You Hear But Do You Listen?

I have had the pleasure of speaking to and listening to top executives from all sizes of companies. A common trait they share is - when someone spoke, they listened. Not only did they hear, but they also listened.

The good listener knows that a good conversation is definitely two-sided, but one learns through listening. Successful people know that and practice the art of listening constantly. “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” - Epictetus

Here are tips to be a better listener:

• Be Legitimately Interested: Drop whatever you were doing and focus.
• Be Honest About Your Time: If you really are in the middle of something important, tell the speaker. Apologize and plan for another meeting where you can ensure your full attention and focus.
• Accept the Speaker’s Point-Of-View: At least until he or she is done speaking.
• Use Body Language, Eye Contact, and Repetition: To show you are listening and interested, lean slightly forward in your chair.
• Go Beyond the Words: Good listeners are actively thinking not just about what was said but also why and how it was said.
• Avoid Planning Counterarguments: Mentally record your disagreement and formulate a response later after the whole message has been received.
• Ask Questions: If there is something said that is not clear to you, ask for clarification. Only ask questions that’ll help your understanding of what the speaker is saying.
• Watch and Learn from the “Good Listener”: We all know one or two “Good Listeners”. Next time you are speaking to them, really pay attention to what they do.

Being a good listener is an invaluable ability and skill. Once aquired it is sure to make you happier and more productive in not only your business but in your life.

Communication is Undervalued

Probably the most important skill anybody needs today in business is the one rarely taught in our education system - how to communicate. This is the skill that gets people their first job, helps them get promoted, creates respect and trust from meetings, develops confidence in others, and help them become leaders.

Technological changes have indisputably led to faster and more efficient communication. To name a few, we have:

• Email
• Fax machines
• Cell Phones
• Telephones
• Telephone conferencing
• Video conferencing
• Pagers

but are we communicating more effectively? No.

Communication is largely undervalued and untaught in the modern world, often with disastrous results. Professor Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University recently stated – that ‘the world’s problems could be solved if we kept talking’. This idea can be applied to almost any situation.

1. Speak to people
2. Smile at people
3. Address people by name
4. Be warm, friendly and helpful
5. Be enthusiastic about life
6. Be genuinely interested in people
7. Look for the opportunity to give praise
8. Be considerate of other people’s feelings
9. Be thoughtful and respectful of other people’s opinions
10. Be a great listener

On the above list, Number 10 may be the most important and also the hardest to do.

Listening and hearing are not the same things.

I will give some tips for being a better listener in tomorrow's blog. For now I will part with a quote from Ernest Hemingway, "I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen."

A Free Way to Market Your Business

If you offer complementary consultations send those who take you up on it an invoice showing your cost and value after your "discount."

If you are like many small business's, you may offer a free or no charge complimentary consultation as a way of getting your foot in the door of prospective customers, to simply educate prospective customers about your business, or as a way of meeting other small business owners you can refer business to and to get out of the home office.

Do NOT forget to send them an invoice with one line showing the actual cost they would have spent on your service if you didn't offer this service for free (this is a good time to review what you talked about in the description field). Make sure to add another line showing the discount which reduces the bill to zero.

You can also suggest that they write a compliment on a social networking site, their web site or Blog, or for your web site. Just remember to make it easy for them to do and to not take more than a minute or two to complete. An example would be to suggest that they write a sentence or two about how their business "fill in the blank" benefited.

That way, your value is in front of prospective customers and they are less likely to take your services for granted. In most bookkeeping programs, you can set up income and discount lines to track this marketing expense (even if the net is zero dollars) and see how effective this type of marketing really is.

A bonus tip! After you make a first sale/service to a new customer send a thank you letter along with the invoice. I have many repeat customers because of that thank you letter.

After a long holiday...

Whew! Am I glad the holiday is over so I can get some rest. I could hardly wait to get back to my office chair and get comfortable in its ergonomic design. What?! Your office chair isn't comfortable? It should be. If a person is comfortable, they will be more productive. Two new studies by Alan Hedge, Ph.D., CPE and Cornell University found that a comfortable working environment can do more than make workers happy: it can improve productivity as well.

