those video conferencing weaknesses. At the conference, he told attendees that any one of them can conduct similar analysis and spot weaknesses and configuration issues. For example, his analysis found more than 43 million devices exposing Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) to the Internet. SNMP is used to remotely configure devices. If exposed it can be used by an attacker to gain access to network traffic and detect other vulnerabilities on a system.

The scan also enabled Moore to conduct analysis of the number of MySQL database management systems still vulnerable to a dangerous authentication bypass vulnerability, which allows remote attackers to bypass authentication by repeatedly authenticating with the same incorrect password. The flaw, which was patched by Oracle, offers instant data loss to attackers if the issue is not addressed, Moore said. The number of systems still vulnerable to the attack is down from the more than 3 million systems that were initially impacted, but Moore said a check in August found more than 90,000 exposed.

Cisco routers were among the most exposed since most people ignore their routers until they break, Moore said. With more than 40 security advisories a year coming from the networking giant, it is difficult to keep up, he said. The analysis determined that the average router has over 60 flaws.

The scan also yielded SSH exposure on F5 BIG-IP system hardware and software. More than 13,500 BigIP appliances were identified as being configured with SSH open, Moore said.

More than 1,000 exposed passwords to database drivers, email clients, point-of-sale systems and retail B2B and eCommerce systems were also uncovered by the scan. HTTP cookie analysis identified specific cookie sessions and further analysis could yield random Web application zero-day flaws, Moore said.

The project has landed Moore on the top attacker's list at the SANS Internet Storm Center's DShield monitoring site. He's had to handle more than 1,700 abuse complaints and 1 out of every 5 ISPs have formally blocked the project from scanning their servers.

"Scanning the Internet annoys people," Moore said. "You can scan the entire Internet with one probe in about 7 hours."

The $100 Startup Informs And Inspires Lean Startups

Start up books can lead your business to success…if you pick the right one.  Selecting the right one is like getting a band to play together. Ask Steven Tyler & Joe Perry of Aerosmith or any member of Fleetwood Mac, for that matter, and you get the idea.  Great music is created when all the pieces come together, but it can be hell getting the pieces arranged.

In the business world, few books really tackle all the ins and outs of microbusiness and lean start up concepts. One that seems to get it is the new book The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make A Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau (@chrisguillebeau).

Chris is a well-travelled business evangelist who wrote a New York Times best seller The Art of Non Conformity.   I picked up a copy of his latest book. And after reading it, I felt it to be a good match for those starting a business. An entrepreneur will be hard pressed to find a better, more concise guide that offers solid tips in a concise manner.

What is $100 worth to an entrepreneur?

$100 Startup incorporates some of the bold image framework used in Rework but offers even deeper text through anecdotes and examples from accidental entrepreneurs successful at spending less than what many people spend on coffee (thus the title's inspiration).

It's this mix of depth but straightforward simplicity that sets the book in its own functional universe of business advice. The refreshing aspect for the reader is that the book offers suggestions that quickly get to the heart of why your business should exist, avoiding certain problems or poor choices as a result.

For example, many businesses have difficulty marketing their offerings because owners haven't thought about what the benefits of their service is.  So Guillebeau offers an opening lesson for business building that spells out the needs for the reader's passion to converge with what others care about â€" imagine two circles overlapping.

This may sound like a duh-big-deal moment regarding matching offerings to customer demand, but Guillebeau emphasizes the notion that not every idea needs to be super sexy to be profitable and attainable.   He also proposes the idea of skill transfer, refining the product or service so that it is specific offer:

“If you're good at one thing you're probably good at other things too. Many projects begin through a process of skills transformation in which you apply your knowledge to a related topic.”

One perspective that caught my attention was the segment The Rise of the Roaming Entrepreneur.  I still think we have instances where being in some locations make a difference, but Guillebeau makes a point about how infused many services and concepts are to the cloud and what it ultimately means to operate a business that fits one's passion as well as a customer service.

How far can $100 go beyond passion?

There is an analytic aspect that belies the presented suggestions. I personally like anything that encourages reviewing your performance in your goals, and the suggestions here are no exception.  The suggestions also become healthy thought starters to make a business go further.  Check out the comment below:

“Regardless of your growth strategy, you'll want to pay attention to the health of your business.  The best way to do this is with a two-pronged strategy:

Step 1: Select one or two metrics and be aware of them at any given time, focusing on sales, cash flow, or incoming leads

Step 2: Leave everything else for a biweekly or monthly review where you delve into the overall business more careful.”

Guillebeau then goes into mentioning a few of the standard metrics used in a business.  This serves a point behind the book â€" to get past the cliché of doing what you love into learning how to apply that love. I liked that $100 Start Up made the explanation simple but essential for the non-SQL/Google Analytics/accounting crowd, even if more is probably needed down the line.

The middle chapters get into launch mode, incorporating the latest ideas for crowdfunding and creating a killer offer. The chapter titles can sound a bit “Your-dream-awaits” in their approach, but this book is meant to bring hope that your analytic approach should yield worthwhile rewards.

If you just have an idea for a business, The $100 Startup makes for one useful here's-what-to-do-next guide.  It avoids excessive used-car-salesman tactics and bad judgment behind concepts that unfortunately litter the Internet.  Guillebeau displays class in noting how a good mix of information and inspiration can bring the right elements for success in place.

Now if he could just do the same for rock bands….

What Should You Do With A Dying Industry: Run or Reinvent

Things change. The business owner knows that better than any one.  Change can alter the impact of your company. And if it's not the kind of change that you're looking for, it can kill your bottom line.  We change everyday.

Our favorite items may not be our favorites any more. When we change our mind, we alter our spending to match our new taste. It's the same for your clients, they can change their minds and their spending habits.

Consequently, Industries Change

We've seen this before and we'll keep seeing it. In the music industry instead of:

1. walking into Tower Records (out of business now),
2. sitting at their listening station (which I used to love by the way),
3. and then buying the entire album just to get the 3 or 4 songs you really like.

