I mean, it is just so easy to just leave it for tomorrow (and tomorrow, and tomorrow) because you always assume that it will always be there — till it’s gone, of course!

So you can imagine my reaction when I bloody woke up one day to find my ALL blogs gone. Everything – kapish! At first, I thought my eyes were fooling me because I was still in my half-wake daze (with hair all over the place), so I do what I normally do online when you think your eyes are playing a trick. You hit the F5 button.

But to no avail! This time (after countless attempts at mashing the refresh button) my blogs just wouldn’t reappear. It was only then that I really woke, raised my right eyebrow, and my brain kinda registered what the heck was going on — I just freaking lost over 2 years of hard work and labor in an INSTANT. Just wiped out from the face of this earth! (Not funny AT ALL.)

After I finished my obligatory cussing, I wanted to find out how in the world my blogs could be literally here one day and gone the next. I logged into my backend and checked my SQL databases and there was the answer — ALL my SQL databases were gone without a trace (POOF!) — confirmation that my blogs were really gone.

I had back ups but they were many months old (like I said – I was procrastinating) and now in the moment where you really wished you hadn’t waited all those months to do something so darn right important, it was too bloody late.

Maybe I haven’t really painted how crucial this really is; losing all your data is akin to having your factory and retail stores all burnt down to a crisp — and you didn’t buy any insurance! In just one day, your business is gone and you have to START ALL OVER AGAIN.

On the Internet, that means all your websites, products – the stuff that makes you money – is entirely obliterated and your income goes all the way to ZERO (which is not very sexy at all!).

And something that would cost you 30 minutes to do (the backups) is now a god-knows-how-long struggle to build all your websites back up again. Not very smart. So now if you can see how really important backups are, whoppee!

Now here’s the best part about the whole thing…

My blogs weren’t really gone at all. My webhost was doing some maintenance and my SQL databases just vanished for awhile (they were back up later in that afternoon), so I was very thankfully granted a very timely “reprieve”.

But you know, it was probably life’s way of tapping your shoulder (or actually smacking your face) to remind that you have something really important to do that shouldn’t be put off any longer.

So now, I’m not taking anymore chances, every freaking thing is now fully backed up and I can rest easy knowing that if anything silly does happen, I can have everything back up online with a simple click.

A tool that automatically steals IDs of non-encrypted sessions and breaks into Google Mail accounts has been presented at the Defcon hackers’ conference in Las Vegas.

Last week Google introduced a new feature in Gmail that allows users to permanently switch on SSL and use it for every action involving Gmail, and not only, authentication. Users who did not turn it on now have a serious reason to do so as Mike Perry, the reverse engineer from San Francisco who developed the tool is planning to release it in two weeks.

When you log in to Gmail the website sends a cookie (a text file) containing your session ID to the browser. This file makes it possible for the website to know that you are authenticated and keep you logged in for two weeks, unless you manually hit the sign out button. When you hit sign out this cookie is cleared.

Even though when you log in, Gmail forces the authentication over SSL (Secure Socket Layer), you are not secure because it reverts back to a regular unencrypted connection after the authentication is done. According to Google this behavior was chosen because of low-bandwidth users, as SLL connections are slower.

The problem lies with the fact that every time you access anything on Gmail, even an image, your browser also sends your cookie to the website. This makes it possible for an attacker sniffing traffic on the network to insert an image served from http://mail.google.com and force your browser to send the cookie file, thus getting your session ID. Once this happens the attacker can log in to the account without the need of a password. People checking their e-mail from public wireless hotspots are obviously more likely to get attacked than the ones using secure wired networks.

Perry mentioned that he notified Google about this situation over a year ago and even though eventually it made this option available, he is not happy with the lack of information. “Google did not explain why using this new feature was so important” he said. He continued and explained the implications of not informing the users, “This gives people who routinely log in to Gmail beginning with an https:// session a false sense of security, because they think they’re secure but they’re really not.”

If you are logging in to your Gmail account from different locations and you would like to benefit from this option only when you are using unsecured networks, you can force it by manually typing https://mail.google.com before you log in. This will access the SSL version of Gmail and it will be persistent over your entire session and not only during authentication.

Man, these type of things are real because recently one of my friends had his Gmail account compromised and there was a a lot of sensitive information inside. Thankfully, he got his account back without any damage done. But don’t take the freaking risk. How’s how to activate the SSL feature in your Gmail account:

1. Sign in to Gmail.
2. Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page.
3. Set ‘Browser Connection’ to ‘Always use https.’
4. Click Save Changes.
5. Reload Gmail.

That’s it! If you’re using Gmail, get that done and keep your noses clean.

