Free McWifi! McWhat?

Ever wish you were at a McDonald's and just, after skarfing your food down, wanted to hang out online?  Well, McDonald's has done it.

Well, there you go.  A lot of the demographic (teens, young adults, corporate people on a per diem budget, etc.) will appreciate it with their internet enabled wireless devices.

As per the article, McDonald's hopes this makes them more like a "hang out" place as opposed to a fast food joint.  Personally, eggBrain's question then becomes, will they be ready as a hang out place?

Even better though, will this spawn a movement for free Wi-Fi in more places?  Is the "Free Internet" really coming to being?  Does this make McDonald's a valid competitor in the Wi-Fi market? Will becoming connected become more of a right than a privilege?

 

Update your Anti-Virus

eggBrain recently fixed a computer that had a corrupted System file.  No boot was possible because the folder was completely missing. No data was missing afterwards, but here's the kicker.

While eggBrain completed its service at the place of residence by setting up the machine again and updating any and all updates, the Anti-Virus program wasn't updated.  eggBrain ran the update (after I had recorded the XP keys with a Keyfinder product) and it found several bits of malware, which were promptly cleaned.  Later on during the week, eggBrain used the USB storage key (where the keyfinder program resides) on another machine and found that a Trojan/Backdoor had latched itself onto the key. I cleaned it right away.  And the only way eggBrain would NOT have found it was because it was inside a hidden file folder and if eggBrain's files weren't updated.

eggBrain strongly encourages you to update your Antivirus PROGRAMS AND DEFINITION FILES no matter which one you use.  Just beware of the rogues ones.

Compute safely

-eggBrain

Service Expansion and Customer Focus

eggBrain has recently expanded its services to provide:

1. Animated Flash Banners
2. Data removal and Recovery
3. Data preservation (through HDD extraction and preservation)
   
4. MySQL Database migration from Microsoft Access
5. Wordpress Blogs

Now what does this mean for small businesses in general?  Generally, if you expand your services, you have to be sure that you provide them satisfactorily to your clients.  As of now, eggBrain would like to think of it as a dragnet of sorts where you would publicize your services and catch what you can catch.  But is that the way to go?   eggBrain has read and heard a lot of other experts say that it's important to focus on your prospect profile, market segment and remember what customer are you trying to attract.  At the same time, the business owner/technician is always wondering:  is the business missing a vital customer base?  Isn't any aim of any business to attract ANY customer?

At some point, sure.  But at any given time, you want to qualify your customers.  If currently what you want are customers that have money and can pay and some of your customers aren't...time to find new customers.  Or at least change your services/products to find customers that will pay for what you have.

And this is the dilemma eggBrain is facing.  Currently, eggBrain is has a skillset that satisfies all three of its services:  database, web and PC Support.  But how does it want to market itself?  B2B (business-to-business) or B2C (business-to-consumer)?  Or as a freelance service to anybody that will take them for a long project?  Or all?  If eggBrain isn't available a certain way, what does that mean?  Is it a benefit or a liability?

eggBrain's would then pose the following questions to various small businesses:  Have you ever found your business in this situation?  That you want as many types of customers as possible but found it wasn't beneficial?  Did you have to decide that how you conduct your business has to change because your revenues were lacking?  Do YOU think it's a liability to provide focus for one service when you're good at several?

I hope to get some posts on this at any time during the next few years (trust me, I've seen some old posts when searching other blogs that still get replies). 

Compute safe.

-eggBrain

No system is safe

Yes, Macs aren't safe either, but that's another story altogether. Today's post is about Ubuntu Malware found in screensavers and themes.

If you have the "waterfall" screensaver from gnome-look.org (an art sharing site), you can find the fix here. This affects any Debian based Operating Systems.

You can find the fix here also from Digitizor.

The "Ninja Black" theme also has the same malware.

So please beware.

Regards - eggBrain

It's been three months since you looked at me

Ok, so it's not quite the Bare Naked Ladies, but I never liked them anyway. In any case, what has been going on with eggBrain over the past three months you may ask?

Our strategic plan is CONSTANTLY morphing and every week, a little more progress has been made.

We now offer FLASH banners for any company that might need them.

Check out our website and follow our links to other small businesses we have encountered.

