Maki & Brian DeLaet EduCyber founders

September 2003 EduNotes

EduCyber is pleased to present the September 2003 Edition of EduNotes. In this issue, learn how to optimize your web site for search engines, the latest Microsoft security holes and how to protect yourself, and Ed Cyber’s firewall suggestions. Enjoy and as always, send feedback to edunotes@educyber.com.
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Congratulations to Janet Osborne, the winner of our free Palm. After a bit of training in what all it can do, she was thrilled and is becoming more mobile with less weight (day timer) to carry around with her.
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Finding the Right Words
Those of us with web sites would love to see our site ranked at the top of the search engines. The important question though, is ranked for what? When you type in a search word or phrase at a search engine, you hope it will list at or near the top the web site that will answer your question or provide the information you seek. And the better you choose the words and phrases, the more likely you are to find what you want.
So when it comes to working on the key words you want your web site to be ranked for, it is important to choose words carefully. The first step is to put yourself in the mind of your customer. This is the opposite of the way most of think when it comes to any kind of marketing (and getting ranked in the search engines is definitely a form of marketing). We want to talk about what we have to offer instead of what the client needs. Take EduCyber for example, I might want to be ranked highly for the key phrase “web site design”. However, putting myself into a client’s shoes, I realize that “build a web site” or “create a web site” might be a much better phrase to aim for.
Once you have a good list (20 or so words or phrases), there are two important things to do. First you want to put these key words in the “key word” meta tag in the header of your web page. If the previous sentence sounds like a foreign language to you, give us a call and we’ll help. The second thing to do is to make sure your key words are actually used on your web site. The more prominent they are (closer to the top), the better. Take care though to not just list the words. Actually use them in sentences that describe your business or what you do. Now your site is ready for the search engines. If you need help getting the search engines to visit your site or tracking your progress, we can also help. Give us a call today.
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Bug, Worms and Automatic Updating
Feeling ready to chuck your Microsoft programs or operating system yet? Over the last two months it seems like security holes have been popping up faster than spam messages. And now there’s more. If you haven’t gone online and updated ALL your computers yet, there’s no time like the present.
If you are a regular visitor to the windowsupdate.microsoft.com web site, you still may not be completely protected. If you aren’t a regular visitor and / or if automatic updating is not turned on on your computer, visit TODAY. If you have a high-speed connection (cable, DSL or something similar), it doesn’t take too long and can save you a lot of grief. The only thing you have to install are the critical updates. There may be other recommended updates or driver updates but install these at your own risk. You may have to reboot your computer and revisit the site a couple of times before you get all the critical updates installed.
Once that’s done, you need to visit office.microsoft.com/officeupdate if you have any Office products (97, 98, 2000, XP). Click the “Check for Updates” link and install the little program that is needed to check your computer to see what updates are needed. The biggest pain about updating your office products is that the installation CD (or other media) is REQUIRED during the update. And of course, when the updates are done, you get to reboot your computer yet again.
All of this brings us to the title of this article. Do you use Automatic Updating? Most people I work with do not like it at all. At the most inopportune times it prompts you to download or install updates or reboot your computer. I’ve had a client (this was well over a year ago and may have been partially caused by other problems) whose computer would not start again after letting windows update his computer and then clicking on the “Restart Now” button. For maintenance clients, we turn this feature off and do it manually, usually once a month. This worked fine with the blaster bug as we had more than a month’s notice before someone actually wrote a worm to exploit the security hole. Recent security developments, however, are causing us to rethink using Windows Automatic Updating as it is essential that any computer connected to the Internet be updated when new fixes are made available. If you have questions or concerns about your updates or updating system, be sure to call us so we can make sure your systems are safe.
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Ask Ed Cyber
Ed,
My friend told me to go to the Microsoft web site for some updates so I did. They’ve got three steps to protect your computer listed there. Their first step says to use an Internet firewall. How do I do this and is it expensive?
Wall-less in SeattleWell Wall-less,
There are inexpensive ways of doing it and expensive ways of doing it. If you look a bit further on the Microsoft site, you’ll see give detailed directions for turning on the built-in firewall (if you use Windows XP) or further information about some common firewalls available if you use another Windows operating system. So if you use XP, you can do it for free and without having to download anything. Simply go into your network connections, choose the connection you use for your Internet connection, select the advanced tab from the properties and check the box to use the Internet Connection Firewall. Then click OK and you’re done.
If you aren’t using XP I recommend you consider upgrading. You’ll find that XP is as close as Microsoft has come so far to getting it right. Not only do you have a built-in firewall, you also have a number of other very good features as well as overall system stability. But that can be costly.
One of the best and most commonly used software firewalls is ZoneAlarm Pro. This software firewall costs $40 and can be downloaded from the ZoneLabs web site at www.zonelabs.com. ZoneAlarmPro allows you to set up a “fence” around your computer. As we all know that good fences make good neighbors, having a fence like this doesn’t keep you from going out or from those you want to come in to do so. It lets you configure how high and how enclosing your fence is and comes with reasonable recommended settings to allow you to easily configure your firewall.
Another firewall to consider is BlackIce (http://blackice.iss.net/). Though we know less about it, it is also quite popular and costs only $30. We don’t generally recommend the Symantec or McAfee Firewalls. They have good antivirus software but we’ve had some problems with their other software and find that customers just get confused about whether they have a firewall or an antivirus program.
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