Several years ago I wrote a post called Verizon and “Good” Security where I was very critical of their asking me to click on a link in their email to log in to their site and verify my password. I refused and they sent me the email several more times.

I haven’t thought about that in a long time and then this weekend I got a new one.

My first thought was that maybe someone, somewhere inside Verizon actually read my email. Probably not, but I am sure I wasn’t the only one to complain. In the end it doesn’t really matter because it looks like they listened to someone.

I think having an open Wi-Fi and you sharing bandwidth with your neighbors is probably a bigger issue to Verizon, but there are definitely risks to an open network, along with a few advantages.

What I really like in this email is first they talk about secure passwords. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run into business website owners with passwords like their name or the business name. The password you use is the key to your store.

The second good thing is they talk about not clicking on a link in an email and entering any personal information, especially your password. This was my main complaint from three years ago.

I have been critical of Verizon’s security in the past and now I want to highlight the change for the good. Congratulations, Verizon. I don’t care why you changed your emails, I’m just glad you did.

Matt Cutts who is one of the faces of Google recently gave a great interview to The WordPress Podcast with lots of good tips on how to properly promote your site.

This is about an hour long, but well worth a listen. The beginning is a bit tech-ish, but hang in there it gets good.

http://wp-community.org/2010/07/20/google-matt-cutts-wordpress/

It’s happened again. I’m helping another business owner who isn’t the registered owner of their own name. This time, like the others, should end well, but after much hassle. I have heard of horror stories where the rightful domain name owner has had to find another name and move on.

I can’t tell you how many times this has happened. A customer wants to hire me and move their site only to find that the person they hired to *do everything* for their website has registered the domain name(s) in their own name, not their customers.

If you haven’t registered your website name yet, take a minute and do it yourself. Go to GoDaddy.com, Register.com or any of a thousand other reputable registrars and buy your domain name. They will probably try to sell you upgrades and other stuff, but all your really need to do is register your domain name in your name. GoDaddy charges less than $11.00 a year for this.

If you already have a website name see who is listed as the administrative contact.
There are many sites that will tell you this, like http://cqcounter.com/whois/
If you are not listed as the administrative contact, write to who is there and let them know you want it changed.

Once you are the administrative contact you are in charge. Any time you or someone else tries to move or change ownership of your site you will get a request for approval. It’s just as important to make sure the contact information for you is always current so you get those requests.

Read more about Controlling Your Domain

Here’s something just for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)

I have many people ask me where to get images for their site, blog, newsletter, etc.
No one wants the hassle of getting a take(shake)-down notice.

Here are a couple of good free sites where you are allowed to use the pictures any way you want.
I’ve donated a few pics of my own.

www.publicdomainpictures.net – repository for public domain pictures

www.clker.com – The online royalty free public domain clip art

Android just released for everyone to use – App Inventor for Android.

“To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app’s behavior.”

This looks very cool, but I’ve just started to play with it. I’ll write more about this in a future post, but if you would like to play with App Inventor for yourself.

Use App Inventor for Android

I’ve been hearing for quite a while how HTML5 and CSS3 are going to ignite the web (as if it needed any help). Most of this talk started with the release of the iPad and Apple’s anti-Flash stance.

Here’s the problem. Most of the browsers out there do not understand HTML5 yet. It’s the same thing web designers have had to think about when designing for Internet Explorer.

IE6 never did web standards very well so you had to add *hacks* to work around it. Only recently have I begun to ignore IE6 in my designs even though it was first released in 2001. I’ll probably still even have a peak just to be sure my page doesn’t look horrible in it.

Even the newest IE still doesn’t get CSS rounded corners or text shadows. Basic design elements. So you’re left with a dilemma of whether to design something new and cool for your visitors, but worry about how many people won’t be able to see it or is it better to fall back on older more browser friendly techniques.

My deciding factor is usually how well a technique fails. If rounded corners or text shadows fail, you just don’t see them, not too bad. HTML5 might just fail completely. I do see it being eased in as more browsers are comfortable with it, but it’s nowhere near an end all right now and isn’t due to fully kick in until the year 2022 or later.

Right now a few browsers do support HTML5 including Google Chrome and if you would like to see some cool previews Mashable has some

100+ Chrome Experiments for HTML5 and More

I like to aimlessly wonder around the web. They used to call it Web Surfing. I’ll follow any number of things that strike my fancy. The other day I was on LinkedIn, looking at the other peoples blogs.

I stopped at a couple and read a post or two. I even registered and commented on one. I like to comment on the posts that I like. Comments are good for your blog.

Then I came on one that just stopped me in my tracks.

This blog had a fairly recent last post where they apologized for not posting much and they promised to do better. I would just write more and forget the apology, but not a big deal. Let’s hope they do.

The rest of the post went on and on about how they didn’t like to write, it was too hard to have perfect grammar, the sun was in their eyes. OK the sun excuse wasn’t there, but I probably won’t return to this site.

Here’s the deal with blogs, if you don’t want to write, don’t have one. A stale blog is worse than none at all.

If you want to have one, just write something, then write more. The wining may have been worse than nothing, but maybe not. Anyway, write what you like, about what you like and don’t worry at all about perfect grammar.

Nothing is better to promote your site. If you are lucky enough to have good comments, even better. Listen to your commenters and reply to good ones.

One of the many advantages of hiring me is that you get all the original work, in an open source format. A quality file in a format that’s readable, so you can use it as you see fit.
I’m a one man shop, this protects you.

Any art or logos that I make are made in xcf , an open format.

I use The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) It’s a free open source program that also allows me to open and save as almost any format including Photoshop files with layers.

Customers get a copy of my work, in several formats, as soon as it’s done.

We all need good sales leads. I write many posts about networking, but there’s always much more.

This is a really good post on MediaPost’s Performance Insider blog I like

Four Ways to Increase Qualified Leads