Newsletter

Bargain IT services in the post dotcom world?
With millions of out of work IT experts, many companies are looking to take advantage of the situation and reduce costs. Instead they end up being the ones taken advantage of. What starts off as a cleaver idea becomes a costly mistake. Why?
First, let's dispel the myth. There are not millions of highly skilled IT experts wandering the streets carrying signs that read "Will Code HTML for Food". Many in the IT field have kept their job, or easily found another job. The vast majority of unemployed IT workers are out of work because they do not have skills that can benefit your company.
So what skills should you be looking for. "facilitating one stop user centric e-commerce solutions" would not be one of them. It's amazing how many people will be sucked in by this kind of talk in an interview, when they would laugh at it in any other circumstances.
Being certified on an Oracle database server that has been obsolete for three years is also another one. A common mistake is to assume that someone who passed a test for a database server once upon a time will be capable of successfully setting up a Windows 2000 server.
Having been involved in a number of bankrupts dotcoms is also something you probably shouldn't be looking for. Do not be impressed by big name companies, especially if you have no way to verify what their involvement was.

So now that we have narrowed your list of candidates down from 300 to 3 we can give them a simple test. What have they done that relates directly to the tasks you have at hand for them. Can they show you examples. Anyone who can pass this test deserves consideration.

Is someone spamming for you?
Everyone hates spam, and more and more companies are taking countermeasures to stop it. Every so often a legitimate message gets blocked, but a quick phone call usually sorts out the problem. Imagine what would happen if all your messages were blocked, and a call to your ISP revealed that your company had been blacklisted as a spammer. You have never sent any spam, but your ISP has dozens of complaints of spam with your web page advertised.
The culprit is probably your web site designer. It is common practice for unprofessional web designers to get a list of as many e-mail addresses as they can, and spam them with an advertisement containing links to all the sites they have designed. The problem is that even the most simple spam filter can detect that these messages are spam, and will extract a list of domains advertised, including yours. These will go into a blacklist, and it can take a lot of effort to get off the list.
With more and more companies maintaining their own private blacklists this can be a major hassle. There are a few precautions you can take to mitigate the risk of this happening.
1. Chose your web development company wisely. This should go without saying, but many companies fail to do any due diligence. Every second invested in searching databases of known abusers can save you hours down the road.
2. Find out what their policy is on giving out information about clients. There are a number of potential issues here including security. If you are at all concerned make sure that you explain up front that your brand/information is not to be used without permission. 3. Create and post a privacy policy. You may need one to be removed from a blacklist.
4. Train your staff for basic e-mail competency. Make sure they understand what a bounced mail message looks like, and make sure they know who to contact when they get one. Most people simply revert to Hotmail, ensuring you stay on the blacklist and loose control, security, and accountability of business correspondence.

It seems silly that one needs to worry about something like this, but it is a growing problem. I have seen this happen to hundreds of companies, and the frequency is on the rise.

Systems For Sale
Prima Computer Services has always had a policy of only selling service, exclusive of hardware or software. This is one of the keystones of our ability to remain objective in the recommendation of vendors. It also has the unfortunate side effect of withholding some very interesting technology from a lot of companies who could benefit from it.
This is about to change, and the products previously developed exclusively for retainer clients will soon be available for sale. Sales will be handled through a separate company which is also part of the Prima Computer Group. Initially there will be no service, installation, or maintenance provided with these products, however these services can be obtained separately from Prima Computer Services.
As a client, you have experience with these products, and we would like your input on how to best manage this change. In particular we would like to know what special accommodations should be made for clients, and what products you might be interested in purchasing. Any comments in general are welcome as well.
If you have any questions, or comments about this plan, or would like further information about the launch please feel free to contact ptdt@primacomputer.com

Network Resource Concentrator
Whether you are a network administrator managing a few hundred user profiles, or an office user trying to connect to a workgroup drive or printer, you understand the hassles that can be caused when a network resource is moved to another machine. While DRFS/EA will handle most situations there are a few things that it won't handle, such as when a printer is moved from a workstation to an HP print server, or when an LPR printer is added to the network.
For the last two years Prima has been developing a device to concentrate all file and printer shares on a single machine address. This has now been perfected, and can be committed to firmware, meaning it can be a highly reliable, embedded device. In addition to making sure you will never have to re-map your 'S' drive, it provides a number of special features not found on other devices:
Service Forwarding:
Nearly any network service can be forwarded through the NRC, including MS Exchange, SQL, HTTP, and SMTP.
SMB/APPLETALK:
All resources can be made available as SMB shares and AppleTalk
Server Translation:
AppleTalk shares on your Mac can be translated to SMB Shares for your Windows machines, and vice versa. HP Jet Direct, LPR, and Windows SMB shares can also be translated.
Driver Sharing:
Frustrated with the hassles of installing a Jet Direct port and driver on each machine on your network. The NRC shares the Jet Direct printer as an SMB Windows printer, and makes the driver available for automatic download when it is mapped
Multiple Network Interfaces:
Load balance with a few network cards. Share resources on your LAN as well as the Internet.
VPN:
Microsoft pptp, and ipsec are supported, allowing you to interface with an existing VPN, or build your own. Make remote resources available on your local network over a low cost internet connection with full security.

Content management with Includes
By now nearly everyone who needs, and can afford a content management system has one. Unfortunately this leaves a lot if people we should like one out in the cold. Many companies would like to make simple updates to their website, and are even willing to learn a little bit about Dreamweaver to edit and upload. The problem is that with the complex scripting and layer intensive sites of today, someone without sufficient skills is almost guaranteed to completely destroy a page if they try to edit it.