We now download our favorites and leave the rest of the album in the digital store.  In the book industry, when we're not downloading reading material the way we download songs, then we:

1. conduct a quick search on Amazon or Barnes and Noble,
2. pay for the item (typically with free shipping and a fraction of the cover price),
3. and wait for our new purchase to arrive.

But that's only for the ones who still love to hold their books - like me.  Recently, I walked into a local Wolfe Camera store. Excited, I was eyeing and investigating my next purchase. Feeling loyal to the company - mainly because of the former warranty program - I was determined to buy from them.

Instead, I discovered another industry in flux. Like Tower Records and Borders Book Store, Wolfe Camera is closing their stores (and a quick online search revealed that this may be old news - but I didn't need a camera until I needed a camera).

Maybe it's the cell phone industry that created a major shift for them. I did just use my phone as the impromptu photography equipment at a recent birthday party. And if you have a good eye, you can get some pretty good shots. And pretty good is good enough for the average amateur photographer.

But What About the Client Who Wants More? 

This is where reinvention comes into play.

Every change always creates some type of niche market. The question is will that market pay for what they want? And can you meet that need in a way that gets them to open their wallets to you?

The beauty about small business is our potential agility. Of course, a sluggish mindset can slow everything down. The key to change and making the most of it relies on 3 core small business decisions:

1) Pay Attention 

In this economy, you can't open your doors, make your money and just coast. You have to watch out for the changing needs and desires of your market. Which means using what you sell and/or constantly communicating with the people who use what you sell.

Staying involved can cause you to organically discover your next move.

2) Pursue New Avenues

Yuki Noguchi in “Why Borders Failed While Barnes and Noble Survived,” highlights some differences in the two bookstore's decisions.

Borders choose to expand the physical store and outsource digital sales to Amazon. While Barnes and Noble, reports Noguchi for NPR:

“Invested in beefing up its online sales. Eventually, it also developed its own e-reader, the Nook.”

As the industry continued to change, one was able to capitalize on that change and the other became a causality.

Finding the natural upgrades to your product or service can position you to win different by setting the curve instead of chasing it.

3) Push a Team

Ideas can come and go with very little impact, the same way highly talented people can have mediocre careers. The difference between success and failure is identifying a smart idea and focusing on it.

In large part your team will draw their passion and focus for the new project from you. If you're half-hearted about the company upgrade, then don't waste your time and money. Because wishy-washy leadership will constantly undermine team effort.

As the head goes, we go.

Because everything is in constant motion I am left with 2 constant questions:

• What industry will change next?
• What kind of opportunity will that create?

I Wonder 

As we become more health conscious, how will it change the fast food industry and pockets of the prescription drug industry?  And if the price of gas continues to dance around our wallets - feeling like a game to figure out just how much it takes before we park our cars - how will the gas and/or electrical industry adjust?

Change happens, and if smart change isn't happening in your industry, how can you make relevant waves to help it along?

Fortunately, in business death isn't automatic. The death of a business has a lot to do with:

• Mindset - learning to ride the wave or just letting it swallow you up.
• Focus - putting consistent effort in the smartest direction, given your circumstances.

Things change. Or better yet, why not change some things?

Running Businessman Photo via Shutterstock

LetsLunch: A Matchmaking Site for Business Lunches

LetsLunch, a networking site that aims to help business professionals meet up for lunch, has just launched version 3.0 of its service, adding some additional features as well as expanding service to the U.K.

The service works by allowing business professionals to sign up and create a profile that outlines their industry and interests, as well as when they might be available to have lunch with other users. Then the site matches you up with other business professionals in your area who might be relevant to your interests and you can choose a specific time and place to meet.

When looking for users to lunch with, you can view short bios, a list of professional interests such as online media or entrepreneurship, and even reviews from other users who have lunched with them in the past. You can also see links to social networking sites like Twitter and LinkedIn if you wish to connect with them further.

Version 3.0 gives users the option to become “sponsored lunchers,” helping them to be seen by more users of the site and thus making the most of their networking opportunities. Other upgrades include social media integrations, group lunch features, and of course expansion into the U.K. market.

The whole idea behind LetsLunch is to “make your lunch break count.” Instead of just eating a sandwich at your desk or picking up fast food, you can actually make new contacts that might help further your business interests.

Though there are plenty of sites that allow business users to meet others and talk online, this one actually facilitates face-to-face meetings, so there can be more chances for expanding your actual network.

Many business owners and professionals may prefer a more traditional or organic form of networking, but many aspects of business are being changed by the Internet, so this type of site may not be such a huge leap.

Especially for people who may have a hard time building their business network naturally, such as those who work remotely or have recently moved to a new city.  A service such as this could prove valuable in a number of different capacities.

Videolicious Lets You Easily Create Tasty Videos On A Low-Calorie Budget

The power of video as a communication medium is nearly limitless. Being able to convey a sense of feeling or urgency via video, when accompanied by the right narration and music, is a unique skill and not easily learned. It is also as Ramon Ray, editor of Smallbiztechnology.com, has said, “a way to give people a reason to find you and stay with you”. Indeed, it is the most preferred method for an Internet audience to get the information they need.  Once you hook your audience with well-worked videos, you're going to find they will remain loyal. But you might be wondering where you should start. As an entrepreneur, what is your best entry into the video-making market?

One of the more interesting apps is Videolicious â€" and yes, it's just as much fun to play with as its name implies. The main usefulness of Videolicious isn't just in a cool-sounding name, but in your ability to create pretty decent videos very quickly. You can use it to quickly record a ‘main' story and infuse various stills or B-roll (or what's basically ‘extra' footage) over the main story, and Videolicious will, in seconds, save the video for you to export to whatever means you want to broadcast it, including social media outlets such as Facebook or HootSuite.

To get a good idea of how Videolicious tells stories, check out this HootSuite blog post that shows how easy it is to use. In fact, I downloaded it to my iPhone, figured out how to use it, and created my first video, all in about ten minutes. This includes adding music to your video (which Videolicious will allow you to do from anything currently loaded on your device) and setting the video up for export. This also includes the all-important final step of exporting it; from my phone I can do this to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or even via e-mail.

