"Spam King" Robert Soloway faces up to 26 years in prison after pleading guilty to federal mail fraud and tax evasion charges. He'll be sentenced June 20 in US District Court in Seattle, Washington.

Soloway was felony mail fraud, fraud in connection with e-mail, and failing to file a tax return in 2005 - the year he made more then $300,000 by sending spam.

In addition to a nice, hefty stay in prison, he also faces fines of over $600,000. While it's unlikely he'll get the maximum sentence, he's going to prison for sure.

Now, all of this is in addition to the millions of dollars in previous judgments companies like Microsoft ($7.8 million) and an Oklahoma Internet service provider ($10 million) have won against him for abusing his network.

Like I've said before, I harbor no illusions that these recent convictions will have any impact at all on the volume of spam we receive.

If you look at it from a spammer's perspective for a minute, it really is super cheap advertising. For the cost of an Internet connection ($20/month or less), you can send your message out to 20 to 30 million people. If only one percent of those people open and read your message, that's 300,000 potential "views" - at a cost per view of less than a hundredth of a cent each.

If one percent of those 300,000 people purchase your product, that's 3,000 sales - for a cost of $20 total, or 6/10ths of a cent each.

It's a simple example, of course, and I'm ignoring the costs to develop the e-mail, hire the attorneys to defend you, etc. But it is a compelling advertising model.

If only it weren't so repugnant!

Just because everyone in corporate American has e-mail, that doesn't mean it is always an effective way to get your message across. Case in point is the e-mailed press release. If not done right, you're just wasting bytes.

E-mail is often the way that reporters and editors prefer to receive information. And because e-mail is everywhere, it is easy to lose site of the fact that it is simply a communications vehicle - your message still has to be laser focused and precise. You still have to consider the needs of your audience - not your company - despite the ease with which e-mail lets you deliver the information.

Remember, too, that all of your competitors are also e-mailing their press releases and story ideas, so you'll want to make sure your information is as easy as possible to evaluate and, ultimately, publish. Think of these tips as "e-mailed press release etiquette:"

• Don't include the entire press release in the body of your e-mail. It's generally accepted that you have about six seconds to capture the reader's attention in the preview pane - perhaps less if the reporter is particularly busy that day. Press releases can average five or more paragraphs. Instead, include a great headline and some teaser copy in the e-mail, and include a click-through to a hosted version on your Web site. You are publishing all of your press releases on your website, right?
   
• Don’t include attachments. A lot of corporate e-mail filtering systems discourage, and in some cases strip away, unknown attachments in e-mail messages. Make data sheets, photos and other release-related items as down-loadable links on the web page where you've published the release. Or, once you've made personal contact with the reporter or editor, send the attachments as a person-to-person e-mail, instead of as part of your general distribution.
  
• Think carefully about “from” and subject lines. These can be as important as the headline in your release. Here's a good rule to follow: Who the mail is "from" tells the person who got the mail whether or not to delete the e-mail (without opening it), and the subject line tells the recipient whether or not to open the e-mail. If someone in your company has a relationship with the media, test using that person’s name in the “from” line instead of the company name by itself, or your administrative assistant's e-mail. Microsoft Exchange will let you set up permissions for people to send e-mail as you. Write an incredible, attention getting subject line and include first name personalization if possible. Recipient first name personalization has fallen out of widespread favor in the b-to-c e-mail world, but in b-to-b, it’s still another way to catch the people's attention.

Once you get the reporter to open your e-mail, the relevance of your message takes over. Just because the media recipient list may be smaller than your customer retention or acquisition lists doesn’t mean relevancy rules don’t apply. If your message isn’t important to the recipient, you’ve lost their attention today and maybe in the future as well.

As you know, my company Tech Experts sponsors a program we call No Virus Wednesdays to help computer users eradicate spam, spyware, trojans and viruses from their computers. It's been hugely successful, and we've helped a lot of clients speed up their computers and protect their sensitive personal information. Because we do so much of this work, I'm always on the look out for interesting angles on how the viruses are designed.

