Are you a good listener?

From the beginning the internet has offered many benefits. The fast access to information and knowledge is one of the great advantages offered by this tool of communication. With services such as messenger, emails, twitter and facebook which allows us to have contact with our family and friends by sharing letters, pictures and videos. But not everything is good in the internet, unfortunately these benefits lead to a major problem, the lack of privacy. Unfortunately many people make mistakes when they are surfing the red compromising their privacy, maybe because they don’t have knowledge or they don’t care.

For many years I have been explaining to my niece Tania what these errors are and how to avoid them and thus she can protect her privacy online, but like any teenager SHE DOESN’T LISTEN TO ME, and now with facebook is worse because each minute she puts information of what she is doing. That's why I'm writing because maybe I could find someone that is a good listener and takes into account these recommendations that I am going to say:

1) Please don’t use the same password in other programs and change it as much as often as possible. A bad example is to put your ID number as password (I know more than one is going to change his or her password today.)

2) Do not say personal information to strangers or if you believe that the network is not protected.

3) Use a browser that has the ability to detect and delete cookies.

4) For any reason don’t answer spam emails.

5) Use programs that help protect and store information on your computer.

6) Use encryption. This program helps you to encode the information sent by internet in order to protect your data. For example, you can use Pretty Good Privacy (PGP, available at: http://www.pgpi.org/) which is available online and is free.

Finally, I hope that the information I have just presented will be used in order to protect your privacy on the internet.

SOURCE

http://www.eff.org/wp/effs-top-12-ways-protect-your-online-privacy

Online Pick Pockets

When I was traveling for Europe in each train station, there was a recommendation saying be aware of the pick pockets. I was worry because I was alone, far away from my home and in a country was neither Spanish nor English were spoken. Therefore, I bought a belly bag in order to secure mi personal stuff such as passport, money and credit card with this bag I felt secure and I enjoyed my trip. But now that I am leaving in a secure place (Miami?) and I don’t need my belly bag I am asking if my credit card information is secure? I don’t think so, because with the internet there is a new type of theft that I name “online pick pocket”. They hack and loot a corporate server in order to obtain the information of buyers’ credit cards, in others words they put their hands inside the pocket of big corporations who have the credit card information.

People think that if they don’t use credit card on the internet they will be safe that’s not true because now all the systems are connected to the internet and the information is available in any part of the world. Remember when you use your credit card in a retail store that information is available for the online pick pockets. Even thought pick pockets exist and will exist; according with Kennneth Laudon Book (E-Commerce 2010) stolen credit card information is around 1.4% of the all online card transactions. For me this percentage will be reduced or at least will be kept in the same level, the main reason is the technology and tools available to protect the internet communications. These tools are:

Encryption
Firewall
Authentication , and others.

In my opinion, you should feel safe because internet has its own belly bag. So don’t worry and keep buying stuff in amazon, ebay, or other reliable websites or paying your bills or making online transactions. Finally, I recommend you to buy advertising in this blog I certify that is a secure place.

Is social media and advertising a good combination?

It strikes me that companies are looking to move their advertising to social media but I wonder if it is gonna work or they really need it. I believe that companies do not understand that social media are conversations between people therefore it is not gonna work to try to sell their products in site such as facebook or twitter. A good example is when you're talking to someone and someone approaches you to sell you something, even though the product may be very good you wouldn’t buy because it was very rude the way that was delivery the information. I think that it will happen to those companies seeking to sell their products in these media. The only thing that companies can do using social media is to gather information for market research or to help them to improve their products and performance in order to increase the market share numbers.

QUANTITY OR QUALITY?

Sites such as Facebook, Twitter has made people to communicate more frequently and faster than ever before had thought, for example before Facebook I only had contact with two high school classmate (Alex and Humberto), after facebook I have contact with my whole class and now I can look from any place in the word what they are doing (if married, divorced, etc). But I wonder what price we are paying to have much information. Despite of that social media has helped in increasing the writing It is also helping to destroy it, it is becoming harder to find people with good writing and that because new generations are writing without any kind of professional supervision on which would help avoid making grammatical errors. Another negative point is that social media is supplanting face-to-face dialogue and the conversation in society, before my friends and family call me or passing by my house to congratulate me, now They just leave me a message saying “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” and that's it, a special day happened to be a reading of hundreds of messages without any attraction or feelings involved and increasingly restraining the relationship of person to person. I honestly don't know what will be best if the quantity (with social media) or quality (without social media) but if you have any idea you can write on this blog or on my facebook (landys Castillo) or you could wait for my twitter address that I will open soon.

Success of Pay Walls at Smaller Newspapers is Good Sign for Print

There's some good news from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, the most famous general-interest paper to maintain a pay wall around its website and one that's holding up nicely in print -- its average weekday circulation increased 2.7% to 185,222 over the six months that ended in March, according to its new report with the Audit Bureau of Circulations. That includes 4,242 electronic editions, but paid print alone still increased 2.3%. And that's a large paper, although it's been charging since 2001, so readers are used to it.

The bad news is that last month Freedom Communications' Valley Morning Star in Harlingen, Tex., a paper with paid circulation approaching 20,000 copies, tore down the pay wall it just put up last July. Publisher Tyler Patton did not respond to calls seeking comment but was quoted on the reversal in a Valley Morning Star article: "While some readers and users gladly paid for our online content, providing free and unfiltered access to our website better complements our mission going forward."

However, the new round of newspaper-industry circulation reports last week suggest that pay walls at smaller papers, at least, often do help. They can help with print circulation, in particular, which is the venue for print ad revenue, still the most important revenue source for papers. And they can wring small but growing circulation revenue from the web.

Newspapers on the whole saw their average daily circulation for the six months ending in March fall 8.7% from the equivalent period a year earlier, according to publishers' reports recently released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. This is a smaller decline than in recent periods but still significant and pockmarked by double-digit declines at 10 of the country's top 25 papers.

Smaller papers did better, pay walls or not. Newspapers with circulations above 50,000 averaged a 9.4% decline, while papers with circulations under 25,000 averaged a 6.5% decline, according to an analysis by the audit bureau.

But most smallish papers with relatively established pay walls reported better numbers still.

DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS

http://www.marketingmo.com/strategic-planning/how-to-develop-your-distribution-channels/