You can’t keep a good geek down – Steve Jobs back at work

Nothing can keep a good geek down, be it cancer, liver transplant or anything you can think of, Steve Jobs keeps coming back. Steve Jobs, 54, Apple’s co-founder and Chief executive is said to have returned to work six months after his medical leave. Jobs is said to have had a liver transplant which must have gone very well because he is said to be expected back at his desk at the end of June.

Steve Jobs has had series of health issues over the years, In 2004, Mr Jobs was treated for pancreatic cancer, in 2008 there were fears that the cancer had returned when he appeared at a major Apple event looking thin and gaunt. In January 2009, Mr Jobs revealed that he was being treated for a “hormone imbalance”. Later Jobs told his staff that his medical problems were more complex than first thought and he would take six months off work to concentrate on his health.
The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend that Mr Jobs underwent a liver transplant over two months ago. It is predicted that Mr Jobs will stay on as chief executive officer of Apple on a part-time basis with a view to moving on to become chairman of the company.
Jobs once gave up the post of CEO of Apple for some years, his absence saw a decline in apples fortunes which seem to rise again once Jobs came back into the help and introduce new innovative products to the Apple Mac offering including the very successful and popular music player, iPod.

Google challenged to make Gmail more secure

Recently and open letter was sent to Google CEO Eric Schmidt by security experts, lawyers, and privacy advocates asking why Gmail users are “needlessly” being put at risk.The 38 strong signatories want Google to start using the secure version of the HTTP protocol to protect Gmail users.

Ben Edelman, one of the signatories to the letter argued that because more people use insecure Internet access – such as wi-fi in coffee shops, libraries, there’s a real risk of session hijacking,” Edelman argue further that though Gmail login process is done on HTTPS but once the user login session is completed, all data transmission is done on regular HTTP which is not secure, hi-tech criminals using sophisticated snooping devices can capture sensitive data or even hi-jack a Gmail account users session and send messages pretending to be the user.

Google responded to the open letter by saying that it will look into whether it made sense to use HTTPS all the time in Gmail but a trial on a small number of its users will be carried out to ensure user experience is not markedly changed by turning on HTTPS all the time.

Google’s Gmail users are not the only email account users exposed this way, most other leading free email services providers are guilty not placing the entire email using session on HTTPS. The main reason providers give for this is that HTTP slows down user experience because a lot of encrypting and decrypting goes on from users computer trough the email services provider servers thereby slowing down user experience.

You can discuss this post and other email and Internet related issues at UK Webmaster Forum

Making money through blogging

Blogging is a recent phenomenon and thanks to the internet is becoming very popular with many people. The internet is a space where some of the money making avenues like freelancing; affiliate marketing, online surveys have made their bow and have been well received by the masses. However, I am sure that people would want to know as to how they can generate income through blogging in particular and this article is an attempt to give you some suggestions on the same.

It does take some time to make money through blogging. While you may keep making stray income from content that you write for other blogs, it is often not sustainable over a period of time. You need to be your own boss and for that you need to create your own blog and follow the steps outlined below.

How to create your own blog

Well, the options for creating a free blog that is your own are in the form of word press and Google’s own blogger. However, if you are really serious about making this a profitable and long term activity, then you need to host your blog with a domain name. This facility is also free with word press and being very user friendly with many supporting tutorials, you should not have any problem hosting one. New bloggers find this an excellent help.

Choose a subject

You need to choose a subject about which you are passionate about and on something which you can contribute regularly. Remember that it needs to be interesting enough to drive people to visit your blog on a regular basis and for that you have to be sure that you are choosing a subject that is dear to you and you have sufficient inputs that you can give.

If it is something technical, then you have to make sure that you have enough knowledge that can engage the attention of the visitors and they feel secure in the fact that your blogs are authentic and can be relied upon. Very soon, you will find that your blog establishes a reputation and you will have many visitors flocking to read it on a daily basis.

If you are not clear about the subject, you can do some research to find out what gets good attention and see whether you can contribute something in that direction.