I owe my friend Nathan a big thank you for this interesting post. MessageLabs (www.messagelabs.com) commissioned Russian artist Alex Dragulescu to create graphical representations of Internet viruses and trojans, based on the actual code of the malware. He's developed a number of images, and each corresponds to the structure of the virus.

I was really amazed to see how much these computer viruses actually look like living viruses, like the one that gives you things like the common cold. They're beautiful images, but scary to think about.

For the English majors out there.... I did research the plural of virus - and it is viruses, not viri or virii. Check it out here on wikipedia.

 

Microsoft announced their new software-as-a-service (SaaS) initiative a few days ago:

At last year's Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer described the industry's shift to a software-plus-services strategy: a combination of on-premises, partner-hosted, and Microsoft-hosted software that empowers customers by offering richer applications and more choices. Today, Chairman Bill Gates announced Microsoft Online Services: reliable, secure, enterprise-class software delivered as subscription services that you sell and Microsoft hosts.

Microsoft Online Services provide the rich interactivity of on-premises client and server applications, and the flexibility and scalability of Web-based services. You can generate predictable recurring revenue streams through new managed services, business-process consulting, tier-one end-user support, and your own value-added services. Efficiently expand your customer base with the new, easy-to-deploy Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft Office SharePoint Online implementations, without adding infrastructure or headcount.

Offer your small- and midsize-business customers real-time collaboration and integrated experiences regardless of device or location, technologies. Your customers decrease routine, time-consuming IT administration and associated costs, increase operational efficiencies, and improve business agility.

Doesn't anyone other than me me see a few issues with this?

First, be honest... When was the last time your Internet went down? Last week? Last month? Certainly within the last 90 days, you've had some kind of Internet issue. I don't know about you, but I really don't want my entire company shut down and unable to edit Word documents when the Internet is borked up.

Second, I like having my data close to me. Hosted somewhere on a Microsoft server isn't as good for my business as sitting in my building, properly backed up of course.

SaaS has it's place - applications that are so prohibitively expensive to purchase that small businesses simply couldn't afford to use them, or programs that require such heavy-horse powered hardware that it isn't practical to run locally for a small number of users. In those cases, it makes sense.

I'm sure we'll see more and more small businesses move to some sort of hosted model - it's cheap, and small business owners have finite resources.

However, once you reach a certain size, say five or more desktops, externally hosted apps don't appeal to me. A brand new high end server and five workstations, including Office licenses, can be leased for less than $300 a month, and outright purchased for less than $10,000.

Own your equipment, and own your data - that's my advice.

Back in the old days, my company was a dealer for Commodore computers (do you remember what Commodore computers were? The Commodore 64!!). We were also an authorized repair center for them. This was back in the days when we did component level repairs on computers - we would actually unsolder chips and troubleshoot board-level problems.

TechRepublic recently did one of their "Cracking open" series on the old Commodore 64.

Talk about bringing back memories! I loved these computers, for their simplicity. They weren't oversold and basically just did what they were supposed to do, without a lot (any?!) fluff.

That would have been, oh geez, about 21 years ago now.

 

 

So, fun to read that Jeremy Jaynes, the guy who hijacked an AOL server and sent more than 50,000 e-mails in three days, had his conviction upheld by the Virginia Supreme Court.

I'm not sure how I feel about the decision being so close (4-3, whew!!), but Jaynes' argument that spam is protected free speech wasn't given much credence. Thankfully!

Jaynes is believed to have generated about $750,000 a month when he sent total of 10 million messages between July and August 2003. His fraud activities allowed him to receive millions of dollars in profit, which he used to purchase several homes in the Raleigh, N.C. area.

Jaynes was ultimately charged in Virginia because the AOL servers he used for sending spam were located in that state.

"This is a historic victory in the fight against online crime," said Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell in a written statement. "Spam not only clogs email inboxes and destroys productivity; it also defrauds citizens and threatens the online revolution that is so critical to Virginia's economic prosperity."

The Supreme Court rejected Jaynes' claim that the state law violates both the First Amendment and the federal Interstate Commerce Clause of the U.S. Consitution.

