December 28, 2005 By Leave a Comment

Look Out MS Office!

There’s a new breed of office productivity applications out there that not only don’t require software, they’re free!

Web-based office applications are gaining in popularity today much like what web-based email services (Hotmail, Yahoo,etc.) did in the 90s. With portability, easy access, and ease of use to their credit, these new tools may offer just the solution that patrons need.

As Frank Blair (IT) points out, here are some advantages to web-based office applications:


This has the potential of resolving several word processing issues for us that we experience in supporting patrons1) No media upon which to save a document and doesn’t want to buy a floppy disk

2) media where document was saved is corrupt (could have been saved on the web)

3) floppy drive or other device can’t read media that has document

4) no more lost or forgotten floppies left in hard drive

5) Compatible with both Word and Open Office

6) Allows a person to work on a document even when they don’t have their media present – anyplace where there is an open Internet connection

Web-based Office applications worth taking a look at:

Writely – Online word processing application that functions with both OpenOffice & MS Word formats.
GOffice – offers online apps for word processing (in PDF or HTML ouput) and desktop publishing. Online apps for presentations & spreadsheets are available as beta release. Free.

Take a look for yourself and let us know what you think…

Author Helene Blowers

Filed under: Core Competencies
December 20, 2005 By Leave a Comment

Librarian Trading Cards

Just for fun …

In case you haven’t heard there’s a new action figure out there called the Deluxe Librarian which features yet another minature clone of Nancy Pearl. Unlike the 1st edition of the Librarin action figure, the deluxe issue comes with a minature PC and a cart of reference books for lighting speed retrieval of information.

Of course, not every librarian is lucky enough like Nancy (BTW: She even has her own website) to get our own action figure, but you can create your very own Librarian Trading Card and join the gallery.

To participate:

  1. Create your own trading card here
  2. Then upload your card to your free Flickr account and add the keyword tag “librariantradingcards” to the image so that it can join the gallery

View the Librarian Trading Card Gallery.

Author Helene Blowers

Filed under: Core Competencies
December 12, 2005 By Leave a Comment

Go Phish

Thanks to William Nation from MOR for sharing this news article with me, Can You Spot The Phish Attack? from internetnews.com.

According to the article only 4 percent of users can spot a phished e-mail 100% of the time.

Take the MailFrontier Phishing IQ Test and see if you are among the 96% of e-mail users who can NOT spot phishing 100% of the time. I took the test and am in the majority!

Filed under: Core Competencies
December 8, 2005 By Leave a Comment

Fighting Spam


These days when the word spam is mentioned, people tend to make a face. Not because of fond memories of the potted meat product, but because of the nuisance of unwanted email, which is the 21st century definition of spam.

Spam may come from someone you know in the form of chain letters or forwarded urban legends, or it may come from complete strangers. Some spam has viruses attached. But mostly spam is just a time-waster. Not only does spam waste your time but it also wastes valuable resources such as network bandwidth, space on email servers, and productivity costs in the time it takes you to delete the unwanted messages.

So here are some tips to combat spam:

  • Never, ever give out your email address on a public Internet forum, such as a discussion group or a blog. There are billions of zombie-like computers that scour the Internet looking for email addresses to add to spam lists. I have a Yahoo account that I use specifically for Web sites that require an email address, so that I do not get as much spam to my work and personal email accounts.
  • Or disguise your email address, joe at yahoo dot com, will allow people to understand your email address, but will prevent automated searches from finding your address. Remember that computers are looking for a standard email format, name@place.com.
  • Block images from your email. In Outlook, do not use the Preview Pane or Auto Preview. Most free, web-based email services will allow you to block images via the Options settings. Images can contain hidden messages that when viewed are sent back to spammers to let them know they have found a valid email address, resulting in…more spam.
  • Do not click the link at the bottom of any email messages to Remove Me From List. This is an instant way to let spammers know they have found a valid email address. Remember spammers get big bucks for real or validated email addresses. Don’t let them know you exist. Cyberspace is the one place where you want to be unpopular.
  • Delete, without opening, any messages that look suspicious. If it looks like spam, it probably is. If you do not know the sender, it is probably spam. If you receive email from the FBI or CIA it is probably spam.

See the October 2004 issue of InfoBytes for more details on reducing spam and instructions for using Outlook junk mail filters to reduce spam.

For more information on spam and efforts to combat it, check out the following sites:

http://www.ftc.gov/spam/

http://www.spamlaws.com/us.shtml

http://spam.abuse.net/

Filed under: Core Competencies
November 23, 2005 By Leave a Comment

PSA: Spoofing a CIA Warning

(spoofing to transmit a virus)

Several staff have received emails that appear to be from the CIA. An example of the message is below:

—–Original Message—–
From: Post@cia.gov
Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 3:37 AM
To: 0ILQ002W5BMMBI@plcmc.org
Subject: You visit illegal websites

Dear Sir/Madam,

we have logged your IP-address on more than 30 illegal websites.

Important: Please answer our questions!
The list of questions are attached.

Yours faithfully,
Steven Allison
++++ Central Intelligence Agency -CIA-
++++ Office of Public Affairs
++++ Washington, D.C. 20505
++++ phone: (703) 482-0623
++++7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., US Eastern time

While this email looks like it is from post@cia.gov, rest assured that the CIA is not monitoring your Internet use. In fact, Internet use doesn’t even technically fall under the CIA’s jurisdiction…unless you are a terrorist.

This is an example of spoofing. Spoofing is commonly used by spammers and phishers to forge the From line of an email address.

In this case, the email had a virus attached. One of the clues that the email is a fraud is the email address that the email was sent to is not a valid email address. Another clue is the inconsistent capitalization — the “w” in we should have been capitalized. Phony emails also frequently have misspelled words in an attempt to sneak past junk mail filters.

In this case the “sphisher” (have I invented a new word) was sending a virus. If I would have opened the attached file then I would have gotten the virus on my computer. Luckily, PLCMC has sophisticated anti-virus and email filtering software installed, so the attachment never even made it to my Inbox.

When is doubt always close the email (or better yet don’t even bother to open it), and go to the home page where the email appears to have come from. A quick trip to www.cia.gov brought up this message on their home page:

Some members of the public have in the past few days received a bogus e-mail falsely attributed to CIA’s Office of Public Affairs. CIA did not send that message. In fact, it does not send unsolicited e-mail to the general public, period. If you have gotten such a message, we strongly encourage you not to open the attachment, which contains a destructive virus.

For more information about phishing make sure to read Helene’s post on 11/18/05 about Bank of America and a phishing fraud, and if you have time take a look at this article: http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/Phishing_Spam_that_cant_be_ignored.html

Filed under: Core Competencies
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