Unfortunately for us, she lives a long ways from me. I do not have access to her computer to be sure. My suspicion is, she has a keylogger on her computer.

Keyloggers can be hardware or software that is attached or installed itself on your computer. When a keylogger is installed, every key stroke that you type is recorded and sent back to whoever is monitoring your computer. Every password, every security question, every email, every Tweet, every instant message, every document for work. Everything. It doesn’t do any good to change passwords on your websites, emails or anything because they are all logged.

How do you know you have one? If you do, the symptoms should be pretty obvious. These people don’t waste time. As soon as they get data back from the keylogger, they strike and that can be pretty quickly. If you have changed your passwords and still find your access to web sites or emails getting hacked, that is a pretty good sign. If you change it on someone else’s computer and nothing happens, that’s also another good sign though not entirely an acid test.

If you have a physical keylogger – then it is easy to find – check your computer inside and out. But these days, chances are higher for a software based keylogger and this can be bad news because there are many types of loggers. Some install themselves deep into the operating system files, making it a lot harder to detect. Some are less insidious and can be detected with some software. Here are a few you can try.

• Comodo BOClean
• a-squared
• SnoopFree

If I did find something like that, my next move would probably be to re-format my computer, wipe everything out and start anew.

When blogging started, it was a good idea to bring to people to your site and create an openly communicate with your potential customers and customers alike and it still very much so. That really hasn’t changed. But at the same time, conversations happen everywhere and some blogs will have better traction with a particular audience than yours. So guest blogging becomes quite important too. What better way to reach out to the right group of people for little or no money and build credibility. Plus, you don’t have the added responsibility of creating content every week to keep the blog going and also promoting it.

In that sense, I can say sometimes I wish I had more time to produce quality guest posts on others’ blogs like I’m doing here.

If you want to start being a guest blogger, it’s easy. Scope out the blogs that have a decent following so that it is worth your while contributing to. Make sure they are relevant to your own target audience, prepare a few good blog posts that will resonate with the audience. Then make contact with the blog owner. Pitch the post to them. It doesn’t cost you but a few minutes of time and the worst people can say is no.

You can also come on over to BlogEnergizer. Our premium members are always free to list their guest blogger availability and we’ll help to get the word out to bring bloggers to you.

Meanwhile, am I giving up my blog? Nope. Because ultimately, I need someplace to point someone back to and while it’s OK to point people to a site filled with products, it’s even better to point people to more relevant content they can sink into and channel people to subscribe to my newsletter. It still has it’s place.

Look familiar? Chances are you’ve come across something like that on some sites. As you can see, the files inside the directory are exposed and by clicking the Parent Directory link, people can check out the other directories on your site especially if the next directory up doesn’t happen to have an index file either.

One way to stop that is to simply create an strongindex/strong file. You don’t have to add content to it just create a file, name it index.html so now people will see a blank page when they go to that URL. But what if you have tons of folders and folders inside of folders and you don’t know which of them are exposed?

Relax. You don’t have to go through them all individually. Drop the following code into the .htaccess file inside the public_html or www folder. If there is no .htaccess file just create it and paste the code inside.

span style=”color:#008000;”code# Disable directory browsing
Options All -Indexes/code/span

Before you download that free Antivirus, firewall or virus scanner, do you know if it is clean?

That’s right. Some antivirus, firewall programs and virus scanners are only pretending to be good for your computer but in reality they carry nasty worms, viruses and spyware themselves.

strongSolution:/strong
ulli
Don’t download and install protection programs that you or people you trust to know these things have strongnever/strong heard of.
If you know the program is legit and good, don’t download it from a site you’ve never heard of or looks suspicious. strongGet it straight from the company’s web site/strong itself.
If it came in an email – strongstay clea/strongr of it./li/ul

1. ColorZilla – This allows me to quickly find matching or exact color codes from a client’s existing or desired design / logo. No guessing, no searching all over the stylesheet.
2. Firebug – How can I not use this? I practically live by this plugin and have recommended it to many people over and over. Don’t tear your hair out wondering which code controls a link in the style sheet or figuring out where the code for that box is located. Firebug will tell you exactly.
3. FireFTP – Although I use FileZilla to upload large packages, for quick uploads, FireFTP is so darn convenient.
4. Evernote – How does a note taking plugin make it into a web developer’s arsenal? Because that’s where I keep a bunch of code snippets. Instead of bookmarking, which I also do for bigger more comprehensive instructions, but quick and small code snippets are kept in Evernote. I used to keep them GoogleNotebook until they decided to pull the project.
5. IE Tab – Ah just when you perfect the design in Firefox someone tells you the site looks horrible on IE. IE Tab simply makes is easy to switch from Firefox to IE to do quick checks on the design.
6. ShowIP – What a fabulous plugin my fantastic web host recommended. It tells you the IP address of the web site you are currently on. While this may not be of use all the time, but it can be of immense value when you’re switching your hosts’. I use it to help me determine if a web site has resolved to the new host or not.
7. Split Browser – great for working on code, comparing a design on IE (on IE Tab) and Firefox or following a tutorial while you edit the code on the other side.
8. Web Developer – this has quite a few tools in it. Makes it so easy to validate HTML, CSS or your feeds. I love the View Generated Source – some sites try to hide their source code with crazy javascript. View Generated Source shows you the underlying source code – that’s right, forget hiding your source code. Oh I also love the ruler to help me quickly measure box and image sizes. Another thing I love about the tools in this plugin is the ability to display the form details. This means I don’t have to view source and dig around to find out where the form is being sent to, what are the field names and so on. Super handy.
9. Delicious – Uhuh. Remember those longer tutorials? That’s where I keep them so I can quickly jump back to them to refer when I need a refresher.
10. RoboForm – I confess. I don’t know the password to many web sites I log in to regularly. Why should I? RoboForm does it all for me plus its so much easier to when working with multiple clients.

