Phishing Test

I was surprised at how much I had learned by taking the phishing test. (http://survey.mailfrontier.com/survey/quiztest.cgi)

The first time I took the test I noticed that I had incorrectly answered some of the questions. I followed up on these questions and learned that you may avoid most phishing attacks by going directly to the trusted website by opening up a browser and then type in the correct url.

The second test that I took I got 9 out of 10. (90%, not bad at all.)

My Ideal Future Career

After I complete all of my education and training for my IT Web Development and Design Specialist Associate degree, I will be able to find a job at any one of many different fine companies. I however I am looking forward to a career of self employment.

I intend to do some intern work during some of my schooling. The intern work will help me gain experience in my degree field. Although some intern jobs may ask me to work for free, I believe that it will still act as a beneficial way to gain some quality hands on work experience.

I will be attending job fairs in the future to build a contact list and get an idea of the prospective companies available that may hire someone in my career field.


I would like to get involved in the Entrepreneurs program at the Fox Valley Technical College. This program should allow me to get some better ideas of what is involved in setting up my own business.


I will be working on my blog while I am going through school, in an attempt to build a good reputation as an internet guru.
I intend to build a list of people whom I can build a trust worthy reputation with.

My ideal job in the future will be a pleasant place to work.
I will actually be working for myself.
I will have a hard time quitting at the end of my work day. I will enjoy it very much.
This work will be very enjoyable.

I will amaze myself daily with my creativity.
I will most likely be building websites for several different small businesses. I will also be maintaining these websites.
I will have several clients whom will trust me to do all of their computer support as well.
In my spare time I will be working on marketing some affiliate products.

I will be very proficient in all of the Microsoft Office programs. Also I will have experience in using the many Adobe products. (Flash, Dreamweaver, and Photoshop, etc.)


I will be doing some freelancing work for several different companies whom outsource their work.
I will have built excellent online reputations with these companies. I will be well trusted to do this type of work. They will come to me when they have work to offer.

The thing that concerns me the most about this career choice is the fact that being a freelancer is not guaranteed to prove as a stable career choice. I do however; think that working towards building trustworthiness with people is essential to my success. Like I said above, I do believe that I will be able to gain employment with stable a company if I am not so successful with my freelancing idea.

Either way, designing or building websites is something that I enjoy doing. I am really happy that this career choice has such a high demand and offers such a high pay range. I will be able to do what I enjoy doing and also have the funds to upgrade all of my equipment to offer my clients the best of what is available.

Generation Interview

I interviewed my wives grandmother Kathy.
She is well to do at the age of 78.

Kathy has seen many new advances in technology in her lifetime. With the ability to see what is going on in other parts of the world, as it happens, to landing on the moon. "Who would have thought," asked Kathy, "Man on the moon and food in a minute, with the microwave?"
Even though computer technology is new to her, she can honestly say that she has attempted to try out computers. She does not like the whole internet thing with the fees that they charge. She would be willing to try to use a computer again if she had a modern and up to date system.

Television is another story. When she was growing up, television was not an option; children in her youth did a lot more reading. Yet in today's day and age, Kathy says that Television is an important form of entertainment for her and she also uses it to keep up with what is going on in the world. She does not like all of the flash involved in today's technology. She does not like all of the blurred out stuff and all of the bleeping that goes on during some of the newer television shows, such as the new reality T.V shows. (She hates them)
Kathy wishes they would add a "little more meat to the television programs". This means it takes a little bit more brains in a T.V. show and a little less beauty.

Kathy cannot comprehend the reason a person would want to use a social website such as facebook or twitter. Kathy asked, "Why would someone want to tweet?" She wanted to know if my wife and I tweet each other. I told her no, but I do have a facebook account. I explained to her how I can keep up with all of my old friends from out of state much more easily, and she can understand that concept, however she has always just talked people; person to person when she has had something to say. "To tweet someone to let them know that you are sitting on the porch is just ridiculous" she said.
Kathy sees a big future in computers, even though she could care less about her class mates from so many years ago, and what they are doing.

I asked Kathy why younger people use stereotypes about older people; such as 'old people are bad drivers'   
Kathy said" Old people use driving as a security blanket" It is one of the last things that they want to give up, she said. Kathy says that many older people don't want to give up what they think "is their right to drive". Kathy knows that her ability to drive at night is not what it used to be so she has not driven at night in the past 3 years. This is because she said that we do not have a right to be a danger to other people. She thinks that it is a very ridiculous stereotype among old people about themselves, to allow themselves to think they are not too old to let go of their driving privileges, when in fact, they really are.

Kathy gets herself involved in things. She goes to quilt groups, (11 blue ribbons and 3 best of shows.)

