Tom Anthony Personal Blog

I don’t have much use for most of our politicians from Virginia – with one notable exception: Congressman Randy Forbes.  He seems to share my core values, and he appearsto be a “real” person. I mean anyone who rides a big bike at the head of the Rolling Thunder Ride for Freedom in Washington, D.C. on Memorial Day Weekend can’t be all bad.  Perhaps even more importantly Forbes appears to “get it” when it comes to the Internet based threat we face from foreign powers. 

Congressman Randy Forbes in Rolling Thunder Ride for Freedom in Washington, D.C.

In a recent Newsletter Congressman Forbes wrote about an Electronic Pearl Harbor describing in interesting detail how cyber security attacks against the United States are rising drastically every year. Let me tell you how close this hits to home. I am a small business owner who was impacted this summer by two such attacks.

In late June a SQL Injection Trojan compromised all my Word Press based websites – about two dozen on my servers – and almost half were my own business sites. This was not because the Word Press content management platform had evident flaws. The people who perpetrate these kind of attacks are not pale and pimple faced geeks living in their mother’s basements.

According to Congressman Forbes report the most serious and potentially the most dangerous have come out of China.

Some of the more sophisticated military analyses from China’s armed forces propose to enhance the ability to attack an adversary’s satellite communications and sensor systems, critical transportation and energy infrastructure, ports of air and sea embarkation, and military command systems. (see http://forbes.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=202509)

Just this week there was news out of the UK that a members of a Russian organized crime gang had used a SQL Injection Trojan as the tool to steal over $9 million dollars from the bank accounts of unsuspecting Brits over the past year alone. I believe it is only a matter of time before we discover this kind of massive fraud here in America.

As a result of that WordPress SQL Injection Trojan we lost two weeks restoring client’s websites in July that obviously we could and would not charge them for. Then add two weeks restoring my own personal and business sites. Since we could not work on new client business at the same time as restoring my own business sites it effectively cost me a month’s income.

“But wait, there’s more! …”

Since that SQL Injection Trojan in June I discovered that an old and forgotten Forum type website I had on my server had also been compromised – this time by a different method. The end result was almost the same however, and my business and personal sites - including this one – went down again.

So the first almost two weeks in August are spent missing my company’s earning potential re-building my business and personal sites again. On one hand it has made me much more expert at launching custom Word Press sites quickly and more securely. On the other hand it has cost my business precious time. Not unlike losing sleep, the reality is that while you still move forward the next day, you really never catch up. Thanks China.

I just finished up a new video – this time for my own company, IMS Strategic Internet Marketing. This was a fun but really important project. Google Business Center was renamed and re-launched a couple of months ago and it’s now called Google Places. That’s where every business owner can claim their own listing – and add content such as business hours, types of payments accepted… that sort of thing. But Google Places also allows you to add other content such as Photos, coupons, even blog type posts and up to five videos to help make your case. That’s pretty powerful.

I decided to make a video specifically to be viewed from within Google Maps under the listing of my own marketing company to illustrate what could and should be done in Google Local. I also wanted to create it using hardware and technology my company owned and operated to make the case for selling the production of such videos. To this end I used a portable backdrop stand we own, with a big roll of special chroma key paper. This is also known as blue screen. I used a photographers light with reflector screens to not only illuminate the subject – which in this case was me – but also to create an even light on the blue screen.

That’s important when you are editing the video – if the blue screen is well lit it is easier to remove the background so you can replace it with something else. That’s how your local TV weather forecaster does it, only for this video instead of a weather map I used a loop of video showing an office building. It looks like I am in front of a window and you can see the office building and street activity below.

Laptop Teleprompter

I think the best item is the wireless mouse which powers a PowerPoint file containing the script. The PowerPoint is being displayed on a laptop that is located immediately in front of and under the camera so it acts like a teleprompter. I have been on both sides of the camera for over 30 years and even if you memorize what you intend to say it ALWAYS comes out better with a teleprompter or similar device. Of course a lot of my early professional life was behind a radio microphone with a script so perhaps that’s just my comfort zone.

I would enjoy your feedback on the video – call me.

You should be able to view the video directly from Google Maps if you type in the following:

“IMS Internet Marketing Services, Chesapeake, VA” or just click here.

One of my first clients was the New York Times Company owned Norfolk, Virginia TV station WTKR. The then general manager knew I was in the Internet business and confided that during a recent hurricane the TV station’s web site was overwhelmed with viewers looking for the latest weather – at the time they only carried the national content from CBS. (Called “CBS Now”).  The point was clear – whether you are ready or not – if it’s on the internet people will find you.

That is sort of the case with this Google owned platform, Blogger.  On March 31^st, 2008 I launched my “new blog” at http://blog.tomanthony.com and just put a forward link on my Blogger profile http://tomanthonydotcom.blogspot.com. Now every time I log into my Google account it lies there waiting for me to do something.

I did not want to have to keep up with two blogs, but I believe it is in my company’s best interest – if nothing else as a link back to the corporate site at http://www.strategicimsweb.com. But I don’t want to waste anyone’s time either, so I have decided to post unique information on my Blogger page. The next thing there will be about a secret purchase I made in the middle of a typhoon. Dang – what a great teaser line!