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Our conference call to discuss implementation logistics with a brand new client was minutes away.    I closed my office door so I didn’t bother my neighbor and fired up my contact list. My computer seemed to hesitate and then something bad happened. The computer began rebooting.

A printed phone list is your equivalent of belts and suspenders

Remember this was a brand new client whose contact information hadn’t yet made it to my address book and phone.  The computer seemed to take a long time simply to get to a Windows splash screen.  The call was due to begin. What do you do in that case?  Does someone run to an office, find the number on the shared calendar, copy it down (hopefully doing so correctly while in a rush) and dash back?  Do you wait for the computer to finish rebooting and then quickly access your files?  Yes, you should have dialed in at least five minutes early, but you didn’t. What if your network was down?

Here is what I learned. A simple printout once a week of my phone list reduces a lot of hassle.   You don’t need a Rolodex the size of your grandfather’s with yellowing cards, coffee stains and liquid paper corrections from typing the information.  Once a week, whenever you do your essential office housekeeping, print out a telephone list and stash it in your bag.

There have been two recent RIM outages so don’t crow about your Blackberry.  There have also been Gmail outages and any network person will tell you that servers, workstations and laptops will all fail at some point.  But the entire phone system in your city?  Not likely, and anything that causes that widespread an outage is on the news.

After what seemed to be an hour but was in reality a couple of minutes, I was dialing the phone and welcoming the new client to the fold.  Of course, I first had to apologize for dialing into the call after he did, something a printed phone list would have prevented.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shazbot/ / CC BY 2.0
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By now you’ve undoubtedly seen the headlines that Google and as many as two dozen other technology companies came under attack by a coordinated hacking effort launched from China.  That’s interesting on many levels, not the least of which is that information technology and information — even about or maybe especially about individuals is an overripe ripe intelligence target.

Computer security is more critical than ever

Google may in fact take its ball and go home, packing it up in China if the company feels government restrictions there are onerous.  That’s interesting, and you probably should know about the issue which is why I included a link, but the big news is what the Chinese hack attack means for your Gmail account. Google has announced that the previously optional security setting that allowed users to use Gmail on unencrypted pages is no more.  The new default is encryption for Gmail, which means that users will soon be accessing an https: prefix.   This matters to you because it means your email from point A to point B just got much more secure, which is a good thing.   As the new article says, secure Gmail is rolling out in waves to the entire Gmail population, but I’ve already seen it on my main account. That doesn’t mean that Google itself doesn’t know exactly what you’re searching for and writing about.  Don’t ever believe that.   And don’t believe that your searching, browsing, writing and other activities are invisible.  Law enforcement and other entities can and do regularly subpoena this information from Google and every company I can think of dealing with data.    We even include a line in the terms of service for our e-commerce clients that gives the client the right to cooperate with law enforcement. Google published some good computer security guidelines along with the changes.    Take a look and make sure you’re protected.