Raising a family was the most important goal in mind when she was a young woman.
She graduated high school at 16 years of age during a time when people didn't bathe every day, in fact, most people only showered after gym class at school.
Kathy could not get a full time job at 16 years old because you had to be 18 to work full time, so her only alternative was college. She did say that her first job at the dime store was when she was a senior in high school, the job payed a minimum wage of 67 cents per hour. The year was 1949
After 2 years of college; Kathy got married and started raising her family. She went on later to get her master's degree in Comparative Literature.
A woman getting such a high education had created a lot of bitterness on her husband's side of the family, because they didn't think that a woman needed an education. All that she needed to know is "how to raise kids and put dinner on the table."

As a woman right out of high school, she was expected to "find a man, get married and live happily ever after." It was not until she was around the age of 46 or 47 years old, the sexual revolution happened. Then all of a sudden all the morals that she had grown up with were no longer there.
Kathy would have never dreamed of having sex before marriage. "Now people have sex and then think about if they want to get married 10 years from now." Kathy said.
She has raised 6 children while running her business (Kathy stated "the largest tropical fish and reptile store in the Midwest)" ("In Racine") Kathy was in charge of the census for Racine County in 1980 and 1990. She was also the president of the Racine Unified PTA Council. (In charge of the all the PTA's in Racine County).

I asked Kathy what she thinks of Euthanasia.
Kathy is pro choice and thinks that it is a personal thing, and personal choice. She does not think that anyone else should have the right to decide for her. If Euthanasia were available and if she was at the end of her life and not well, sick and unable of doing anything, she would like to have a choice. She tends to agree with Jack Kevorkian's point of views.

Just until this winter, Kathy has volunteered at a nursing home, just reading stories to people who can't very well do so for themselves because of their eye sight, just keeping in touch with the outside world. . Any older person would just love to get out of the house for awhile. It is very important to an older person to get out with their younger family members.

Kathy believes that hospices are a wonderful thing.
A hospice increases the value of a person's life. A hospice will enable someone to die with a little more grace, without having to "be stuck in a nursing home somewhere where someone sticks their head through the door every once and a while." Kathy's quilting group supports hospices by making quilts for people that have hospice care to anyone that wants one. Kathy said "a hospice improves a person's life by not institutionalize them and making them a number." A hospice has a homelike atmosphere and someone will come to tend to the person living in the home. The person who stays in a hospice will die as comfortable as possible.

Kathy lives in a community that does not discriminate against the elderly. She does not feel the effects of elderly abuse too often. Kathy believes that some types of abuse are more focused on the less fortunate. Kathy claims to be lucky to have earned a pension and she does receive her SSI. She does not need to worry about housing or residential care or any other types of assistance.

Kathy receives Social Security benefits, but still has to pay out $162 a month for health insurance. "They keep saying that people that are on Medicare or Social Security are not paying for health insurance. ' Well, the Hell were not, $162 a month" Kathy said. The $162 a month health insurance does not cover everything.

Death and dying is a topic often discussed by the elderly. Kathy thinks that 60% of her quilt group is afraid to die. Kathy's philosophy is "Look, I lived for 78 years and they have been damn good years." She is living well now and don't have much to complain about. She is realistic enough that she won't live forever. She only hopes that when she dies she does not die with a lot of pain.

Kathy finds it wonderful that her children are healthy, her grandchildren are healthy, and her great grandchildren are healthy. She considers herself lucky. She feels as though she has had an accomplished life. She still thinks that she could accomplish more.

Times have changed and so have people's morals. In Kathy's generation, people did not divorce as much, and things like abortion, were just not acceptable.

Online Video Marketing

An Online video Marketer, creates online video products and then markets them using social media strategies; such as, blogging and YouTube and twitter to help drive traffic to their websites, T hen they can sale their product from that traffic.

An Online video Marketer must decide his or her niche and create some very good related content and submit it to YouTube or any other video uploading website.
Consistent uploads will help build some nice traffic. This will put the online video marketer into a good position to make money online.
The video marketer will want to make friends in the YouTube community. YouTube is an interactive website. Get interactive.

One of the best ways to create a product is to write an e-book (a document written in pdf format)
Using a product called Adobe Acrobat 9 this job can be done. An e-book is offered for download by the buyer. The eBook will allow for instant gratification to the buying experience.
EBooks are very good business venture because the product is in digital format that may be duplicated time and time again. This eliminates high overhead cost and inventory.

Online video has come a long way in the past few years. There is massive growth projected in the future.
Studies in college such as learning html, and java script and using Adobe Photoshop and many other courses will help me learn the things needed to do this job.

