Last week I blogged about Metro style design getting some attention of late. I’ve been immersing myself in the world of design at Microsoft over the last few months and I have found that Metro style runs deep. One of the questions I often get asked is whether Metro style will extend beyond the products we’ve seen to date – Windows Phone, Xbox 360 and Windows 8. The answer is yes – Visual Studio is already showing some Metro style and so is our Dynamics business.

At Convergence last month, our annual gathering of Dynamics partners, we gave a sneak peek of Microsoft Dynamics with a Metro style interface. In a blog post about the demo, Kees Hertogh explained how this delivers an immersive experience that makes the most of live tiles, deep linking and the panoramic canvas approach. I like the deep linking in particular that enables you to ‘pin’ any part of the application to the Dynamics Home page or Windows Start page – essentially ‘flattening’ the application experience and making any given task directly accessible from the highest navigation level.

Doing the Math on Disappointed Customers
By JAY GOLTZ

In the last 30 years, I have made almost every mistake a business owner can make. But I have always understood the importance of trying to do everything I could to make customers happy and encourage them to return. This might seem trite and obvious, but it really isn’t. At least not to everybody.

Seven years ago, I bought a new house. I decided that I wanted to get one of those garage-floor coatings that make the floor easy to clean and leave it looking great. It is a big garage, and the process is not cheap. I chose a company that claimed to be the best, and I forked over $3,600. The company’s people did a beautiful job, and I got a very nice letter:

Dear Mr. Goltz,
Thank you for choosing to do business with us. We appreciate the opportunity to serve you, and your satisfaction is our top priority. Please contact us whenever we may be of further assistance. Thank you again for selecting us. It is our privilege to work with you.
Sincerely, [name withheld]

Nice, right? So far, so good. Seven years of good, in fact. And it is still mostly good, except that the coating flaked in one spot, about the size of a small banana. I know: it’s nothing to go bananas about. The rest looks great, and people have bigger problems. But I figured I might as well fix it.

I found the original bill to get the phone number, and I was happily surprised. Attached to the bill was a “Limited Lifetime Warranty: If verified peeling or blistering occurs and a claim is received within 10 years after installation, [the company] will, in its discretion, either repair the affected area at no charge or replace the entire floor at a discounted fee, …” Wow. What a great company.

I called. I described the problem. The woman on the phone asked me to take a picture of the spot and e-mail it to her. Sure, no problem. Then she called me the next day, to tell me that the spot was probably due to some moisture in the concrete, and it wasn’t covered by the warranty. Really? In that case, it is hard for me to imagine just what the warranty does cover. She told me, however, that I could buy a scratch-and-nick kit for $35 and repair it myself.

In a sense, I was no worse off than when I started this adventure because I didn’t even know that I had a warranty. Initially, I would have happily spent the $35 and called it a day. But then I did find the warranty, and that left me disappointed that I was not dealing with what I thought was a great company.

But I was not mad. I am a small-business professional! I don’t get mad. I tried to help both of us. I explained, calmly and politely — you’ll have to trust me — that this was disappointing. I told her that if the company would just send me the touch-up kit, I would be happy to fix it myself. Then I went on to explain that I, too, own a business and that if this were my business, I would give the kit free so that customers would continue to feel great about their floors and about recommending the company to others.

After I delivered this eloquent, reasonable, well-thought-out suggestion, she replied, “You can either give me a credit-card number on the phone or mail us a check.” (Anybody remember Lily Tomlin’s telephone operator?)

I stayed calm. I asked, “Is there an actual owner of the company there, or is this a branch location for a large company?” It turned out there was an owner, and the woman on the phone volunteered to put me into his voice mail. The recording revealed his name, Gus. I told him the situation. I was not complaining — just giving him an owner-to-owner suggestion on how to make customers happy for very little money. I left my phone number but told him he didn’t have to call me back. Which he didn’t.