A normal chair can give comfort for some period but an ergonomic chair will give comfort the entire time it is occupied. Using these chairs releases pressure from back stretches and pains. Ergonomic chairs distributes the whole body weight equally. An ergonomic chair will have its seat pan in a perfect position with suitable dimensions. An ergonomic chair is provided with pneumatical height adjustment. Not all chairs have enough back support for lower back and upper back with good lumbar support. An ergonomic chair satisfies all kinds of body posture with good back support in addition to lumbar support. Locking the chair backrest in one position generally isn't recommended. Before choosing a chair be sure that its armrests are broad, cushioned and comfortable.

Now I am going to lean back, relax, and enjoy.

A Note To Employers: 8 Things Intelligent People, Geeks and Nerds Need To Work Happy

There are many reasons to let geeks work the way they want to work. Today they work in every industry. They are the knowledge base, blood and sweat equity of many businesses. They work harder than most. They work longer than most. Their job isn’t a separate “thing they do” while they look forward to going home and relaxing. Geeks *live* what they do. They eat, sleep and breathe it. They are your systems administrators, your IT team, your programmers, your web developers, your designers… and sometimes even your customer service and sales people.
Anyone who understands how to leverage todays technology to increase intelligence, productivity and efficiency; anyone who stays up nights working to get better at what they do; anyone whose job is their life - is a geek. These are the most important asset your company has. For this reason, its important to give geeks what they want. Best part is, if you do, they most likely will not leave your company to work for someone who will.

#1. Let them work when they wantGeeks work almost every moment they are awake. They are online before they go to the office. They are home working after the office closes. They work weekends. They are even sometimes working in their dreams. Employers should understand this and more importantly appreciate it. Don’t force geeks to work 8 - 5 if there is no real need other than “company morale.” Meetings are one thing (, so is socializing with coworkers, but a relaxed office schedule will do wonders for the contentment levels of your employed geeks.

#2. Let them work where they wantGeeks prefer to have a couch around to nap on if they are tired. Some like no windows, others want to stare out into a city or landscape. At home, geek’s offices are usually more lived in, more comfortable and enjoyable than anywhere else in the world. This is because they love what they do, and they do it so much of the time they need to be comfortable where they do it.

#3. Let them control their lightingThere is nothing more annoying than working in bright crappy fluorescent lighting if you prefer to work in the dark, or vice versa. Geeks usually have sensitive eyes from staring at CRT monitors for too long. The last thing you want is your geeks to have headaches. Most geeks aren’t very pleasant to work with when they have headaches.

#4. Let them wear headphonesGeeks are experts in the arts of “focus.” Focusing takes removing all unnecessary distractions from your environment and creating a state where nothing else is going on but what they are working on. The harder the problem they are trying to solve or the more creative they have to be, the more they need to focus. Headphones, or simply a lack of ringing phones and talking sales people allow geeks to focus much easier.

#5. Do not expect them to wear a suitGeeks find arbitrary activities that lack real and meaningful purpose, a waste of time and energy. This includes attire. Most companies today are aware of this and even practice casual dress so as to make everyone more comfortable, but geeks are a special case. “Suits” (the kind of person) usually represent a business man who lacks most things other than a nice smile and great negotiation skills.

#6. Do not make them participate in company events (unless you are sure it is geek-friendly)Most geeks will not be jumping up and down with joy to attend a company party to celebrate the local football team, unless of course there is beer, and they can hang around and talk to each other about geeky things. Keep this in mind when planning company events. Geeks like to have fun, just not the same kind of fun as your typical non-geek.

#7. Do not hold a lot of arbitrary meetings that could have otherwise been handled through email or IMThis one is important. Like I said, geeks need to focus to be happy and able to focus. Nothing is more of an interruption than someone walking into their space unexpectedly and saying “hey do you have a minute?” The answer is usually going to be a disgruntled “Sure.” The truth is geeks are fine with attending planned meetings (and will happily be there if the meeting is really a necessary one for them to attend in person), but are usually most happy communicating through email and IM. These forms of communication are most appealing to geeks because they do not interrupt you, and polite geeks will even respond with a quick “hold on a sec, I’m in the middle of something.” Email and IM are recorded, searchable records of conversations. They are efficient and to the point. This also makes geeks happy. Geeks can discuss anything through email and IM and will usually be more willing and thorough with their response. Face to face meetings are important, geeks know that, but I would guess that 90% of conversations and meetings held face to face, would be more efficient and end with happier people, if they were held in a recordable, written, virtual space.