Best of all â€" at least to an extent â€" Videolicious is free. With a free account, you are limited to one minute in video length, using up to ten additional shots per video, and can store 20 videos. This is the ‘personal' account and is probably great for simple and short videos, and it might even be enough for a business that wants to do a little video marketing. There's also a ‘business' level that costs $10 per month or is $60 if paid for a full year, and lets you do up to 10-minute-long videos with added stuff like access to licensed music libraries (in other words, no copyright issues here). The ‘business plus' plan is $20 per month or $120 for a full year and allows unlimited service â€" unlimited video length, shots, storage, and other useful stuff.

Bottom line, you can easily use this product to experiment a little first and then move up if you find your video groove.

Why Small Businesses Still Need Paper In A Digital World

I recently published an article on Xerox about the increase in paper use in our supposedly ‘paperless' world.  Experts predicted that we would move towards being totally paperless, but the reality is that in the past thirty years worldwide paper consumption has gone up by 50%. Why is this?  Read the full article here to find out.

One reason is that printed communications have proven to be just as effective as ever. Also, we have so much more information at our disposal today than we ever did and that simply translates into more to print.  So how do you deal with all this paper (which isn't going away anytime soon!)?  Here are a couple of my tips from the article to help you better market your business and increase your office efficiency:

• Have at least one color device. Color has been proven to deliver a far more powerful impact than black and white. Now that the cost of color printing has been drastically reduced, the difference in price is negligible. Not only is a full-color print job more compelling, charts and graphs are also easier to render in color.
• Scan important documents. By taking advantage of your MFP's scanning capability, you can have better control of your filing system. Group all documents from the same project in one file and scan them into one file on the server. As you begin to move file cabinets out of your office, you'll free up space and make future office relocation easier.
• Pay attention to printer features. When comparing models, take a printer's pages per minute (ppm) into account. While the difference between 28 ppm and 35 ppm may seem unimportant, when printing large quantities, a few extra pages a minute add up quickly. Also, be sure duplex capabilities are included, as well as wireless printing and compatibility with your other devices.

For all my tips on how to better control your paper consumption, printing costs and increase your office efficiency, check out the full article on the Xerox website.

Scott Mitchell of LoopLogic: The Importance of Story Telling in Business Video

Everyone loves a good story and not just one told in print.  Story telling in video can have a big impact on the videos overall success and also bring benefits to your business and web site as well.  Tune in as Scott Mitchell, CEO and Co-Founder of LoopLogic, joins Brent Leary to explain why story telling is important and shares his insights on tracking views, engagement, interest and how to reap SEO benefits.

* * * * *

Small Business Trends: Can you tell us a little bit about your background?

Scott Mitchell: Sure, I have been in technology for over two decades. I was once a programmer.  In fact, I am probably still 75% geek, but 25% business. My Co-Founder and I, we started this company, LoopLogic, in order to make video on the Web just a little bit easier.

Small Business Trends: Can you talk a little bit about the story telling aspect of video?

Scott Mitchell: When you think about video, using it either for your business, which is obviously the focus of your audience, or even at home, you do want to have a story arc.

It does not matter if you are creating a highly produced piece or if you are going to create something as simple as turning on your phone to do a quick 30 second interview.  You will always want to think about it as a beginning, middle and end.

The three act structure has been around for a longtime for a reason, and you want to make sure that you do that. Create a buildup to making the point and end having a good conclusion.  So that the viewer is able to walk away from it feeling informed and persuaded.

Small Business Trends: Is there a big difference in telling a story that will help a business as opposed to telling a story from a personal standpoint?

Scott Mitchell: When it comes to the structure, there might not be all that much difference â€" when it comes to the content, it is very different. With content marketing for businesses, the focus is less and less on the product in business, and more and more on human needs of people.

The hallmark of modern marketing and the hallmark of modern video and things like email marketing, has been a move away from, “Hey, here is bunch of features.” Trying to explain how to use the tools for maximum benefits in your business.

That type of content marketing, that type of storytelling to your customer in this modern age, is much more appealing.  We have tracked this with our technology.

Small Business Trends: How do you go from having a finished video to using it to drive leads and build relationships from it?

Scott Mitchell: What you want to make sure is that anywhere you are posting the video, you are able to track who is viewing it.  When are they viewing it?  For how long?  So that you can better understand how the video is working.  Is it engaging people?

The other thing that you want to do is not just place it in one place, you want to try to distribute it through multiple channels, being able to place that video on a syndicate of affiliate sites.

But again, whenever it is being posted in those sites, being able to have the analytics on those sites about viewership can be important.  So what you might find out is that, maybe the video performs extremely poorly on your blog, but low and behold, it performs extremely well on one of your affiliate sites.

Another place that we've seen more and more people using video is embedding it in their email marketing. In the past, that would typically mean if you had your email marketing message that would say you have been around us for 30 days and we want to teach you a little bit more about X,Y, or Z and here is the link to a video.

Well people click on those links at about half, or even as low as a quarter, of the time that they will click on a nice thumb nail of the video, inside of your mass email program.

Small Business Trends: You have a way to set some responses based on who views the video, and what they've seen in the video. I think that is the critical part from a business prospective.

Scott Mitchell: For some, posting video to YouTube provides a lot of SEO love back to your site. If you are looking to get some of that love back to your site, absolutely post on YouTube.  What we can actually do is, we can always put a wrapper around that YouTube video.  So you will get all of that YouTube love, but you will get all of the tracking you talked about.

Back to the tracking, let's say you send out a video through you mass email program. We can track it down to a named individual.  The reason why that matters, is you can start pushing people into different groups.

Here is a group of people that didn't even click it, fine.  Here is a group of people that watch the video, but they only watched it for a couple of seconds, they push play.  Then here is a group of people that watch 50% of it.  Okay, the people who push play and the people who watch 50%, those are very different people, in terms of a level of engagement.

I can have a very different conversation with those two groups.  That is the problem of a “view of a video.” A lot of times, like on YouTube, it shows you how many people viewed it.  But you don't really know down to the named individual how much they viewed.

