THE INTERNET - Now it's the wireless version

The changes and growth in technology are both rapid and mind-boggling. Everywhere you turn there is something new and exciting. Remember when the Internet came into being how you had to dial up, and yes, remember how slow it was to download material?

Well, today all of that has changed. There is now broadband technology which allows for greater speed and efficiency. Already, Jamaica is not very far away from these advancements and is making a plunge into the inevitable. Citizens are becoming aware of the diverse hi-tech facilities and services available to them.

Now after all that entanglement with the lines, cords and wires with the telephone, dial-up access, ADSL, there is now wireless Internet technology. Though the wireless providers are limited in Jamaica, they do exist, and one such provider is J2 Limited.

"Starting out a year ago with partner Julian Edwards, we saw the opportunity to provide wireless Internet service," Julian Spence, managing director of J2 Limited, told TeenAge. Spence said a lot of planning and homework went into the establishment of J2; so designated because the principals are both named Julian.

But why wireless Internet? What are the advantages and what are the costs involved? Well, installation is easy.

A reliable service is provided, and there are no telephone charges. After the initial installation fee is paid only the required monthly fee is necessary and J2 provides very competitive rates that are lower than our main competitors. There are no rental fees or anything of that nature.

Of course there are none of those unsightly wires in your homes or offices and again the service is very fast and reliable, Spence said. Costs for the J2 wireless Internet service range from US$40.00 to US$100.00.

Although presently only available in the corporate area and Portmore, J2 is planning to expand to other areas of St Catherine, and other parishes soon.

"Because of our cost-effective plan and our need to be affordable for our customers, we are a great step ahead for the e-business industry."

Already J2 is looking to provide not only wireless Internet services but Video Camera Surveillance as well.

"We are now looking to supply selected customers with Video Camera Surveillance, where customers are able to watch their property via the Internet.

This new service will be ideal for small business owners and homeowners who would like to keep an eye on their assets," Spence said.

Phishing' on the Web

Phishing can be defined as the act of sending an email to an individual, in an attempt to trick the person into surrendering private and confidential information, such as user names and passwords.

Phishing often works because the actual email (and sometimes a fraudulent supporting website) is usually designed and formatted to look, seem and feel as though it is coming from a legitimate enterprise.

There are numerous North American examples of phishing attempts and successes, but Jamaicans need to be on their guard as well as it is only a matter of time before local tricksters try their hand at 'phishing' for online bank account log in details and more.

Notably, in early 2002, there was a phishing attempt to get the user name and passwords of customers of a certain local Internet Service Provider (ISP).

A fraudulent email (disguised to look as though it was from the ISP itself) was sent seemingly to the ISP's entire list of customers, asking that customers "log in to update their account status in order to avoid disconnection."

I know of a few people who got caught by the trick (and there may have been many others), as they typed their user name and password into the form, only to be locked out of their accounts soon after, as the perpetrators got the information that was input and proceeded to change the password, hence locking them out.

For more information about phishing on a global scale, you can visit www.antiphishing.org.

WEBSITES OF THE WEEK

www.trendwatching.com ­ Anyone who wants to get a good sense of emerging consumer trends from a global business perspective should bookmark trendwatching.com.

Utilising a network of approximately 4,000 'trend spotters' in over 50 countries, they produce a monthly newsletter which details emerging consumer trends, as well as new business ideas associated with these trends.

Www.yardsalejamaica.com ­ One of the more recent additions to Jamaica's online landscape, yardsalejamaica.com is an online marketplace where sellers can post items for sale, and buyers can make an offer on items that are for sale. Items are sorted by category, and anyone in Jamaica or elsewhere in the world can log to participate.

Www.courttv.com/trials/jackson/ ­ Just in case you missed the drama and highlights on television, courttv.com has a comprehensive section of its website dedicated to the Michael Jackson trial, with everything from daily court proceedings updates to message boards for those who want to argue in his favour or against him.

AROUND THE WORLD

Do you watch television while working on the computer or surfing the web? A United States survey done by Universal McCann showed that in 2004, the average individual spent 300 minutes per week simultaneously surfing the web and watching TV.

