Pinterest Marketing

The book I read to research this post was How To Use Pinterest For Marketing Purposes A Beginners Guide by Jeff A Hamilton et al which is a very good guide which I bought from kindle. Pinterest has 21 million members and is the fastest growing social network on the planet behind Facebook & Twitter. It’s even bigger than linkedin & google+. Added to that where is an unusually high proportion of women and people into things like crafts, the right product can really sell like hot cakes. To get an account with Pinterest they have to give you an invite which isn’t a problem and you have to link it to your twitter and facebook accounts to help them avoid spam accounts. When you go on the website there is a kind of revolving display of popular repins and you can either repin, follow or comment on an item you are interested in. A lot of people look for a narrow niche they are interested in and concentrate on that. Whatever you offer on this site has to be interesting and avoid spam as this site is very much geared up to penalize that and most members are very much against it. With the right product marketed in the right way you can get a lot of business. A lot of what this site is about is giving something back whether that be special offers, free gifts or free information etc. One word of caution be careful what you repin, you can repin ie someones website but that can infringe on copyright and the same goes for images. Pinterest make it clear in the event of a lawsuit you are responsible for any legal costs etc although if they are sued they will defend their interests. There is no cut legal agreement as tried and tested in the courts so you must be careful. I don’t currently have a pinterest account as I think it would be difficult promoting my blogs on there but it does look interesting as a source of information. I did really enjoy reading this book which I think was free and I would recommend it

Malware Forensics

The book I read to research this post was Malware Forensics Field Guide For Windows Systems by Eoghan Casey et al which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. This book looks at the legal aspects mostly according to American law and also looks at the technical aspects of dealing with a virus infestation on either a network or desktop pc. It lists loads of software that can do the various jobs, far too many to list here and looks at doing the basics with some of this software. Eoghan is a bit of a legend in Digital Forensics and I have read quite a lot of books by him. There is also quite a lot of posts on different aspects of digital forensics at my computing blog at http://scratbag.me & my technology blog at http://scratbagroberts.com

If your computer is attacked by malware it’s best to analyze it in a live state which means with out re booting it which will often destroy any evidence. Many professionals use MD5 or Memory Digest 5 to copy the hard drive. One problem facing you in this job is there is various types of memory that all need to be copied. Another problem is what you copy it to, in most cases it will be an external hard drive due to the enormous amount of data. Also copying it to writable media like dvdr’s takes longer. A good program that will copy a network to another network hard drive is Encase Enterprise. A lot of malware nowadays contains keyloggers to find things like passwords, something to locate credit card numbers & an email address for this information to be sent to. One way you can spot malware is you use a port sniffer like wireshark it will constantly try to access the internet to send its newfound information. This book is nearly 1,000 pages and covers every aspect of malware and I really enjoyed reading it.

Google Nexus 7

The book I read to research this post was A Newbies Guide To Nexus 7 by Minute Help Guides which is fairly short but a very good book which I downloaded from kindle. I have done a couple of posts on the Nexus 7 at my technology blog at

http://scratbagroberts.com

This is my computing blog but I thought this is a relevant subject for this blog too. The Nexus 7 is a digital tablet which is much cheaper than the current leading tablet the iPad by Apple but has a similiar amount of processing power and on the whole does away with some of the more superfluous features like a sim card in favour of wi-fi & bluetooth which it still uses but also is very cheap for a tablet especially with the features it has. It generally needs a wi-fi network to do things like install apps via your computer or a wireless hotpoint. It’s worth mentioning Google were giving away $25 away in the form of a voucher if you joined Google Play for you to download apps and I know currently give away 1 paid app free every day. It’s worth noting Google remove any apps that get a lot of negative reviews but don’t check them as such like Apple do with the Appstore. It’s best to check reviews prior to downloading an app to make sure it’s value for money.

The Nexus holds a charge for 300 hours, lets you watch 9 hours of video & lets you read a book for 10 hours when fully charged. It has a 7 inch screen measured diagonally. You can watch video in high definition. I noticed in a technology magazine that rated digital tablets it was 2nd behind the iPad and it has the latest form of the Android Operating System 4.1 and as new features are rolled out you can update that via a wireless connection to the internet.  This book keeps it simple & I think was a free or very cheap download but I think if you want something more detailed on the Nexus I would recommend the book Google Nexus 7 For Dummies by Dan Gookin.

