The Isolated Entrepreneur

In this week’s Get to the Point newsletter, there is a great case study of why a person would drive approximately an hour to a Mac store rather than going to the local Apple store.

Anti-Phishing Phil is a free, interactive game that teaches users:

• What phishing is.
• How to determine if an email/website is legitimate.

It is geared towards people who are just beginning to use the computer.  The software is still under development, but you can  try it out.

Don’t depend on the forward button in your subscriber’s email software to spread the word about your e-zine.

Depending on what software the subscriber uses, the forwarded email may look garbled or just be the text version of your product.

By including a “refer a friend” and/or “forward newsletter to friend” links and webpages, you are better able to control the look-and-feel of the forwarded message.

Finally, you can get statistics on how viral your e-zine is.  =-)

Self had a wonderful article written by Andrea Todd.  “My husband is a better mother” talks about one mom’s guilty feelings.  It just goes to show we can be our own worst critiques.

If you work with zip (compressed) files as much as I do, you will find that the installed compression utility in Windows Vista is very slow.

My recommendation is to install 7-zip, a free, open source program.  This is great for Windows XP as well.  If you open the pop-up menu (right-mouse click) for any item you will find a new 7-zip menu that gives you several easy options for compressing and uncompressing files.

It also handles several other compressions such as Unix gzip and tar format.

If you are alike me, you mostly scan web content rather than reading it word-for-word.

Jakob Nielsen has a great newsletter article about web writing. Click on the “writing for the web” under Mea Culpa for great words of wisdom.

Business Week released a great article that sums up the economic outlook.  It connects the recently announced reduction in short-term interest rates with the current unemployment rate, increased energy costs, and falling housing prices.

For those of you just getting started with Office 2007, make sure you check out the menu options under the Windows logo in the upper left corner of your Office window to the left of the save button.

By clicking on the logo, you will open a menu that includes:

• Save As
• Recently Opened Documents
• Print, Email and Fax
• Publish on blog or website.

I have Automatic Updates enabled on my Windows XP computer, but I really hate the “Do you want to restart your computer now?” prompts that show up every five minutes.

Here is a link on how to disable or change the time that lapses before it appears again.  If you don’t usually shut down your computer, I do not recommend disabling it - but just delaying the prompts to remind you.

You can also change the settings to have the computer wake up from hibernation when it is on AC Power at a specific time to install software updates.

Just a friendly reminder.

Monday is the deadline for 3rd quarter 2007 estimated taxes. Envelopes must be postmarked September 17, 2007 or you can pay them online or over the phone through the free EFTPS system.

For more information, see the IRS Self Employment Tax webpage and make sure you check the deadlines for your estimated state income and unemployment taxes - if you have them.