Microsoft have issued several security updates for Internet Explorer 7. As exploits go, this one appears to be quite serious as they note that "consistent exploit code can be crafted easily". This means that another outbreak of (possibly virus-related) attacks looks imminent.

If you use IE7 and don't have automatic updating enabled, you should check for updates and install it manually. Instructions for updating your Windows Vista or XP computer can be found on the Microsoft Update page.

Here are two articles with recession tips for web designers and developers. I figure that they also apply to most types of businesses.

There's no new advice here but the points are definitely worth remembering. Take a look:

• Recession Tips For Web Designers
• Top 10 Reasons Why Many Freelance Designers and Fresh Start Up Design Firms Fail

David Armano, from the interactive services firm Critical Mass, suggests 10 Ways Digital Can Help You Thrive in a Recession. It's a US-focused slideshow presentation but also applies to British small businesses.

I share it because several points correspond with our approach when building sites:

In this video, David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder of 37signals, talks about how build a sustainable on-line business. 37signals builds Basecamp, a successful online project management tool which, incidentally, is what we use for our own projects.

Here's a summary for you:

If you're looking into starting a marketing campaign, this blog post by Eric Karljaluoto, creative director at smashLAB, might offer some fresh perspective. It's an insightful read, though not for someone who's easily offended. Here are the main points I took away from the article:

• "Don't spam, engage people in a dialogue."
• "It’s no longer about the number of messages you send; instead, concentrate on the actual interaction or engagement that results."

Additional reading:

• SmashLAB's Primer in Social Media
• Seth Godin's Email checklist

A client's Yahoo email account was hijacked recently. She found out after an email was sent out in her name, to her entire contact list, asking to borrow several thousand pounds. This was such an obvious scam that no-one fell for it. Fortunately, other than some embarrassment and inconvenience, there were no serious consequences. It could have been much worse.

Have you ever been presented with a premature 'change cartridge' warning by your printer? This scenario should be quite familiar: your printer is happily churning out pages with no sign of fading when suddenly the low ink indicator lights-up. The thing then becomes useless until you pop in a brand-new (and probably expensive) cartridge. You might suspect that there's still more ink and you're probably right. It's been widely-reported that printer manufacturers' cut-off system is a little too eager.

Thanks to an article from Slate, an online magazine, I came across fixyourownprinter.com. The site has a forum offering tips on how to squeeze every last drop of ink out of your cartridge. Although Slate's article focuses on laser printers, fixyourownprinter.com also covers many brands of ink-jets.

Congratulations to one of our clients, Saronti, who have released this cute YouTube video of their services.





Note: Another Cup of Coffee didn't design or build the Saronti website. I just thought it would be nice share to share the video with you. :)

Ooops!

It appears that I may have incorrectly credited some designs that appeared in our gallery. A designer we used in 2007 submitted some concepts for his portfolio section on our site. Just today, a visitor dropped us a note claiming that some of the concepts do not belong to the designer. Here's the note:

In response to my post about running your own email server, a reader mentioned the BlackBerry mobile email service. According to his computer consultant, running Exchange (Microsoft's messaging and collaboration software) as an in-house email server is necessary for the BlackBerry. Coincidentally, this subject came up with three other clients over the past year so there's obviously another common misunderstanding here—they were going to install a company server for the same reason.

The consultant was partly correct, but it really depends on your needs. BlackBerry has two types of solutions: