Everyone loves freebies, including me. It's a trait I inherited from my father, I suppose.

More accurately, my father loved 'cheap'. He generally cast a jaundiced eye at 'free', telling me "There's no such thing as a free lunch."

The Internet has delivered much to us for 'free' (ignoring, of course, the cost of a PC, software, internet connection, time, etc.), and we have come to expect so much to be 'free' online. Free software. Free news. Free anti-spyware products. Free videos. Free music. Free web hosting. Free email.

So, when is 'free' not worth the price?

In my humble opinion: when it costs you more in the long run.

BusinessWeek featured a great story yesterday on their website to illustrate the point.

The article featured tales of woe from business owners who cut costs & turned to free hosting & email solutions, including a construction company that essentially lost email service after switching to a 'free' hosting & email solution.

Free, web-based email solutions have their place. I have a Yahoo account that I use for low priority messages & services. Yet I still maintain (and pay handsomely for) a 'real' email solution and web server for critical business functions. As the BusinessWeek article so eloquently states, "like anything else, good service comes at a price."

If your business currently relies on Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, or any other 'free' email service, how much is it costing you in lost business?

Further, if your customers contact you via one of these free providers instead of contacting you at "me@mycompany.com", how much are you losing in brand awareness and website traffic?

I can't even count the number of times I have checked out a company's website just because I was in contact with someone at that company. Using the ficticious 'me@mycompany.com' address as an example, I often will open a browser tab and type in http://www.mycompany.com just to learn more about them.

How much additional business have you missed because your customers don't see the brand strength that comes from having your email address tied in with your company's website address? Even if it's just one sale per day or week or month (depending on your average ticket), how much revenue might you be losing per year?

As one of the sources quoted in BusinessWeek's article said, "Everything important that happens to a company these days, happens in e-mail."

Our hosting & email customers may not be paying the lowest rates on the market, but given that their average investment for hosting and email accounts is so reasonable and yet comes with superior service ... it really IS a deal that's even better than 'free'.

Some of my customers handle their own website updates & maintenance, often through one of the Content Management Systems we deployed for them. They enjoy rolling up their sleeves and they appreciate the immediacy and cost savings of doing a job themselves.

If you’re going to manage your own website updates, it is important to handle images as efficiently as possible. With a little practice, you can develop the core skills needed to touch up, crop, resize, and format images for the web.

Properly formatted images will help your pages load more quickly, which improves your website’s usability and visitor retention. Visitors will bail out if it takes too long for images & pages to load.

I have been an Adobe Photoshop user for 10 or 15 years now, and it is my ‘go to’ tool for creating & formatting images. The big drawback to Photoshop is the price tag. The current version, Photoshop CS4, lists for $699.99. You can generally find it discounted at Amazon, CDW, and other online retailers.

Reducing Your Software Investment

Even if you’re not ready to part with $600-$700 for the software, you have alternatives.

First, shop around for an earlier version of Photoshop. Check eBay, consignment stores, or your local independent computer/software retailer. Later, you can upgrade from Photoshop CS, CS2, or CS3 to the current version for less than $200.

Adobe sells consumer versions of Photoshop for significantly less than the professional software. Photoshop Elements 8 lists for less than $100, and can also be purchased at a discount from numerous sources. Although Elements is not as robust as CS4, it offers more tools than most users will need. As with earlier versions of CS, you may be able to find a bargain on an earlier version of Elements.

Also, Adobe offers free, full featured 30 day trial versions of their software. If your project is short term, download Photoshop and use it for a month. You may find that it’s overkill for your needs, or you may decide that it’s worth the money.

Freebies

I have tried several of the freeware & shareware programs for retouching, cropping, and sizing images. Some of the programs even support multiple layers, similar to Photoshop. This allows you to add changes to an image and selectively modify their appearance, transparancy, etc. without affecting the other elements in that image.

Picasa

Edit, annotate, and geotag photos, create collages, and turn pictures and video clips into movies. And since Picasa is a part of the Google family, it includes free online image storage and it integrates with your Gmail account and a free online photo sharing system.

FastStone

A decent piece of software for a freebie! Resize & crop photos, get rid of red-eye, and adjust color, brightness, and other settings. FastStone also includes some basic effects and filters, including Lens, Waves, and Morphs.

GIMP

Some say that GIMP compares well to Photoshop, although I found the layout of tools & palettes less than ideal. I did like the support for channels, layers and masks, as well as the filters and effects.

Paint.NET

If you need to edit RAW files from your camera, skip Paint.NET; it doesn’t support the file format. However, for most folks who simply need to work with JPG, PNG, TIFF or GIF files, the program works well and has an interface that I found familiar as a Photoshop user. It has all the tools you need to crop, rotate, or resize photos, as well as adjust colors. Paint.NET supports layers and history.

Stay Safe When Downloading Software

Many of us clench our jaws when downloading files from an unknown source. There are simply too many security risks. That’s why I turn first to trusted sources such as CNET. All of the programs mentioned above are available at CNET.

You can also find many other programs there for managing your images. Try a few. Discover which features work best for your needs.

Tips for Creating Safe, Useful Passwords

Passwords are the curious curse of our generation. I'm quite certain that my father and previous ancestors didn't need to worry about them on a day to day basis.

The topic is fresh in my mind because we started setting up this blog a few weeks ago as we planned a major update to www.armanda.com. We set the administrative password, as well as individual passwords for Armanda & for me. This blog was a low priority for me, so I either didn't write down my password or I lost the Post It I used for writing it down. Either way, it took several attempts for me to hit on the correct combination of user ID and password today.

What should I have done differently? You would think I would know after all these years of dealing with ATM cards, voicemail, websites, computers, email, and other common items that require a password.

Tip #1: A password should be something that you can easily remember. 'Nuf said.

Tip #2: A password should be difficult for others to guess. Don't use your birthday, your child's name, your pet's name, or simple sequences of letters or numbers on the keyboard such as "qwertyuiop" or "123456789".

Tip #3: It's best to use a "strong" password. Use both uppercase and lowercase letters, and add at least one number or special character (such as $ or # or *, etc.). Perhaps your favorite song by The Who is "Boris the Spider", which was released in 1966 ... Boris1966 might make a great password. It contains both uppercase and lowercase letters and some numbers; it's 9 characters long, and it would be easily remembered.

Tip #4: Use a longer, rather than a shorter, password. Go for at least 8 or 10 characters. The longer it is, the more difficult it will be for others to guess. Just don't make it too long for your own memory!

Tip #5: Do not use the same password for everything. Even if someone does crack one of your passwords, following this advice will keep them from having free run of all your accounts, files, etc. (I will admit to re-using some passwords, though, since it eventually becomes impossible for me to remember a unique password for every online membership, email account, bank account, ecommerce site, etc., etc.)

Password Fanaticism

If you want to really kick it up a notch, consider the following advice for protecting your computer & other accounts.

1. Change your passwords regularly. Some would say this should be done at least every six months. I have also worked for companies that required a change every three months.

2. Change your password immediately if you have even the slighest inkling that someone might have figured it out.

3. Don't share your password with anyone.

4. Don't use the "remember password" feature in your web browser for critical accounts. What happens if someone borrows or steals your computer?

5. Don't type your passwords on public computers (at a hotel, library, etc.) or on a computer that belongs to someone who is lax in their own security efforts. Spyware or keylogging software could compromise your privacy.

I wonder if I will remember the password for this blog the next time I want to log in?