Presenting Your Business

When it comes to running a business, not only is your ability to communicate with customers extremely important but your image is important as well. Since we live in an increasingly digital world, it has become important to present your page well to the world, whether it's a simple landing page, a blog or some social media profiles. And while content and products you're offering should be valuable to your audience, the design of your site or blog can play a big factor in keeping your fans engaged. No one will stay on a poorly designed website. You also need to keep in mind the font that you are going to use. Once the design is perfected, and you do not need to hire a professional if your budget is small, you need to make sure that you have contact information in the form of an 800 number, internet fax number, email and an address. This is one of the ways that you can gain more trust from your customers. It makes your business look more reputable.

Fear of Being Away From Your Phone

This is taking the whole addiction thing a little too far. I realize that we all love to use the internet phone services, emails, and social media sites to stay connected but as I might have pointed out earlier, we gradually disconnect from the world as our noses are buried in our phones and laptops.

"According to recent research sponsored by SecurEnvoy, an internet security firm, more people feel anxious and tense when they are out of reach of their phone -- and the younger they are, the more likely the stress. Known as "nomophobia," or "no mobile-phone phobia," a recent online survey of 1,000 people in the UK found that almost two thirds (66%) of respondents were afflicted, a rise of 11% when compared to a similar study four years ago. "Some people get panic attacks when they are not with their phones," said Michael Carr-Gregg, an adolescent psychologist working in Melbourne. "Others become very anxious and make all endeavors to locate the mobile phone. I have clients who abstain from school or their part-time jobs to look for their phones when they cannot find them in the morning." According to the survey, the younger you are, the more prone you are to nomophobia. The youngest age group (18 -24) tops the nomophobic list at 77%, which is 11% more than that of the next group -- those aged 25-34."

What do you think about this "phobia"? Would you say that you are one of the ones that suffers from it?

Cyber vs. Physical

What do you think is a greater threat, a physical attack or a cyber attack? With the way that technology is moving, cyber attacks are becoming much more prevalent and could eventually pose a serious threat. I had talked about the possibility of there being an all out cyber war but it seems that we are at the very most in the beginning stages of setting the ground for it. Hacking is not exactly something that is new as we have seen plenty of phone services being hacked to whole data systems. The FBI has a dedicated cybersecurity squad in each of its 56 field offices and has 1,000 dedicated agents and analysts working the Web beat, Mueller said. They focus on three key threat groups: terrorists, organized crime rings and state-sponsored cyberespionage. Mueller didn't single out China by name, but the nation's prominence on the threat landscape was an oft-mentioned topic at this week's conference. Cyber-spying? We really do live in a totally new world where lives could be destroyed through the use of computers. I do not think that physical threats will go away completely because in the hand of suppressors, they are useful and efficient.

Phone Services Costing More

Another consequence of the airwaves getting jammed is that the phone bills getting more expensive. It is costing a lot for the phone companies and of course your prices will be going up. One solution is to use internet phones through a different provider instead of a regular phone service. Some things are being done to improve the speed of the networks but the fact remains that it is getting crowded. This problem might be felt more so with people that use their phones for business and communication such as emails and internet fax. It is better for business to use a provider that is designed to help them run their business because they would have features such as call forwarding and toll free numbers. These services will get more people to call and increase business. Though, many internet phone companies offer the service free of charge and you can even use it on Facebook

Privacy Info on Apps

According to a new Federal Trade Commission report, the vast majority of the thousands of mobile apps intended for children offer no privacy information, which makes it hard for parents to make informed decisions about which apps are safe to let their kids use. In July, FTC staff searched Apple's and Google's app marketplaces for the term "kids" and found nearly 12,000 apps. They then randomly selected 200 kids' apps from each store and examined the information provided in the store about each app. They also visited developers' web pages for the apps. According to the FTC, in most cases "staff was unable to determine from the promotion pages whether the apps collected any data at all -- let alone the type of data collected, the purpose of the collection, and who collected or obtained access to the data." Specifically, the promotion pages for Apple apps contained almost no relevant language regarding app data collection or sharing. In the Android market, only three of the app pages examined offered even minimal information beyond the general "permission" statements Google requires. And even those only mentioned that the app provided information to an ad network -- without identifying which information was being collected, by whom, how it was to be used and whether it's shared with other parties.

Personally, after reading any type of privacy statement for a phone service or any type of application, it feels like I understand less about what they were trying to say. One of the changes that need to happen is that the statement needs to be more clear. What do you think?