I don't think we'll see any drop in spam because of it... So it's kind of a hollow victory.

But still, it makes me feel better to know this guy is going to be in jail for a few years.

Full Disclosure: As you're undoubtedly aware, my company Tech Experts (www.mytechexperts.com) is a Microsoft Gold Certified partner; so, our bread is buttered right along with Bill Gates' when it comes to the technology we sell and service for our clients. Admittedly, I'm biased.

On February 27th, the European Commission fined Microsoft $1.3 billion (899 million euros) for "continued failure to honor the 2004 anti trust ruling against it." Articles here and here.

While just a blip on Microsoft's cash pile, it's still just a plain-ass ridiculous amount of money. Especially when you consider the total amount Microsoft has paid out just to the EU exceeds $2.5 billion.

I said several years ago there's a very simple way to bring this to an end, one way or another.

Were I Steve Ballmer, I'd give Neelie Kroes a call. He's the Commissioner for Extortion Competition for the European Union. The call would go something like this:

"Hey Neelie, Steve Ballmer here. Hey, sorry we've had this disagreement! I'm mailing you a check for that $1.3 billion you wanted, because while we disagree with your position, we like to keep everyone happy. By the way, since you guys don't really like the way we do business here at Microsoft, rather than continue to aggravate you, have ridiculous fines imposed, and have all this rancor, we decided today we're just going to stop selling and licensing all of our software in the European Union. Yep - as of today, you can't buy any Microsoft software anymore. Sorry it didn't work out."

Abuse of monopoly power? Perhaps. But I think a very strong argument could be made the EU is using their powers a little abusively, too.

It wouldn't ever work in the real world, I know, but fun to think about. Microsoft has enough cash on hand to survive the (what I expect would be) a very short stand off.

Google announced today that it was building its own fiber optic cable to the trans-Pacific region, linking the United States and Japan. Neat!

The $300 million "Unity" project is a 10,000km linear cable system with 7.68 Tbps transmission capability.

Google's press release talks about the specific details. But the two things I find really interesting are:

A) Trans-Pacific bandwidth demand has grown over 60% over the last few years. That's a huge increase.

B) Google is moving to owning (and ultimately, I'm sure selling) infrastructure network capacity.

GoogleFi, Google's wireless network in Mountain View, was a testbed for something much larger, I'd guess.

It will be interesting to see how things progress with Google owning infrastructure and search.

 

You know that nearly all of us computer geeks are also Trekkies (or, if you're so inclined, Trekkers). My personal favorite is Star Trek:TOS (Star Trek The Original Series) followed by Voyager. I just love Kate Mulgrew!

And if you know me personally, you know that I absolutely abhor driving. And lately, as I get older, I'm just not all that big of a fan of traveling, period. The inverse co-efficient of patience for nonsense and a low tolerance for foolishness as I age, I suppose.

So, I was very disappointed to read in Scientific American that we're still no where near having reliable transporter technology. Well, really any kind of transporter technology for that matter.

From the article:

Scientific American: What's the biggest misconception about teleportation?
Jeff Kimble: That the object itself is being sent. We're not sending around material stuff. If I wanted to send you a Boeing 757, I could send you all the parts, or I could send you a blueprint showing all the parts, and it's much easier to send a blueprint. Teleportation is a protocol about how to send a quantum state—a wave function—from one place to another.

Apparently, our current research into quantum teleportation doesn't have much to do with the kind of transporter we'd all probably like to have. But it is kind of interesting research. As the author of the article summarizes it, quantum transportation has more to do with computing than with commuting.

If you're not a network geek, this post will probably put you to sleep. But it is something I think is interesting, and potentially problematic, as the Internet continues to grow and expand.

IP addresses, the series of numbers that computers use to talk to one another both on internal company networks, and on the Internet, are a finite resource - there are only so many available. Well, that is until IPV6 becomes widely adopted, years from now I'm sure.

