Topics Include: Thanksgiving Thoughts, And Turkeys..., Hodgson Launches BIO International Convention site

Thanksgiving Thoughts

As November and Thanksgiving roll around I spent some time pondering what I am thankful for this year. Obvious things come to mind: family, health, the economy is on the upswing (somewhat), and even though Thanksgiving is an adopted holiday for me (thanks for reminding me – you know who you are) – I have pulled together the top ten things I am thankful for from a technology / web business owner perspective:

• I finally understand what people mean by the "cloud" – call me – I'll tell you about it.
• Those geniuses who only had ONE computer managing 6000 traffic lights here in Montgomery County, MD now know and understand the value of "back ups" and "redundant servers".
• The Ektron conference was in Florida, not New England this November.
• Video conferencing – it blows email away and beats the phone hands down.
• The disposable product (the best type of product is always disposable) that is technology continues to evolve and change, giving us endless new challenges.
• Our clients – I know it sounds self serving – but we celebrate in their success and are sincerely happy to help them succeed and reach their goals.
• XM satellite radio – I knew I was entrenched in 80's music, but now, with XM, I can live it with Adam Ant, Simon, John, Roger, Nick and Andy from Duran and then I can get all Flock of Seagulls with Echo and the Bunnymen, I could go on, but I will spare you.
• My 14 year old son is more technically savvy on the gadgets than I am, but he asks my advice, opinions and guidance on his blog posts.
• The media frenzy about MySpace has been drowned out by the media frenzy about Twitter – which means that in 6 months we can only hope the Twitter frenzy will be drowned out too.
• The number one thing I am thankful for are the people who surround me. The individuals I work with everyday are a diverse and varied group – they have unique experience and valuable insight with personal and professional lessons they share, from sales, administration and operations. The technologists are so smart and more technologically advanced than I can ever hope to be – and I am thankful for the fact we can all learn from each other and guide one another and that we are greater together, than the sum of our individual parts.

And Turkeys...

As long as we are focusing on Thanksgiving, I thought you might enjoy a look at some of the biggest technology turkeys of the year. These all relate to email marketing and were identified by security firm Proofpoint as some of the scarier email incidents of 2009.

• Wife of FBI Director Robert Mueller bans him from online banking: Mueller received a seemingly legitimate email from what he thought was his bank, and began filling in the requested personal information. He says he barely caught himself in time before falling victim to the scam. While he tried to pass it off as a teachable moment to his wife, she decided to curtail his online activities until sure he learned his lesson.
• Start–up Suicide: The social media advertising and applications start up RockYou sent out a mass email to their customers announcing a site redesign. The only trouble is, instead of using BCC, they displayed the entire mailing list in the CC: field. Not surprisingly, many of these addresses ended up on a spammer's list. Two months later, the start–up sent out another email using a mailing list. This time, they asked contractors to provide information for their W9 forms, which resulted in people inadvertently sending personal information to the entire mailing list. Oops.
• UCSD Fake Out: UC San Diego managed to send an acceptance email to all 46,000 students who applied for admission, instead of the 18,000 that actually were accepted. That would have been one big freshman class.

Just a little something to ponder as you digest your Turkey dinner this month. Even with the rise in social media, e-mail remains the number one security and blunder-causing threat for most companies.