An online video marketer can earn $10,000-$60,000/per month using video marketing and Google Adwords.

Massive growth projected in the future

73% of U.S. internet users view videos online. 63% of American online video viewers watch at least once per week. 10 hours of video are uploaded each minute to just YouTube alone. This means that you can only watch a fraction of the online videos in your entire lifetime. 75% of AOL and Google users say that they are watching more videos this year than a year ago. 52% of them expect to watch still more in years going forward.

An online video marketer will need to know the skills necessary to compete in the job market.
The video marketer needs to establish his or herself as an authority in their field and work toward creating videos that allow the user to retain the information that is in the video content. Keep instructional videos less than 4 minutes long.

YouTube

Everyone can broadcast their ad campaign on YouTube and tap into the world's largest online video community.

YouTube is the 6^th largest website online. It is the largest video uploading website in the world; making it the #1 entertainment destination as well.

Who's watching?

71.3 million People of all ages are watching YouTube videos

When a user goes to Google, they usually have in mind to leave Google and go directly to their desired destination based on their search term.
YouTube users go to YouTube with the intention to stay on YouTube.
YouTube is now using the new overlay technology that allows for advertising to overlay the video that is intended. User interactive video ads are created and it is increasing user ratings. If a user chooses to click on an ad, they may and if they choose not to view the ad, they will leave it alone, and the video resumes.

Video marketers can check there video stats, by using YouTube Insight and Discovery Tools.

Ways to succeed as an online video marketer

1. Create powerful intro.
   
2. Go into the background of the issue or the product. Keep this section about 35-45 seconds.
   
3. Discuss the solution to the issue. Sale the outcome not the details.
   
4. Call to action. Tell them what to do or invite them (whatever the situation calls for)
   Give them only one thing to do. Only give them one option.
   

E-mail security settings

I feel as though all of the following e-mail settings are just as important as the other and I will be looking for these types of security settings within my email client.

Read e-mail messages using a reading pane:        Allows you to read an e-mail message without actually opening it. Even though you can read the e-mail without opening the actual e-mail document you should still be aware of messages and attachments from unknown senders.

Block external content:    Prevents the user's computer from downloading the images and external links that are present in an e-mail. Spammers use the external content to note which e-mail addresses are actually in use, allowing them to add the e-mail address to their spam list, they can then sale your e-mail address to other spammers.

Preview attachments:    Some e-mail clients will allow a user to preview an attachment without saving it or opening it. To preview the attachment, the user must have the required application installed in order to view the attachment.     For example: You must have Microsoft Word installed on your computer in order to view an attachment that is a Microsoft Word attachment.

Use an e-mail postmark:    Some e-mail clients will allow for a legit e-mail that could otherwise look as if it were a spam e-mail, to have a postmark into the e-mails header, this postmark can be read by compatible e-mail clients on the receiving end. The compatible e-mail client will recognize the postmark and allow it thru.

I use the e-mail that is provided from my user account at peoplestring.com.
I will now examine my e-mail security settings within my peoplestring e-mail:

My e-mail client does offer a preview pane; it offers to hide or display remote inline images (block external content) and allows you to hide or display attached images below the message.
You can adjust the Score threshold. If you choose 1-3, this is the highest setting. (By selecting the highest setting you may miss a few real emails as it could result in them being marked as Spam.) A medium Spam setting would be in the 4-6 range, and low would be 7 or higher. You can adjust these settings according to your preferences. You can also choose a setting to allow or disallow e-mails sent in certain languages. Peoplestring e-mail allows you to set certain address rules; to allow or reject certain email addresses. I have set up to reject a few different e-mail addresses that I have received daily spam emails from yet I still receive them, the spam showed into my inbox daily until I set my score threshold, now it goes into my junk folder.

I did not see any settings for allowing an e-mail postmark so I will give the peoplestring e-mail a security ranking of 3 out of 5.

I will now check my wife's e-mail client G-mail from Google.
Her G-mail account allows for security settings such as allow or disallow external content such as view images. I advised her and changed her setting to disallow the external content.
G-mail allows users to view a snippet of the message (like Google web search!) in my opinion it does not show enough of a preview to make me feel secure.
I did not see anything available to allow for her to preview attachments or create an e-mail postmarks.
I did not see the opportunity to setup and adjust a score threshold like is available at peoplestring.com.
I will give G-mail a security ranking of only 2 out of 5.
If you are interested in joining peoplestring please do so through my affiliate link www.paychecks4life.net

As for me I am going to check into setting up a Microsoft Outlook account, since I have it already installed on my computer. I will do this to see if I can get a better security ranking from Outlook. I have seen Outlook quoted several times in my Security Awareness book that I am learning from in college.