Anyway, CIDR (classless inter-domain routing, pronounced like cider in apple cider) was introduced back in the early 90's as a way to avoid wasteful IP address assignments. CIDR allows one to use VLSM (variable length subnet masks) to chop up their IP address blocks into convenient sizes, as opposed to rigid class-based chunks.

For example, if your network doesn't employ VLSM, you can only break your networks into subnetworks of equal size.

So, if you have a single class C address range, and you want to break it into two sub-networks for some purpose, your option would be two blocks of equal size: two networks of 128 addresses each (actually, 126 because the network address and the broadcast address don't count as usable.... Like I said, if you're not a network geek, this is getting really boring). You could also break up the block into four networks of 64 (really 62 usable) each, eight networks of 32 (30 usable), etc. all the way down to 64 networks of 2 usable addresses each. The point is, it's rigid - without variable length subnet masks, once you chop a network into smaller blocks for some purpose, the entire network is chopped into identical sizes.

This can get wasteful pretty quick. And remember, we said IP addresses were in limited supply. So, you don't want to waste addresses if it can be avoided.

VLSM lets you pick different size networks for the same large network block. So, perhaps you want your engineering department, which consists of 4 people, on a distinct network so you can throttle their bandwidth differently than you would for your sales guys, who number a dozen. With VLSM, you could break the network up to give engineering perhaps 14 usable addresses (a subnet of /28) while giving your sales department a subnet of /27, or 30 usable addresses.

The key is, you're not tied to equal sized blocks. Which means you waste less address space. However, if you're sloppy about programming your routers, you can really bloat the size of your routing tables, because each of those separate subnetworks could potentially be advertised in the routing tables.

Internally, that isn't a major problem - unless your network is huge, you're probably not going to have enough entries to task the memory of your average router. Externally, however, it is problematic.

If you have a few networks subnetted for various purposes, you're supposed to aggregate that network announcement to the outside world into the smallest possible number of routes.

To use our example above, even though engineering and sales are different networks internally, to the outside world, there is no need to advertise them as such. In real world applications there may be a need to do that, but for example purposes, lets assume there isn't.

Instead of announcing a /27 and a /28, along with whatever other networks you're using, you can announce a single /24. (For the network geeks reading this, I know that we don't generally announce /24s - remember, this is a simple example!)

Now, to the point I'm attempting to make. I receive a report every week, courtesy of the kind folks at CIDR Report (www.cidr-report.org) that analyzes the number of routes advertised on the Internet, and how many can be aggregated without affecting routability.

In the latest report (parts of it copied below), there are 250,499 routes advertised across the global Internet. The algorithm that CIDR report uses to compute the potential aggregation is explained by them as:

Aggregation Summary

The algorithm used in this report proposes aggregation only

when there is a precise match using the AS path, so as

to preserve traffic transit policies. Aggregation is also

proposed across non-advertised address space ('holes').

Based on that policy, they are calculating the routing table could be reduced to 160,924 routes, which represents a savings of more than 35%.

There may be some valid reasons some network operators don't aggregate certain traffic, but a bloat of 35% across the entire Internet really tells me that there's a great amount of sloppy network design going on out there. Some systems have more than 90% aggregation possible. That's a lot.

To the point: I think it is really interesting that if managed and aggregated properly, the global BGP routing tables would shrink by more than 35% overnight. I wonder what that would do to the speed of some of the older core and border routers out there. To sum it up another way.... Cisco and Juniper must love BGP table bloat!

AS Summary

         27461  Number of ASes in routing system

         11562  Number of ASes announcing only one prefix

          1577  Largest number of prefixes announced by an AS

                AS4755 : VSNL-AS Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. Autonomous System

      88894720  Largest address span announced by an AS (/32s)

                AS721  : DISA-ASNBLK - DoD Network Information Center

 

 

Aggregation Summary

The algorithm used in this report proposes aggregation only

when there is a precise match using the AS path, so as

to preserve traffic transit policies. Aggregation is also

proposed across non-advertised address space ('holes').