Be warned Jamaican advertisers, as some viewers may be tuning out during the ad breaks, and focusing instead on their computer monitors.

Your e-mail says more than you realise:

This column is for employers and employees. It is not a "how-to" column, but rather basic advice on how to prevent you from embarrassing yourself and/or your company at some point in the near future.

Why do you need e-mail etiquette? Every company needs to implement etiquette rules for at least two reasons - professionalism and protection from liability.

1. Professionalism Use proper language in your e-mail. This will convey a professional image of your company.

2. Protection from liability Employee awareness of e-mail risks will protect your company from costly law- suits. Companies in the United States and United Kingdom have suffered as a result of acts committed from workstation com-puters. We should learn from their experiences.

How do you enforce e-mail etiquette?

The first step is to create a written e-mail policy. This e-mail policy should include all the Dos and Don'ts concerning the use of the company's e-mail system and should be distributed to all employees. Secondly, employees must be trained to fully understand the importance of e-mail etiquette.

Finally, implementation of the rules can be monitored by using e-mail management software and e-mail response tools. If you send it from the office, it comes from the office Personal e-mail sent from the office, using your work-assigned e-mail address, are regarded as official company communications regardless of contents and/or addressee.

This could possibly expose you, and your company to unnecessary risk, including lawsuits. Be careful what you do! Do not copy a message or attachment without permission

If you did not get permission, Do Not copy a message or an attachment belonging to another user, you might be infringing on copyright laws.

Do not use e-mail to discuss confidential information Sending an e-mail is like sending a postcard - strangers have access. If you don't want your e-mail to be displayed on a bulletin board, don't send it. We all know someone who is a "techno-peasant" who will accidentally forward a message to the "wrong" person. Moreover, making libellous, sexist or racially discriminating comments in e-mail, even if they are meant to be a joke, can have serious legal implications.

Don't forward virus hoaxes and chain letters If you receive an e-mail message warning you of a new unstoppable virus that will immediately delete everything from your computer, this is most probably a hoax. By forwarding hoaxes you use valuable bandwidth and sometimes virus hoaxes contain the viruses themselves, by attaching a so-called file that will stop the dangerous virus.

The same goes for chain letters that promise incredible riches or ask your help for a charitable cause. Even if the content seems to be bona fide, the senders usually are not.

Since it is sometimes impossible to find out whether a chain letter or virus notice is real or not, the best place for it is the Recycle Bin. What to check if it is a hoax or not? Log on to http://urbanlegends.about.com, they can often help.

To, Cc and Bcc or Not We have three choices for addressing an e-mail, "To", "Cc" and "Bcc" fields. This should be fairly straightforward but many people end up in trouble.

First, there are the users who have no idea that the "Cc" exists. Every address is listed in the "To" even if the e-mail is only directed to one person. In cases such as this, the receivers are often not clear as to who should take action so either they all do something or they all do nothing. Secondly, there are users who feel that every e-mail should be copied to their entire address book whether it is relevant to everyone or not.

Lastly, there are users who never read the names of the people who receive a copy of an e-mail. They are the "Did you see this?" Crowd. For example, person X sends an e-mail to persons A, B and C. C immediately forwards it to A and B with the question "Did you see this?" Not bothering to notice that X already sent A and B copies.

Here is a rough guide on how to use the address fields: For the people you are addressing directly, put their addresses in the "To" field. For the people you are addressing indirectly, the FYI-ers, put their addresses in the "Cc" field. Please, copy only those who need to be copied; not your entire universe of contacts.

The addressees in the "Bcc" are like "Cc" except that those in the "To" and "Cc" fields do not know that the addresses in the "Bcc" are included in the conversation. They are blind to the 'Bcc' addresses. As you can imagine, use of the 'Bcc' is somewhat unethical and therefore its use is discouraged.

