On Demand Technical Support

Review: StreamSend Makes it Easy To Expand Your Client Base with Repetitive, Opt-In emails.

StreamSend’s opt-in (Permission based) Email marketing service has proven to be one of the best ways for a company to affordably engage in e-promotion. Their service allows clients to quickly and efficiently strengthen their relationship with existing and new customers, providing the look of a Fortune 500 company without the expense. Whether you are building lists, conducting an advertising campaign, or just reviewing reports, their easy to use console makes every step of the process a breeze.

As they are an opt-in – or permission based email service – you never have to worry about your emails being bounced back as Spam. Further, as each email address is verified, you don’t have to wonder how many of your emails are actually getting delivered or face a mail box overflowing with “unable to deliver” notices.

Templates Make Creating an Email Campaign Easy

StreamSend’s ready to use templates makes it possible to create and send a professionally designed email or newsletter in just minutes. Or, for those with a creative flare, a custom template can be used.

Either way, this email marketing service makes it easy to conduct a targeted email marketing campaign, or to strengthen the relationship with your clients.

StreamSend has proven to be one of the most cost effective ways to manage and build customer relationships, resulting in higher consumer loyalty and more profits. It specifically allows you to send announcements, newsletters, and other vital communications securely and easily.

StreamSend’s Easy To Use Console Makes List Management Simple

You can build a list, or using the StreamSend “Import to” Wizard, quickly upload an existing customer list in moments. Further, you can upload and manage multiple lists at no additional charge. New subscription requests, removal requests and bounces are handled automatically. You won’t need a large staff or a huge budget, as after just a few minutes of setting up, you can securely and easily send a professional, targeted message to the right clients.

Quickly Generate Detailed Activity Reports to be “In the Know!”

StreamSend allows you to track subscribers reading activity in real time to gauge you campaign’s effectiveness. You can see who is reading your newsletter, who is forwarding it, which links they click on, who is subscribing and unsubscribing, and how many new subscribers the latest email campaign brought. These reports can be exported and downloaded into Excel or other formats for local analysis of your campaign’s success.

For Developers, StreamSend’s API Allows Implementation on Nearly Any Platform

For Developers, StreamSend is a wonderful way to boost your offerings to your own clients, enabling your customers to benefit from the ease, speed and cost effectiveness of StreamSend. You can strengthen your own customer relationships by providing a cutting edge and valuable online tool. Whether you are using HTML, Ruby, PHP, ColdFusion, or .Net, the StreamSend API allows a customizable integration between Stream Send and your client’s site. StreamSend’s Reseller program also enables you to increase your revenue stream while serving your client’s needs.

You can further leverage the benefit of StreamSend, making it even easier and faster, with customized API Plug-Ins like Arachnid Creations’ Web Services StreamSend API Plug-In.

Summary

For an easy to use, Opt-In email marketing tool, StreamSend is obviously the hands down choice. It’s low cost, managed lists, ease of use, and compliance with anti-spam laws definitely makes it the top email marketing tool available.

I am working on a new computer, received just 24 hours ago, in my normal work environment, which means that I am writing this with six main programs running. And they are all running perfectly – I can talk on Skype while switching back and forth between Microsoft Streets and Microsoft Access according to what I need, and I don’ t have

to wait. It’s almost instant.

I love it like that.

I was working away from my office several hours a week, and I found working on my client’s old, antiquated systems was something like watching paint dry. It was awful. Being of limited resources, I couldn’t afford to go and buy a new $1,000 laptop, but I could afford to rent. For much longer than I care to admit my foolishness, I paid through the nose for a laptop, paying its original cost three times. (I keep wondering why I’m so bright and not rich yet; perhaps this is why? Hmmmmm.)

I thought to look on EBay and see what was available when the same client downsized me, in an effort to survive this recession, and that left me with $800.00 less a month. I am able to work remotely, however, and so at least there is a solution, although it feels like a step backwards. But that laptop just had to go!

On EBay, I looked at several suppliers and finally settled on a deal from the Blair Technology Group. They offered a “Buy Now” Dell Optiplex GX270 Pentium 4, 2.8 GHz with 512K of RAM, delivered, for $118.61. I had already determined that it would be faster than my laptop. As I write this, with seven programs running, including task manager to monitor resource usage, I find the CPU isn’t even running at 10%, and my page file (memory) usage is about 80% of available memory, of which two-thirds is being used for Cache. (I transferred 1 Gig of RAM from my old desktop into the new system, and moved one half of the existing RAM and put it back into the old system, leaving me with 1.25 GIG on the new system).

Exactly as described, this system from Blair Technology Group was an excellent buy; I got a better system than my laptop for less than half of what I was paying every month to rent the laptop. What geek wouldn’t whisper, “Sweet!”?