#8. Do not make them do anything other than workThis one isn’t completely accurate all the time. Geeks are team players, but they are also easily insulted by being given a task below their level of expertise or outside of the scope of their position. They’ll do it, but they won’t be totally happy. This includes: answering phones, taking out trash, going shopping for company supplies, and “filling in” for a sales person.

Ever wonder...

Why inkjet printers are so cheap?

Answer:
by Pendragon...

The reason is that the companies who manufacture and sell them intended from the very beginning to hook you with a cheap printer and then rip you off, hopefully for years, with incredibly expensive consumable ink cartridges which they also sell. The marketing plan they have adopted is that they will produce inkjet printers that are as good as they can produce and sell them at cost or even below cost to hook consumers on the special proprietary inkjet cartridges that are consumed in those printers.

I would never buy an inkjet unless I only had a few dollars to spend on a printer. In the event I did purchase an inkjet printer, I would use remanufactured cartridges. Look at any of the laser printer models from HP or Xerox as an alternative. In fact, alot of the new color laser machines are under $500.

http://www.tangerineofficesystems.com/
http://www.d-ros.com/
http://officeworldadvice.blogspot.com/

In the Business World...

Remembering Names is Key

You can’t continue to make excuses and apologize to people if you forgot their names. If you tell yourself you’re terrible with names, you’re always going to be terrible - it's a self fulfilling prophecy. Moreover, if you apologize to people, you only remind them that you’re terrible! If you forget the name, you can forget the sale!

There's no better way to convey that someone is important to you than remembering his or her name. A few time-tested tricks can help.

Always repeat the name as you're introduced. When someone introduces herself to you, your appropriate response should be: "Hi Lara Hall. I'm Tory Johnson, and it's nice to meet you." Try to say the first name a few more times in a conversation, and definitely repeat it as you're wrapping up. If it's a difficult name, don't be shy about asking how to spell it or even the origin.

Association is a key tool in memorization. Do you know someone else with the same name? Is there a characteristic of the person you can identify with the name? Some examples include short Sally, long-haired Harriet, or freckled Jane. Try to form a picture in your mind of the person, a defining trait (gorgeous gray hair, dazzling green eyes, or long, lovely nails) and envision their name over the image.

Don’t tell yourself that you can’t remember names! Once you have made the decision to go out of your way to remember them, it will only be easier to acquire and master the skill.

Things You Shouldn't Say at the Office

If you want to get AHEAD at work, there are phrases you need to leave OUT of your professional vocabulary. Here they are, courtesy of Real Simple magazine and Suzanne Bates, author of Speak Like a CEO.

Don’t say, “That’s not my job.” If your boss asks you to do something, it IS your job. Instead, try saying “Should that should be my priority right now? Because I have a lot on my plate.” Then have a conversation with your boss about your responsibilities, and what they consider to be the most important.

Don’t say, “This might sound stupid, but…” You should never undermine your ideas by prefacing them with this kind of wishy-washy language. Instead, say what’s on your mind. This reinforces your credibility, because it shows that you’re able to present your ideas with confidence.

When you’re on the job, never say, “I don’t have time to talk to you.” RUDE! Instead, ask the person, “Can I come by – or call you back – after I’ve finished this?” Then quickly and graciously explain why now isn’t a good time, and suggest a better one. Let your phone calls go to voicemail until you can give callers your undivided attention.

...and since we are on the subject of what not to say, here are some tips about things that should never be written in an email:

*Gossiping about your colleagues: including your boss, co-workers and clientele. You should never write about appearances or personality clashes.

*Forcing your political or religious views onto others. This has been known to cause many conflicts in the workforce. This could offend many people because of political or religious differences, and possibly discriminations.

*Sending jokes or stories about racial or sexual issues. This could offend many people due to the sensitivity related to those issues. Your reputation could be damaged as well.

*Soliciting money for personal emergencies. Although, many workplace do help employees in time of need, you should never be the one to send an email. Another colleague should take that action on your behalf.

*Forwarding confidential information to employees outside your department, former employees, or competitive employees. That could be grounds for dismissal. By leaking confidentiality, you are hurting the company's image and reputation.

These are some of the basic things that you should never say or do in an email. Just because you don't see the email in front of you, doesn't mean it doesn't exist anymore. The next time you email, just treat it as another tool for professionalism.

