http://smb.blogs.techtarget.com A blog for SMB IT professionals. Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:15:31 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Aside from the news that a 10-year-old boy playing with matches started one of them, the California wildfires have mostly fallen off the front pages of most of the nation's newspapers. But businesses will be feeling the effects of these fires for quite awhile. Especially at risk are the small and ... http://smb.blogs.techtarget.com/2007/11/01/marketing-through-altruism/ It's been a week since Apple debuted its latest operating system, called Leopard, and the initial reactions by users and analysts is, well, not good. At all. According to numerous reports, security researchers believe Leopard's firewall is actually worse than Apple's previous OS, Tiger, "having more holes than its namesake cat ... http://smb.blogs.techtarget.com/2007/10/31/security-concerns-stalk-leopard/ I'm writing this blog post from my home office, and there's a good chance you're reading this blog post from your home office. That's good news for mobile IT vendors. With mobility becoming an increasingly important IT priority, investments by SMBs in smartphones and virtual private networks (VPNs) could rise by ... http://smb.blogs.techtarget.com/2007/10/30/mobility-making-its-way-to-smbs/ Bashing help desks and tech support sometimes feels too easy. With that in mind, I'll try something different. I want to offer kudos to the tech support call center at Digimarc Corp., for helping the U.S. Secret Service nab a thief. Apparently Timothy Scott Short, 33, allegedly stole a Digimarc printer on ... http://smb.blogs.techtarget.com/2007/10/25/tech-support-it-can-also-fight-crime/ Here we go again. Not Your Average Joe's restaurant announced today that credit card information of up to 3,500 customers was recently stolen by hackers (or a hacker ... the company isn't sure how many crooks were involved). The data breach took place between early August and late September, the company ... http://smb.blogs.techtarget.com/2007/10/24/not-your-average-security-breach/ Google is riding high these days. Its stock price is up over $600 a share and it holds a commanding lead in the Internet search engine wars. And thanks to its customizable homepage, users can manage virtually every aspect of their lives via Google RSS feeds, email, stock quotes, weather, ... http://smb.blogs.techtarget.com/2007/10/23/wasting-time-has-never-been-easier/ It's finally here! Talking spam! This morning Commtouch Software Ltd., the Israeli antispam service vendor, announced that its Commtouch Detection Center has identified a huge outbreak of MP3 spam. Other antispam vendors have also detected it. These messages come with MP3 attachments that, when opened, play voice messages promoting stocks. To hear ... http://smb.blogs.techtarget.com/2007/10/18/click-on-me-and-ill-tell-you-some-spam/ Slowly but surely, SMBs are increasingly turning to unified communications (UC) technologies to improve productivity and shorten response times of businesses-critical decisions, according to a new report by AMI-Partners. Still, AMI says that SMBs are only just scratching the surface of UC, picking and choosing individual UC components rather than realizing ... http://smb.blogs.techtarget.com/2007/10/16/unified-communications-tempts-smbs/ The federal government is really cracking down on spammers. Here's a video of the feds processing spam complaints: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjarLbD9r30 The federal government hopes its criminal prosecution of spammers will act as some sort of deterrent. On Friday, two men who were convicted of spamming millions with pornographic emails were sentenced to five ... http://smb.blogs.techtarget.com/2007/10/15/are-the-feds-running-in-place-with-antispam-efforts/  This story pretty much speaks for itself, but here's a brief setup. Jammie Thomas was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for sharing a couple of dozen songs she illegally downloaded. Thomas' defense in court was that someone spoofed her IP address and it was actually that person who ... http://smb.blogs.techtarget.com/2007/10/12/spoofing-never-heard-of-it/