My daughter was there when the delivery service came. She described the delivery person as “flipping the package over and over, end on end, all the way up the driveway.” She noted that he offered to carry it in for her, but she declined the offer! The computer was shrouded in bubble wrap, inside the box, and it didn’t seem to mind the arduous delivery. Everything worked except a minor problem with the CD drive, which I am working on with the company. Frankly, I don’t care if it gets resolved or not; I am already satisfied with the purchase, even if the $10.00 CD Reader doesn’t work. I didn’t mention the name of the delivery service because I didn’t want to embarrass UPS. Ooops!

I did send an email and they responded quickly, with several suggestions of what to do to resolve the problem. Unfortunately, none of them worked, and I think the CD Reader really is defective, but in any case I do trust them to work them out.

So, is there a moral to the story?

Sure. Blair Technology Group rocks! You should try them! Just say “ ‘On Demand Tech’ referred me!”

Dear Friends:

Sorry for the lack of updates lately!  I have been working on setting up an online store for a client, and am happy to report that it is completed now and functioning properly.

I previously told you that I would be doing a series on downloading movies, software, etcetera, using torrents. However, I have changed my mind.

Recent legal events, as well as the changing face and purpose of malware (viruses), have made me reconsider.

For example, a Federal Court last October 5^th awarded the music industry $222,000.00 from a woman who downloaded thirty copyrighted songs (link). More recently, another jury in Boston awarded four record labels $675,000 from a graduate student in Boston (link).  While watch dog agencies such as the RIAA are rumored to be changing their tactics by working with Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) to go after only the most serious abusers of copyright, the possibility of legal action makes the practice of downloading copyrighted material  a risky venture. Nothing on the internet is completely anonymous; with the right resources, anything and anyone can be traced.

Further, as the state of Malware and viruses continues to evolve, dabbling in the “Free Lunch” side of the internet is riskier than ever. Governments everywhere are now getting involved in trying to prevent network stealth attacks while simultaneously planning on how to do it to their enemies. Oddly, the fastest way to contaminate a network is to plant Trojans and other malware in a pirated movie or software program.

I don’t believe that any one virus protection program is able to block all viruses. I like both Norton and MacAfee, but I have experienced script attacks that did manage to infect my system in spite of them. If I unknowingly allow my system to be hijacked, it’s no longer most aptly to be controlled by some pimply faced, pizza eating hacker, but more likely by a sophisticated government agent or a terrorist organization. They would not necessarily have an interest in me, but more likely would be trying to use my computer to launch other attacks. Ghostnet has given us evidence that it is possible to infect and control computers in other countries, even government computers.

There is no free lunch on the Internet. As for the artists who create the music and the movies, just like the programmers that create the software we use, they do deserve to get paid for their work. If I write a book, and people read it and like it, I should get something for the hundreds of hours I put in to create it. It’s just morally right, and legally too.

I set on a course I no longer choose to follow as I watch the storm clouds gather and the water turn dark and rough around me. It is not my plan to lead you on a journey where it is quite possible you will shipwreck your life.

(You can still send your technical questions to me, and I will help where possible).

Coming Blogs:

Why I don’t want you to go to my site www.makemoremoneywithtwitter.com.

There are lots of legitimate reasons one might choose to download copyrighted material, and a lot more illegitimate ones, but I’m not going to discuss whether or not you should (at least not now). Keep in mind that there are criminal and civil laws against the unauthorized copying of copyrighted material, including movies, shows, music, music videos, etcetera. While P2P file sharing technology is completely legal, many of the files traded through P2P are copyrighted. Downloading, and specifically uploading, P2P files may put you at risk for a civil lawsuit in any country. These lawsuits usually take the form of class-action suits, filed against groups of users who are logged as blatantly copying and distributing copyrighted materials. Recently, the MPAA and RIAA, along with the governments of England and Australia, took several thousand users to court, demanding that they pay thousands of dollars in copyright infringement penalties.

Also be warned: your ISP (Internet service provider) may, at their discretion, release their logs of your downloading/uploading activity to potential copyright plaintiffs. The more megabytes you download/upload, the more you risk being sued by the MPAA, RIAA, and other pro-artist groups.

Surely you are not surprised to hear this, so with that caveat out of the way, let’s look at how to do it!

a. Downloading music, video, and software using Torrents.

Torrents are the files associated with a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol used for distributing large amounts of data. BitTorrent is one of the most common protocols used for transferring large files. When a file provider makes his or her file available to the network it is referred to as a “seed” and allows others, called “peers”, to connect and download the file. Each peer that downloads a part of the data makes it available to other peers to download. Once the file is successfully downloaded by a peer, if left available to the network, the peer becomes a new seed. This distributed nature of BitTorrents can result in a viral spreading of the file among peers.

As more people join the “swarm” the chance of a successful download increases, as does the speed of the download.

