Hello

Suzanne here at HotScot with the HotScot December 2006 newsletter. A Spam update, something for the older entrepreneur, avoiding scams and fascinting facts about the humble Biro.

Sincere apologies to any who have previously requested to be taken off our newsletter database and may have received this month’s copy: please click here > to unsubscribe once more and we will do our best to ensure that this does not happen again.

• Spam Update
• New Year Planning
• Olderpreneurs
• Beware this scam
• Pure Dead Brilliant
• Blogs and Links

• Hints and Tips
• Latest Sites
• And Finally
• Feedback
• Unsubscribe

The US Technology firm Postini said it had already detected seven billion spam e-mails worldwide so far in November, compared to 2.5 billion in June. See this report in the Scotsman from Tuesday 28th November 2006.

Apparently 80 per cent of the world's spam e-mail is generated by some 200 gangs. According to Spamhaus, an organisation based in London, spam sent from eastern Europe is an increasing problem. The top ten of the world's worst spammers lists four Russians, two Ukrainians, two Americans, a Hong Kong company and one in Israel. The most sophisticated gangs can send 100 million messages a day.

So now you know why you are getting so much more spam, please stay vigilant and do not contribute to the problem by opening any email you are unsure about.

In a matter of just over four weeks 2007 will be with us and you need to be planning the changes you will have to make to your website to keep it up to date. Here are a few things you need to do:

• Update tariffs and price lists ready for the new season
• Update availability for the new year
• Get rid of out of date News Items
• Think of getting some new photographs for your website to reflect any changes you have made in your business
• Make sure your contact details are all correct
• Plan to keep on top of your emails over the festive period as you are likely to get more enquiries over this time.
• If you are going to be out of touch for a while get an autoresponder set up on your email, we provide this service FREE if you contact us with details of your message.

We have come across this great site, The Olderpreneur, a website aimed at people over 50 involved or interested in business issues and enterprise, which has been launched by the charity PRIME. The website (www.olderpreneur.net) offers users case studies, news, practical advice, quizzes and research. Site visitors are also encouraged to contribute by submitting their own articles and links.

The charity hopes that the website will be used as an interactive source of information. Site users can help to decide the order in which articles appear by voting on them. The more votes an article receives, the higher it will appear in the website's headlines.

The Trading Standards Office are making people aware of the following scam:

A card is posted through your door from a company called PDS (ParcelDelivery Service) suggesting that they were unable to deliver a parcel and that you need to contact them on 0906 6611911 (a premium rate number). DO NOT call this number, as this is a mail scam originating from Belize. If you call the number and you start to hear a recorded message you will already have been billed £15 for the phone call.

One of our Clients has had some good exposure in the press recently. Once again, Pure Dead Brilliant Tours Ltd. of Glasgow, Scotland www.puredeadbrillianttours.com have been placed in the spotlight. Their innovative and unique tours, services and brilliant customer care has come under the attention of the press in Scotland with an excellent and informative feature in the Evening Times at www.eveningtimes.co.uk/hi/news/5059209.html

This just shows the power of positive PR and perhaps it will encourage all of us to shout a bit louder about our own successes!

Thanks to Nigel Cole of Cats Whiskers Tours www.catswhiskerstours.co.uk for alerting us to this developing issue with the way Google looks at links from your blog to your main site.

It seems that Google is now considering any Blog with significant numbers of links out to one particular website as an attempt to Spam. This could result in blacklisting. We still strongly recommend the tactic of using a Blog to create inbound links to your own site but would advise that the number of these links is kept to below 10% of the total links on your Blog, that the links are to varied pages on your site rather than just the home page and that you have plenty of links out to other relevant sites as well.

Anti Virus software - Only have one anti virus program running at a time, if you have installed another anti virus program to avoid problems with Norton remember to make sure you have uninstalled or disabled Norton.

Good housekeeping - Defragment your hard drive regularly, say every three or four months, to keep it running in tip top condition. You can find the disc defragmenter utility from the "Start" menu under AllPrograms/Accessories/System Tools.

Dont Google it! We are surprised at the number of our customers who tell us they search for a website on Google even if they actually know the domain name. This is an unnecessay waste of time when you can just type the domain name (www.domain.co.uk) in to the address bar, the box at the top left corner of your browser window. Then just press the "Enter" key and it takes you straight to the site you want. There is also the problem that Google does not index brand new sites and hidden pages such as our Content Management Sytem so by using a Google search to find your page rather going direct using the address bar you will get a "Page cannot be found" error.

Ascension Solutions www.ascensionsolutions.co.uk is a Professional website package designed for this motivation and training company by Mhairi Longmuir, our newest member of staff.

Shearwater Marine www.shearwatermarine.co.uk is a Bespoke design for the Dunoon based commercial diving services company, produced by Edward Lopez our Flash "Guru".

The Old Byre www.theoldbyreknoydart.co.uk is a Professional website for this walker's lodge in the "last wilderness" of the Knoydart Peninsula, another Ed Lopez creation.

Corshill www.selfcateringholidaylets.co.uk is a Professional design by Robert Allan for this holiday business, and shows how good photograhy can make a powerful impact on a site design.

Did Biros really revolutionise writing? 57 Bic Biros are sold every second - not bad for a 60-year-old product. Did the pens make that much of a difference?  http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/magazine/6173154.stm

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