Ever wonder how a laser printer works? (In laymans terms)

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Within the laser printer cartridge there is a drum that slowly turns. As it turns it is given a charge by a wire (charge corona wire) or, in some cases, another roller. After the drum is charged the printer shoots a laser at the surface of the drum discharging the drum in certain places. These places end up looking like letters and numbers on the drum.

To get these discharged letters and number shapes off the drum and onto a piece of paper the laser printer covers the discharged shapes with charged toner. It then hooks them up with an oppositely charged piece of paper. It makes sense that the toner is attracted to the paper and there it is, toner on paper. If you have ever changed a toner cartridge you can attest that the stuff loves to attach itself to just about anything. The process so far just makes the toner attach itself in an ordered fashion or letter and numbers.

Getting toned

The process is just about complete at the most basic level. What needs to happen to finish off the process is for the toner to be fused into the paper permanently. To accomplish this the laser printer rolls the paper by a heat roller to melt the toner into the fibers of the paper. As the laser printer does this it real eases the charge with yet another roller.

Ultimately, when the process is in synch there is no muss and no mess. But everything needs to be timed just right. In the end, there is a warm static free piece of paper with all the words fit and unfit to print.

http://www.tangerineofficesystems.com

http://www.d-ros.com

Xerox 6180. Is it the right choice for your office?

Add the Xerox Phaser 6180N ($500 street) to the small but growing list of relatively low-cost color lasers that can serve as workhorse printers in a small office or workgroup. Aside from a low price, entry into the club requires a combination of speed and paper handling that can smoothly handle relatively heavy-duty printing. The 6180N scores well on both counts and offers good-looking text and graphics as a bonus.

On the speed front, the 6180N offers a 26-pages-per-minute (ppm) rating for black-and-white printing and a 20-ppm rating for color—not to mention results on our tests that fully reflect those ratings. To get a significantly faster color laser you'd have to pay twice as much, for the Lexmark C534dn. For paper handling, the 6180N offers as standard both a 250-sheet input tray and a 150-sheet multipurpose tray, giving you the option of keeping two different kinds of paper—such as letterhead and plain paper—loaded at all times.

You can add a 550-sheet drawer ($400 street) if you need still more capacity. And you can add an optional duplexer ($200 street), although it's cheaper to buy the 6180DN model ($650 street) instead of upgrading the 6180N.

Network setup is a one-click operation. The program doesn't even ask how the printer is connected—it just looks for it, searching both USB ports and the network. It stops only for you to confirm that it found the right printer, and then again to announce that the installation is finished.

Text quality is one of the 6180N's strong points, with output that's good enough for most desktop publishing needs. Graphics output was typical for a color laser—easily good enough for any internal business need, including PowerPoint handouts, and arguably good enough for things like trifold brochures, depending on how much of a perfectionist you are. Photos were of typical laser quality, making them easily good enough for things like client newsletters, printing Web pages with photos, and printing photos as part of an advertising handout.

The total package adds up to make the printer a prime candidate if you need a small-office color-laser workhorse.

You can view the printer here:

http://www.tangerineofficesystems.com
http://www.xerox.xom

Think Global But Buy Local

When thinking about your local office products dealership versus a giant manufacturer, they are often first perceived like David going up against the behemoth Goliath that sells office equipment direct to the public. Dealer/suppliers, much like David, are smaller infrastructures than their larger competitor, and thankfully, this is a great advantage that translates into superior speed and agility when responding to requests for fast customer service!

Unlike the giants that make and in some cases sell their copiers, multifunction and other office products direct, your local community dealer won't try to impress customers with their size. Instead, they will typically bend over backwards to provide first-rate customer service. After all, they have a personal interest in ensuring fast turnaround and excellent service—their livelihood depends on it.

But that’s just one of the reasons why you may want to buy from a dealer versus the manufacturer. Dealers have brand flexibility and can represent more than one brand of products. This enables them to recommend products and solutions that most closely meet a company’s real business needs, pricing and corporate objectives. They also maintain relationships with multiple software providers. And since they’re not in the business of developing software, they’re free of any natural bias towards their own products. An independent dealer/supplier is going to take special care to find the kinds of systems that best serve you.