We've been bitten by the green bug, so our operations are striving to reduce the wasteful use of any kind of energy: gas, electricity, time. Yes, we said time. Time, like energy, once used, is converted into other things.

Who turned us on to green? Green Fox Energy Group.

Everyday we strive for efficiency so we focus our time in creating deliverables, improving our processes as well as increasing the type and number of services to our customers. Did you know that we now offer flash banners as well as secure data removal? Additionally, we provide customized PC education.

We are continuing to investigate social media and its effectiveness on the impact of improving a small business. Yes, there are TONS of articles regarding that it's a wonderful thing. If anything, eggBrain would agree to a certain degree. But can we have a better interface in creating these "social" media pages? Facebook alone is cumbersome. eggBrain has a professional opinion regarding social media shared in another post soon.

Windows 7 has happened! eggBrain has heard both gripes and likes about it. In the long run, eggBrain buys nothing from Microsoft unless it's been proven and prevalent. Throwing it on a machine based on a release...isn't exactly our idea of proven technology. But then again, Microsoft HAS been able to patch things up along the way. eggBrain just wonders if Microsoft is in touch with their customer base. Their commercials make it sound like they are.

This post has been random. No real excuse. Just like there is no real excuse that you should not have some kind of backup happening for YOUR PC or virus protection.

Be well.

-eggBrain

Facebook, Koobface, the other side

Kaspersky Lab Detects New Worms Attacking MySpace and Facebook

"Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of secure content management systems, has detected two variants of a new worm, Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface.a. and Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface.b, which attack MySpace and Facebook respectively. As part of their malicious payload, the worms transform victim machines into zombie computers to form botnets.

Even though the worms are currently only infecting MySpace and Facebook users, Kaspersky Lab analysts are warning users that the worms are designed to upload additional malicious modules with other functionality via the Internet. It is highly probable that victim machines will not only be used for spreading links via these social networking sites, but the botnets will also be used for other malicious purposes."

This is the same as an infamous attack of last year. If anything, some blogs say they are rumors, others say they are fact.

This blog from mashable.com claims is it is a two part way of having you go to a site which loads malware by luring you with this scare. Some might call it social scareware at this point, as far as eggBrain is concerned.

Associatedcontent.com's post states: "Facebook users who added the Fan Check application may find themselves especially vulnerable. The Fan Check application tells you which of your friends are your biggest fans. It compiles data by accessing your wall and your news feed (already a bit creepy from a privacy standpoint, but Facebook users are aware of this when they add the application)."

Again, if you are a facebook user and you have this app, please try to remove it promptly. In addition, there are signatures written for the Koobface virus by various antivirus companies, such as Kapersky and Norton/Symantec. (This link contains information about the virus and it's latest certification as late as Sept 4, 2009.

All in all, in eggBrain's honest AND professional opinion, UPDATE your antivirus, DISCONNECT your machine from the internet, and SCAN your computer with a Full detailed scan. The software that we recommend, AVG Antivirus, does have a signature written for it so you SHOULD be protected.

Reconnect after you are SURE any and all malware has been removed.

If you STILL have the virus and any other malware that may have come along because of it, you may need to have an expert, such as eggBrain, to take a look at your machine.

Feel free to post your progress here or e-mail eggBrain.

Regards,
eggBrain

Facebook, Fan Check Virus

To all users of Facebook, please check out this article:

FaceBook Fan Check Virus Already Infected A Lot Of Users

and here is a quote:

"Yeah, you should know that FaceBook is full of viruses, malware and phishing scams among others, but you can protect yourselves. FaceBook Fan Check is apparently an app which checks your number of friends, then gives users the possibility to create a RSS feed to post it on your FaceBook page.

All is good until here as this is nothing more than a virus. When users try to access the FaceBook Fan Check app they’ll get a message that says the app is down because the developer is adding new features, and new capacity, and that it could take days to finish them. IT says that you should become a fan on FaceBook of the update, but in fact it will infect your FaceBook account, and it will send an email to all of your friends to become a fan, but it will infect them too."

Please be aware. No antivirus has been able to detect it yet, and at the same time, if you can, disconnect your line from the network OR disconnect your wireless in the meantime. A solution for this may be coming soon, or at least a workaround. Please stay posted.

And don't download anything that says it can exclusively remove it.

Regards,

eggBrain