A simple way to do this is to abstract the editable regions and put them in a separate file that is then included in the page by the server. In fact this is how many of the expensive content management systems and applications servers work. If, however one doesn’t need to cross sell, up sell, or profile users the same can be accomplished free of charge with Server Side Includes or server scripting.

By inserting a layer the main page, and creating a table in the include page with the same dimensions of the layer you can allow the person doing the input the see exactly how their content will look. The only difference between the include page and a normal page is that the HTML to BODY tags should be removed, leaving only the body content. Dreamweaver will still display the body content as if it were a normal HTML page.

To make things easier you can place all the includes in a separate directory so the chance of editing the wrong file is reduced. You can also configure Dreamweaver with the FTP account, so that files can easily be put to the server. Even if you’re a wiz with Dreamweaver it can still make your life easier.

Content Management for Diverse Platforms
There are times when an advanced form of content management system is required. One instance is when you need to publish the same data in a wide variety of formats. Not everyone needs this capability, but it is becoming more and more common, and in many cases can provide you with a distinct advantage over your competitors. Examples of desirable formats might be HTML pages designed for 1024x768, 800x600, and 240x320, simplified HTML, PDF, various e-book formats, WML, IMODE, HDML, and good old paper print-outs.
A good example of someone who needs all these would be a newspaper publisher, however anyone who frequently publishes useful information could benefit from having the publication available in all those formats. Publishing on a single web page cuts off a potentially large number of viewers.
Designing a site for 1024x768 will leave users of 800x600 displays scrolling to view a whole page. Designing for 800x600 greatly limits your navigation, as well as advertising space. Neither one cuts it for the 240x320 display of a PDA. And not all PDAs are created equal. Many PalmOS and others require special software to display HTML, or even require a simplified version of HTML such as AvantGo. MWL, IMODE, and other mobile formats have an all together different set of document requirements. While these mobile formats have never taken off in the ways promised there can be no dispute that they are by far the most widely used formats for real time mobile documents, and that this is only going to increase as more GPRS networks are rolled out.
With a content management system capable of publishing to all these formats any organisation stands to benefit from having the ability to let their users access content any time they want. As this technology is now available at a price that most companies can afford, we will begin to see more and more companies adopting this to open new communications channels with customers. What would you have to say to a customer if you had a few screens of content just under "The Economist" on his PDA?

New Registrar Partner
Prima is no longer recommending Register.com for domain name registrations, hosting, or other services due to consistently poor response time, numerous technical problems with register and their affiliates, and a recent customer service fiasco. Like NSI, they appear to simply be to large and impersonal to offer any sort of reasonable level of support for the average user.

We have partnered with a new registrar who we hope will be able to offer better service and pricing. This is directNIC.com. They offer domain name registrations for $15/year, with a $5 option for a web based DNS manager. That’s 34% less then Register.com. Half the price if you don’t need the DNS service.

Prima is offering free DNS service to any clients parking, or hosting their own domains.

Content Management, Part III
Another interesting application for content management is to allow users to update a site using HTML. You may think that your site is written in HTML but, unless you have a personal homepage done in FrontPage 95, you would probably be surprised to see how little of the site is actually straight HTML. Do you have animated menus, pop-up boxes, animated text, news tickers, or anything of the sort? If so these are probably written in JavaScript. If you open your page in Dreamweaver you probably won't even see most of this content. This text is usually tucked away in a set of arrays which are read, processed written into a layer. To change it you have to edit the raw code in the file. This is problem enough when it is straight text, but what happens when you want to add images, links and styles. You end up having to create a JavaScript function that generates a string equivalent to the HTML code you want to display.

Enter the content management system. Instead of hard coding this text you hard code a reference to a database record. You insert your HTML into this database record and your server side script inserts it into the page on the fly. Now your web designers can design the content in the application if their choice, copy and paste the code into the content management system, and upload it to the database. You no longer have to pass the HTML to a programmer to convert it and hack it into the original page. You also no longer have to run the risk of having your site malfunction because of an error in the content that can take hours to debug. If the content causes a problem you simply delete the record in the database and you are back where you started.

Add-me Spam-me
Prima maintains a special domain used only for registering for web sites. Each registration is unique so that if an address is misused it can be traced back to the original web site. This rarely happens, but when it does it is helpful to be able to stop it quickly before the address is sold on to more and more spammers. Addme.com is one such unscrupulous company who has decided to turn a quick buck at the expense of their users. They have sold their list to the Opt In Network, who is promptly spamming with offers of free vacations.

It is recommended that you update your domains.bar filter, in particular if you have had any dealing with them. This filter has been updated to include the Opt In Networks web servers and tracking servers, and should ensure that you never see anything from these spammers.

Both companies have been reported to the FTC.

Give out your e-mail address safely
Nearly every web page you go to now adays requires you to give an e-mail address to sign-up/register, to get the content you want. Many people are hesitant to do this. They are afraid they will get spammed, or that their address will be sold.

With a small trick that requires only a few changes on your mail server you can give out an address that can be:

1. Create a new conical domain off of yours. I use NS.primacomputer.com
2. Create ailiases/name matching to deliver to the correct mailbox.
3. Someheader-steven@ns.primacomputer.com should be delivered to steven@primacomputer.com. You may find these features in the "* POP collection" function of your mail server
4. When giving out an e-mail address include the host you are communicating with along with your user name and the NS domain name. For example "mp3.com-steven@ns.primacomputer.com"
5. If you want, create a filter in your mail client to direct all mail to *@ns.yourdomain.com to a folder other then your inbox. I call mine Ads.