A dealer/supplier can also guide you through the thorny leasing process and even manage your lease agreement if that is your preference over purchasing. This ensures that your business doesn’t incur any of the penalties and fees which are part and parcel of the leasing business model. Partnering with someone that is experienced in the leasing game can mean the difference between saving and losing money on the deal.

Some dealer/suppliers serve as single-source solution providers that can streamline your business processes and ensure maximum efficiency and accountability. Why spend valuable time and resources coordinating several or more vendors when a single supplier may be able to provide a range of services? Imagine having one vendor provide services such as:

• Document imaging including document preparation/re-assembly and image indexing and verification
• IT services from network design and installation to desktop applications• Facilities management including copy and mailroom management

When you purchase office equipment from a local supplier, you’re buying from someone right in your backyard. You know where to find them and they’re directly accountable to you. Then there’s the human factor. A local dealer is a solid member of the community, and many dealers believe in giving back to their local region by supporting worthy causes, running the gamut from assisting in civic events to charitable donations to college endowment funds. They invest in the needs and people of their community, only some of which are customers.

Save Some Money With These Printing Tips

When printing Office Documents like XLS, PPT or DOC:

For Powerpoint: Print Handout and not slides. Use Grayscale or B&W mode rather than the default Color mode.

For Excel: Instead of printing full spreadsheets or the entire active spreadsheet page, select the areas (or cells) that you want to print and choose "Print Selection". Reduce the print quality (dpi) from the Page setup window and also deselect the option to Print Gridlines. If possible, use the Draft Quality mode.

For Word: Click "Options" button in the Print window and choose "Draft output" in the Printing options. Specify the page numbers that you want to print instead of printing the entire document. That will save your printing time, paper as well as ink.

When printing Photographs or Web Images:

Printing colored pictures on a home computer consumes the maximum amount of ink.

For many inkjet printers, printing a color photo can use as much as 30 times more ink than printing a standard page of text. The best bet is that you take the digital camera to the nearest photograph printing lab rather than print those jpg files at home. That may actually cost cheaper than printing on your personal printer.

If you still want to print images at home, get a good photo editing software like Photoshop or Gimp or even Paint.NET. Resize and Crop the picture to make it look more interesting. For best results, use photo paper recommended by the printer manufacturer as non-standard quality paper may jam the printer rollers or may even repel ink. I personally prefer a photopaper with a Matte finish than a glossy paper.

ISP to Sell Your Browsing History for Targeted Ads

It's one thing when Google uses your search for boobs to deliver targeted ads for plastic surgeons in your area. It's another when your ISP uses deep-packet inspection to snoop on which sites you visit and for how long, and then essentially sells that data to advertisers for super-targeted. That's exactly what Charter is about to do, calling it an "enhanced online experience." Naturally, the program is opt-out, not opt-in, so you've gotta take the initiative to hang on to one last shred of privacy. And no, they're not passing on the money they're making off your browsing habits in the form of discounts. I hope this doesn't migrate to other ISP's like pay per byte billing. Which incidentally is putting a limit on the amount of bandwidth a person uses and then billing them for "overages".

Fake, infected media file attacks half a million victims in a week

In what is being called the largest fake media file outbreak in three years, some 500,000 people have nearly fallen prey to a phony music or video track that is actually a spyware-infested Trojan horse.

Usually purporting to be a music track with an MP3 file extension, the file is actually an installer that claims to require a special codec and special media player to play back the file.

Install the codec and what you really get is a computer screen full of pop-ups delivered through a variety of malware programs. You can see what the infection process looks like by checking out the video on this post. The attack is primarily being distributed through peer-to-peer networks.

This is hardly an original attack, but the scale of it is immense: Those 500,000 atacks occurred in the space of just one week. That's substantial.

The bright spot is that according to McAfee, which provided the data in the BBC report, only about 10 percent of those who downloading the infected file actually installed it.

The infected file incorporates all manner of potential file names. Though the BBC story includes a half-dozen infected file names, the real list is exhaustive to the point where it would make little sense including it here. It's likely that that list will continue to grow, too, as the attack continues to develop.

You already know what you need to do now, but I'll say it again: Update your antivirus software, make sure it's running real-time scans, and keep off those peer-to-peer networks.

Can I fax with an all-in-one over cable internet?

Can I fax with an all-in-one over cable internet?

