Digital Original: LinkedIn Groups Can Generate Sales Leads

LinkedIn is a great way to gather local intelligence about what is happening in your local business community. It shows who is making job changes and who has opened a new business or expanded their services. That's why LinkedIn is a place where every printer who is actively selling wants to be.

Do You Know Your Passwords

Do you realize that computer passwords are just as important as the keys to your shop? Everyone has backups for their financial and prepress files, but do you have backups of your passwords? Every printer should do a password audit. The passwords for every computer and application should be recorded in a central place and then taken off site. The passwords should be changed regularly and when any personnel changes are made. Owners should also be sure that all software is registered to the company and not to any particular individual.

There are ways to find the passwords for your computer. On a PC, just log on with an administrator account, open the Star menu and click on the Run button. Type “keymgr.dll” into the text box and hit Enter. The key manager utility program will launch and display a list of passwords used on the computer. Just highlight the password you want to get more information on. If you click on Properties, a pop-up window will display the username, password, and server address for the selected item.

To find lost passwords on a Macintosh, you would log onto the computer with an administrator account and open a new Finder window. Then go to the Utilities folder in Applications on the hard drive. Double-click on the Keychain Access icon and launch the utility program. It will list all your passwords on the computer. Highlight a password and click on the “I” button at the bottom of the window to view all the information about the password.

Find Lost Serial and Key Install Numbers

More common pieces of information that get lost are the serial numbers and key numbers for licensed software. The issue usually comes up when replacing an older computer and moving the applications to the new hard drive. If you don’t have the right information, you can’t install the software. Some software vendors will share the licensing numbers with you, but others may force you to buy a new license.

Finding your serial and key numbers on PCs is easier with the free application called Belarc Advisor. The software builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, network inventory, missing Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status, security benchmarks, and displays the results in your Web browser. All of your PC profile information is kept private on your PC and is not sent to any Web server. To download the free software, visit http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html.

John Giles is the author of “12 Secrets for Digital Success” and “The DTP PriceList”. He is the technology director and a consultant for CPrint International. Contact him at 954-224-1942 or john@cprint.org. You can also find John on Twitter.com at @JohnG247 and Linkedin.com. His blogs can be found at http://johngilesiii.blogspot.com/ and at www.MyPrintResource.com. To order John’s books, visit www.crouser.com.