What we have started doing is using the analytics to actually trigger actions in your other systems. When somebody passes that 50% threshold, or let's say 75% threshold, add a tag in the CRM system saying, super interested in X.

Then they pass the 90% threshold, super, super interested in X.  Now you can use those tags in order to do future email marketing.  Or, if you are lucky enough to be using one of these automated marketing tools, you can automatically trigger the sequences.

Small Business Trends: Where can people learn more?

Scott Mitchell: Check out our site and go to LoopLogic.com.

Scott Mitchell â€" Looplogic by smallbiztrends

The Power of LinkedIn: 4 Ways to Leverage The Grand Network For Business

A recent LinkedIn release  pegs the number of professionals connected on LinkedIn at an unbelievable 175 million members worldwide, 15 million of whom are self-employed professionals. More than 75% of these professionals are spread across 10 countries around the world.  The leading countries (with regards to number of professionals) are the United States, United Kingdom, India, The Netherlands and Canada.

Small business professionals leverage LinkedIn in a myriad of creative ways. Not only do they leverage the site to make critical hires, but they also use LinkedIn Groups like “mini conferences” where they can learn more about various subjects such as advertising and public relations. We've also heard of small business professionals relying on their networks to find trusted vendors, partners and even funding for their companies.

Here are some ideas of what you can do with LinkedIn, irrespective of the size of your business:

• Boost Your Sales While Making Connections Seamlessly. LinkedIn, by itself, comes with the power of social media sharing and connections. You could grow your network just by staying active on the network. At the basic level, you can create direct connections and then referred connections through your extended network. LinkedIn's Premium accounts also offer you “InMail” with which you could reach out to anyone in the world. Marketo - a leading Revenue Performance Management Company â€" reports that InMails offer a high hit rate and perform astonishingly better than regular email. On the sales side, “Sales Navigator” â€" an outbound sales tool provided by LinkedIn to its premium members â€" pulls in accurate data, seamless integration, and real-time information about prospects (or decision makers in companies).
•  Establish Credibility for superior engagement. Members with regular updates (that offer value to others versus self-promotions) are probably the most valuable offering that LinkedIn provides for companies looking to sell, hire, or perhaps just engage. As individuals and key employees answer questions on LinkedIn Answers, participate in groups, and share valuable information, the platform runs off a knowledge centric, value-added platform working to benefit of every member's efforts.  
• Hire People and develop systems to work the recruiting systems. Did you know that at least 24% of most entry-level candidates, 8% of middle management executives, and 9% of top-level executives look for jobs on LinkedIn (thanks to an info graphic from Lab42 , reproduced by Mashable)? If the numbers are anything to go by, you have a better likelihood in finding the best, most apt talent for your organization through LinkedIn as against the usual recruitment practices? Additionally, you'll also get a deeper insight as to the type of person your potential hire is by reviewing updates, responses, and usual participation on LinkedIn. Further, LinkedIn Recruitment services program promotes your job listings to candidates who match the profile and demographics you suggest. Stacy Lyons, Corporate Recruiter at Bronto Software, reports that 7 of their last 8 hires came straight off LinkedIn.
•  Get Endorsements and Recommendations about your Brand, products, and Services. Every recommendation and endorsement that appears for your services, products, or the brand is an “earned” on. While there ways to grow your Facebook page fans and Twitter followers, LinkedIn is more of a closed network and these endorsements, shout outs, or recommendations don't come in just because you went out of your way to do the same for others. All love on LinkedIn is voluntary.

LinkedIn can be a very powerful tool, if you explore the ways to use it to your advantage. How are you using LinkedIn? Does it work for your business?

Adobe confirms targeted attack on digital certificate code signing infrastructure

Adobe has announced that it was the victim of a targeted attack that accessed an internal server and confirmed its digital certificate code signing infrastructure was hacked, but Flash, Reader, Shockwave and Air were not impacted.

According to a statement by Adobe senior engineering director Brad Arkin, Adobe became aware of the attack after it received two malicious utilities that appeared to be digitally signed using a valid Adobe code signing certificate.

Arkin confirmed that the impacted certificate runs on the Windows platform and three Adobe Air applications that run on both Windows and Macintosh, and that its revocation will not impact any other Adobe software for Macintosh or other platforms.

It has now decommissioned the existing Adobe code signing infrastructure and as of yesterday, has issued an advisory revoking all software code signed after 10th July 2012.

He said: “The first malicious utility we received is pwdump7 v7.1. This utility extracts password hashes from the Windows OS and is sometimes used as a single file that statically links the OpenSSL library libeay32.dll. The sample we received included two separate and individually signed files.

“We believe the second malicious utility, myGeeksmail.dll, is a malicious ISAPI filter. Unlike the first utility, we are not aware of any publicly available versions of this ISAPI filter.”

Arkin confirmed on Twitter that Adobe received the pwdump7 sample on 12th September leading to the investigation. He also said that the three known bad files that were signed with the impacted certificate occurred on 25th and 26th July.

He said that a forensic investigation is underway, but its internal testing indicates that moving the impacted Adobe certificate to the Windows Untrusted Certificate Store does not block threat actors from executing the malicious utilities on a victim machine and this could have a negative impact on the user experience and the execution of valid Adobe software signed with the impacted certificate. Therefore it does not recommend using the Untrusted Certificate Store in this situation.

Arkin said that the private keys associated with the Adobe code signing certificates were stored in hardware security modules (HSMs) kept in physically secure facilities, and all entities authorised to request digital signatures were provisioned according to an established procedure that verified the identity of the entity and verified that the release engineering environment met the relevant assurance criteria.

“All code signing requests were submitted via mutually authenticated Transport Layer Security (TLS) connections to the code signing service and were performed only if the requesting entity came from the originally provisioned IP address,” he said.

“Within minutes of the initial triage of the first sample, we decommissioned our signing infrastructure and began a clean-room implementation of an interim signing service for re-signing components that were signed with the impacted key after July 10th and to continue code signing for regularly scheduled releases. The interim signing solution includes an offline human verification to ensure that all files scheduled for signature are valid Adobe software. We are in the process of designing and deploying a new, permanent signing solution.”