If I buy a regular all-in-one printer and hook it up via usb to my computer, can I then fax via the internet? I do not have a phone line that works anymore, as I use voip.
Also could I received faxes? and if so how would I figure out the number, or would I have to ask comcast for a second # ?

Thanks

by Pendrago...

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

1) No
2) Maybe
3) Home Number or 2nd number either/or

Faxing over VoIP is sometimes a problem due to "lossy" codecs. Analog (old phone line) is still best for faxing.

You can read more about it here.

http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/fax-...

In short faxing over VOiP might work. Use caution and at your own risk.

Whaling... Be aware of phishing scams

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - US federal court officials have warned that hackers are emailing phony subpoenas embedded with malicious software to high-ranking executives to steal valuable corporate information.

Thousands of powerful US executives have received the bogus emails that contain links which, if clicked on, install software letting hackers take control of computers and swipe passwords or other sensitive data.

Internet security insiders refer to the attacks as "whaling" because they use social-engineering trickery involved in "phishing" but target individual "big phish" instead of casting nets in a sea of Internet users.

"The success rate was incredibly high," Websense Security Labs manager Stephan Chenette told AFP.

"Most likely due to the nature of the content and the real data, the emails had their exact names and legal language in there that made it seem like a serious subpoena."

The emails are crafted with the seal of the US federal court in San Diego, California, and are addressed to executives using their names, addresses and other individual details.

Clicking on a link to see a "subpoena" displays a realistic looking document and stealthily installs malicious computer code in the reader's computer.

"When the recipient tries to view the document, they unwittingly download and install software that secretly records keystrokes and sends the data to a remote computer over the Internet," court officials said in their warning.

"This enables criminals to capture passwords and other personal or financial information and starts software that allows the computer to be controlled remotely."

Subpoenas in the United States are usually served in person to assure judges that the orders from courts have been properly received by those named.

US investigators believe the hackers are not familiar with the court system because the website executives are directed to uses a "uscourts.com" domain name while actual court online addresses typically end in ".gov."

Aspects of writing in the messages appear British, according to police.

Among the targets have been executives at banking giant CitiBank, Time Warner-owned America OnLine and Internet auction house eBay, according to the courts.

The hackers likely got confidential information about intended victims stolen or gathered in the Internet's underworld.

"In the malicious community there is a lot of buying and selling of credit card and other information," Chenette said.

"Attackers buy cell phone numbers, home addresses and other specifics about people. In this case they were identifying and going after larger executives."

There is a trend toward more convincing, targeted "whaling" attacks, according to Chenette, who says to be wary of supposed court or tax department emails.

Trick emails with giveaway spelling errors of the kind that gave "phishing" its name are giving way to well-crafted, believable messages honed using confidential information about targets.

"The future of spam is to become more evasive and successful," Chenette said. "It is always a cat and mouse game ... a very real game."

Secure your desktop!

When leaving your workstation SECURE your desktop. ID theft, nosy co-workers, HIPA rules, whatever the case may be Windows Vista provides an easy way to secure your dektop and keep away those prying eyes.

The quickest way to lock your computer screen is to just use the Win+L keyboard shortcut. Some people prefer to use the mouse to lock the workstation, however, or would just like to have both options. Here's how to easily create a shortcut to lock Windows Vista, although this should work on Windows XP as well.

Right-click wherever you want to create the shortcut, choose New, and then Shortcut.

Enter the following text into the shortcut textbox. Note that the screen will look different on Windows XP, but the same text should work.

rundll32.exe user32.dll, LockWorkStation

Enter a name for the shortcut, and then click Finish. That's about all there is to it. Now when you click on the shortcut your workstation is locked and you may now get your coffee :)

On the Horizon

Firefox and Internet Explorer are each due for a refresh this year. These are the expected highlights. I am currently beta testing IE8 and the webslice feature is pretty cool. Stay tuned for more...

Firefox 3

More Security

• One-click site info: Click the site favicon in the location bar to see who owns the site. Identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to understand. In later versions, Extended Validation SSL certificate information will be displayed.
• Malware Protection: malware protection warns users when they arrive at sites which are known to install viruses, spyware, trojans or other malware. You can test it here (note: our blacklist of malware sites is not yet activated).

