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Since we've been doing more strategy, it has become more and more necessary to formalize our 'ramp up' process for new strategists. Our strategist typically herald from the marketing side of the world & combine their knowledge with practical elements of technology. This dual-combo makes for a powerful strategist.

However, there is a BIG difference in doing one interactive project during a marketing career & actually being a qualified Interactive Strategist. As such, we put together "homework" for our planners and strategists to answer that at least give them some basic familiarity into combining traditional business with the world of interactivity. Here are the questions we ask...

History has proven to me that it is very difficult for clients to understand time & knowledge as an actual currency. If you're in the time & materials industry, you'll appreciate what I'm talking about. My wife, who's a lawyer, was kind enough to send me a song that really helps me bridge the gap with my clients :) [Remember, this is meant to be funny - don't get your feelings hurt!]

Want to know the perfect formula on how to create a frustrating system, provide terrible customer service, and manage to drive a loyal customer to hate? Just take lessons from PayPal - they are doing a great Job at really screwing up.

Here's the magic combo:

First, PayPal created some security restrictions that 'automatically' triggered on my account. While they won't say, I'm guessing its because I accepted 20-30 payments before I attempted to make a full-withdrawal. Regardless, this sparked their security system and it asked that I certify my account (this is different than verify). To do this, I have to ADD MY PERSONAL CREDIT CARD to the account ?@?#$@#$# I also have to verify my SS#. The first step takes 1 week for the transaction to show on my personal CC#... The second step fails because they say that I've used my SS# at some point in the past.

I just found a great backup app (utility) for my USB drive. The app that comes with PortableApps isn't very flexible and it drove me to finding something better. Luckily, I found Freebyte Backup through PortableFreeware.com. They even told me how to 'make it more portable' by avoiding the installation and simply running the .EXE & creating my own profiles. Hope this helps others looking for a stable, feature-rich USB backup utility.

In the early years, some could argue that having a website, albeit bad, was still superior to not having one at all. Websites were not the ‘norm' and having one proved that your firm was unique and cutting edge. Fast forward 10 years and this is no longer the case – every business and organization is expected to have a website. But times are changing again! It is no longer acceptable to simply have a website. Now organizations are at risk to the dangers of a bad website.

If you thought that anti-spam protection for your incoming mail would alleviate your e-mail problems forever, think again – another issue that can cause more than a few headaches are DNS BlackLists (DNSBLs), sometimes also called RBLs (Realtime Black List). DNSBLs are not a new idea, but their usage is increasing rapidly. In short, a DNSBL is an innovative use of DNS to provide access to lists of IP addresses (or other info). These lists are created on varying criteria -- for example, the IP address was caught sending spam, or it's owned by a company known for supporting/sending spam. Or perhaps the IP address hosts a mailserver not following the rules, or a web/proxy server that has been compromised in such a way that it could be used to send spam. In this way, common sources of spam can be compiled into these lists and checked by a mailserver before accepting mail. If you show up in the blacklist, your mail is rejected.

As the spam-war has escalated, DNSBLs have become a double-edged sword. They have probably saved SMTP from being utterly inundated with spam to the point that it's useless. However, blacklists have also been forced to get increasingly aggressive. It's not uncommon for an organization to find itself blacklisted, even if it didn't overtly send spam (that it knows of). If your organization becomes the unlucky member of a DNSBL, you'll find that most (if not all) of your email is rejected by the outside world because you're now considered a spammer. The worst part is that you may have no idea why you were blacklisted and no idea how to get de-listed!

CentreSource has jumped on the Blackberry bandwagon! After complaining for months that I spend too much time with email, I gave up trying to avoid the problem and simply decided to further my addiction :) We purchased three new Blackberry 8703e's and have now started the painful process of getting them to work in our Open Source environment. That's right, Blackberries in a world without Outlook and Exchange. The verdict? It works, but not great.

Gene McCabe, owner of FrugalReader.com, was kind enough to be a guest blogger this week. He shares his experience in working with a development firm (CentreSource) to develop the latest version of FrugalReader.com. For anyone looking to read an honest, realistic experience about Custom Web Development, I encourage you to read Gene's commentary.

If you own a single slot CD-R, you may wonder how you're supposed to burn copies of your disks and/or make exact images of your distributions. One popular way is to create an 'Image' of your CD-ROM in the format of an ISO. The ISO file is an actual image-copy of the CD-ROM - not the files itself. This may be hard to understand, but CD-ROM's have more info associated with them other than the files that are stored on them. Special security, volume info, etc. - all stored at the low level of the CD-ROM.

Recently, a potential client asked us if we could recommend a viable open source document management system (DMS) for their needs. Despite our deep experience with Open Source business solutions, I didn't have one to recommend. I think that is primarily because so few businesses have need for a true DMS - even if they could benefit from it. As I thought about it, we could benefit from one because we save so many files and even have an elaborate naming scheme for versioning.

So, I went on a quest to see what I could find. The systems I chose have the following features: Easy to use, Flexible to store any file, Versioning, Ability to handle large Volumes of Data, Customizable Meta Data, Document Text Search (including PDF), and Provide a Web Interface for Universal Access. Here are the ONLY two candidates I found: