How Long Will Your Digital Photos Survive?

Back in the days when photographers used to shoot with film cameras, we would worry about the archival quality of our photos.  How long would they survive before fading away into oblivion?  We ourselves might only live another 40 or 50 years, but such a short lifespan for our photos would be unthinkable.

Looking back at color prints from the 1960s and 1970s, our fears were well-founded.  Old Ektacolor prints have long since faded and shifted color toward the yellow.  Cibachrome prints and Kodachrome slides are much better, but not immune.  Whole collections of what were once professional-quality photos are now just interesting anachronisms.

The new generation of photographers, accustomed to shooting only digital, may laugh at such worries today.  If a photo print fades, just fire up your computer and print another.  Why worry?  Digital ones and zeroes don't fade with time.

But there's a whole body of research that suggests such complacency is unfounded.  Digital photos may fade away even faster than photographic prints; it's just that the failure mechanisms are different.  Here's a link to an interesting article from an unlikely source that describes the problems with digital photography in some detail:

Long-term archiving: digital photography's Achilles' heel

Major Security Breach at Epsilon Interactive

By now, many of you may have received emails alerting you to a security breach at Epsilon Interactive, an on-line company used by many major corporations to send marketing emails to customers. An outside hacker broke into the Epsilon network and gained access to numerous names and email addresses of their clients’ customers. Major corporations affected include Barclays Bank, Best Buy, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Marriott International, Target, Walgreens, Hilton Worldwide, and Disney Destinations, as well as a host of others. If you’ve received one of these emails, you might be wondering how it will affect you. I’ll try to answer that question here.

What Happened
Epsilon specializes in sending bulk marketing emails in the name of their client companies. It takes a certain amount of skill to craft personalized emails in a way that spam filters don’t block them, and this is Epsilon’s claim to fame. They send more than 40 billion emails on behalf of their clients annually to people who have provided an email address to the client company. Although Epsilon isn’t saying exactly what happened, it is clear that someone was able to hack into their network and obtain customer names and email addresses. Epsilon has stated that “approximately 2 percent of total clients” were hit, which would be about 50 companies. To date, Epsilon has not provided a detailed list of those companies, but the ones named above have notified their customers of the breach. Epsilon has made it very clear that the hackers only got names and email addresses, not any financial information. This means the information can’t immediately be used to do anything harmful, other than to send out more spam.

The Risk
Email addresses on their own aren’t all that valuable, but if you can tie a customer’s name and email account to a company they do business with, the problem becomes more serious. A hacker can create a customized email that appears to come from the client company to trick the customer into revealing sensitive information. Suppose, for example, you got an email from your bank encouraging you to sign up for a special offer. All you have to do is click on the link in the email, log into your account, and you’re all signed up. Of course the offer isn’t really from your bank, and the link takes you to a rogue website that captures your login information. Before you know it, the hacker uses it to break into your account and drain it dry.

How to Protect Yourself
The good news is that the stolen information by itself won’t let a hacker do anything harmful. As long as you practice due diligence in opening and reading emails, you should be safe. The first thing to remember is to never provide sensitive information—account names, passwords, social security numbers, etc., in response to an email request. Legitimate companies will never make such a request by email. Also be very cautious about clicking links in emails, and never enter any sensitive information onto a website you arrived at from an email link. Whenever you must enter sensitive information go to the company’s website by manually typing their web address into your browser (once you’ve done this, you can bookmark it for future use).

You may also want to consider investing in a strong spam filter for your email network, even beyond the anti-virus/anti-malware software you should all be using. There are two ways to do this, either by using a Cloud-based service or by using a hardware filter you add to your own network. Cloud-service companies such as AppRiver can filter almost all spam before it even gets into your network, or you can use a hardware email security appliance such as those offered by Barracuda Networks. Either option can significantly reduce the amount of unwanted spam clogging up your network.

Finally, make sure that access to your network is protected by strong passwords. Although we don’t know how the hacker got into the Epsilon network, we do know some of the techniques commonly used. One approach is to use a program that tries to brute-force its way into your network by automatically trying common usernames and passwords. Passwords like “1234” or the word “password” are easily hacked. At TeamLogic IT a new client recently asked us to repair damage to their network caused by a hacker. When we investigated, we discovered the break-in probably occurred because their server password was one of the most common and least secure passwords out there. Don’t let this happen to you.

