There has been a lot of buzz in the media these past couple of days about a serious security flaw in Microsoft IE. I don’t use IE anyway and haven’t done for two or three years (wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole!).

This is not the first time this has happened with IE. Back in 2005 there was another security flaw in Microsoft’s browser version IE6 – I wonder how many times it has to happen before people get the message that hackers will always try to infiltrate widely used programs, like IE. This problem is not applicable to the beautiful and very fast Firefox (the Bomb of all Browsers – read the above article on how to customise it to act like IE with certain websites including Active X controls) or Chrome, Opera, Safari etc.

I would suggest get out there and download one of the alternative browsers, give it a good go for a week and I’m confident you will never want to go back to the ‘dark side’ of MS IE. I’m quite sure you can import your bookmarks from IE too. No excuses folks – protect your personal information and say ‘no’ to IE!

One tool which I am trialling is Airset.  This collaboration tool is currently free and so far it looks like it has everything I need. I can log messages to my team there, upload files and documents we are working on, add contact details of clients, and other features which I haven’t yet fully explored. All of these features are for the eyes of my team only and are in a secure environment that is password protected and encrypted.

I’m not at the stage where I need a portal for clients to login also but this may be something I look at down the track. For now, I think Airset will work well for Net Secretary’s team and enable us to be that little bit more efficient.

So I duly called Dell to see what they could do and to my surprise, I was told I only had the hardware warranty, not the software warranty. So $82 later, I now have the 12 month software warranty helpdesk support. This was something I omitted to look at when I purchased my new PC, perhaps arrogantly thinking I could handle any issues myself. It is a timely reminder that small business should have a software support plan in place, whether it be your partner who is an IT expert, a reliable accessible friend or family member who is expert in IT issues or a paid for helpdesk service, of which there are many around.

Dell were extremely helpful when I previously had issues with my PC not connecting to the Internet and dropping out. They fixed it remotely from Malaysia or wherever they are and because I purchased my system from them, they have all my details on file and I feel confident they can provide me with the support I require (hopefully infrequently!). Virtual Helpdesk Assistants helping a Virtual Assistant!

Now I just have to get around to calling them back to get this darn Outlook problem fixed …

I just had to repost this from an email Kathie Thomas sent to the Virtual Assistants Forum a couple of weeks ago. How many of these can you relate to hearing before?

• The Marathon Message: The extremely long voicemail that never ends.
• The Death March: Leaving a phone number at the end of a long voicemail. If you missed it, you then have to listen to the entire message again just to get the phone number.
• The Screaming Eagle: The voicemail left in a noisy bar or as a fire truck is passing by.
• The Drunken Dispatch: The drunk dial voicemail.
• Voicemail Interruptus: As the person is leaving the voicemail, they stop in the middle to have a conversation with someone else or answer another call before they return to finish the message.
• The Misguided Message: A person or telemarketer leaves a message for you that was actually intended for someone else.
• Voicemail Incognito: The anonymous voicemail.
• One Way Wonder: When the person thinks they are speaking to you when they are actually talking to your voicemail.
• The Pocket Dialer: The person that accidentally calls you because the phone is in their pocket or bag and isn’t locked, leading to an endless soundtrack of them walking down the street, driving or having a conversation with someone else.
• And, worst of all, the person who rattles off their telephone number at lightening speed, causing you to have to repeatedly go back over the entire message to try and decipher the digits.