Just to have an idea how much information is available in BitTorrent files, IsoHunt estimates that there are 1.4 Petabytes worth of information indexed globally, roughly the equivalent of Facebook’s stored user photos estimated to be in excess of ten billion photos!

So the first thing you’ll need to do is download and install a BitTorrent client. There are several available, but most are just rip-offs of programmers Brad Cohen’s version that he developed in April 2001. His company still maintains the program and it can be downloaded for free at www.bittorrent.com (for personal use only).

(For a more detailed explanation of how the Bittorrent protocol works, click here).

b. How to find Movie, Music, Ebooks, and Software for downloading.

There are lots of sites that provide tracking services and indexing of torrent files:

• www.piratebay.org. This is a decent site for BitTorrents, though it shouldn’t be confused with piratebay.com, which requires a paid membership. Their search engine doesn’t work correctly if you put a phrase in “quotes”. Otherwise, it’s pretty decent!
• www.isohunt.com. This site is decent also, just make sure your pop up blocker is turned on and your antivirus program is up and running, as I have encountered some questionable activity while browsing this site.
• www.mininova.com. They have a lot of variety and often I can locate obscure items here when I can’t find them elsewhere. However, I have had script attacks, pop ups, etcetera here, so again, turn on your pop up blocker and make sure your antivirus is a good one and that it is up to date.
• Others include www.BTjunkie.org, www.torrentscan.com (A meta search engine), and www.Demonoid.com. Like everything on the Internet, everything is always changing, so don’t be afraid to do a search on Google.

It is important to pay attention to the comments and whether or not a download is “trusted.” For example, in the following screenshot from Piratebay, trusted torrents are marked with a green skull and crossbones, and not trusted ones are marked with red.

How to detect the better quality Torrents.

On other sites, you may notice the number of comments, negative or positive, and just save yourself some aggravation and don’t download the red ones or the torrents that have no comments; they are usually scams and were uploaded to either get you to sign up for advertising or to try and sell you the rights to the content. Once you download the torrent, your BitTorrent program will automatically add it to your download list and start downloading it.

In my next blog, we’ll look at what to do with the file(s) you’ve download, and how to get them into a format that you can use on you IPhone, your DVD or BlueRay player, etcetera.

Torrent Privacy Scam

A while back an associate asked me about website www.torrentprivacy.com. Having never heard of the site before, I checked it out and learned that it was promising internet privacy for a fee. Specifically, to allow anonymous download of movies, software, etc. I put on my Investigator hat and decided to check it out.

They have a very convincing website. The following has been directly copied from their “About Us” page:

About our service

Our special software creates secure tunnel via SSH protocol and all traffic which goes through this tunnel is totally encrypted the way nobody is able to read it. We have already included a configured torrent client in the pack so everything you download through this client will go through secure tunnel and will be downloaded privately. Also we provide you an access to special proxy for the most of world trackers in order not to reveal your IP address in case the tracker is inspected. The tracker will have only our IP address; you stay protected and unidentified.

We guarantee you 100% privacy from 3rd parties while using our services. We do not keep any logs and we will never reveal any personal information unless a serious crime is committed by TorrentPrivacy user through our service. Our dedicated servers are placed in the Netherlands, Canada, the USA. The Netherlands – the country well known for it’s loyal laws regarding individual privacy (25 892 – Rules for the protection of personal data (Personal Data Protection Act), Passed Upper House on July 3rd, 2000. (Stb. 2000, 302)).

Our services are fully compliant with the law. Like a phone company, TorrentPrivacy is a common carrier and we do not monitor, review, log or store data. It is your responsibility to observe the law of your country, the same way as it is your obligation to keep within the law using a telephone or a fax machine. TorrentPrivacy sells sophisticated electronic envelopes to people who need them. Privacy is an inalienable human right.

Any internet newbie should understand that every time you click on a link or download a file, a log entry is created on the Internet Provider’s server. The log entry identifies you by your IP address, what you requested (e.g. the link you clicked on), and what the result is, plus a lot of other information including your operating system, your browser make and version, etcetera.

I always tell my clients that nothing they do on the Internet is private. I also tell them if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I caution them about a growing global viral war that has spawned networks of compromised computers.

(Click Ghost Net For additional information).

So I should have known better.

Mistake #1

I signed up for the service, paying with a protected credit card (which was never billed). Their website cautioned that some anti-virus applications mistakenly confused their software with a virus but assured me that it was not. Growing more wary, but still idiotically forging ahead, I downloaded their software and installed it. (My ego got me here, thinking I was too good to be victimized).

My virus software did not identify the package as being infected. (Note that in the case of Ghost Net only thirty percent of virus software identified the Ghost Net Trojan as a virus). So with my virus protection and firewall set to “Trusting” I jumped into the murky world of video and software Piracy.

