On Tuesday, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) issued a Fraud Alert indicating that fraudulent letters were being circulated to credit unions along with two compact discs labeled as training materials which the letter instructs recipients to review.

The release goes on to warn:

“DOING SO COULD RESULT IN A POSSIBLE SECURITY BREACH TO YOUR COMPUTER SYSTEM, OR HAVE OTHER ADVERSE CONSEQUENCES.”

And further instructs that “Should you receive this package or a similar package DO NOT run the CDs. You should contact your NCUA Regional Office or the NCUA Fraud Hotline at 1-800-827-9650.”

You can view the original alert here and view the bogus letter here.

-- Mike

The other day, a White House special committee released information predicting the potential far-reaching impact of the H1N1 Swine Flu and urged businesses to prepare for a potential pandemic.

The next day I received a call from a customer wanting to understand what the impact would be on his company’s website in a pandemic. I have to admit that I was a little thrown off by the question. It wasn’t something I expected to be asked about and wasn’t immediately prepared to respond either.

Upon further reflection after the call, though, I had the opportunity to review our standard Disaster Recovery Plan and service offerings and was able to bring the unique question into standard operating elements. That is probably best advice I can give.

If you’re responsible for such planning in your organization check see what happens according to your current planning. See how they relate to the potential effects of an outbreak.

There are plenty of resources online from one extreme to another. The article linked above offers some good starters and the World Health Organization has a complete Pandemic Preparedness guide available for download.

What are your pandemic plans? Are you thinking about it? What are your thoughts? Comment here and let me know!

-- Mike

I recently came across a blog post from 2005 that laid out a “typical” web development lifecycle in a very creative way. It’s from a no longer active Japanese site, pingmag, and in the post titled The Website Development Process, the author uses some great photos to illustrate his take on the process. He presents the “programmer,” “designer” and “client” in various vignettes using little toy characters.

Of course, any attempt to generalize a web development process is going to be very idealized, and it probably won’t apply to a real-world project. (Just ask any project manager and they’ll confirm that for you.) However, that’s not really the point of the piece. It really does do a great job highlighting the typical milestones: definition, brainstorming, site maps, wireframes, design, client review, revision, production, presentation, beta testing, revision, and go-live.

I recommend you read the piece. You’ll get a chuckle as you do.

But there’s one thing that the article missed altogether. At the end of the piece, the go live is defined as the end, and though the piece comments about the need for a cure period where post-live issues are resolved, but it misses the biggest milestone of all – post-live maintenance and growth of the site. I often use the mantra that “your website is never done” – to be truly effective as a web presence you need to constantly update and adjust, grow and change  your site as your company does.

From the Dovetail perspective, that milestone is the most important. What happens after the project is “done” and the customer is handed over the keys to the kingdom. Of course, we’ve developed novo to help small and mid-sized businesses do just that – take control of their web and sales and marketing strategy by never forgetting that their site is never done and helping them to keep it fresh.

-- Mike

follow me on Twitter: @mikevilla