Volume 1 - Issue 4 4-30-06

MANAGING PASSWORDS  

As you work on the Internet, you will need many user names and passwords.  I have tried to find the universal user name, which is a password that has a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and special characters.  Some websites will not allow special characters, some require a password over four characters, some require six or more and some require eight or more.  I have given up on a universal password and here is how I organize my passwords.  I have an Excel spreadsheet that has the following columns – Web Site, User Name, Password, Account, Secondary Account (not used much) and Comments.  I have a link in my system tray at the bottom of the screen (near the Start button on the left side) so I can click it to quickly open the Excel sheet and look up any password that I need.  I just counted the entries in My Passwords and there are 152. (They are sorted in alpha order which Excel will do for you).  I am sure that many of you have more.  The message here – organize early so you do not have to come back and do “damage control” later.

I told Linda about this and she said that one needs to be careful if you let others use your computer.  If the passwords are easily accessible, you might have a security problem.  Excel does have the capability to require a password to open a workbook.  Go the Excel help and you can find the steps to secure the workbook.  We both laughed at the fact that this will require a password to access your passwords.  DO NOT FORGET THE PASSWORD TO OPEN THE EXCEL WORKBOOK!

FEAR AND GREED AS MOTIVATORS

A colleague of mine once made the comment that two of the strongest motivators of people are fear and greed. I have pondered this, and I believe that it is a very basic behavioral pattern in the human being. When I told Linda (my wife) this, she said that sex and money are the strongest motivators. The sex part does not work over the Internet, but the money does and that is the greed to which I referred. If we have money, we always want more.

Fear and greed are the major motivators used in some of the advertising that I have witnessed on the Internet. Most of the “high pressure” ads that you see start by promising to make you $1000+ per day (pick your own number). This offer appeals to greed. As you read through the ad, you come to the part where you are told that today is your lucky day since if you order RIGHT NOW, you will get a ???? % (pick your own percentage) discount off the list purchase price AND you will receive many FREE bonus gifts to go with the deal. This is the fear and greed combination since you immediately think that unless you take advantage of this offer you will miss this once in a life time opportunity.  What you may not know is there is a built in script (small computer program) on many web pages that changes the date of expiration daily so it always remains the same number of days till the offer expires).

Search the Internet and check out a few of the ads that promise to make you rich without your having to work at it, and you will probably see this pattern.  Many of the eBook ads on the Internet today use this pattern.

Remember FEAR and GREED. Do not let these emotions cause you to make poor decisions on the Internet, because you will certainly be offered the opportunity.

If you are writing sales pages for yourself, remember fear and greed since they can enable you to create some “killer” sales pages.

VOICE RECOGNITION - CONTINUED

Back in V1, I2 of “Boomer-eZine”, I talked about using voice recognition (VR) for transferring information from my brain to the computer using voice rather than pounding the keyboard.  This is a continuation of that topic.

I received the high quality microphone that I ordered and plugged it in and started the VR software.  The software with which I am experimenting is included in the Windows XP operating system at no additional cost.

When you first start, the system requires that you read from text that it displays so that you train the system to understand your voice.  This takes approximately 10 minutes.  When I finished, I dictated a short document.  It is very interesting to startup MS Word and speak into the mic and watch the words appear on the screen.  However, I was not pleased with the initial results, and after reading additional instructions, I found that the more I train the software, the better the accuracy.  

When you click the Tools option on the VR Toolbar, Training is one of the options.  When you click on Training, you will be given a list of 8 selections from which to read.  These include Aesop’s Fables, Bill Gates The Road Ahead, excerpts from The War of the Worlds, The Wizard of Oz, The Fall of the House of Usher, among others.  The text is displayed and as you read and the software understands what you read, the background behind the text read turns blue so you know where you are.  Allow 10 minutes per training session.

After reading about three more training sessions, I read the same document as I did previously, and I was amazed at the increase in the accuracy of the recognition.  I am going to continue to work on this, and I will report on it in a future issue.  If this works well and is FREE with Windows XP, it will be a great tool.

BUILDING A FORUM ON YOUR WEBSITE

One of the recommendations made by John Reese in his “Reese  Report” was to establish your website so that your readers would help it grow by supplying input to the site.

One way to do this is to create a forum on the site to allow your readers to leave opinions, have discussions, ask questions, etc.  John Reese recommended phpBB which is a bulletin board software package.  I checked and my web host provided phpBB as part of the basic package so at no additional cost, I clicked on the Install button and in about five minutes, I had installed phpBB on the Boomer-Entrepreneur.com site.  Visit the forum at www.boomer-entrepreneur.com/boomer-forum/.  Remember that it was just started so the content is small.  

phpBB is an open source piece of software which means that it is free.  It has a very good website www.phpBB.com where you can download it.  It also has all kinds of information and support.  There are additional discussion forums on using the software and downloading custom styles for the board.  I started with the basic style and plan to go to www.eLance.com and hire someone to make it fancy.  

In summary, I am impressed with the software and the price is great.  

Well, folks that is it for this issue.  See you down the road.  Stay tuned.  

John Howe

www.boomer-eZine.com

www.boomer-entrepreneur.com

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