Improved Performance

• Reliability: A user's bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences are now stored in a transactionally secure database format which will prevent data loss even if their system crashes.
• Speed: Major architectural changes (such as the move to Cairo and a rewrite to how reflowing a page layout works) put foundations in place for major performance tuning which have resulted in speed increases in Beta 1, and will show further gains in future Beta releases.

Internet Explorer 8

Choice of layout engine

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 will ship in standards mode by default. However, users can set three different rendering modes using the X-UA-Compatible header:

• Quirks mode which supports Internet Explorer 5 and legacy browsers
• Strict mode which supports Internet Explorer 7 and is accessed through the emulate IE 7 button
• Internet Explorer 8 standards mode

Cascading style sheets 2.1 compliance

The Internet Explorer 8 layout engine is built to be cascading style sheets 2.1 compliant, enabling web developers and designers to write their pages once and have them render properly across all cascading style sheets 2.1 compatible browsers. However, Microsoft is not finished—hence, Microsoft is seeking feedback from developers working with Internet Explorer 8 Developer Beta 1.

HTML improvements

Many cross-browser inconsistencies have been fixed in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1, including:

• Separate URL handing for attributes.
• The get/set/remove attribute implementations are now compatible with those of other browsers.
• Default attributes for HTML are supported so that they always exist on elements whether specified in the markup or not.

Improved namespace support

Internet Explorer 8 simplifies the use of standards-compliant XML-based webpages that support namespace features like scalable vector graphics, XML user interface language, mathematical markup language, and others.

Platform performance improvements

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 improves performance in many Internet Explorer subsystems, such as the HTML parser, cascading style sheets rule processing, markup tree manipulation, the JScript parser, garbage collector runtime, and memory management. More performance work is planned for later beta releases.

Question on my Xerox Workcentre M24?

Question on my Xerox Printer?

I have a workcentre m24 xerox printer and what I see on my screen color-wise is not what comes out from the printer. i have tried every predefined setting in the print dialog box to no avail. i am printing a PDF file. when i print directly from illustrator or quark, the colors are a bit closer.

any help would be appreciated, thanks.

1 week ago

Also: I really should have added that the print out on my HP color laserjet 3700DN is MUCH closer to what I see on the screen than my 8x more expensive Xerox M24 ... how can that be?

by Pendragon...

Printers

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

I can make this fairly short and sweet. 1st: Calibrate your monitor! Adobe Gamma is an easy tool to use for this. 2nd: Make sure your M24 has been calibrated by the service technician, I know you can perform a calibration BUT that paticular model from Xerox is high end and the service tech has more options available to him than you do.. Also remember to approve HIS calibration. Color is subjective and what he thinks is blue you may not. 3rd: Use PANTONE colors when possible and get a PANTONE book so you will know what the color is supposed to look like printed.

I have been in the office industry over 20 years. As a service tech, the customers that I have taken care of over the years RARELY call me because what they see is not what they get. Just following those 3 simple things will improve your prints dramatically.

The last thing is to use a high quality paper. I know it sounds cliche but the XEROX papers will give you the truest output from the XEROX machines.

Simply_T is mostly correct in that the image printed will never match exactly, BUT with the M24 (high end machine) you can get VERY close.

**edit** With the Hp being close to what you see, the problem defintiely lies in the M24. It needs calibrated by the tech.

**2nd edit** How many copies/prints are on your M24? It could be something like a bad developer.

Best antivirus software for 2008 - Just my opinion of course :)

You're crazy to use a computer on the web without antivirus software, but getting solid antivirus protection doesn't have to mean spending a fortune. In fact, some of the most capable antivirus products don't cost a thing.

Free:

Alwil Avast! 4.6 Home Edition - Venerable Avast! is still free for personal use, and it's a relatively unobtrusive and capable virus stomper that will work well for just about anyone. A new feature adds a web proxy to the mix (which filters all traffic running through it for security risks), and it works will all major web browsers. It also recognizes non-virus threats like spyware and adware. The Pro edition ($40) adds a few power-user features that the average user probably won't miss. Give the free version a try!
Aviva AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic 7 - This has long been a capable and effective antivirus product, especially noteworthy for its fast operation.

Many readers have asked me about Grisoft's AVG product. I've used it and don't really prefer it to Avast/Aviva, namely because it does not seem to scan all files effectively. Independent security ratings place it relatively low in overall capability as well. Your mileage may vary, of course.