To learn more about how to protect your network, including how to create strong passwords, read my previous blog entry, Protecting Your Business Against Cyber-Criminals.  And if you’d like TeamLogic IT to help improve the security of your network, just visit www.teamlogicit.com.

News of Garmin's Demise is Highly Overrated

Garmin recently announced its FY2010 results, and even though they generated well over half a billion dollars in operating income, Wall Street made it sound like they were on death’s door. With the automotive market moving away from standalone GPS navigation devices to smartphones like the iPhone and Android, the pundits on the Street don’t see much of a future for Garmin. One “expert” who should know better went so far as to say, “Garmin is toast.”

This kind of myopic oversimplification from so-called “experts” is one reason we still haven’t recovered from the recent financial industry meltdown. Garmin’s future doesn’t depend exclusively on the automotive market. Sure, it’s a big part of their current revenues, but it’s not the lion’s share of their profits. According to their annual report, the Outdoor/Fitness market accounted for $237 million of income before taxes while the Automotive/Mobile market accounted for only $205 million. Add another $134 million from the Marine and Aviation markets and you’ll conclude that even if the automotive market went entirely away, Garmin would still survive. And everyone agrees there is little threat to the growth and profitability of the non-automotive markets.

Let me caution you that this doesn’t mean I recommend you buy Garmin stock. The vagaries of the stock market are not something I can predict. I’m more interested in assessing the future of Garmin as a company. And here, I agree with one pronouncement from the pundits. Garmin needs to reinvent itself. The question is how?

Garmin already tried one approach—introducing their own version of a smartphone. Unfortunately they went about it all wrong. Rather than capitalizing on the unique capabilities they could bring to the smartphone market, they tried to introduce a “me too” product far too late in the game to be successful. The world didn’t need one more smartphone like all the others, no matter how well known the Garmin brand. The pundits cheered when Garmin finally pulled the plug, for good reason. No need to sink another dollar down a hopeless rat hole.

So what should Garmin have done? For one thing, they should have read Marketing Warfare, a book written 25 years ago that predicts exactly the debacle they encountered. (This book should still be required reading for every marketing department on the planet.) Instead of making a frontal attack on an entrenched competitor—Apple—they should have taken advantage of their unique strengths to do an end run around them. In fact, they could still do so.

What are these unique strengths? I know of at least two, drawn from their expertise in the Outdoor market. The first is waterproofness. Every GPS in Garmin’s outdoor line is waterproof to an industry standard called IPX7. This means they can withstand immersion in up to a meter of water for 30 minutes. Smartphones not only aren’t waterproof, you’ll void their warranty if you get them wet.

Garmin’s second strength is the quality of its GPS receivers—you can find your position anywhere in the world with a Garmin receiver. A typical smartphone won’t reliably find its position unless it is in contact with a cell phone network.

So what would be the target markets for a waterproof smartphone that can reliably find its position anywhere in the world? Not just hikers and backpackers. Think police and fire departments, search-and-rescue teams, telephone and power companies, harbor pilots, and any business that sends personnel outside in inclement weather—construction companies, pool services, ambulance services, and a multitude of others. It’s a market poorly served by existing smartphones, and one that could be a significant opportunity for a targeted solution. Sure it’s not the next billion-dollar-a-year business, but that just means Apple won’t be going after it anytime soon. Garmin could have it to themselves, and it would certainly be much more profitable than their previous foray into this market. And if they were smart, they could leverage this success into broader markets later on. Don’t forget that Hewlett-Packard was once a bit player in personal computers, selling almost all of their products into a small niche called test and measurement. Now look where they are. Garmin could follow a similar path.

Will they do it? Probably not. Being a niche player is a tough pill to swallow for someone used to being out front. But whether or not they choose this particular path for future growth, they need to pick one that builds on their unique competitive advantages and not just blindly follow the leader.

Disclaimer: I have no formal relationship with Garmin, although they were nice enough to loan me GPS receivers while I was writing Outdoor Navigation with GPS. All receivers they loaned me were returned promptly when I was finished using them.