An important site to assist you with online security is SCAMwatch
This is an Australian Government site provided to assist online users to be protected from scams and allows you to report scams that you may find out there.

Verisign is one of the leading online transaction security providers.
Seeing Verisign when conducting online transactions alerts you that you are indeed conducting a secure transaction.

Googles Postini services are some great online tools you can investigate

How much of your business is conducted online?
This question is answered with a higher number every year I ask it, and the most common questions I am asked in return concerns the security of a business’ private information.

Important questions indeed!

The internet was designed to enable easy communication and exchange of information and business transactions. Unfortunately this means that it is also relatively easy for the criminal element to steal information such as credit card numbers and bank account access codes.

Businesses therefore have to become vigilant about their e-security measures and remember that on-going staff training is an important aspect of the strategy.

Putting a strategy in place with policies and procedures for conducting online transactions could be the most important strategy your business embeds all year.

Strategies involve a number of levels including: assessing potential online products and services for authenticity by checking webseals or trustmarks. A common trust mark is the VeriSign logo. Ensure the site is an authorised reseller of the product and you know exactly what merchant you are dealing with. You can check the business or company registration with ASIC and if necessary check for licences applicable with industry bodies or professional associations.

SCAMwatch is a great website published by the ACCC to provide information about online shopping scams and how to protect yourself, and how to report any scams you find online.

When you actually get to the point of carrying out a purchase transaction, some method of authentication is used and the most common are usernames, passwords and digital certificates.

Your business strategy needs to include keeping the business network free of malware and viruses that can breach the security of your passwords.

Lastly, if it sounds too good to be true – it probably is!

In this economic climate, it is more important than ever to spend time working ‘on’ your business rather than just ‘in’ your business.

Many of us have to think about how we may need to change practices, streamline processes and increase efficiencies to survive the current climate.

One key to success is finding a niche market and catering to that market very specifically. This is even more important now and spending time finding out how you can fill a niche could be the turning point you are looking for.

Some business owners shy away from activities like market research, but can we afford to avoid this?

If your business has slowed in these times, you can utilise technology to spend some time to research new business avenues or expansion of avenues that are working.
Utilise forms that are available online such as business plans, marketing plans, networking plans, whatever you need is likely to be available online with a little searching. These assist you to cover everything you need when planning and take a methodical approach.

Nearly 25% of businesses in Australia are not making a profit, and that is without taking our current economic climate into consideration. So I hear you ask how do they stay in business? The short answer is that many of them don’t. Some do work their way to profitability through years of hard work, but the fact is that businesses come and go.

There is an old but still true saying – failing to plan is planning to fail.

Many business owners fail to plan because they don’t know how to plan. If you find this describes you, think about including employees in the planning process, or seeking assistance from outside through professionals and government organisations that assist business.

GPS technology has become increasingly popular and affordable over the past few years.
The main 2 types of systems in use in Australia are the sets that you mount in your car or carry whilst hiking, and the phones with GPS integration.
Global Positioning Systems (GPS) were developed by the US Department of Defence and became fully operational in 1993.
The system basically works by the receiver calculating a position by timing the signals sent by satellites. Each satellite continually transmits messages on the time, precise orbit information and orbits of all GPS satellites. From this the receiver measures the transit time of the messages and works out the distance to each satellite. Using some complex maths the receivers’ location is worked out.
This position is then displayed on a moving map and can include direction and speed. Usually 4 satellites are used to perform this calculation.
When navigating in a city you do need to drive a little slower than you might normally as I’ve found the display can be out by around 10 – 20 metres, which could mean missing a turn. It only takes a little practice to get well tuned to your GPS and avoid this issue.

The first mobile phones with integrated GPS were launched I990 but were not available for the broad consumer market until 2002 in the US. These units use the mobile network, so beware the charges that may be incurred for using them.

The handheld or car systems have no cost attached to using them, but you will need to update the map software on them every 12-18 months in order to display new roads, roundabouts, speed cameras etc.

Some of the handheld systems have no map displays but include an electronic compass and barometric pressure and rate of change, effectively giving you a portable weather station.

One way marketing content can be presented online is through the use of video streaming.

Streaming refers to the way the video is ‘presented’ to the user online.  From the late 1980s computers became powerful enough to display multimedia content.  I remember how computers were once advertised as ‘multimedia’ computers, meaning they had a CD ROM and a set of speakers.  Today it is standard to have a much higher and wider range of multimedia capabilities.

Video content was usually delivered to computers using CD ROMs, as another issue in the 90s was the lack of bandwidth to allow the delivery of this content via the internet.  In general, multimedia content is large, so this impacts on storage and transmission costs.  To offset this, content is usually compressed for both storage and streaming.

There are two basic ways of streaming – ‘on demand’ or ‘live’

On demand streams are stored on a server and available for viewing at any time a user comes along and requests it.
Live streams are only available at a particular time, for example a live stream of a particular sporting event.
One of the main advantages of streaming the media is that the user can start watching the video almost as soon as it begins downloading, rather than having to wait for an entire file to download.  The file remains on the server, rather than being delivered to your computer.

If you have used You Tube, you will notice the red bar along the bottom of the video is moving at a different rate to the marker that shows where you are up to in the video.  This red bar is showing you the progress of the streaming.
If you are considering multimedia marketing content for distribution on the internet, then streaming is possibly your best choice of methods.

Watch this You Tube presentation about streaming

Wordpress information on putting video streams into blogs

Podcasting can be used as a marketing tool for business, which means that business can use subscriptions to podcasts as an efficient way of keeping up-to-date on information.
The really great thing about podcasting is that you are not just putting information up on the net, but you are providing a way for people who want your information to subscribe to your podcasts.
This means that when you put a podcast up, subscribers receive that information immediately and you are pushing information to the people who want to receive it. A receptive audience is one of the most critical aspects of successful advertising.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is the name given to the distribution of podcasts, and you can subscribe to news headlines, share market updates, podcasts and even blogs, drawing this information from a variety of sources, but having them delivered to you in one place.

This can save your business a lot of time in searching the net to check if there is new information out there from sources you often use.
Time is money in business and using technology in smart ways to save you time, means you are saving money.
There is a range of free software called feed readers available for retrieving RSS, but most people sign up for web-based services, which means you don’t have to install anything.
Most web-browsers and email programs today have feed readers built in to them, and iPods and many MP3 players can also subscribe through iTunes and similar sites.

Information management is a critical issue for business today. We are dealing with an overload of information, and whilst the internet is an amazing tool, we often feel swamped when trawling through the masses of information out there.
Learning to use effective tools to simplify this task is simply smart business practice.