Darknet

The book I read to research this post was Darknet by Lance Henderson which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. I will give you a word of advice this information is intended for information purposes only and unless you have a good reason I wouldn’t dabble in all this privacy and anonymity on the web stuff especially things like darknet websites which maybe can be something like Iranian newsites but can also be something much more disturbing. The author of this book has dabbled in computers since the 80’s and has many years of experience using things like Tor & other security products. Tor comes in the form of a browser that hides personal information like credit card details, ip addresses & location. You mustn’t go on a site like facebook with this product where they can take advantage of inherent weaknesses in Tor. Sites like Facebook pool together as much information about you which is then used as marketing information for businesses. There is a website at http://freenet.org where you take a massive download which only downloads slowly but is many links to darknet websites which are not listed in search engines like google. Another idea for helping your privacy is vpn or virtual privacy networks for which a fee will be paid and in return they hide your internet information. Bear in mind the vpn has access to this information so you probably don’t want one that is based in the same country as you as it will have to give information if requested to by the authorities. Some people dabble in P2P sites where you can often download the latest album, film or software for free falsely thinking their personal information is secure. These sites access part of your hard drive for shared files potentially allowing access to anything on your computer. Even where encryption is used you can bet law enforcement people have tools that will decrypt it. Also organisations like the MPAA are determined to crack down on people who use these sites not just people who sell pirated goods. This is a great ebook although only short and I think it’s a great subject to do a blog on.

Promoting Your Business Or Cause On Social Media

The book I read to research this post was Promote Your Business Or Cause Using Social Media by Dennis Smith which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book which is around 170 pages is a reasonable length and a good introduction to this subject although if like me you are quite savvy about social media it might not offer that much new information. There is quite a large section on Facebook which is quite interesting and something I didn’t know is if you promote a business or cause on a personal profile page which is quite common that is a serious infringement of their rules. Also if you have a page like a product you don’t need to authorize every like button message you get which is the equivalent of a friend’s request on a personal profile. There is a substantially shorter section on pinterest and this site boasts predominantly women users and apparently the average user clocks up 89 minutes on this site every month. The figure for Google+ is 3 minutes per month. Twitter is another powerhouse on the social media front with micro blogging which they call tweets which has now become a part of our language. I did quite enjoy reading this book and there is some interesting stuff on BlogTalkRadio where you can upload a podcast and there is the option of using the website which is free or downloading the software which you pay for but has additional features. There website is http://blogtalkradio.com.

Dropbox

The book I read to research this post was Dropbox For Beginners by Lisa Thompson which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. Dropbox was the first website to be a cloud service provider. It does this in 2 ways one is it provides Dropbox desktop software that synchronizes your computer with any devices like tablets and the other is it provides online storage which will work with your computer and any devices. You can back up a wordpress website to this site via the plug in that is available. You can also back up your computer hard drive but the free service is only 16 GB so is probably not enough. Above that amount it is a pay as you go service. They do encourage you to use this cloud service with twitter, facebook & linkedin and give you an extra 125 MB free for each of these you connect to this website. Also there are various options for what security like passwords you have protecting your storage space. I think this service is ideal for storing things like mp3s, video and ebooks. You can set it to upload stuff by default via the desktop program to your cloud space. They have well over 100 million users worldwide. The website for dropbox is http://www.dropbox.com. This is an informative book although it is maybe a little short.

Google Nexus 7

The book I read to research this post was The Amazing Nexus 7 by Paul Walmsley which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book is a little bit longer than some books on the same subject. It also has all the essential tasks you need to do to set your nexus up, nicely grouped at the beginning of the book. The Nexus only works with a wireless network although some come with a sim card as well. Although very cheap compared to other tablets on the market, it can punch above it’s weight and has garnered a lot of favourable reviews. Interestingly you can get a different paid app for free every day on sites like Amazon & the Google Android Appstore. Of course the Nexus runs an Android operating system. It also uses by default a version of Chrome as a web browser and Google as a search engine. You can read ebooks, watch movies, play music, play games and run apps on it. It has got good graphic ability highlighted by the games it can play. These tablets are essentially computers with touch screens and have consider computional capabilities. Although the tablet is named after Google it isn’t manufactured by them. Finally the Apple IPad leads the way with the most apps that are compatible with that but Android is gradually catching up.