So what gives?  Why would a software developer be OK with users stealing his software?  It turns our Jeff has discovered there are some benefits to people pirating his software.  In fact many software companies know that piracy is key to why they are #1, even though they would never admit it (right Bill?).

I admit to being a little bit nervous about writing this. The sad truth is that, these days, it is so easy to pirate single-player PC games that most gamers only have to pay for them if they want to pay for them.

You see, when people pirate a game, more people get to play it.  And when more people get to play it, that would never have purchased it (or played it) if they had to buy it, you sell more copies.

Now interestingly enough, that’s not why Jeff Vogul thinks its sometimes OK to pirate his games, even though I assure you he knows this is true.  Jeff talks a while in his blog about children in third world countries who can not afford to pay him the $25 US Dollars that his game costs.  He even get’s emails from these children begging for a free key.

When I get one of these message, what I want to respond is, “PIRATE MY STUPID GAME!!!” I mean, seriously, the time used drafting that e-mail would have been much more profitably spent figuring out how BitTorrent works.

But Jeff says the piracy by these children in these foreign countries helps him by helping to give his life meaning.  He wants to bring joy to the people who experience and play his games and feel like ultimately he made a difference in people’s lives.  Even if they stole from him.  Head over and check out Jeff’s blog for the rest of the story.

Share this on your favorite social network:

Hide Sites

Creativity is awesome. Creativity is what makes people unique and different. But creativity isn’t always a good thing. Social engineering is the use of a little bad creativity to get people to divulge information, such as usernames and passwords.

The most common methods of social engineering involve the telephone and email. This helps protect the hacker’s true identity and makes it easier to trust them because you can’t see them in face to face. However, in some circumstances, hackers will social engineer situations by dressing as a uniformed employee (security guard, repairman, etc). This uniform generates a subconscious trust between you and the hacker.

It is very important to weed out these hacker’s and their social engineering in order to protect your data. These artists are counting on your natural human nature of trusting and willingness to help others. They often appear to be in a hurry in order to keep you focused on helping rather than asking questions.

Using these simple tips can be the difference between losing your valuable data to theft or protecting it:

• Seek assistance if in doubt
• Ask for and verify contact information
• Ask who authorized the request
• Verify the authorization
• Be very concerned about unescorted persons
• Ask simply why the information is needed
• Report any suspicious activity immediately

FREE Security Awareness Poster

This article is available as a security awareness poster! PCI, MasterCard, Visa and American Express require a security awareness program at most companies who take or process credit cards. Use this free poster in your company to spread the word!

Share this on your favorite social network:

Hide Sites

Also check out the EFF’s press release which gives a little more insight.

Share this on your favorite social network:

Hide Sites

Matt is adamant that these add-ons should be distributed under the GPL and not sold.  He says “WordPress is GPL” and therefore “plugins and themes created for wordpress should be GPL.”  Matt has gone so far as to threaten to sue creators of add-ons such as the Thesis theme.

Apparently Matt is a big enough jerk that it’s not OK for anyone to make money except him.

Share this on your favorite social network:

Hide Sites

For those not in the know, Google is being investigated because its Google Street View cars were also collecting Wireless LAN information, including the MAC address[slashdot.org] of devices on users networks as they drove neighborhood and city streets.

Attorney general Richard Blumenthal said, ‘Google’s responses continue to generate more questions than they answer. Now the question is how it may have used — and secured — all this private information.’”

Remember friends, this is from a company who’s motto is “Do no evil.”  We can trust them right?

Share this on your favorite social network:

Hide Sites

Microsoft has since confirmed the news and explained that this is an opportunity to thank their employees, while increasing employee knowledge of the device.  Quite a bold move, if you ask us!  No word on whether or not this includes the monthly plan fee, or just the device itself.

Share this on your favorite social network:

Hide Sites

The patent now appears to cover all Apple devices including Macbooks, iMacs, iPhones, iPads, and Apple TV.

Apple’s goal of owning 50% of the advertising market in 2010 makes us all wonder if a move to the desktop isn’t next on their roadmap. As many people abandon Microsoft in favor of Apple, this could put a serious hurt on sales of their products in our opinion.  Others assume that it could push people from Microsoft to open source, rather than Apple.

Share this on your favorite social network:

Hide Sites

A helmet is a biker’s number one method of protection in a crash, dip or fall.  Did you know that your password is the number one method of protecting your data from would be thieves, hackers and other criminals?  You can help protect your data by using complex, hard to guess passwords like the examples above.

Most password cracking software can guess your password in a matter of just a few short seconds if you use simple passwords, such as the name of your child, or spouse.  That’s because your password is a word!  In short, password cracking programs use the dictionary to search for your password, but it even makes it easy for people who know you to guess when we use common, or well known things about us as passwords.

Use these simple tips to make creating a complex password easy, rememberable by you, but hard for hackers and thieves to figure out.

• Use both letters and numbers
• Don’t use any personal information
• Intentionally misspell words
• Combine words or use a phrase
• Use upper and lowercase together
• Use special characters (#$%^&)
• Use as many characters as possible
• Avoid words listed in the dictionary

FREE Security Awareness Poster

This article is available as a security awareness poster!  PCI, MasterCard, Visa and American Express require a security awareness program at most companies who take or process credit cards.  Use this free poster in your company to spread the word!

