Free Computer Consultant ………. Daily Insights

If you want to get serious about blogging, I highly recommend you check out Yaro Starak. I was watching a free video of his early this morning and he mentioned “Moving The Free Line”.

I like that term.

What “Moving The Free Line” means is giving more away for free than you used to. Maybe it’s an ebook that was free but now comes with a bonus ebook or a video. One way or another you are trying to “over deliver” with what you give away for free.

Here at FreeComputerConsultant.com I think I have done a pretty fair job of “over delivering”. After all, my offline clients pay over $100 per hour for my time and opinions. On this website, it’s free.

In fact, the only thing I have sold, I sell cheaply. Namely my two eBooks.

My first eBook, “How To Improve Your Email Image” has sold for under $10 the whole time it has been offered. I just haven’t gotten around to raising the price and creating new PayPal buttons. To be quite honest, the eBook doesn’t sell all that well because people don’t care about their email image. I see that every day.

People, in general, don’t care if their emails get opened. Again, I see the evidence every day.

I shouldn’t be surprised, a lot of people don’t even care how they look. With the advent of the popular “bed head” hairstyle, the shorts falling off one’s butt to reveal not just designer undies, but as of the 4th of July I have (unfortunately) seen “tightie-whities” prominently displayed this way. Curiously, the young men sporting this look did NOT have a legion of attractive young girls surrounding them.

My other eBook, “One Secret Can Save You 8 - 16% Buying Dell Online” has been a better seller, and I could easily charge more considering how much you save with just one Dell purchase, but I haven’t gotten around to that either.

Here again, most people are looking for a FREE COUPON CODE that will save them a few bucks; without considering how many dollars they could save by spending less than $20 on my eBook. Corporations especially could save HUGE money time and again by buying a $17 eBook (that still sells for $14.95 because I’m too lazy to create a new PayPal button) once.

If you detect a little bit of “grit” in my writing today, it’s probably because I received an email from someone who read this post on my new FREE Support Forum. Here’s the post:

I ordinarily try the free adaware.

http://www.lavasoft.com/single/trialpay.php

The person emailed me this:

You’r no better sir you refer me to some site to buy a product by clicking on more “blind” links to buy some more crap!
This is what is Killing America the BS crap on the net!
Either sell a good product or take it else where

If you notice in my recommendation, I bolded and italicized the word FREE. I gave the person a link, not cloaked by me in any way, that has a download button for the free version of AdAware. I am NOT a web affiliate for LavasoftUSA and would make ZERO if anyone chose to buy the PAID version available on the same webpage.

Come on, folks! I know everyone wants free, but can you blame LavasoftUSA from wanting to offer a better product for a price? And is that MY FAULT for sending you a link to page that has BOTH? I said to use the FREE one!

Quite frankly, I and my clients have gotten such benefit out of the free version for so many years we probably should send them some money. They have been gracious in offering such a great free version we are indebted to them.

If someone offers you value, please don’t object to paying something for it.

If I tell you something is free, then it’s free; unless I’ve been misinformed. If so, contact me and let me know and I’ll change it.

I had two people contact me today saying they had received an email warning them of the “Postcard” virus.

Naturally, the email tells them this has already been checked out via snopes.com and even includes the URL to get there and check it out for themselves. Naturally, no one does, but at least these two individuals contacted me before looking like an idiot and passing it on.

The email indicates that some original writer even checked with the Norton Antivirus people (probably called the CEO, don’t you suppose?) and they are “gearing up” for this one.

Further, to really move you to take action, the email warns you that this Postcard virus will “burn your whole hard disc” and the CNN classified it as the worst virus ever.

Well, I went to snopes.com and sent this paragraph from the end of the snopes page referenced to these people:

From Snopes.com:

Although the Postcard virus is real, it isn’t a “BIG VIRUS COMING” (it’s already been around in multiple forms for a long time now), it will not “burn the whole hard disc” of your computer, CNN didn’t classify it as the “worst virus” ever, and it doesn’t arrive in messages bearing a subject line of ‘Invitation.’

Bottom line: this is old news, won’t burn your entire drive, it’s not the worst virus ever in anybody’s book and you probably don’t need to read on online postcard from anyone in the first place.

When someone sends you an email like this, DON’T FORWARD IT; at least not without checking it out (don’t follow any links provided, that could be a trap) go to snopes.com or truthorfiction.com and do a simple search. Chances are it will be easy to find - especially if it’s at all valid. And if you do forward it, at least use BCC (blind carbon copy) so you don’t look like an idiot even if it is a valid threat.

You can also expect that the people who received these out of date and inaccurate emails will be less likely to open ANY email from the people who sent them junk like that in the first place.

Take a look at my Email Etiquette eBook to get your emails read and avoid looking foolish.

I don’t use AOL (and pity those of you who do - LOL!), but I was asked recently about using BCC (blind carbon copy) in AOL.

I found this solution:

Add Bcc Recipients to an Email in AOL

To add a Bcc recipient to a message you are composing in AOL:

* Start with a new message (click on the Write icon in the AOL toolbar).
* Enter Bcc recipients’ email addresses in the Copy To: box.
o Separate multiple recipients by commas.
* Make sure you put the Bcc recipients in parentheses.
o For example: “(ladeduaolmember, ladedu@ladedu.com)”
* Write and deliver your email as usual.

I found it here.

For more on Email Etiquette, please see my Email Etiquette eBook.

A couple days ago my wife got one of those annoying emails warning of the “Life is Beautiful.pps” powerpoint attachments which, if opened, it warned, would wipe out your entire C: drive. And, and this is the good part, they get your PASSWORD too!