 

 --- 15Feb08 ---

ASnum    NetsNow NetsAggr  NetGain   % Gain   Description

 

Table     250499   160924    89575    35.8%   All ASes

 

AS4755      1577      388     1189    75.4%   VSNL-AS Videsh Sanchar Nigam

                                               Ltd. Autonomous System

AS9498      1156      106     1050    90.8%   BBIL-AP BHARTI BT INTERNET

                                               LTD.

AS4323      1386      507      879    63.4%   TWTC - Time Warner Telecom,

                                               Inc.

AS18566     1042      253      789    75.7%   COVAD - Covad Communications

                                               Co.

AS22773      859       87      772    89.9%   CCINET-2 - Cox Communications

                                               Inc.

AS11492     1215      447      768    63.2%   CABLEONE - CABLE ONE

AS19262      879      148      731    83.2%   VZGNI-TRANSIT - Verizon

                                               Internet Services Inc.

AS8151      1153      495      658    57.1%   Uninet S.A. de C.V.

AS17488      983      402      581    59.1%   HATHWAY-NET-AP Hathway IP Over

                                               Cable Internet

AS6478       927      380      547    59.0%   ATT-INTERNET3 - AT&T WorldNet

                                               Services

AS2386      1362      847      515    37.8%   INS-AS - AT&T Data

                                               Communications Services

AS15270      647      137      510    78.8%   AS-PAETEC-NET - PaeTec

                                               Communications, Inc.

AS6197      1032      538      494    47.9%   BATI-ATL - BellSouth Network

                                               Solutions, Inc

AS18101      715      241      474    66.3%   RIL-IDC Reliance Infocom Ltd

                                               Internet Data Centre,

AS4766       853      391      462    54.2%   KIXS-AS-KR Korea Telecom

AS4812       552       94      458    83.0%   CHINANET-SH-AP China Telecom

                                               (Group)

AS4668       524       71      453    86.5%   LGNET-AS-KR LG CNS

AS7018      1454     1007      447    30.7%   ATT-INTERNET4 - AT&T WorldNet

                                               Services

AS7011      1054      609      445    42.2%   FRONTIER-AND-CITIZENS -

                                               Frontier Communications of

                                               America, Inc.

AS855        554      112      442    79.8%   CANET-ASN-4 - Bell Aliant

AS4808       527      129      398    75.5%   CHINA169-BJ CNCGROUP IP

                                               network China169 Beijing

                                               Province Network

AS7545       490      112      378    77.1%   TPG-INTERNET-AP TPG Internet

                                               Pty Ltd

AS9443       451       76      375    83.1%   INTERNETPRIMUS-AS-AP Primus

                                               Telecommunications

AS17676      506      134      372    73.5%   GIGAINFRA BB TECHNOLOGY Corp.

AS6198       647      278      369    57.0%   BATI-MIA - BellSouth Network

                                               Solutions, Inc

AS6140       603      238      365    60.5%   IMPSAT-USA - ImpSat USA, Inc.

AS19916      556      202      354    63.7%   ASTRUM-0001 - OLM LLC

AS16814      427       75      352    82.4%   NSS S.A.

AS3356       844      500      344    40.8%   LEVEL3 Level 3 Communications

AS4134       863      521      342    39.6%   CHINANET-BACKBONE

                                               No.31,Jin-rong Street

 

Total      25838     9525    16313    63.1%   Top 30 total

 

Raelyn Campbell is suing Best Buy and the Geek Squad for losing her laptop computer and lying about it. To the tune of $54 million.

At first it sounds kind of absurd. Until you read a few articles, and Ms. Campbell's blog. She's not after the money - she's simply trying to get them to clean up their act.

I think we all know it will get settled in some manner. But the publicity should help Geek Squad clean things up a bit.

How embarassing for the Geeks, especially after this incident in January.

My friend Tim Schulien (vinman1978@aol.com) introduced us to Budapest Restaurant, 3314 Monroe Street, Toledo, Ohio. Call them at 419-241-1513.

First, let me say: This isn't a fancy restaurant. They've been around since 1959 (new owner's took over a few years ago), and it is very much still decorated in swanky 1950's decor.  

We've eaten there a few times, and the food has been spectacular every time!