A build server was identified as being compromised. This required access to the code signing service as part of the build process and this was not caught during the normal provisioning process. Arkin said that the compromised build server did not have rights to any public key infrastructure (PKI) functions other than the ability to make code signing requests to the code signing service.

In its ongoing forensic investigation, Arkin said that Adobe has identified malware on the build server and suspected that this was the likely mechanism used to first gain access to the build server. He also said that Adobe has forensic evidence linking the build server to the signing of the malicious utilities but could confirm that the private key required for generating valid digital signatures was not extracted from the HSM.

“We believe the threat actors established a foothold on a different Adobe machine and then leveraged standard advanced persistent threat (APT) tactics to gain access to the build server and request signatures for the malicious utilities from the code signing service via the standard protocol used for valid Adobe software,” he said.

“The build server used a dedicated account to access source code required for the build. This account had access to only one product. The build server had no access to Adobe source code for any other products and specifically did not have access to any of Adobe's ubiquitous desktop runtimes such as Flash Player, Adobe Reader, Shockwave Player or Adobe Air. There is no evidence to date that any source code was stolen.”

The next stage is a complete revocation of the impacted certificate for all code signed after 10th July 2012, this is planned for Thursday 4th October.

Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure, said that it had "thousands of clean, official Adobe files signed with the compromised certificate", but only three were deemed to be ‘bad files'.

Andrew Storms, director of security operations for nCircle, said: “Adobe acknowledges they have found two different pieces of malware using one of their code-signing certificates. One steals passwords and the second will modify ISS servers. The implications of a breach this serious are staggering. Adobe will be cleaning up this mess for a long time.”

Dell completes acquisition of Quest Software

Dell has completed the acquisition of Quest Software to add its identity and access management (IAM) and data protection software to its portfolio.

As reported by SC Magazine in July, the acquisition sees Dell offer even more security solutions its previous acquisitions of network security vendor SonicWall and managed security service provider SecureWorks last year.

The deal sees more than 100,000 customers, 5,000 channel partners, 1,500 software sales and marketing experts and 1,300 software developers added to the Dell Software Group. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

John Swainson, president of Dell Software, said: “The close of the Quest acquisition is a tremendous milestone in Dell's journey to strengthen our end-to-end IT capabilities, empowering our customers to unlock greater value in their Dell technology investments, as well as their overall IT environments.

“The addition of Quest Software into Dell's software portfolio will extend our industry-leading suite of solutions to a broader range of customers and partners, while simplifying operations, maximising workforce productivity and delivering faster results.”

Alan Fudge, SVP of worldwide sales and marketing at Quest Software, said: “Quest is a strong strategic fit with Dell's software group and our products extend their existing capabilities in systems management, security and business intelligence.

“Dell and Quest share a similar view on emerging trends, believing that customers need to be able to quickly scale and adapt in order to meet changing needs and market dynamics. Together, we will enable IT organisations to simplify operations, maximise productivity and deliver faster results - and the entire Quest team is excited about joining Dell.”

Translucent Accounting

Making things “transparent” has become popular in recent years. Transparent accounting, transparent processes, transparent government… it's one of those words that sneaks up on you and then all of a sudden â€" it's everywhere â€" modifying all sorts of other words.

Of course, it makes sense that there would be some sort of backlash somewhere.  And the idea of translucent instead of transparent accounting made me laugh. Sure, you can see it, but you have to squint and it's a little out of focus.

If I'm the guy on the right in this cartoon, I think I'd be looking for another job soon.

Setting Up A Contest Isn\'t As Easy As It Sounds. Learn How To Transform Idle Contests Into Social Melting Pots

A whole lot of social media experts will tell you that your business can benefit greatly from setting up contests. Many articles online don't tell you how to set up your contest to attract an audience, though. They only say “setting up contests is good.” Well, duh! Everyone should know this by now, but one thing they should learn, at this point, is how they can set up contests to attract participants and attract more attention.

Seth Lieberman, CEO of SnapApp, gives us 4 pieces of advice to make contests more successful, which I will condense in a nutshell:

• Set a goal for your social media contest. Your contest has to have a solid scope to achieve, such as getting more likes, followers, or even sales. Set up your contest to revolve around that goal. A contest without a goal is about as useful to you as an air conditioner in a Norwegian winter.
• Get out there and reach groups that have likely potential customers. If you've got a restaurant in Miami, for example, you can join a local group and ask them if you can advertise your contest there. It's a very professional way to get the word out about your contest. As Lieberman said, when it comes to contests, “When you build it, they will come” isn't a proper piece of advice.
• Know what to give your winning participants. It has to mean something to them. If you offer some little doohickey, they won't give you the light of day. If you're a consumer electronics dealer, you can offer something like a tablet. Some people identify with these devices.
• Watch out for Big Brother. The FTC has regulations that govern any sort of endorsement, so a person's advertisement for your company with the motivation to win a contest might come under scrutiny. To make sure that everyone knows what's going on, write some terms and conditions to the contest that clear things up.

As long as you follow these simple pieces of advice, you'll have a better experience with your contests than the thousands of businesses who start contests without achieving the results they wanted.

Sophos adds encryption module for data stored in the cloud

Sophos has added anti-virus and encryption functions to its Android security products.

These have been included in its consumer Mobile Security and in the new Sophos Mobile Encryption app, and Sophos said they allow its SafeGuard Enterprise users to securely access encrypted files stored in the cloud through the Encryption for Cloud Storage module. Users can securely view documents saved in Dropbox on their Android device.

Users enter their password and they can view encrypted documents on their mobile devices without compromising corporate security, according to Sophos. An iOS version of this app is already available via Apple's App Store, and Sophos said that it plans to support further cloud storage providers such as Egnyte and Google Drive with future releases.

Matthias Pankert, vice president of product management at Sophos, said: “Users want to stay flexible and take advantage of personal apps in their working environment. They use Dropbox to take their data with them and can be tempted to download apps from stores other than Google Play.