IT – Freelance Web Designer and Information Technologies software jobs.

I researched freelancing jobs at Freelancer.com and I discovered many different jobs available for a freelance web developer.

Freelance.com is an online job marketplace that provides a means for employers and freelancers around the globe to collaborate for mutual benefit.
Individuals or businesses in need of skilled help for short or long-term projects can post those projects and allow freelancers to submit bids for the completion of the work.

The lifestyle of a freelancing web developer is taking off and freelancing offers unparalleled job flexibility. You can even work at home.

There are many jobs available to a freelance web developer

Jobs available on 2/20/2011

.NET Jobs available (226)		Web Security Jobs available  (32)		ASP Jobs available (92)		HTML Jobs available  (1025)	Computer Security Jobs available  (14)	DNS Jobs available (7)	PHP Jobs available (1755)
JavaScript  Jobs available (413)		XML Jobs available (63)		Linux Jobs available (89)		UNIX Jobs available  (1)	SQL Jobs available (81)	Windows Server Jobs available (14)	Perl Jobs available  (37)

Expectations of the future for freelancing these outsourced jobs are huge, so huge that we cannot even comprehend this future. The freelancer.com website offers an application programming interface (API). The API allows for the greatest functionality of the freelancer.com website.

There are countless possibilities for the API and Freelancer.com is actively looking to engage with its community of Employers and Freelancers to embrace those possibilities.

The freelance jobs available will vary in pay and experience needed and will be decided upon the employer based on how you bid. I have seen jobs that pay small amounts and there are jobs that can pay up to $13,000 each. With freelancing jobs as well regular jobs available for a web developer, there will always be competition for employment, however there is a lot of work available. There is still a large demand for web developers, and the future is expected to hold the same demand.


Freelancer.com also offers an affiliate program that pays earn 90% of project fees; and 10% of fees taken from items sold on their website.

Career Interview

Today I will interview Margaret Albright.
(Freelance Web Developer and Internet Marketing Entrepreneur)

Margaret Albright has been successfully working online for several years now and she claims to know what she is doing.
Margaret has built many affiliate marketing websites, some of which she has sold for profit. Margaret Albright has built and administrates several membership websites which offers her some residual income.

Margaret's Ultimate Membership Site teaches others how to do what she does, however time restraints do not allow for her to offer the support needed for any new members on that one particular site, so it had to be closed to any new members.

Today Margaret focuses most of her attention on the many other websites she has built; websites that teach people how to make money online.

Rory:    Margaret; will you describe a typical day at work?

Margaret:    I get up and have some coffee, Open my laptop and check my emails. I answer any support emails I may have received. Then I eat breakfast take a shower, etc. Next I add content to any site that needs to be updated. I have a lot of free time in the afternoon to do more web stuff or just relax. At the end of the day I must check again for support questions and answer them. Before I stop working for the day I backup any new content to my portable hard drive. I also back up all my databases each night.


Margaret uses ftp protocol to upload all new content to update her databases. She also uses a Microsoft program called "FrontPage" to add content to her websites. To communicate with her customers she uses SMTP protocol from her email client Gmail; from Google.


Rory:    How many hours do you work in a typical day?

Margaret:    8 to 10

Rory:    What do you consider the best part of your job?

Margaret:    The freedom

Rory:    What are the downsides to your job?

Margaret:    No one thinks I am working so they ask me to run errands, etc. Since I am home, doing nothing, I may as well help them.

Rory:     What made you decide to pick this career path? Are you glad that you did?

Margaret:    I wanted to own my own business and not have to answer to anyone but myself. I am very glad I did.

Rory:    What is your education level?

Margaret:    Business Management and Accounting, associate degrees. I am also a Dale Carnegie graduate.

Rory:    Would you consider working for a company or doing any other freelance work?

Margaret:    I would not consider working for another company. I have my freedom and plan to keep it. I prefer to only work for myself. I am a good boss and therefore I am able to do exactly what I want to do.

Rory:    In what ways can someone view examples of your work?

Margaret:    MyInstant.biz is my best work. I have helped many people build online businesses with this site.
AllNaturalCures.net is another good example although I do not own that site anymore so there may be some changes to my original design and content.

Rory:     If there were some things in your line of work that you could improve upon by obtaining more education what do you like to learn?

Margaret:    I wish I had a better education in php, java script and perl.
I am completely self-taught in all my programming.
A formal education would absolutely make a lot of my programming easier.

Rory:    If you had a word of advice for me about working in web development and the internet marketing industry what would it be?

Margaret:    It is a fascinating field and the sky is the limit. There are so many options available to you in this field. Learn all you can and have fun!