The lunch menu includes Hungarian staples like Chicken Paprikas, Veal Paprikas, and Hungarian Beef Goulash. Dinner adds Breaded Pork Chops (which I had the first time I ate there, and I have never had better pork chops, ever!), Stuffed Cabbage, and Baked Swiss Steak.

So far, I've enjoyed the pork chops, with fantastic home made Hungarian dumplings, the Veal Paprikas, and the Hungarian sausage with dumplings. They serve a nice iceberg lettuce salad with the meal and home made bread. These aren't light meals!

The home-made desserts all look delicious, but I've only ever sampled the cheese danish. I highly recommend it.

Call to verify hours, I think they're only open until 8 or 8:30 during the week, but definitely try it out.

 

A few months ago, I read an article in Fast Company magazine about Jason Calacanis and a new "human powered" search engine project he was funding. I thought it was a pretty interesting concept.

The idea is that, instead of using some new fancy computer algorithm to index the web, you simply use people. It isn't very high tech, but makes a lot of sense for topics that are important.

People can evaluate context and make subjective judgments about what are relevant and important web sites for a given topic. Computer software is great at crunching numbers and running algorithms, but not so good at making a judgment call.

There's not a ton of people-powered search indexing on Mahalo yet, but enough to give you an idea of where it's headed. The nice thing is, if there's not Mahalo indexing available, they've provided links to all of the major search engines, with your search topics already populated.

I harbor no illusion they'll even make a dent in Google's profits, but still, Calacanis has come up with what could be a very useful and profitable little search niche.

 

 

Domain name renewal scams aren't new - our clients have been dealing with them for years - but I figured it would be helpful to warn you about them again. A Google search brings up thousands of examples of these renewal scammes and schemes.

The usual way this works, known as domain slamming, is fairly basic, and works just about the same way telephone slammers do. Companies with very questionable ethics download millions of WHOIS records for domain registration information and domain expiry dates. Then, a few months before the domain expires, they snail mail or e-mail a very official looking and sounding document or message that tells them to protect their valuable name by renewing early. Here are a couple of scanned examples.

Of course, when the domain owner sends the check or pays by credit card, thinking they are doing the right thing, what actually happens is that a registrar transfer is initiated. The registrant will then go through the steps to complete the transfer, because they think they're doing the correct thing in response to the (fake) renewal notice they received.

You can protect yourself fairly simply. Here's a few recommendations:

Also, always make sure you know your registration administration information, such as your domain login and password.

The meeting I had in Dallas was a peer group of other geeks in businesses similar to mine.

One of the topics I brought up for discussion was time management. And in a fun little bit of irony, we ran out of time on the first day to talk about it, and ended up talking about it the following morning.

The largest challenge I face in my everyday business life is managing my time effectively. After running through what I thought to be the problem, our facilitator asked me: "What is the real problem?"

And she's right.... The problem isn't really managing my time effectively. I am for the most part a reasonably skilled manager, and can effectively do just about anything that needs to be done.

The issue she suggested is really fear.... And I don't necessarily disagree with her.

What do I fear about actually doing those things that need to be done, instead of the things I am doing? Perhaps admitting the things I think need to be done really aren't that important?

An interesting question to work through.

Some of the folks in the peer group gave me an interesting insight. We all, everyone in my line of work, have crazy schedules that can easily swing out of control. It is partly the nature of the beast, unless you're a service company with dozens of employees, an emergency or wrinkle in the schedule isn't controllable, and sometimes unavoidable. The trick is to stop using that as a crutch to not get the important things done.

One member offered that he never schedules things on Mondays, since that is the craziest day for them. Another suggested putting my list of things in writing, prioritizing them as best as possible, and then picking the top three and focusing on them, instead of the whole list.

People don't repetitively do things that they don't really want to do.... I wonder if I find some satisfaction in the chaos?

The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.

 

So, I'm at the airport in Dallas, waiting for my flight back to Detroit, which was originally supposed to take off at 12:05. Around 11:30, when I noticed there was no activity at the gate by anyone employed at Northwest Airlines, I popped on the Internet and checked the flight status: Delayed 1 hour, 45 minutes.

