What To Do When You Want The Advanced Features Of Microsoft Exchange But Don’t Want The Costs

With the complexity, costs and problems associated with installing a mail server, many businesses are now opting for “Hosted Exchange” in the cloud rather than bringing the server in-house. What are cloud-based or hosted services? Think of them like a gym membership. Instead of purchasing your own home gym equipment, which can be expensive, require maintenance and take up a lot of space, you can pay a small monthly fee to go to the gym and use a multi-million dollar facility that is kept and maintained by someone else.

Hosted Exchange works the same way. Instead of incurring the costs and hassle of building and maintaining your own mail server, you can pay a low monthly fee and get top-of-the-line services, storage and security for your e-mail. Plus, you get the following benefits:

• Being able to access your e-mail remotely from any device
• More uptime and fewer issues
• E-mail archiving (sorting of old e-mails)
• Spam filtering and anti-virus included
• 24/7/365 support
• Unlimited storage
• Easy synchronization with mobile devices

Want to find out how Hosted Exchange can save you a lot of money and solve your storage and archiving problems? Give us a call at 408.483.1881.

How To Get Your E-mails Delivered

Since e-mails are cheap and easy and deliver instant results, there’s a good chance you are (or plan on) using e-mail broadcasts to communicate with your clients and prospects. But with so much spam, how can you make sure your e-mails stay OUT of the spam filter and get safely delivered to your recipients’ inbox? Here are a few tips:

1.  Send e-mails only to people who have opted in or requested to receive e-mails from you. Otherwise, you’ll risk being flagged as a spammer and will get your account or server blocked.

2.  Use a legitimate e-mail broadcasting service. This goes along with the above recommendation. These services have entire teams of people working to make sure the e-mail broadcasts sent from their servers are delivered – a huge task that is no simple thing in the online world. That’s why it’s better to use these services versus broadcasting from your own server. It takes only one person to flag you as a spammer to get your server shut down.

3.  Send text e-mails instead of HTML. A study by AWeber.com shows that plain text messages are undeliverable 1.15% of the time and HTML-only messages were undeliverable 2.3%. If sending HTML, always send a plain text alternative message, also called text/HTML multi-part mime format.

What Are QR Codes And How Can You Profit From Them In Your Business?

      The last time you were flipping through your favorite magazine, you may have noticed a small, digital-looking image on one or more of the advertisements. What is it? A “Quick Response” code or QR code for short.

A QR code is a specific matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code), readable by dedicated QR barcode readers and camera phones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded can be text, URL or other data.

This concept was initially created by Toyota for tracking parts in vehicle manufacturing; however, QR codes have been largely adopted by advertisers that want to target mobile phone users (known as mobile tagging). QR codes can be used to display text to the user, to add a vCard contact to the user’s device, to open a URL or to compose an e-mail or text message. Users can also generate and print their own QR codes for others to scan and use by visiting one of several free QR code generating sites.

So how could you use this? Some companies are smartly using this technology to drive sales by allowing people flipping through a magazine or waiting at a bus stop to get more information on a product, connecting the dots to get people to buy much faster than these types of media originally offered. Others are putting QR codes on permanent coupons or on their business cards to allow would-be prospects an instant way to get more information about a business. You can easily get a free QR code by searching online for a QR code generating site.

How To Be Safe And Smart On Social Networking Sites

Did you know…

• More thank 90,000 registered sex offenders were removed from one popular social networking site…and those were the ones who used their real names.

• According to the Al Qaeda Handbook, terrorists search social networking sites for government personnel, officers, important personalities and all matters related to them (residence, workplace, times of leaving and returning, children and places visited).

• Social networking sites have become a haven for identity thieves and con artists, and social networking viruses are on the rise.

      Think about it: Facebook, Twitter and other social media websites have become the world’s largest database of personal information, all served up intentionally by the user. It’s practically every scammer’s dream come true!

9 Smart Tips To Stay Safe

      Protecting yourself requires some awareness of how cyber criminals use the system against you. Here are a few things you need to know:

1. Keep you firewall’s security and anti-virus software up-to-date.
2. Never log in from public hotspots. Social networking sites generally do not have secure logins available (that’s the https with the lock icon in the search bar). That means your username and password can be swiped at any time. Log in only from trusted wireless networks.
3. Use strong passwords that contain a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, symbols and numbers.
4. Remember the golden rule: If you wouldn’t do it or say it on a public street, don’t post it online.
5. Be wary of all links and files. Hackers often post links in comments to try and trick you into downloading an “update,” “security patch” or “game.”
6. Keep an eye on what your friends post about you. Many people have been fired or lost an important client because of online pictures and content.
7. Be careful who you “friend.” Yeah, it feels great to have hundreds (or thousands!) of friends, but the reality is, you really know only a fraction of those people.
8. Be wary of all add-ons. Many of the games and plug-ins are written by third-party companies, not the social network itself.
9. Do a search on yourself. You might be surprised at just how much information comes up! If it’s more than you feel comfortable with, restrict your profile online.