Their service startst at $34.99 and you can even write your own script for them to record. It’s not only for voicemail but you can use the service for on hold messages too. Don’t forget to add promo messages for your products, web site or blog in your script.

Other places you can find voice talents:

1. Voices.com
2. Voice 123

Not so fast. It is a sad truth that many who know how to bring in the numbers don’t know how to effectively get them to their site or monetize them. As a result, they earn very little or nothing at all.

Followers and newsletter subscribers are two different things. Personally, I’ve always felt list subscribers much more profitable and loyal than following at any social networks. I believe this is because people who are at social networks friend or follow you to (surprise) befriend you and – let’s be honest about this – hopefully sell something to you. People who subscribe to your list do so because they want something from you, are more interested in what you have to offer them and expect you to pitch offers to them – to a certain extent.

So next time you’re in a social networking site and you start feeling envious of the number of followers or friends they have. Stay the course. Focus on converting followers to blog readers and newsletter subscribers and subscribers to customers.

How Outsourcing Can Affect Your Retirement

That certainly caught my eye. As a business owner, I love what I do and the thought of retirement only crosses my mind once in a blue moon. It is unrealistic I know for me to expect to work forever. There will come a point when I am unable to work. That’s why I’ve started putting ’systems’ in place for the last year.

In doing so, I’ve also discovered a problem with my systems. I love to write in my Word Processor. I like the thought of nicely formatted documents, neatly printed and binded where I can refer to regularly. Yes, I still do a lot of things on paper. Especially reference documents. I like them printed because it sucks having to follow directions with two open windows. But paper also means my system is not shareable.

This realization hit me hard when I had to instruct my assistant who lives only 50 miles from me. Not a short distance but far enough I cannot have her in my office everyday or even once a week. It needs to be online. Why not just PDF the document. Tried that. It only generated more work. Making the PDF and uploading is not the problem but keeping track of all the PDF’s and referring to them was beginning to be a problem. My instructions also sometimes come in video format. I could of course create a page to list all the links out but if I was going to do that why not just create the whole system online? It’ll…

• Save me from keeping copies up to date
• Save me from doing work twice – enter information once and everything is there to share

I tried many ways and almost built a WordPress powered staff only site just to manage all this which is not a bad idea. That may be the next one I’ll try if this one doesn’t pan out but right now, I believe a wiki will work best for me because:

• Wikis are editable if I give users the ability to. If an assistant changes a password they can just enter it there and I or anyone else on the team can pick it up without constantly emailing each other.
• It is easy to link to different Wiki pages
• Wikis are pretty easy to use
• Staff can add, update or contribute information to the wiki. I can get them to help me create the systems by documenting the work they do work for me. When they leave to pursue bigger and better things, I already have documentation in place to pass on to new recruits.

If you’re interested to try out wikis to manage and share your systems internally, here are some places you can get started.

• Pbwiki
• WetPaint
• Wikispaces
• Google Sites

You can also run them on your web host – I prefer not to do this because I’ll have (yet) another web site and script to manage.

• DokuWiki
• WikkaWiki
• PmWiki

Rather, I’m talking about useful or simply fun applications that people like and enjoy using. These are the ones that generally get passed along. So what can you build?

Games - since the beginning of computing and the Internet games are just plain popular because they are fun. Of course having a great game idea helps. If you’re just creating another clone of 8 ball that’s not interesting enough and won’t get you the viral traffic you’re hoping for. Come up with something unique or a new niched spin on a popular game.

Quizzes - Always fun. People love to know if they are compatible with their chosen career/spouse/life etc. They are also narcissistic and want to find out if they have a high IQ or not.

Calculators - some people may love math but if you can make it easy and save their time, they’d be happy to use it, bookmark it and refer people to it.

Timers, time trackers, calendars – we are a society obsessed with tracking time and productivity.

List creators, customized planners – everyone at some point looks for a better way to organize themselves.

That should be a good starter list for you to chew on. You can of course get real fancy and create social network apps, applications people log in to perform or track tasks, plugins and more. Those will require more technical skill or the ability to pay for it.

If you’re on a shoestring budget, there are many quiz scripts you can find for free at places like Hotscripts.com including calculators. You can also scope out private label software to brand.

What happened?

My web host shut my account down and deleted all my web sites. It felt like being thrown out of my own home. The reason, a script I had installed the day before had gone wrong – very wrong – it flooded the web hosts’ email servers to the point it almost crashed the server. Not only did it hurt, I was absolutely embarrassed. Here I was, thinking I was so smart and could install a script or two plus save money.

It’s been many years and many lessons learned since but that memory is as fresh and raw at certain periods today as it was back then.

Today, I use several hosted web based software and yes I pay monthly for them. It did not come easy of course. When I started using Aweber, I didn’t have that much money coming in but I knew the importance of sacrificing early profits.

The best part? I don’t have to worry about them.

• I don’t have to spend valuable time upgrading the software
• I don’t have to worry about people hacking it
• I don’t have to think about the software being compatible with the server or crashing it
• When the system goes down, I have someone to ask and demand for answers
• When the system goes down, I don’t have to upset my schedule and delay my projects further to fix it. I know that they have the properly qualified expert developers to work on their system. People whom I am not able to afford on my own.

If you’re struggling with a decision about money and paying monthly for software. Allow me to help make the decision easy. The first and most absolute basic, spend it on an email newsletter / autoresponder system.