Now, keep in mind there had been no announcements, and as I write this a full 20 minutes after the original, scheduled departure time, the flight status screens in the airport are still showing the flight as outbound on time.

It really is pointless to complain about the arrogance, inefficiency, and resulting insolvency of the airlines. The airlines don't really care, and even if they did, given the whacked out economic model of the airline companies, there's nothing they could do about it anyway. I think we'll just have to resign ourselves to an air system that is, overall, pretty crappy; once in a while, OK; and on (very) rare occasion, delightful.

For me, this is just an inconvenience, as I'm headed home. For the English gentleman sitting next to me, who will undoubtedly miss his 4:40 connecting flight from DTW to JFK, where he had a 6:50 flight to London - it's a huge pain in the ass. I can't begin to understand the frustration this poor chap must be feeling, just trying to get home. 

 

 

I was talking with a client today, and just randomly we started discussing employee Internet usage and the amount of time wasted. It gets to be staggering pretty quickly, if you do the math.

Suppose an employee spends 6 minutes per work day on the Internet doing things that are clearly not work related. That's 30 minutes a week. Or, 1,560 minutes per year - equal to 26 hours.

If that employee's burdened cost is $15/hour, your company just spent $390 for absolutely nothing.

If you have 10 employees, figure almost $4,000 per year in wasted time.

And that is if they waste only 6 minutes per work day.

My conversation with the client ended up there. But I thought about it some more when I got back to the office, and ran it out a little further....

Let's say you have an employee who consistently comes in right at the bell, so to speak. So, they run to the time clock, punch in, and then go through the process of taking off their boots and coat (remember, we're in Michigan... it gets cold here!), putting their things away, booting up their computer, socializing for a few minutes before they get started, perhaps even get their coffee ready.

Then this employee punches in from lunch, and spends a few extra minutes after they're punched in finishing up whatever they were doing on their lunch hour.

If you add all of that up, you can easily envision a scenario where you've lost 30 minutes a day to nonsense.

Which equals 130 hours of time you have paid this employee in a year, for which you've received nothing.

At our illustrative $15/hour burdened cost, that's $1,950 per year in completely wasted labor expense.

If you have a few of these people on staff, or their cost to you is even higher, the pointless expense to your company becomes staggering pretty quickly.

We have software we sell that monitors and reports on employee's Internet usage.... So that base is potentially covered.

But how do you deal with the "leaked time" in the scenario above?

Short of being a drill sergeant in your business, I'm not sure of the answer. I'd imagine, as with most things, it involves a delicate act of line-walking between too strict and not strict enough.

 

In order to understand a little better why I'm not a big fan of voice over IP (Vonage and the like) as a replacement for traditional telephone services in a business, it helps to know something about the initial design and development of the Internet. The development of the IP network (initially, ARPAnet, and now, the Internet) basically resulted from attempts to cure deficiencies in the telephone network.

It kind of worked like this:

The North American telephone network is built like a pyramid. At the bottom are all the Class 5 (local) offices; for example, the Monroe central office is a Class 5 switch. Above them (in ever decreasing numbers) are the Class 4 (Toll) offices. The Wayne, Michigan tandem exchange is a class 4 office. Above them them are the Class 3s (Primary), Class 2s (Secondary) and at the very top of the pyramid are the Class 1s (regional).

Calls through the network go up and down the pyramid. Say I want to call a friend in California. I dial 1-949-nnx-abcd. My class 5 office recognizes that it can't complete the call so it hands it off to the class 4 who can't complete it, so it hands it off to a class 3, etc.

The call might or might not make it up to a Class 1 office but at some point it will hit an office that knows what to do with it and the call will start moving down the pyramid, finally ending in a Class 5 office in Orange County.

That office will recognize the number as one of their own and send it off to my friend's phone. The entire connection, in all it's forms and permutations (analog, digital, copper, fiber optic, microwave, satellite) is mine for the entire duration of the call. That circuit is nailed all the way through.