Share this on your favorite social network:

Hide Sites

Elephants remember everything!  If elephants had fingers and used computers, they certainly wouldn’t write down their password!  Humans shouldn’t either!  Protecting your information from would-be thieves is essential.

Usernames (sometimes referred to as an ID) and passwords, whether assigned to you or selected by you, are designed to control access and log your system usage.  When a thief or hacker uses your username and password to access a system, everything that person does appears to be you!

These thieves may attempt to access your system in a variety of ways, but they almost always first look for usernames and/or passwords that have been written down in the office or work areas.  They also target computers that are left logged in when the employee walks away.  If a computer is left logged in and access by one of these thieves they can use the password saving features of web-browsers to access password protect applications and websites.

The good news is, we don’t have to have the memory of elephants to remember our passwords!  Use the informational tips below to help keep your passwords safe from thieves and hackers and protect your organizations information!

• Never write down or share a password with anyone.
• Change your password often.
• If you think your password has been stolen, change it immediately.
• Avoid using password saving features in web browsers.
• Do not allow others to see you entering your password.
• Don’t use the same password for personal accounts as you do at work.
• Log off or lock your computer when you walk away from your desk.

FREE Security Awareness Poster

This article is available as a security awareness poster!  PCI, MasterCard, Visa and American Express require a security awareness program at most companies who take or process credit cards.  Use this free poster in your company to spread the word!

Share this on your favorite social network:

Hide Sites

How to get out of the Google Sandbox from TheGeekPub on Vimeo.

Mike at TheGeekPub.com explains the effects of a phenomenon known as the Google Sandbox, and what to do to get out of it if you find your site in it.

For many years now, a hot topic amongst bloggers and SEO experts has been around a phenomenon in which new sites are put into a “probation period”. This results in pages for highly relevant content and keywords on your site ranking very low to not at all in the Google SERPs for some period of time. Usually that probationary period is believed to last between one month and one year. During this unfortunate time period no amount of quality, well optimized content will rank high in the SERPs listings (with few exceptions).

It should be noted that many bloggers and SEO experts do not agree on what the sandbox is, and if it even exists in the first place. It’s a very controversial and almost religious debate! The good news is, that whether or not the sandbox actually exists is irrelevant to most people. We know the effects of the phenomenon actually do exist, even if caused by something else entirely.

The sandbox is beleived to have came into existenace during the March 2004 Google updates. It is also important to note that the webmaster did not cause his site to become a member of the sandbox, but that this happens to virtually all new websites. Many seasoned bloggers and webmasters specifially target the purchase of older domain names to bypass the effects of the sandbox. While this may work in some cases, we’ve heard plenty of testimonials of old domains re-entering the sandbox when changing content and IP addresses at the same time.

Why does the sandbox exist?

Obviously, if you’re a webmaster, site owner or blogger the Google sandbox can be not only irritating, but down right infuriating. Many even feel the sandbox is a punishment. The truth fortunately is something entirely different.

Many years ago the SEO, blogging and webmaster communities figured out exactly (or close enough) the methodology that Google uses to rank websites in its SERPs listings. For the newbies reading here, Google basically used (and still mostly does today) the following to determine where your site would rank:

• Incoming links from related websites
• High quality anchor text in links
• Original, unique, keyword rich content
• High quality, keyword rich page titles

This knowledge led SPAMmers (specifically search engine SPAMmers) to create websites catering to exactly what Google was looking for. These SPAM sites would be caught relatively quickly by the powers that be at Google, but most of them continued to exist for several weeks to several months. This was enough time to allow these sites to profit from advertising or products they were selling. These SPAMmers would have hundreds of websites and domain names ready to go the minute Google banned the current one. These websites were extremely easy to create and could be highly profitable.

Google fought back and the sandbox, or phenomenon as we know it was implemented. New sites are still indexed as quickly as possible. However, Google will not highly rank the vast majority of the content of a new site with any weight in the SERPs. The only know way out of the sandbox is time. After a site starts passing Google’s SPAM checks these penalties are slowly removed and website starts to rank in the SERPs until the website is fully removed from the sandbox.

How does this affect my Blog or Site?

If you have a relatively well aged website (older domain, existing content, no history of SE SPAM), then likely you are not affected by the sandbox at all. However, if you have a new website, with newly created content you will be affected.

The first thing you will likely notice is that pages on your site with the exact search phrase may not show up in the SERPs even if your website is the only website on the Internet with that page title and keywords. This is a clear sign your site is in the sandbox.

What should I do to get out of the sandbox?

Honestly, there’s not much you can do to get out on your own. Only Google and their secret algorithms know when you will get out. But you can increase the odds that their algorithms will favor your site! You can also use this time in the sandbox to your advantage!

While many people spend hours or days searching for ways to get out of the sandbox, only to find out a few months later they are out without any changes, others use this time more wisely. Spend your time in the sandbox creating high quality, unique, original, keyword rich content for your website. Spend time working with other webmasters to create natural organic links to your content. Join our guest blogger program and when your site does come out of the sandbox you will be miles ahead of the competition and your site should be ranking very well for your content!

No webmaster, blogger or site owner is ever going to cherish his time in the sandbox, but wise webmasters who are patient will use this time to build a site that truly shines. Which camp will you be in?

Share this on your favorite social network:

Hide Sites