“As Android increases its global market share, Android devices and apps are becoming a prime target for data theft and attacks by cyber criminals. It has never been more important for individuals to have security applications on their devices.”

Starbucks Triggers Customer Service Drama

Ignore your customers when making a business decision, and they'll let you know it. Take the example of café chain Starbucks, which recently announced discontinuing free soy milk and syrups for loyal customers. Customers weren't happy and responded. Your customers are probably the same. Customer service is an important thing, and if you forget about it, even for the benefit of your bottom line, you may find other unfortunate results. Here's more on the story and what other business bloggers have to say about the importance of listening to customers.

Where Starbucks Went Wrong

They giveth and they taketh away. Free soy milk and syrups that is. These usually cost 50 cents extra, but have been offered free to customers as a reward for making at least five purchases on a registered Starbucks card or mobile app…until now. Of course, the company says they are now tweaking another part of the rewards program by offering its gold-level members, those who make at least 30 purchases over the year, a free drink or food item with every 12 purchases from the cafe chain instead of after every 15 purchases, as before. Wired

Here's the announcement from Starbucks. Customers were not impressed. One possible reason is that the cafe chain tried to spin the news into something positive, even though company representatives should have known it would be unpopular with customers. After all, the “rewards” they were adding to the program (a free drink or food item) were less popular than what they were taking away. Some customers make the choice of soy for health or other reasons, so it is more than a preference. You can see some of the customer comments below. Starbucks Blog

From your customer's point of view. Small business marketing consultant Steve Miller insists Starbucks' biggest mistake was not trying to see things from their customers' point of view. In other words, Miller says Starbucks just called up their marketers and had them create an announcement that tried to make their unpopular decision, probably made purely for business reasons, sound like something good. Had they taken a moment to see things from their customers' point of view, they would have known better. Two Hat Marketing

Small Biz Customer Service Ideas

Meeting your customers' expectations. Consistency is critical in every business. Customers must get the service they have come to expect, or they may not remain customers. This is most important when the customer relationship moves from the offline to the online world, says business owner and blogger Joanna Ellis. Creating the same great customer experience online as in your offline experiences translates into better conversion rates and more revenue. Property Management Insider

When things go bad. Customers who do become perturbed have never had more tools at their disposal to express their anger at your company or brand. One of the most popular places to do this online is Yelp. When you read a bad review of your business there, the first instinct is to strike back. Keep calm, says Rieva Lesonsky. Take some time to figure out what went wrong with this particular customer and the try to reach out and make things right. Grow Smart Biz

Awesomeness is as awesomeness does. The key to being awesome at customer service is not just shining on your good days. Customers should be able to count on the fact that even on your business's worst days, you will meet or exceed expectations. Belinda Weaver, blogger at Copywrite Matters, argues that a business owner must desire to make good customer service decisions, even when things go wrong. In fact, she says, business owners should treat these problems as opportunities to do the right thing. Copywrite Matters

Making them drool. Blogger Sharyn Sheldon says there is a way businesses can go beyond merely satisfying their customers on a regular basis, to a point where, as she so colorfully puts it, competitors will be drooling with envy. That's because Sheldon thinks she has the answer for the kind of customer service every business owner dreams of, one where you not only meet customer expectations, but gather input to improve from their suggestions. Byte-Size Learning

Adobe to revoke certificate following fraudulent use

Adobe is revoking a code signing certificate after it determined it was used by cybercriminals to fraudulently validate two malicious applications running on Windows.

Our investigation to date has shown no evidence that any other sensitive information-including Adobe source code or customer, financial or employee data-was compromised.

Brad Arkin, senior director of security for Adobe products and services

Code signing certificates are used to ensure the validity of software.  A fraudulent certificate enables an attacker to spoof the validity of an application enabling it to evade antivirus and other security software.

Adobe said the utilities â€"Pwdump, which extracts password hashes from Windows and myGeeksmail, a malicious ISAPI filter that can be used to move in a network-came from a single source. Investigators traced the utilities to a compromised build server with access to the Adobe code signing infrastructure. 

"Sophisticated threat actors use malicious utilities like the signed samples during highly targeted attacks for privilege escalation and lateral movement within an environment following an initial machine compromise," wrote Brad Arkin, senior director of security for Adobe products and services in a blog post.  "As a result, we believe the vast majority of users are not at risk."

Adobe plans to revoke the impacted certificate on Oct. 4 for all software code signed after July 10. 

Arkin said forensics investigators believe the certificate was not used to sign widespread malware and was limited to the two malicious utilities.

"Our investigation to date has shown no evidence that any other sensitive information-including Adobe source code or customer, financial or employee data-was compromised," wrote Arkin.

The revocation of the certificate affects the Windows platform as well as Adobe Muse, Adobe Story AIR applications and Acrobat.com desktop service on Mac operating systems. Consumers will receive automated updates, but IT admins managing Adobe products on the Windows platform will need to install product updates, Adobe said.

Arkin said users should not notice any disturbances in Adobe products while the certificate is revoked.  Security teams for organizations operating Adobe products must download and deploy the updates themselves. IT security teams can assess their risk at the Adobe support page.

Andrew Storms, director of security operations at San Francisco-based vulnerability management vendor nCircle, said the list of applications affected by the certificate revocation update is lengthy. 

"There are a slew of desktop products that all need to be updated," Storms said. "This is a code signing certificate that would be used heavily and an IT admin will have to figure out how to test and deploy the update for everybody."

Affected products include ColdFusion, Flash Media Server and Adobe Application Manager, among others. According to the security bulletin, Adobe is working with VeriSign to revoke the certificate.

"Adobe takes security very seriously, and we are committed to determining how the signatures misusing the Adobe code signing certificate were created given the stringent security measures in place to protect our certificate store and our infrastructure in general," Arkin wrote.

News Director Robert Westervelt contributed to this report. 

Logoworks Reopens Under New Ownership

Less than a year after HP shut down Logoworks, its online logo design service, the site is back up and running, albeit this time under new ownership.  Growth equity firm Oldslip is the new owner, with Daniel Wolfson serving as President of the new Logoworks.