The whole dialing process takes almost no time to complete and the connection quality is, usually, exceptional in quality.

So what is the problem? Why mess with success?

From the military's point of view (and remember, that's who really started the Internet) the system was flawed. Because there are so few Class 3, 2 & 1 offices, a failure of one or two of them could severely impact the ability of the military to communicate in times of war.

It was assumed that the onset of WW III would begin with the explosion of a nuke in the atmosphere to knock out all radio communications and then the sneak bombings of the Class 3, 2 & 1 offices in the US.

You could then call around the corner for pizza but the White House couldn't reach Norad.

Recognizing that the voice network, while not perfect was still excellent and not wanting to mess with it, the DoD decided that the new kid on the block, the data network, would get a complete makeover.

Recognize, that at that time data communications meant, for the most part, telex and TWX which worked with a network very similar to that of the voice network. Fast delivery wasn't as important as guaranteed deliverability.

So the idea was to develop a connectionless network. One wherein, if some of the major nodes were knocked out then the system would be self-healing and self repairing, and would have the ability to route around the damaged nodes transparently - and all the data traffic would get through (even if voice was blocked). The goal was that, even if the shortest path is operational, the system would force later packets into alternate routes - just to maintain diversity.

And so the Internet was born.

It works incredibly well for data traffic. But data, while it requires much greater bandwidth than voice does not require immediacy. The Internet by design cannot deliver (or at least guarantee) immediacy.

So, my position is that, while VoIP is fun to play with, and offers some real cost savings in certain applications, it will never work well (or at least as well as we'd like it to) over the Internet because the Internet was specifically designed not to handle it.

Now, having said that... I have a VoIP phone at home, and I use some VoIP trunks in our office.

I'd just never be comfortable relying entirely on VoIP in a mission critical application like business telephone service.

I read this on the message board for one of the personal coaching programs I'm involved in, and thought it was particularly useful:

On voicemail greetings, people tend to record a message along the lines of "Hi, this is Tom, I'm sorry I missed your call, please leave me a message and I'll return your call...."

Generally, that's functional, and lets you know someone wants to talk to you.

If you changed your greeting to the following, you can be sure you only return calls to people who follow the instructions in the voicemail, and avoid playing silly phone tag with people for what may be an unimportant call.... People will leave the right message if they really need to speak to you and if it is urgent:

"Hi, this is Tom. I'm sorry I missed your call. Please let me know why you called, so I can get to work on it before I call you back. Thank you!"

 

In case you haven't read about it already, recently Network Solutions has started "front-running" domain names - which means that if you are looking for a domain name and happen to use NetSol's site to do the searching, they will register and hold the name so that you can only register it through their company.

As you probably know, Network Solutions is the domain name registration company that for years had a monopoly on domain registrations, and even yet today, controls the main servers that populate the domain name system, has started to preregister domain names as a "service" to client. Typically, they charge 5 to 10 times more than their competitors to register a domain name.

Officially, Network Solutions denies they are front running; as a matter of fact, they're calling this a "customer service feature" to protect their clients from front running:

Although Network Solutions does temporarily register a site a customer searched for, spokeswoman Susan Wade denied there’s anything nefarious afoot. “Network Solutions is not front-running,” she said. Network Solutions holds the domain for up to four days, during which time a customer can register it only from Network Solutions and after which it again becomes generally available if unregistered, Wade said. But that feature, she said, is a “pre-emptive” measure to protect customers–from front-runners. That’s because front-runners can tell when a customer has searched for a domain at Network Solutions, for example because Network Solutions then must check availability at other sites when a customer searches, Wade said.

Our here in the real world, we all know it is a simple and very transparent ploy to rope potential customers into registering domain names at an inflated rate.

Because, if you're looking for a domain, find one you like at Network Solutions' search page, you're going to want immediately register it to make sure you get it. Really good domain names are as scarce and as valuable as Manhatten real estate.

Shame on Network Solutions!

Welcome to CEO Notes from Tech Experts.

I'll be posting owner-relevant computer, Internet security and management information, as well as some personal thoughts and insights into general business topics.