The National Security Agency (NSA) has been in the news recently and almost everyone that uses the Internet should be concerned about what many consider a mass information gathering effort on the part of the government. This heightened concern follows Edward Snowden’s controversial leak of secret NSA documents.

The documents show that the organization is collecting information on an unknown number of people. The documents indicated that the agency was collecting what is called telephony ‘metadata’ from one of Verizon’s companies. Data collected included call records and was done on a daily basis, over an extended period. Continue reading →

No matter how large or small your company is, it’s clear that managing your company’s online reputation is more important than it’s ever been. Almost every company, from the local plumber, to the pizza shop that’s there when you don’t particularly feel up to cooking, to the mega-corporation that produces most of the electronics in your house, they all have a web presence, and that web presence for most companies is one of the largest and most important means of reaching out to prospective new customers. That presence, however, extends far beyond the scope of websites under company control. Many consumers turn to sites like [Yelp,] [Bing,] or more niched sites like Urbanspoon and TripAdvisor in search of reviews for the products they’re considering, and many still turn to forums and social networks they participate in looking for opinions before they make any purchase or commitment. These reviews are often considered to be more powerful than the conventional word-of-mouth spread of information, and staying aware of what is said about your business and knowing how to reach out to the online community are vital skills. Continue reading →

Managing your online reputation is an essential part of running a successful business. Consumers often turn to the Internet now as their primary source of information when trying a new product or service, before things like the phone book, and appearing trustworthy and worth a consumers time and business is absolutely paramount. On top of appearing on their radar at all, which can be challenging enough in and of itself, you must make a strong first impression to potential customers, because when they search for whatever service it is you provide, not only do you ideally pop out at them, but so does a laundry list of your competitors. When first impressions and your public reputation both matter as much as they do when marketing online, doing a little (or a lot of) reputation management is nothing but a wise practice. Continue reading →