Small Business Tech

I noticed this evening that Google has added drag and drop to Gmail. You can grab a small handle at the far left portion of message listing and drag it onto a label. You can also accomplish the same by dragging the label onto a message. You can also select multiple messages and drop them onto a label.

This addition as well as the recent ability to "move" messages into labels makes Gmail more and more useful. The Gmail web interface is becoming more comfortable for former Outlook addicts.

By the way unlike tasks in Google Calendar, this feature is available in Google Apps.

Labels: email, Gmail, Google Apps, Outlook

All of the news about Google this week has been Google Sites and Google Health. A new feature added to Google Docs has me excited. They now have an option to have a spreadsheet filled via an online form. If you need to conduct a simple survey or plan a potluck dinner or any task where you need multiple user input this is a great tool. You can see an example here.

A form is very easy to setup...

• Create a new Google spreadsheet in Google Docs
• Enter form questions along row A
• Save your spreadsheet
  
• Click the "share" tab on the right hand side
• Click the radio button for Live Form
• You are now able to enter a list of email recipients as well arrange and edit your questions.
• The interface even allows you to create multiple choice questions, etc.

Your spreadsheet will now fill with data provided by your recipients. Google will also send you an email alerting you as forms are filled.

Labels: email, Google, productivity

I consider myself to be a careful computer user. I have do not remember ever catching a trojan or virus in at least the last seven years. I carefully surf the web on any of my production computers. Well, I got caught in a simple and easily-contrived phishing scam recently.

An email arrived indicating that the credit card used in my Yahoo pay-per-click advertising account was about to expire. I knew this event was going to happen soon, so I clicked the link and entered my user name and password in the very official Yahoo Marketing login page. The remainder of the process was odd, though. I was not taken to a page with my credit or account information. I chalked it up to a web oddity and made a note to check it out later.

Well later did not come soon enough. When I went back to log into Yahoo I was unable to do so. It all came together in my head - I had been scammed. A call to customer support at Yahoo quickly resolved the issue. The culprit had charged $500 to my credit card and proceeded to setup his keywords and such. Yahoo refunded the $500 and restored my account in just a couple of hours.

How to you prevent this. I now have a habit of not opening any notice directly from an email. I will open a link if a friend sends me a Youtube video or such, but I do not click on a link if it involves my bank, credit card, or any account with monetary value. If any link leads to a login page or any form that asks a personal question then I just close the browser.

Obviously we need to follow up on certain notices, though. The best method is to open a browser and enter the usual address that we use to access the service. Then look in the area of interest pointed out in the email.

This brings up a another valuable point. DO NOT use the same password for every web site. Using a unique password for each web site will minimize your exposure if you do get caught in a phishing scam. I do use the same password for non consequential web sites, but I use a different password for each and every financially related web site. I will follow up with more information about how to manage passwords easily and safely.

Labels: email, passwords, phishing, security