Ever since Google allowed people to have Kontera ads alongside Adsense, many webmasters have decided to add another revenue stream onto their websites.

Obviously, it doesn’t mean that just adding Kontera would see you making more money, it’s a little more complicated than that.

You’d have to test and measure if adding a new nifty thing actually increases or decreases your overall revenue. For example, some marketers who were making good income with Adsense on their websites made EVEN more when they removed it.

Because without the Adsense ads they discovered that more of their visitors ended clicking on their affiliate links instead, which gave them a higher ROI. So you really have to test and measure.

Anyway, if you’re looking to add Kontera to your wordpress blog, it’s really easy to do. You can visit Kontera wordpress plugin page and follow the steps listed there.

If you use an autoresponder to collect opt-in leads, you’d normally have a webform like this to capture the person’s information:

So you capture the guy’s info, he’s on your list, and now you start to followup with the fella using email. And this is what you normally do when you create an email (let’s use aweber as an example):

Hi {!firstname},

Blah blah blah blah!

Regards,
Joe Black

If you’re familiar with autoresponders, the {!firstname} will be filled with whatever the person entered when he first opted-in. The trouble is a lot of people are lazy and they enter their names in lowercase. Which means the person types in ‘robert’ instead of ‘Robert’. And then when you craft your emails, it looks really unprofessional. Like this:

Hi robert,

Blah blah blah blah!

Regards,
Joe Black

Doesn’t look or feel nice eh? It’s like you don’t respect the person’s name enough to ‘spell’ it right, only that it wasn’t really your fault in the first place. So what do you do?

Simple.

Just use {!firstname_fix} instead of the normal {!firstname}. And now the autoresponder will automatically “fix” any lowercase names and spell the name out the right way when you craft your emails. Something like this:

Hi {!firstname_fix},

Blah blah blah blah!

Regards,
Joe Black

will become
.
.
.
.
.

Hi Robert,

Blah blah blah blah!

Regards,
Joe Black

So now all your emails will have your subscribers name spelt right even if all your opt-in leads are lazy bastards who can’t bother to type their name in right. I didn’t know this when I crafted all my emails and when I did, I went back to my autoresponder and changed all my (!firstname} fields into {!firstname_fix}. Took me some time but worth it.

Anyway something you can use if you haven’t done so.

Cheers…

Normally, the code your autoresponder provides you gives you a webform that looks like this:

That’s the standard look and it works fine. I’ve been using this ‘look’ for the last 10 months now and I’ve built a list of decent size. But then I discovered how to jazz up my submit button!

Have a look:

haha! I’ve added red lipstick round the button and it looks more sexy and alluring, doesn’t it?

Well, I’m sure you this is nothing revolutionary and you’ve seen it around on some webforms already. But I never figured out how to add that lipstick round the button before (html is for gods). Until now that is…

As you can see, I’ve added the lipstick to my submit button on the right hand side of my blog. It looks a little screwy here, but I’m not gonna waste my time figuring out how to make it look perfect. Also the red turns green when you hover over it, it’s like a psychological response to mover forward (traffic lights). Plus the regular pointer changes to a ‘hand’ pointer’ too (although it seems the Prnt Scrn didn’t capture my pointer).

Ummm.. ok I’m starting to sound like techno-geek who’s getting excited at his new fascinating discovery. Anyway, I added it to all my websites and I think they should increase opt-in conversions a wee bit (or more).

So if you’re looking to do this as well, here’s the link to help you along:

Lipstick Buttons!

Cheers

And to make it worse, I just found out that I could actually do that whole thing automatically if I just did some simple geek techniques.

Boy, that would have saved some time! But I didn’t and I actually had that info lying on my desktop for weeks!

Anyway, if you own websites and you too need to change your dates, then this should help:

1. Place all your html or htm pages are in one folder

2. Open one html file in your html editor (Dreamweaver or Frontpage or whatever…)

3. Click on Edit > Replace

4. A box will pop up. Now just enter 2006 in the Find area and 2007 in the Replace area.

5. Hit ok and then the program will now automatically find all the 2006 and replace them with 2007.

Ok, please remember to do this because it helps your site look more professional when it has the current year stamped on it.

Goodness! Imagine if you didn’t do this small bit and your year was stuck at 2004. It would look so un-pro! Just like DBS!!

ahahahaa! How could an organization with over 6000 employees miss this simple thing?

They should just give me a few thousand bucks to change that 4 to a 7 and I would boost their image and professionalism immediately! That’s money well spent, I say!

Or they can increase my savings rate to 15% a month or something… Ha!

Anyway, hope you have a good year coming because I’m planning mine to be even better than the last!

HNY!