|  Hello
Readers!
Passwords. Don’t we all have a million of them? Or are you
one of those people who uses the same one again and again?
Passwords are a fuzzy area of security for lots of people.
Today, we’ll begin to clear up some of that confusion with
an article from Benjamin Rich. It’s Part One in a two-part
series discussing your passwords. Today’s installment primarily
deals with the threat – how do crackers and hackers figure
out passwords? Don’t miss Part Two coming up later this week,
which will offer tips for avoiding bad passwords and choosing
good ones. This is a hefty article but it’s an enjoyable read,
I promise! Ben’s thoughtfully included a glossary to help
with some of the terms you might not be familiar with.
Also in today’s issue – Herman Drost offers advice on using
an autoresponder to help sell your products on the Web. People
who visit your site tend to get distracted, and an autoresponder
is a great way to remind them about your product or service.
Check it out for help with setting one up on your site. There
are even links to free and paid autoresponders you can download
now.
For those of you who are looking for a little useful code
to add to your site, have a look at the last article. It discusses
a seldom-used but pretty effective way to grab your visitors’
attention.
Hope you enjoy the articles!
How to Use an
Automatic Responder for Effective Prospect Follow-up
By Herman Drost
When a prospect shows an interest in your product,
if you don't deliver what he wants immediately and follow
up on him, you lose sales. No matter what you're selling online,
using an automatic responder to do personalized follow
up, can drastically increase the amount of sales you
receive. It can also dramatically cut down on manual follow
up of your prospects.
Once a prospect requests your information there are a million
and one things that can divert his attention from it.
For instance:
His computer crashed, he has to wait several days to get it
repaired. His wife called, her car broke down again. He has
to pick her up. The kids are screaming, the dog is chewing
on their favorite toy. His friend needs a ride to the airport...now.
These are just a few examples of what can happen to cause
your prospect to forget about your offer. That's why
it is so important to get your offer in front of a prospect
more than once. The ideal number is 5-7 times.
How an automatic responder (autoresponder) works
These programs automatically return a prewritten message to
anyone who sends a message to the autoresponder's email address.
They usually allow for one or more follow-up messages.
Types of automatic responders
Single follow up - this one will reply once only to
any message sent to it. These are very useful for letting
someone know that you have received their mail and will
get back to them shortly, or you could inform people
you are away on vacation.
Multiple follow up – these are often called sequential
autoresponders. They can be programmed to follow up over a
period of days, weeks, or months with any number of sequential
messages.
Features:
- Send multiple follow up messages
- Messages can be personalized
- A copy of each requestors
message can be sent to your e-mail address.
- Can create an online form
to insert in your web page.
- Supports both plain text messages
or HTML.
- Broadcast email updates to
your entire customer list
- Attachment support - your
messages can contain one or more
attachments.
- Tracking URLs - setup a tracking
URL to track click throughs from your
messages
- Totally Ad Free
- Automatically adds an "Unsubscribe"
link at the bottom of each message.
Read
the rest of the article here.
Password Infomania
- Part One
By Benjamin Rich
I recently read an interesting
article in 2600 about the pitfalls involved in choosing a
secure password. Since it's a techie issue and something many
people should be aware of (but aren't), I thought I should
recount some of the tips and background on passwords, password
selection, and how your password might be compromised. More
importantly, I'd like to show you how the weakest link in
any security structure is often the human link, and how you
can maximize the security integrity of your home or office
environment just by choosing more effective, harder to crack
passwords.
Password Storage
Passwords, on just about every system, are stored encrypted.
The two general approaches to encryption are one-way and two-way
encryption. One-way encryption is a method in which characters
are encrypted so that the final outcome looks nothing like
the original plaintext,
and cannot be traced back or unencrypted - the algorithm cannot
be reversed. Two-way is really more the type you hear about
in spy movies, in which plaintext is translated into gibberish
using a cipher,
but can be translated back again using a special anti-cipher
or key.
Passwords that are highly important - such as the root password
to a multi-user system (your Linux 'root' password, your Windows
'administrator' password, etc.), or for most Internet mail
accounts and shopping accounts - are stored using one-way
encryption. This ensures that no matter where it is - even
when it's on the system where no one should, in naive theory,
be able to get - the password is never in a form in which
it can be easily compromised. When your password is entered
(for instance, when you login to your mail or your computer),
the characters you enter in plaintext are encrypted using
the one-way algorithm, and then the final result is compared
to the stored 'hash,'
the encrypted information. Only if they match will you be
allowed in, not if they are simply the same password (since
no one but the user and the algorithm knows what the actual
password is).
One-way systems are then of course more secure, since, failing
a breakthrough in large number theory, it is completely impossible
to trace the original plaintext from the resulting hash using
any sort of magical algorithm. Two techniques are used in
password "retrieval" (i.e. cracking your root password when
you've been silly enough to forget it 1);
that is, when we're talking about a password that can't be
simply 'un-ciphered,' as by some clever WWII Bletchley Park
operative "mathemagically."
Read
the rest of the article here.
Drawing Attention
to Your Forms
By BasicTemplates
A little known tip that helps draw attention to any
form on your page is the blinking cursor within a form field
that flashes when the page is loaded. This is especially effective
for mailing list sign up forms, feedback forms and recommend-it
forms on your page.
Did you notice that when this page loaded, the cursors was
already positioned in the form field and blinking? Did it
grab your attention?
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Here is how we did it. Place the code below in the <BODY>
tag. This code instructs the browser to display the blinking
cursor within the "signup" form in the text box named "email".
<body onLoad="focus();signup.email.focus()">
You can change the form name and text box name to whatever you
wish. However, it must also be changed within your <BODY>
tag. If they are not the same, the browser will not understand
the command.
Here is the form's source code with corresponding color codes
to help you understand.
<form
name="signup" method="post" action="http://www.yoursite.com/cgi-bin/script.cgi">
<input type="text" name="email" size="15" maxlength="40">
<input type="text" name="name" size="15" maxlength="40">
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Send">
</form>
Of course, you will need to change the action line to whatever
script processes the form on the web site server. Contact your
web hosting service if you are not sure what to use.
Provided by BasicTemplates.com, Web Site Templates with
External CSS.
At BasicTemplates.com each website template includes its own
custom coded "external" stylesheet that helps you design your
site properly the first time, and is an aid in teaching you
the basics of external CSS. Subscribing members have access
to all 500+ pre-designed web templates with new templates added
every week. Individual web templates are affordable at only
$5.00 USD. URL: http://www.basictemplates.com/.
Originally appeared at: http://www.basictemplates.com/tools/blinkcursorforms-full.shtml
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