Reply To All

The "Reply to All" button is one that can generate tons of unnecessary e-mail. For example, if you send 12 people e-mail asking if they are available at a certain time for a meeting you should get 12 replies. However, if each person hits the "Reply to All" button not only will you get 12 replies, but so does everyone else for a total of 144 messages! The "Reply to All" button should be used with thought and careful consideration. More next week.

Dr Semaj is a frequent facilitator for Strategic Planning Retreats, Cultural Alignment and Organisational Restructuring. He conducts Staff Selection and Development Programmes for different business sectors across the Caribbean.

Screening 'Windows'

For years, Microsoft asked consumers, "Where do you want to go today?"

With the launch of the company's new Windows Vista operating system next year, the software company will turn that old slogan on its head, essentially asking parents, "Where do you not want your kids to go today?"

In Vista, the world's largest software company will, for the first time, emphasise parental controls.

Parents will be able to restrict online activities, limit computer use, control the types of games played and block the use of specific programmes. In addition, Vista will monitor where children go online and track some activities.

"For the very first time, we are including in the operating system family settings, which allow parents to control everything from the amount of time a child spends on the computer to the games they play and the content they have access to," said David George, Microsoft's director of family safe computing business development.

Including the controls in the operating system accomplishes two things not easily done with add-on parental control software programmes available today, George and others say.

Because the controls are built in, they can be easily activated by parents, he said. In addition, because they are part of the operating system, they can be tough enough to be effective restrictions for children who often know more about technology than their parents.

"These controls are very hard to circumvent," George said. "If your child is a world-class hacker, you might have a problem. But in 99.9 per cent of the cases, the children are going to have to have access to their parents' passwords to circumvent the controls."

Vista will allow parents to restrict a child's Web activities by age or by selecting from among 14 categories, such as pornography, tobacco and alcohol. Vista will check the content of Web pages as well as checking with a Microsoft database that has categorised millions of Web pages. The Web restrictions also control what children are allowed to download.

Parents can use the system to control what days, times and for how long a child can use the computer, which could put an end to teens hiding a laptop under the covers to send instant messages until the wee hours of the morning. Computer games can be controlled by Entertainment Software Rating Board ratings, or by regulating specific content such as language, violence or sexuality. Games can also be blocked or approved by title.

The new operating system will also allow parents to block specific programmes, such as peer-to-peer file-sharing programmes that raise ethical questions along with security risks and in some cases lawsuits against parents.

Vista will log activity reports of how much time children spend online and what they do while there, including information about who they e-mail.

While the company's marketing divisions tout the effectiveness of the parental controls, articles on the Microsoft website acknowledge that older children are already skilled in avoiding filters and restrictions at school and public libraries. Some students have already begun tossing around strategies for getting around the new controls. The new parental controls are a supplement to, not a substitute for, parental involvement, the Microsoft site says.

Converting online visitors into customers

There is a lot of talk in the Internet marketing industry about increasing website traffic - after all, if your potential clients aren't finding your site, what good is it doing you? You can only promote your business' products and services to those who actually find you online.

Because of this, many businesses spend a lot of time and money on increasing traffic to their sites through various Internet marketing initiatives, including pay-per-click campaigns, search engine optimisation, and email marketing. These are all very effective ways to increase site traffic.

So, you can get traffic to your site. But if visitors immediately leave your site without doing anything, the time and money you spent to get them there simply wasn't worth it. Is there actually something more you can do for your site? If you only focus your efforts on increasing traffic, you're only doing half your job.

The answer: Increase conversion. You need to be able to convert visitors to your site into customers - either by making a direct sale or by having them sign up for your newsletter so you can continue your relationship with them long after they've left your site. For example, if 5,000 people visit your site each month, and 50 of them turn into actual customers, your website conversion rate is 50/5,000, or 1 per cent. If each of those customers equals an average sale of $200, your business has made $10,000.

However, by increasing your conversion rate to even 100 customers out of 5,000 visitors, your conversion rate has increased to 2 per cent. Using the same average sale amount above, you have increased your income to $20,000 - without increasing the amount of money you spent to get customers to your site! You had the same number of visitors, but your profits doubled!