At first, everything worked great. I was able to download movies, music, and software using their version of Bittorrent software. (Bittorrent was developed by Bram Cohen as a free, open source file-sharing application effective for distributing very large software and media files. In this case, Torrent Privacy just stole it and doctored it to look like theirs. BitTorrent itself is a good, safe program).

I started running into problems after about a week. For example, when I would be examining the torrents at www.isohunt.com or www.mininova.org my system became subject to script attacks that attempted to take control of my computer. MacAfee caught and stopped most of them, but not all. More than once I had to disconnect my internet connection and scan and remove viruses from my hard drive. I kept ratcheting up the level of my protection. Eventually I turned up MacAfee’s firewall to “Stealth” level, which hides my IP address and disallows returns of internet pings, (a means of discovering if a computer is on a network), and was able to operate normally, mostly. (Norton doesn’t seem to have the equivalent).

I was able to download “cracked” software, movies, even new ones not yet out on DVD, and music. While I downloaded and tested all of these, I only kept what I had license for (for example, my Harry Chapin Boxset CDs that my granddaughter stepped on and cracked). About seventy percent of the software I downloaded contained viruses. (I will be blogging more about the ethics and legality of downloading media without copyright later).

Mistake #2

Finally MacAfee identified TorrentPrivacy’s program as a virus and removed it. I re-downloaded the file and reinstalled it, and again MacAfee identified it as a virus and removed it. So, like a real foolish Internet Newbie, especially considering that I knew better, I turned off my virus protection, started the program, and then turned my virus protection back on. Everything was fine, or so I thought.

Mistake #3 and #4

It was about here that we lost power during a software installation which crashed my registry and prevented Windows Vista from loading. I was caught without a working backup of my registry nor a set of recovery CD’s for my laptop (#3). It was necessary to do without it for a week while I waited for Toshiba to send me a copy and then I had to reload all of my software.

Undaunted, I also loaded TorrentPrivacy’s software (#4).

Knowing that is foolish, if not idiotic, to disable my virus protection to make a program run that my antivirus kit is telling me is a threat, I finally contacted TorrentPrivacy’s help desk to see if the problem could be resolved.

I defined the problem to the help desk “technician.” His replies were vague and unsubstantial. After several IM’s back and forth, it became apparent that he had nothing to help me, even if he wanted to, which I am certain he did not. So, I angrily suggested that I would send the file to MacAfee and see what they had to say about the file. (I should have just gone out and kicked a hornet’s nest with my bare foot!)

Immediately the “help desk” session was terminated and my computer was taken over. I was flooded with intrusive scripts, and literally could not get control of my computer for over thirty minutes. I finally did by disconnecting from the internet, ending several running programs that I never started using Task Manager, and then scanning my hard drive where several viruses were discovered and deleted. Then I restarted my machine.

Windows would not load. I was able to start in safe mode, and tried to restore to one of several restore points that I had created, but they had all been deleted. Luckily, I had made a backup copy of my registry so I thought I would be able to restore the registry and be back in business, but it also had mysteriously vanished.

It ended up that I had to wipe the hard drive and reinstall everything, again. (It takes about eight hours to load everything I use professionally and personally on my work computer). When I was done, I attempted to log into TorrentPrivacy just to see what would happen, but when I did I discovered that my login had been disabled.

Summary

TorrentPrivacy is an out-law organization intent upon taking over your computer, with an end goal, I assume, of stealing your personal data and information. It is likely that they are using unknowingly contaminated computers to form a network that provides a platform for other nefarious activities, as in GhostNet and BotNet.

Video and software piracy is illegal, and just doing so makes one a criminal. It only makes sense, then, that sites made for illegal activities are going to be run by criminals, and there is no honor among thieves. Attempting to play in this arena is extremely unwise; they’re not doing it for fun, but with a profit motive. They are not giving to you; they want from you.

The creators of viruses are getting better at finding means to infect you without tripping your antivirus software. Anti-virus companies, such as MacAfee and Norton, are getting better at detecting these, but the malicious programmers have the advantage. So even on a good day there is a chance a virus will get by your protection; surfing adult sites or downloading from untrustworthy sources will always subject you to the possibility of becoming infected.

I have remembered what I used to live by:

1. I will never turn off my virus protection to allow a program to run.

2. I will not be caught without system recovery disks again.

3. I will not be caught without a recent backup of my registry on a disk separate from my system. (E.g. I keep a back up now on a CD or DVD so it can’t be erased).

4. Bootleggers, Credit card thieves, scam artists, etcetera, that are based in countries outside the United States are not subject to the same laws we are, so often they have nothing to lose and can operate with impunity. I have conducted business with entities in the UK and Canada, and have no regrets, but I think it unwise to deal with companies in Estonia, Russia, China, etcetera, without a lot of research first.

Alicia Harris

www.ondemandtechsupport.com

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