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Anchor Trailways Needs Hendersonville’s Help...
Keystone client, Anchor Trailways, is doing something great to give back this Christmas. They have organized a toy drive for children of the homeless this Christmas. Their goal? To completely stuff one of their rather large motor coach buses with toys.
They’ve partnered up with 107.5 The River and the Nashville Rescue Mission for their Stuff-A-Bus promotion this Saturday, December 20, from 10am-Noon. The Anchor bus and 107.5 The River crew will both be live and in person at our very own Indian Lake Village on Saturday to collection donations.
We have a soft spot for local companies that give back to the local community, and wanted to do our part to help publicize this event. The folks at Anchor are really great, down-to-earth people with a genuine desire to serve and help the Nashville community. If you have any spare toys, or can purchase some by Saturday, you’d be helping to make this Christmas really special for some kids in need.
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Major Internet Explorer Vulnerability Remains Unpa...
Internet security experts are warning computer users of a vulnerability with Internet Explorer that is still not fixed. The hole allows malware on infected sites to infiltrate your machine–and the websites containing the infected code might not even know they have it. This bug affects all versions of Internet Explorer, meaning that it affects over 70% of Internet users worldwide.
Obviously Microsoft is surely working overtime to try and patch this hole, and it appears there will be a Windows update soon. Until then, we thought you’d want to know.
An easy solution is to temporarily switch to a different browser until a fix is ready. But not all users have more than one browser installed.
Thankfully, most of the infected sites, for now, are Chinese sites.
Also, there is a fix out there… and by editing your registry data you can block access to the one local file that the malware targets. Now, we don’t for a second suggest you go editing your registry data–well meaning people can cause serious and irreparable harm to their computer by tinkering around in there. (Keystone Networking Specialists, however, might be able to help you).
You can also use a firewall, or a web filter such as Websense, which will warn you before you visit a site that has malicious code on it.
Also… it’s a good time to remind everyone to keep their Windows Update turned on–regularly checking for Microsoft updates is one of the best ways a user can help keep their system as safe as possible.
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2008 Hendersonville Military Christmas Care Packag...
The 2008 Hendersonville Military Christmas Care Package Drive has come to a close.
We’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who donated to the drive; your contributions WILL make a difference this Christmas for our deployed military members in Iraq. Thank you!
Thanks also to our co-sponsors, all of whom helped promote the drive, helped collect donations, and helped us pack everything up:
- Hendersonville Chamber of Commerce
- Hendersonville Christian Academy
- The Access Group, LLC
- Hendersonville City Hall
- The UPS Store
- Healthcare Performance Partners
All told, over 111 boxes of donations were collected–totalling over 1514 pounds! Great job everyone! We nearly doubled last year’s total.
Thanks finally to all the volunteers who came out Tuesday night to help us pack everything up. Here are some photos of our packing party; I hope you enjoy them:
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A Lesson In Lazy Domain Name Management
Here’s a domain-name cautionary tale: George Bush, like many presidents before him, is having a library built and named for him–it will be at Southern Methodist University in Texas.
And like most libraries, this one has a foundation set up to raise funds and promote awareness.
And that foundation, the George W. Bush Library Foundation, had purchased a domain name for the library’s website. Fittingly, the domain is GeorgeWBushLibrary.com.
Well, seems they forgot to renew the registration for that domain, and it expired.
Now, you may not know this, but the Internet is full of people who are out to get you. One such group is known as “domain squatters.” They monitor lists of domains that are about to expire, and they pounce on them when they do. Then… they sit back and wait for the original owner to realize what happened and then offer to sell the domain back at an outrageous price. And they make millions doing this.
Well, that’s exactly what happened to George W Bush’s library domain. It expired because the foundation wasn’t paying enough attention to it. A squatter scooped it up–some company called Illuminati Karate–and then offered to sell it back to the foundation… for $35,000.
And the foundation did it. They paid $35,000 to get back a domain that would have cost them $10 to renew on their own.
The lesson? Pay attention to your domain names and their expiration date. Or better yet, let us manage your domain name–we set all our domains to renew automatically so they never expire. Or buy your domain name for multiple years in advance… you can buy in 5 and 10 year blocks.
Last thing–watch out for domain expiration spam. It’s a new game for scammers to send unsolicited emails that make it look like your domain is about to expire and you should renew automatically by clicking. And once you click you lose your domain. The way to avoid these is to know where your domain is registered and how to reach them. If you ever receive an email about your domain expiring… immediately call the company where your domain is registered (it might be us here at Keystone) and inquire… never click a link in an email like that. You might regret it to the tune of $35,000!
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Web Browser Round Up
Seems to be a big week for news related to various web browsers. Since there’s so much to talk about regarding browsers, we thought we’d do a little round-up here to keep you all in the know.
1. Google Chrome is now out of Beta Testing
Google’s Chrome browser has officially come out of beta and is now a stable release. That doesn’t mean they’re done tweaking and improving Chrome, and it certainly doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed a bug-free browsing experience–I still can’t get the thing to install right on my laptop.
So we’re still not exactly recommending you go out and switch from Internet Explorer to Chrome. But Google releasing their own web browser in direct competition with Microsoft (who has long been the only dominant player in the browser wars) is big news in the world of tech and could shape the future of the web.
2. Microsoft’s IE8 to be more helpful to the disabled.
Microsoft has announced that they’re adding several new features to the next version of Internet Explorer that are aimed at improving the browsing experience for disabled people. It’s great to see them thinking along these lines, and it’s nice to know that they are still trying to innovate.
3. Mozilla’s Firefox browser gains market share.
For the past several years, the Firefox browser has been David to Internet Explorer’s Goliath. Popular with a tiny sliver of the Internet browsing population, but nowhere near enough to be a serious competitor to Microsoft.
That’s all changing, however. Slowly, over time, Firefox has crept up on IE, and recently past the 20% mark in market share for the first time. That means that 20% of the people online are using Firefox. Still not a large enough chunk to put Microsoft’s dominance in jeopardy, but probably making them begin to sweat a bit.
4. New browser causes controversy.
A company has released a new browser developed specifically for African Americans. It’s called Blackbird, and it’s got features built in such as news feeds and social networking tools that are designed to help African Americans connect with each other through the Blackbird web browsing experience. Oh, and it’s already terribly controversial, as you can probably imagine.
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