Important Factors to Increase Conversion

Simplicity is important in Web design because the more complex the design, the harder it is for visitors to focus. Complicated flash animation or large images on sites can sometimes cause more harm than they're worth, especially if visitors to your site are unable to load them. If your load time takes too long, visitors will leave without a second thought. Be sure that the focal point of your home page and inner pages is what you want your customers to absorb the most: what your business is, why visitors should browse through your site, the benefits you can offer them, and how to become a customer.

Web surfers are notoriously fickle, so don't make them read through pages of content and decide for themselves why they should choose your business. If the benefits of your product or service are clearly outlined and backed up with sound content, they are more likely to turn into customers.

Include Calls to Action

Many websites don't convert visitors into customers for one simple reason: they don't ask the visitor to take action. All pages should encourage visitors to take action - either to purchase a product or service, sign-up for your newsletter or to contact your business. Use Effective Navigation

Understand where on your site you want visitors to go most, and make it easy for them to get there. If the goal of your website is to encourage visitors to use your eCommerce functions, link to your eCommerce shopping cart wherever it seems logical - don't make them search for it. Try to think like a visitor to your site browsing through your products or services, and make it easier for them to become a customer, not harder.

Pay-per-click advertising is a great way to generate traffic to your site, but one of the most common mistakes that many business owners forget to do is take the customer where they want to go. If the customer found you for the search term "Hotel in Kingston" then ensure you're directing traffic to your selection of Kingston hotels, not your homepage. This act alone will greatly increase your conversion rates.

After you've made these changes to your website and you've increased your conversion rate, imagine the results you'll get when you implement a marketing plan to increase traffic to your site! If you use a pay-per-click or email marketing campaign and optimise your site to make it more visible to search engines, your profits can increase even more. Using the example given above, if you increase traffic to your site from 5,000 visitors to just 7,500, just look at the results:

7,500 visitors with a 2 per cent conversion rate = 150 customers. 150 customers x $200 per sale = $30,000!

That's a $20,000 increase from what you were making in the beginning. So, you can see that just increasing the number of visitors to your site is not the answer - you need to convert these visitors into customers to make your Internet presence pay off for your business.

We've only begun to scratch the surface on the topic of conversions. There are additional strategies and tactics to help increase your online conversions - resulting in increased revenues for your business. I will elaborate in my next article. Let's start profiting from the Internet today!

BlackBerry blackout spreads to Caribbean

Arguably as frightening as an electricity blackout, the BlackBerry service outage in Europe -- which affected e-mail, internet services and the all-important BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) -- spread to North America and the Caribbean last week, but with less impact there, due to quick communication by the mobile providers to customers.

According to Jason Corrigan, Commercial Director for Digicel Jamaica, "Due to an issue with RIM, BlackBerry customers across Central America and the Caribbean experienced delays in browsing, sending and receiving emails and with BlackBerry messenger."

Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian makers of BlackBerrys, had advised that the issue was impacting all operators across the region, he said.

"In an effort to continue to deliver the best service to our customers, our technical team worked closely with RIM to provide frequent updates on the issue as RIM worked to resolve it," Corrigan said.

Kalando Wilmoth, regional head of corporate communications for telecommunications company LIME, said all markets were affected but once the company was made aware of the issue, it went on the offensive to notify subscribers and explain what was happening. "We did a lot of immediate -- as immediate as we could — response, he said.

LIME made use of its social network platforms, Facebook and Twitter, as well as traditional media to inform its customers. "We sent out sms blasts (text messages), had radio public service announcements and did interviews (in Jamaica and in some other territories)", Wilmoth said.

There aren't many outages each year and this one was particularly challenging as it had technical difficulties and was "clearly not normal", he said.

LIME currently provides services in 13 territories regionally.

Digicel's commercial director also said RIM advised on Thursday that "as of 9:00 am that morning full BlackBerry service had been restored and that their Support teams continue to monitor the situation to ensure ongoing stability."

RIM has since apologised for the system's failure. Robin Bienfait, the smartphone company's chief information officer, said "You've depended on us for reliable, real-time communications, and right now we're letting you down".

