Just a word to the wise: if you've got an e-commerce website and you ship outside of your country, you may find that some international carriers may deliver to a particular country … but not to the part of the country in which your hopeful customer resides.

If such is the case, and if your e-commerce shop liaises with the FedEx, USPS International or other carrier websites to determine available shipping methods (according to your specifications) and resultant costs in real time, your hapless customer may not be presented with any shipping method at all during checkout — and may not be able to complete his or her purchase.

If you're lucky, that customer will contact you rather than skipping off to your nearest competitor.

A little research may tell you that one carrier is your favorite choice for delivery to a country but may not deliver to specific areas, while another may.

Bottom line: it pays to do your homework!

I occasionally hear people talking about using webmail (reading, sending, storing email online at an ISP or Google or Yahoo or Hotmail or …), and I never understand it. Sure, it's accessible from "anywhere" but if that online location is not controlled by you, then what happens when something happens? I'd heard fairly recently about Google shutting down someone's email account — which apparently meant, to that user, that among other things, his business emails were gone. And if those were business emails, how do clients email him? (Let's set aside the fact that using a free, pretty much untraceable email address for business purposes would seem to be an odd practice, at best.) more »

Since one of our clients has just purchased Photoshop Elements, I thought I'd knock together a little article regarding how to resize pictures in Photoshop.

Now, if you don't know, Photoshop Elements is kind of a "Photoshop lite" — but it's got quite a lot of the same features, and certainly enough to satisfy all but the most geeky graphics persons. more »

Fraudulent and deceptive emails have long been a danger to those who receive email, so I thought I'd answer the question inevitable question: what is phishing?

Essentially, phishing is an attempt to trick a consumer into divulging information, usually by clicking on a link in the email and going to a website to "validate" his or her information — such as account login information (passwords), credit card information, Social Security number, birth date, etc. As you can see, this information would allow the unscrupulous to log into your account (such as Paypal or your bank), or to steal your identity and "divest" you of funds. If you've had an email account for very long at all, you've probably seen at least one of these. more »

So you've crafted a new article, carefully copied it into your blog, pressed the Publish button, and then visited the home page to check your work — only to find weird characters strewn throughout your blog article.

You may find characters such as those in the image to the left, or question marks or other gibberish characters such as strange accented A's strewn about your article, but whatever they are, theyÁ areÁ notÁ welcomeÁ. more »

Marketing Vox published an article entitled Boomers Don't Retire; They Become their Own Bosses. Based on an analysis of a target="_blank">study conducted by Ipsos Canada, it indicates that:

For many Boomers, retirement is an opportunity to start a business and become their own boss.
15 percent intend to work for themselves until they die, according to a new Ipsos Reid (Canada) study of Boomers who have either retired early to start their own business, or intend to do so, reports MarketingCharts.

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