According to Wolfson, the purchase of Logoworks from HP included the technology, trademark, and domain name, though he is unable to comment on the purchase price.

Of the purchase decision, Wolfson says he was simply “in the right place at the right time.” A contact who used to work for Logoworks under HP connected Wolfson to HP, and a deal was struck.

Bringing the Team Back Together

Wolfson recognizes that Logoworks‘ design community and internal team were its competitive advantages over other design services like 99designs. That's why he's going to great lengths to bring previous Logoworks employees back:

“Logoworks had a phenomenal culture, and we're trying to put that back together.”

So far, the new iteration of the design company has just a handful of employees (many of whom previously worked for Logoworks) and a dozen or so external designers, but Wolfson plans to grow it back to its former glory, bit by bit.

What's Changed?

Wolfson recognizes how important Logoworks' small business customers are, and aims to continue to provide professional design services to this market, with a few key changes.

Wolfson says services will remain the same in terms of packages and pricing. For example, the introductory package includes four logo choices from two designers, with two revisions for $299. The company might experiment with smaller packages at lower prices down the road, says Wolfson, in an effort to “give a higher quality product that is tailored for the customer.”

He aims to improve customer service, which, according to online reviews, had room for improvement under HP's leadership, and provide faster turnaround.

Wolfson plans to nurture his design community, who he calls the “crown jewel of Logoworks.” Rather than any designer being able to sign up and offer customers logo options (like 99designs), designers are vetted and selected by Logoworks, and are more involved in customer interaction.

What About Former Logoworks Customers?

Many former Logoworks customers have asked whether their previous files are still available. Unfortunately, the files were not made accessible through the acquisition, but Wolfson says they have a special offer for previous customers looking to recreate previous files.

If you are a former Logoworks employee and are interested in rejoining the new team, please contact Logoworks at Contact@logoworks.com for more information.

Tibbr Partners With Box, Adds Features in Latest Update

Tibbr 4, the latest group collaboration offering from Tibco, was announced this week and offers some new features for business users including a partnership with Box, integration with other third party apps, and a service that measures influence within a workplace setting.

Tibbr is an enterprise social network that is mainly subject-based. It gives employees tools to organize data into categories and share with people or groups, then easily find it later if needed. It is available in both on-premise and cloud versions to fit businesses of different types and sizes.

Tibbr 4 brings an entirely new design that includes social profiles for users, timelines for specific subjects or projects, sharing widgets, company insights, and mobile compatibility. The update also includes a new social graph API, which integrates some third party apps into the user experience. This is where the partnership with Box comes in, but other apps like behavior platform Badgeville and sharing platform Wayin are also available.

And as for the new feature that give employees Klout-like influence insights, the service measures each user's activity in the context of their work and produces a score along with charts and infographics illustrating their activity. While the score may seem a little obsolete for this type of service, the insights into actual use and activity might prove helpful to some.

These changes come just after Salesforce revealed the latest version of its Chatter social networking feature, as well as a new sharing service that offers many of the same features as Dropbox and Box.

Of course Tibbr and Salesforce are just two in a long line of services aimed at providing collaboration and enterprise networking tools for businesses. But Tibbr's integration with Box and other third party tools that are already used by many businesses certainly makes it a more attractive offering.

Windows 8 \'very exciting\' - Gates

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has called the new Windows 8 operating system scheduled for release next month "a very exciting new product" and "a very big deal" for the world's largest software maker.

Gates said that he was already using Windows 8 "and I'm very pleased with it."

Windows 8 is Microsoft's biggest overhaul of Windows in more than a decade and the company's attempt to stay relevant and exciting in a world where mobile gadgets have started to overshadow personal computers.

"Hardware partners are doing great things to take advantage of the features," Gates added. "It'll be a big deal."

Microsoft Corp. will release Windows 8 on Oct. 26 along with a new version of Internet Explorer.

Gates responded to a question about Windows 8 during an AP interview about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's key role in a new global campaign to eradicate polio.

Windows 8 will replace Windows 7 on practically all personal computers sold to consumers.

It features major changes in the way consumers interact with their machines, and versions of it will also run on tablet computers and smartphones.

Although Microsoft has grown into much more than a maker of computer operating systems providing computer services to corporations and Xbox gaming machines to game enthusiasts Windows still accounts for a significant chunk of the company's annual revenue.

In 2011, Microsoft's "Windows & Windows Live" division generated 27 per cent, or $US19 billion, of the company's $69.9 billion in annual revenue.

QuickBooks Online Goes Global

Accounting software for small businesses has traditionally been focused on all things local â€" local tax laws, local taxes, local accounting standards, and more. That's why it can be difficult for many small businesses to go global or cross over borders, especially without taking the time to grow first.

However, small businesses received some good news this week when Intuit announced its new version of QuickBooks Online that is now available to businesses around the globe.

This change means that small multinational businesses or businesses operating outside the U.S. can use the software to create localized invoices, pay bills, and track expenses based on standards from wherever the business is located. Users can personalize currency and formatting according to their country's standards. The program can also help businesses process taxes, sales, and more.

This could mean big things for small businesses around the globe. Previously, features of QuickBooks and similar programs weren't available to businesses headquartered outside the U.S. or a select few other countries. The new global version eliminates many of the borders and hoops that these small businesses had to jump through in order to become multinational or operate in other countries.

The program, which has already been used by businesses in over 130 countries since its beta launch in July, is also customized for local impact. This means that not only can users customize settings like languages, but they can also input specific cultural information so that they can get the most out of the program and make it meet the specific needs of their business's home base.

The program maintains all the QuickBooks Online features that thousands of businesses already use, such as centralized forms, expense and income tracking, reporting tools, cloud usability, and more.

There are three different versions of the software available, including QuickBooks Simple Start, QuickBooks Essentials, and QuickBooks Plus. Costs start at $15 per month, and vary based on which features are needed.

Some activist DDoS attacks growing in sophistication, expert says

The majority of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against corporate and government websites can be easily filtered out by appliances and software, but one expert says a growing number of attacks are from technically savvy individuals and often trip up mitigation systems.