Problems with a link in RIM's European infrastructure on Monday failed, highlighting problems with its back up system which also didn't work. The system's failure led to a backlog of messages and emails from across Europe, which then affected RIM's data service for its 70 million Blackberry subscribers worldwide.

RIM, which only last week launched its new line of Blackberry 7 devices in the Caribbean, has been struggling in recent times to maintain its market share in the face of competition from other smartphones, particularly the iPhone series from Apple.

Internet security concerns

Credit-Card fraud and email scams are two of the most talked about Internet security concerns online security issues are a very real concern, the equivalent activities are more popular offline than online.

The term 'Internet security' has different definitions, but there are some concepts and features that have commonality.

Firewall

Consider living in a gated community. The security guard at the guardhouse determines what traffic enters and leaves the community and, with your permission, who is allowed to visit you. Members of the community with appropriate access can come and go as they wish. A firewall performs a function similar to that of the guard, except that it is a bit more efficient and does not fall asleep.

Simply put, the firewall's function is to prevent unauthorised traffic getting to your computer via the Internet and allow access to pre-authorised 'traffic' (inbound and outbound bits of electronic data from your computer).

The firewall can be in the form of a piece of hardware or software. For most home users this will take the form of a piece of software a firewall usually comes pre-installed with more recent operating systems, acquiring a third-party solution is recommended.

Chat Rooms

Although you use chat rooms to 'socialise' online, you sometimes have no idea who you are 'socialising' with. This becomes even more dangerous when teens and minors are involved.

There have been numerous reported cases, mainly in the United States but also in Jamaica, of minors being taken advantageof by criminals and pedophiles. Quite often, the victim gets lured into the attacker's web of deception over a period of time. Wouldn't it be great if a parent or guardian had the ability to monitor the victim's activity before they became a victim? Well, the activities in these chat rooms can be monitored discreetly and indiscreetly. There are a number of software programmes that allow you to monitor your child's activity online.

A home-page hijacker is a programme that enters your computer, normally as a virus, and constantly changes your home page and search results to where it wants you to go. It does this by either changing your start-up folders or registry run key on your computer so that each time you restart your computer it resets itself. You may consider this a minor Internet security risk but the reality is that your personal computer has been compromised.

As long as the hijacker programme remains on your computer, no matter how often you change your homepage settings, the hijacker changes it back. The obvious solution is to detect and remove the virus.

If you surf the Internet on a regular basis, it is likely that you have been exposed to some attempt at stealing your identify. The attempt normally comes in the form of an email or while visiting a website you are told that you have won something or that someone wants to give you a free gift.

Identity Theft

Some of these attempts are referred to as 'phishing' where the email received seems to be coming from your bank or a trusted vendor. The email usually suggests that your account with the company has been compromised and you need to reconfirm your information. Other attempts include emails informing you that your loan has been approved (which you did not apply for), you have won the lottery, or that the sender has money but cannot retrieve it without your help ('Nigerian' scam).

You may be asking yourself if this really works. The answer is 'yes'. There are two goals for most of these attempts: primarily to get you to voluntarily submityour personal information; and the secondary goal is to steal as much information about you as possible.

The latter is usually achieved when, out of curiosity, you start clicking on links to see what will happen. As you follow these links, programmes are being copied to your computer that will track your online activity and send back information to the programme's owner.

To avoid these challenges, simply delete these emails when you receive them, do not let your curiosity get the better of you. Remember, if it's too good to be true, then it is.

Viruses have been around since the inception of the Internet. It is mandatory that you have an anti-virus programme installed on your computer. Most persons, however, do not keep their programmes updated.

Defensive system

Persons who create viruses are constantly trying to improve them in order to beat any defensive system that you may have installed on your computer. Similarly, anti-virus software companies are constantly improving their programmes to defeat all attacks. Therefore, having outdated anti-virus software is like taking expired medication for an illness.

There are many more ways that your security can be compromised online. However, having the appropriate security programmes installed on your computer and using a little common sense should reduce your chance of being a victim.