Driving traffic to your blog and sustaining them

You need to first follow certain search engine optimization techniques that will enable a search engine to give your website a rank. Becoming aware of how a search engine ranks a particular website based on certain algorithms would be useful for you and you will find many articles on the internet that is devoted to this subject. Once your website gets a rank, you will find that you are able to attract visitors to your site and depending upon how interesting, informative and entertaining your blogs are, you will have regular traffic to your site. It is important to be regular with your updates and this way, your site gets accessed by the search engines like Google on a regular basis. Making sure that your site is known on some of the popular social networking sites is another way of publicizing your blog.

Blog monetization

Having created a great blog with a rank and getting visitors on a regular basis, it is now time to take advantage of this traffic and monetize your blog – which will be explained in subsequent articles.

You can find out more about blogs and blogging and exchange blogging tips and ideas with other webmasters at UK Webmaster Forum, the blog and blogging section can be found here.

Protecting Customer Personal Data

Businesses that accepts credit cards from their website are compelled to abide by The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) which is a set of comprehensive requirements for the protection of payment card data; developed by Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover and JCB.
PCI DSS provides business best practice guidelines to establish a “minimum security standard” to ensure customer personal details and credit card information are secured from thief.  There is an industry built around this to help ecommerce site owners achieve PCI Compliance. PC1 Compliance includes testing procedure put in place by site owner to ensure the way they handle data is safe and secure.

Private companies that doe not sell online but collect sensitive personal details re required to collect such information over SSL and register with information commissioner office to ensure data in their possession are collected and stored safely and securely however there does not seem to be a rigorous data safety enforcement similar to PCI DSS which could partly explain what could have gone wrong with Parcelforce customer tracking system which was in the new recently.

It was reported that personal data including signatures of recipients of Parcels has been exposed to those tracking deliveries on the Parcelforce website.  A failure in Parcelforce system allowed people using the mail tracing service access to the name, postcode and signature of various Parcelforce customer details. This clearly put  Parcelforce at risk of breaching data protection rules.

Data Protection just like PCI DSS ?
Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) stipulates that businesses have a responsibility to keep personal and sensitive information secure. Any organisation which processes personal information must ensure that adequate safeguards are in place to keep that information secure,” said a spokeswoman for the ICO.
“Failure to protect personal details such as names, addresses and signatures could lead to information falling into the wrong hands and ultimately the loss of customers’ trust and confidence.
Requirements of the ICO and PC1 DSS are not too dissimilar; the only difference is that the credit card consortium that created PC1 DSS enforces compliance proactively on merchants that processes their credit cards.

SEO for Google Local Business Listing & Google Maps

For quite a while the holy grail of search engine optimistion was to have generic keywords associated with your site product or brand listed on the first page of Google result pages, this is still a desirable position for a keyword associate with your site to be, but there are many other ways to get into page one on Google with far less efforts and possible a better traffic that converts to sale than the old method of targeting generic keywords, this two ways are via Google Base and Google Local Business Listing and Google Maps. This articles focuses on the latter.

Case for getting listed in Google Local Business Listing & Google Maps

Local business listing is invaluable to businesses that targets a particular locality or only cover a certain area such as restaurants, plumbers, mechanics etc. You business is listed on Google SERPs higher than organic search result giving you a improved click through potential free if charge. Local Business Listing is more detailed than regular organic listing, and the map location that indicated where you business is draws attention to it more than the dull PPC and organic listing that follows.

Take example of someone looking to hire or buy canoes or Kayaks in Herefordshire are, you type the following keywords into Google “canoes and kayaks herefordshire” the first listing on Google result page is HB Canoes and Kayaks. The Google Map/Local Business Listing for this keyword is above the organic listing, it gives the following details about the business:
Business Name
Business Address
Business URL
Telephone Number
Website URL
Telephone Number
Directions
A Market on Google Map to show where Orcop, the business location is.

With this much information right on the first page of a search result, who will not click on the HB Canoes and Kayaks listing?
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