Just so you don’t check it out yourself, at the bottom of the email it says “verified by Snopes.com”. Which of course, it isn’t..Snopes exposes the hoax. So does TruthOrFiction.com. But people don’t check things out for themselves.

It’s a hoax that dates back to 2002.

Your first clue is the “it will wipe out your hard drive”. Very few viruses ever did. Why would they? They want to profit from their work and wiping out your hard drive just doesn’t pay. They want to turn your machine into a spam bot that they control. At least nowadays they do. There have been some malicious, destructive viruses, they just aren’t that prevalent.

My wife of course sent that family an email with a link to both snopes.com’s review of the hoax and truthorfiction’s with the suggestion that they send out a correction to everyone.

With one BIG difference.

We suggested they use BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) instead of the CC that they used on their email. Why? We sent this link also:

Why and How to use BCC.

Bottom line is that not using BCC exposes our email address to spam and gives our address to everyone they know. Sorry, but our email is kinda private - primarily because we don’t like spam.

Making that person look bad

We chose not to make that person look bad and sent our email to just them (She replied instead of “reply to all”). But you know what? They never did send out a correction. Probably didn’t read about BCC either. That’s just rude, IMHO. If I ever send out faulty info, I send a correction as soon as I’m made aware of it. Everyone should.

The next day someone else did a “Reply to All”. Another reason to use BCC. This other person pointed out the hoax for them to everyone else. Makes them look kinda stupid. Much more so than if they would have sent the correction themselves.

But even this second person used CC instead of BCC and the resulting email was such a disaster that I didn’t even look at it the first time. Only when I wanted to blog about how bad it was did I see, clear at the bottom, the purpose for their correspondence.

Folks, I know it sounds like I’m just trying to generate sales, and yes, I do appreciate the sales, but take a look at my email etiquette ebook - I’m still selling it for less than 10 bucks.

Is it worth 10 bucks to not look so inept? Is it worth 10 bucks to have people read your email instead of deleting it on sight?

Check out my email etiquette ebook here.

Want to see what this disaster of an email looked like? Get your barf bag ready…

(intentionally blurred to protect the innocent)

Then, eventually..

here’s the original message: (Direct from Microsoft & Norton! - rrriiiiight!)

>
> Many of you may have already received this – but am passing it along.
>
>
>
> Anyone-using Internet mail such as Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and so on.
>>>
>>> This information arrived this morning, Direct from both Microsoft
>>> and Norton.
>>>
>>> Please send it to everybody you know who has access to the Internet.
>>>
>>> You may receive an apparently harmless e-mail with a Power Point
>>> presentation ‘ Life is Beautiful’
>>> If you receive it DO NOT OPEN THE FILE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, and
>>> delete it immediately.
>>>
>>> If you open this file, a message will appear on your screen saying:
>>> ‘It is too late now, your life is no longer beautiful.’
>>>
>>> Subsequently you will LOSE EVERYTHING IN YOUR PC, And the person who
>>> sent it t o you will gain access to your name, e-mail and password.
>>>
>>> This is a new virus which started to circulate on Saturday afternoon.
>>> AOL has already confirmed the severity, and the anti virus
> software’s are
>>> not capable of destroying it.
>>>
>>> The virus has been created by a hacker who calls himself ‘life owner’.
>>>
>>> PLEASE SEND A COPY OF THIS E-MAIL TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS, And ask them
>>> to PASS IT ON IMMEDIATELY!
>>> THIS HAS BEEN CONFIRMED BY SNOPES
>
> ———————————————————————-
> –

Then a signature block here with a favorite quote (omitted)

>
>
> No virus found in this outgoing message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.16.6/1150 - Release Date:
> 11/24/2007 5:58 PM
>
>———————————————————————–
>-
>
>No virus found in this incoming message.
>Checked by AVG Free Edition.
>Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.16.8/1154 - Release Date:
>11/27/2007 11:40 AM
>
>

Then FINALLY, we get to the message that the sender wanted us to know:

This email has been circulating for a long time. Click on the Snopes check below

Snopes.com <http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/life.asp>

How many people will scroll that far down (past all of that GARBAGE) to read what you have to say?

Which is why I prefer to put my reply at the top, and if the person needs to read the history, they can keep reading.

But do you see what I mean?

Enough said.

Yahoo’s Reuters article on Top 7 Office Pet Peeves (Yahoo story deleted/moved) quoted a guy commenting on this survey of top office pet peeves.

Two had to do with emailing, and as the author of an Email Etiquette eBook, I thought I would comment.

The first pet peeve was selecting “reply all” when that wasn’t needed. To me, if the email originally did need to get sent out to a group with public display of all addressees, then it would be common courtesy to reply to all IF on the same topic. The problem would arise when someone hits reply all to ask the original sender “oh, BTW, how’s your Aunt’s arthritis doing?

That’s just dumb and not thinking. Yes, and that translates into rude. But then again, that type of response shouldn’t be on the office email anyway, right?

The second office pet peeve had to do with BCC’ing. BCC is Blind Carbon Copy, where the recipient doesn’t know what other recipients there may or may not be. BCC is VERY APPROPRIATE and COURTEOUS in a wide variety of circumstances, although, usually, not inter-office.

This person was quoted, or perhaps misquoted, as saying that to use BCC was like standing up and shouting “Fire” in the middle of the building. What? Perhaps it’s a misquote.

The comment followed a statement that “no email is private”. I agree. And those who think email is private, especially corporate email, are terribly naive. I cover this also in my Email Etiquette eBook.

The eBook is still available for $9.95, but probably not for long.

I have also written articles about the appropriate use of BCC, check out Associated Content.