It's cheap and easy to launch an attack but the common person may not know how to go about it.

Jeff Lyon, CEO, Black Lotus

A wide variety of attacks that are driven by activists use relatively unsophisticated tools. They can cause an initial disruption, but business and government websites can recover fairly quickly, said Jeff Lyon, CEO of Los Angeles-based Black Lotus Communications, a DDoS mitigation firm. A growing threat are DDoS attacks driven by extortionists and technically savvy hackers, which are complicated enough to make it difficult to defend against, Lyon said.

"Those attacks tend to be extremely complex because the attackers know that the basic tools so prevalent in the wild aren't as effective because security providers can easily defend against them," Lyon told SearchSecurity.com in a recent interview.

DDoS mitigation has been gaining interest from enterprise IT teams of late. The financial industry has been especially hard hit by DDoS over the last two weeks. JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America both suffered intermittent website problems. U.S. Bank and PNC reported problems with their customer websites Wednesday. The attacks are believed to be originating from a group known as Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters, a hacktivist group that has been announcing its campaigns on the Pastebin website.

Lyon said some of the DDoS campaigns are layer 7 HTTP attacks that look like real users. Systems that use behavioral analysis and signatures often have to be manually tuned to filter out the right traffic and rule out false positives, he said.

"In order to defend against that specific type of attack you have to have a method in place to determine which traffic is robots and which traffic is humans and be able to implement a filtering rule" Lyon said. "That's where the real challenge is right now."

In this interview, Lyon talks about the transition from extortion-driven DDoS attacks in 2003 to more hacktivist-style attacks, which began in about 2007. Today, hacktivists primarily use social networking to gain enough followers and collaboratively take out websites while a determined individual can rent a botnet or create their own DDoS tool to carry out a targeted attack, Lyon said.

Give us a brief history of DDoS and tell us about Black Lotus:

Jeff Lyon: Black Lotus is a managed availability security firm. We started our company up in 1999. Back then was when the first USCERT advisories came out saying there's this new phenomenon called a DDoS [distributed denial-of-service] attack. About four years after that, attacks really started occurring against the enterprise. Back in 1999 attacks were really against criminal enterprises or against ecommerce or larger start-up companies. Around 2003 is when attacks really started impacting online casinos, poker rooms and that's when extortion became a major target of a DDoS attack. As the years went on, namely about 2007 is when the hacktivism trend began to occur. It stopped being just an extortion tool. It started being used if you didn't like someone or you wanted to tell someone to do something, you could go ahead and use a DDoS attack. Consequently 2007 is where DDoS mitigation became a really big business.

Why do you think was there was an evolution from financially motivated DDoS attacks (extortion) to politically motivated or statement-driven attacks?

Lyon: Mainly it's because anonymity is much more prevalent. If you are making a statement against a company or an organization you can use a medium like Twitter or any other type of social media to generate opinions and get people to attack a target. What has happened with Anonymous is that everyone can get together and launch a low orbit ion cannon (LOIC) type of attack. Everyone stays relatively anonymous. It's more of a collective that's making the attack. This is very difficult for law enforcement to wrap their hands around and actually prosecute individuals even though they are undertaking those initiatives. With extortion, they are able to use more traditional tools to investigate the crime because there is a money trail.  It may be difficult to figure out who launched the attack but when there is extortion involved you are able to say this is where the money went after someone made a ransom payment.

Are some hacktivist-driven DDoS attacks making it more difficult for Black Lotus and other DDoS mitigation firms?

Lyon: What we find is that the more common Anonymous type of attacks-the ones you see in the media-are actually relatively easy to defend against. These types of attacks take advantage of the collective and other people making a statement. When you see someone on Twitter announcing a target to attack, what they are doing is trying to take advantage of that company's inability to defend itself against the attack, but it's really not that complex to defend against.  

It seems like a lot of DDoS attacks use fairly unsophisticated methods, flooding websites with malicious traffic that can be easily filtered out, is that the case?

Lyon: The attacks will run the gamut with different technologies in use. The ones we hear so much about, especially the ones that are launched by relatively unsophisticated folks wanting to take part in a protest, are pretty unsophisticated attacks. In order for them to occur the organizers of these attacks have to distribute tools to their followers. Once that tool is distributed then security experts and analysts can take it apart and figure out what needs to be done to defend against that particular type of attack and build those signatures used in mitigation appliances and other security products.

The ones that are extremely difficult are actually not in the realm of hacktivism. They could be extortion attacks. They could be attacks against competitors or they could be hacktivism, but not the mass-media hacktivism we're all so familiar with. Those attacks tend to be extremely complex because the attackers know that the basic tools so prevalent in the wild aren't as effective because security providers can easily defend against them. The attacker must build a tool or use a tool that is lesser known and much more difficult to raise a defense. The one that comes to mind are these layer 7 HTTP attacks that look like real users. No matter what your signature looks like there are attacks coming in that match your legitimate traffic. They look exactly the same. In order to defend against that specific type of attack you have to have a method in place to determine which traffic is robots and which traffic is humans and be able to implement a filtering rule. That's where the real challenge is right now.  

So there are some hacktivist DDoS attacks that can be sophisticated?

Lyon: These will be the hacktivists that are themselves computer hackers. They are very well educated in the use of computers and computer networks. For example you might have a website with a religious or political view that is unpopular with a specific person or specific hacker and that hacker takes a personal interest in taking down that website. That particular type of attack still qualifies as hacktivism. It's still an activist style attack, but not the common type person launching an attack.

How difficult is it for a single person to carry out a fairly sophisticated DDoS attack?

Lyon: If you're not skilled in specifically designing a tool or already active in that realm of trading tools and coding for malicious purposes, your other option is to go to websites or underground forums and essentially buy access to the tools. You can go on a hacker forum and explain you want to attack a website. Someone might come forward and say they control a botnet that has 100,000 systems in it and I'll let you rent that for $10 an hour. It's cheap and easy to launch an attack but the common person may not know how to go about it. Your common person who doesn't know anything about hacking probably won't find these forums and successfully launch an attack.