And that was O.K. Of course, the next time someone asks me which company coated my floor, I will be giving a different answer. Here is the simple math. The touch-up kit can’t cost more than $10, including shipping. The cost of coating a garage floor is now, I’m sure, around $4,000. I almost certainly would have had occasion to recommend this company to a couple of other people in the coming years. Which means this will probably cost him $8,000 in lost business. And then there are all of the referrals from the referrals. Maybe $20,000? $50,000? Nice letters and warranties might get a sale, but standing behind your product or service will get the repeat business and referrals that make the business.

But it’s not just the math. If I were him, I would have fixed the floor because it is the right thing to do. Period. That is how I have always run my business. I own a large custom-framing shop. If someone comes in tomorrow with picture framing I did for them 30 years ago that has a problem, I would happily fix it. I would feel great that they thought enough of my company to bring it back. It’s good business. It’s good karma. And when you get bigger and you are not taking care of the customers personally, it’s about good hiring and training.

Maybe Gus will call me. It has been only a couple of weeks. Maybe he is out of town at a seminar on how to build your business.

Original article here.

Build Up Your Phone’s Defenses Against Hackers
By KATE MURPHY
Published: January 25, 2012
As cellphones become more like computers, they are attracting hackers who can listen to calls or steal information. But there are ways to bolster a phone’s defenses. Read article.

No matter how clean a house you keep, your computers and gadgets are bound to get a little dirty here and there. Here’s what you need to clean them, and how to do it without hurting them. Your gadgets aren’t as resilient as they might seem, and just spraying Windex on everything and rubbing it down with a paper towel can cause all sorts of damage to a device. However, they are remarkably easy to clean as long as you do it right—and you can do most of it with just a few simple household items (or at the very least, a trip to CVS). Here’s how to do it.

Clean Your Monitor With White Vinegar
LCD screens are pretty delicate, and you don’t want to press hard on them, because that can burn out the pixels. Instead, turn your monitor off (so you can better see the dirty spots), and grab a dry microfiber cloth. Many monitors and other gadgets come with one. From there, just gently wipe the screen. If you have a more hearty build-up of spots or gunk, resist the urge to press hard and wet the cloth with a 50-50 mix of water and white vinegar. You can use a special monitor cleaner if you desire, but the vinegar/water mix should work just fine. If you can, though, use distilled water instead of tap water, as tap water is likely to leave white spots on your screen from salt or other deposits.

Remember, as you’re doing this, that you want to use a soft cloth, preferably microfiber. Do not use anything paper-based, like paper towel, Kleenex, or toilet paper, since it can scratch up your monitor. Also remember never to spray any liquid on the monitor itself—always spray it on your cloth first.

Clean Your Keyboard with Compressed Air and Rubbing Alcohol

If your keyboard is only mildly dirty, you should be able to get by with two things: blowing some compressed air in between the keys (to blow out dust) and cleaning dirty keys with a swab of rubbing alcohol to remove oil, grime, and germs. Alternatively, we’ve become very big fans of the Mr. Clean Magic eraser, and it’ll do wonders for a grimy keyboard, especially if it’s noticeably oily.

Clean Your Mouse with a Bit of Water or Alcohol
With the exception of old-school mice or the Apple Mighty Mouse, most mice shouldn’t need to be opened up to be cleaned. Generally, you can just turn it over and take a cotton swab to the rubber pads, wetting it with water or alcohol if necessary. For the mouse buttons, you should be able to clean it in much the same way you did the keyboard—use some alcohol on a cotton swab to rub away dirt and grime. If you absolutely have to, you can look up a guide to taking apart your mouse, but know that this probably voids your warranty and shouldn’t be necessary in most cases. Also, remember to turn off or unplug your mouse before cleaning.

Clean Your Laptop Body with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser
If you have some non-acetone nail polish remover around, it’s been known to clean up laptops (especially lightly-colored ones, like MacBooks) quite well, but nothing works quite as well as the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. Get it wet, wring out as much water as you can, and lightly rub it over your trackpad, keyboard, and laptop body. It should clean them up, remove any grease from your fingers, and give it that new, fresh-from-the-store look. Don’t press down too hard, since the Magic Eraser has a tendency to “shed” when rubbed hard, which will just dirty your computer up more. If your computer’s grimier than that, clean your keyboard with an alcohol-soaked swap as described above in the keyboard section.

