Conficker Virus Apparently No Joke

Malware creators love to target April Fool's Day with their wares, and the latest worm, called Conficker C, could be one of the most damaging attacks we've seen in years according to Christopher Null: The Working Guy in an article titled, "Beware Conficker worm come April 1." The malicious program is thought to have already infected between 5 million and 10 million computers, and is such a great threat that there's a $250,000 bounty from Microsoft for anyone who catches the program's author.

In an article titled, "No joke in April Fool's Day computer worm," by John D. Sutter, one quick way to tell if your computer may have been infected is to check to see if you've gotten automatic updates from Windows in March. If so, your computer is probably fine. If not, you should go to http://safety.live.com/.

If you use antivirus software, you should check to see that you've received their latest updates as well. These programs may have also been disabled by Conficker C.

Remember, your best line of defense against computer crashes of any kind is to regularly back up all of your data.

Scared of Social Media Marketing? Don't Be!

So you'd like to delve into the social media marketing scene, but you're afraid... well, maybe not afraid, but you don't have the first clue where to start. I think you're in the boat with a lot of freelancers who haven't gotten their feet wet in the social media pool yet.

Because social media marketing seems so complicated--with a huge learning curve--a lot of people feel like it's a waste of their time to become informed. I beg to differ and so does Michael A. Stelzner. He's so commited to making people comfortable with Social Media Marketing, that he's written a report, AND he's giving it away for free!

In his report titled "SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING INDUSTRY REPORT, How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses" (March 2009), Michael has spent a lot of time and energy sharing the results of this industry report. He says,

If you're in charge of marketing your business, you'll want to closely examine what's on the following pages. My team turned over every rock, looking for the "not so obvious" findings among this content-rich data.

We set out to uncover the "who, what, where, when and why " of social media marketing with this report. Nearly 900 of your peers provided the kind of insight that previously has not existed.

If you're pondering starting social media marketing, it's my hope that these findings will help push you over the edge. If you're already onboard, feel free to examine what the really experienced marketers are doing (and use this study to persuade others.

Check out Michael's report. It's my hope that you'll begin to see that Social Media Marketing will be a great marketing avenue for your freelance writing career.

Writers: Use Cheap Ink!

As writers, we tend to use a lot of ink. My business expense for ink and paper alone is probably about 70 - 80 percent of my budget. Well, there's good news. PCWorld did an extensive study, and they say that it's safe to go "cheap" on your ink expense.

In their article, "Cheap Ink: Will It Cost You?", PCWorld found that inexpensive third-party or remanufactured printer ink cartridges may be worth the savings. An added bonus? They sometimes yield more prints than their new, branded counterparts too! From the article:

PC World teamed up with the Rochester Institute of Technology, a respected research university known for its top-notch laboratory for testing imaging products. Using popular ink jet printers from Canon, Epson, Hewlett-Packard, Kodak, and Lexmark, we ran side-by-side tests of brand-name and third-party inks to compare image quality and fade resistance. We also tracked how many pages each cartridge churned out before running dry.

Our tests show that all of the third-party inks in our test group yielded more prints per cartridge--on top of costing less--but that, with some notable exceptions, the printer manufacturers' ink we evaluated usually produced better-quality prints and proved more resistant to fading. Of course, our conclusions apply only to the printers we tested. We couldn't test all of the printers that are available (partly because you can't get third-party ink for all of them), so we picked a set of mainstream inkjet printers from recognized brands as a way of taking a snapshot view of the ink market.

If you print photos, the cheap ink may not work for you because it is less resistant to fading, but if you're primarily print text, PCWorld says there's every reason to choose the cheap stuff. Your estimated savings? $30 on a black-ink replacement cartridge compatible with an HP 45 inkjet printer according to PCWorld.

What other ways have you saved on business expenses?