Clean Your Touch Screen Gadgets with Water and Vinegar
Like your monitor, the best cleaner for a touch screen device is a 50/50 mix of distilled water and vinegar. That said, touch screens are a bit more resilient than LCD monitors, due to the fact that they’re meant to be touched, so you can press a bit harder if you have a particularly stubborn spot (don’t go overboard, though). Just like everything else, use a microfiber cloth and spray the cloth with a small amount of liquid, not the screen, before wiping it down. The last thing you need is to get your phone wet, void your warranty, and break something important (like the charging socket).

If you see your password below, STOP!

Do not finish reading this post and immediately go change your password — before you forget. You will probably make changes in several places since passwords tend to be reused for multiple accounts.

Here are two lists, the first compiled by SplashData:

1. password
2. 123456
3.12345678
4. qwerty
5. abc123
6. monkey
7. 1234567
8. letmein
9. trustno1
10. dragon
11. baseball
12. 111111
13. iloveyou
14. master
15. sunshine
16. ashley
17. bailey
18. passw0rd
19. shadow
20. 123123
21. 654321
22. superman
23. qazwsx
24. michael
25. football

Last year, Imperva looked at 32 million passwords stolen from RockYou, a hacked website, and released its own Top 10 “worst” list:

1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. Password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123

If you’ve gotten this far and don’t see any of your passwords, that’s good news. But, note that complex passwords combining letters and numbers, such as passw0rd (with the “o” replaced by a zero) are starting to get onto the 2011 list. abc123 is a mixed password that showed up on both lists.

Last year, Imperva provided a list of password best practices, created by NASA to help its users protect their rocket science, they include:

•It should contain at least eight characters
•It should contain a mix of four different types of characters – upper case letters, lower case letters, numbers, and special characters such as !@#$%^&*,;” If there is only one letter or special character, it should not be either the first or last character in the password.
•It should not be a name, a slang word, or any word in the dictionary. It should not include any part of your name or your e-mail address.
Following that advice, of course, means you’ll create a password that will be impossible, unless you try a trick credited to security guru Bruce Schneier: Turn a sentence into a password.

For example, “Now I lay me down to sleep” might become nilmDOWN2s, a 10-character password that won’t be found in any dictionary.

Can’t remember that password? Schneier says it’s OK to write it down and put it in your wallet, or better yet keep a hint in your wallet. Just don’t also include a list of the sites and services that password works with. Try to use a different password on every service, but if you can’t do that, at least develop a set of passwords that you use at different sites.

Someday, we will use authentication schemes, perhaps biometrics, that don’t require so much jumping through hoops to protect our data. But, in the meantime, passwords are all most of us have, so they ought to be strong enough to do the job.

Check out the article here: TechRepublic

Section 179 of the IRS tax code allows businesses to deduct the full purchase price of qualifying equipment purchased or financed during the tax year. That means that if you buy (or lease) a piece of qualifying equipment, you can deduct the full purchase price from your gross income. It’s an incentive creative created by the US Government to encourage businesses to buy (or lease) equipment to re-invest in their growth.

Jobs Act of 2010
H.R. 5379 aka Small Business Jobs and Credit Act of 2010 increased the maximum Section 179 deduction to $500,000 for qualifying equipment and software placed in service for tax year 2011.

Tax Relief Act of 2010
Bonus Depreciation was increased by the Tax Relief Act of 2010 on December 17, 2010, allowing businesses to use the first year Bonus Depreciation of 100 percent on qualified assets purchased after September 9, 2010, but no later than December 31, 2010.

Section 179 covers both new and used equipment, whereas Bonus Depreciation covers only new equipment.

The material provided is for information purposes only. Please consult with your tax professional for advice, or visit www.irs.gov.