That bastion of defense policy wonks, RAND, also publishes research papers and literature searches in areas of social service, government policy, and science and technology.

The Guidestar database provides Adobe Acrobat (pdf) versions of the mandetory IRS Form 990 that all charitable organizations with revenue over $25,000 must file each year. Although the site is clearly geared toward “upselling” you to a very confusing array of paid products and subscriptions, the free service allows you to view the 990’s as they have been submitted. Fascinating stuff.

author Ilona Bray J.D.

Client fees have been studied and agonized over in all sorts of contexts, but one conclusion comes through loud and clear: Except when you are dealing with the truly indigent, it’s better to charge fees for services than to give them away. For one thing, clients tend to think more highly of services they’ve piad for. Things gotten for free are seen as throwaways–as evidenced by the phrase I and others heard while prividing immigration law advice at a free clinic, “Thanks but do you think I need a real lawyer now?” Later, I learned another valuable lesson: Clients who have paid even a modest fee are more likely to keep their appointments and actively participate in problem solving.

This is another great book from Nolo Press.

Microsoft has improved the update service to allow centralization of computer updates. The biggest difference is that it now includes the Microsoft Office applications, like Word and Excel as well as Windows 2000 and Windows XP operating systems.

Haven’t implemented this myself yet as we’re looking at replacing our aging server, but once we’ve done that, then this will go on the server, along with the Symantec Anti-Virus version 10.

Welcome to Tech for Non Profits. As the banner says, non-profit organizations (NGOs) need technology as much as for-profit businesses. As consultants to non-profit clients, we are interested in finding hardware and software for office networks that provides outstanding value both for the money invested but also for the time required to get them working.

Comments and suggestions are appreciated. And drop by the Microdesign Consulting web site.

Part 4 in the (unfortunately) ongoing series for Personal Computer Hygiene discusses manual deleting of spam in OutLook Express.

Earlier parts of this series:

Part 1 Manual Scanning with Symantec AntiVirus
Part 2 Manual Scanning with AdAware
Part 3 Manual Scanning with SpyBot Search and Destroy

Note that in Parts 1-3 the programs described also have an automatic scanning component which, under normal circumstances is always turned on, and available. However, one of the first steps I always take when tracking down odd computer problems is to perform a manual scan with these programs.

Also, I’ve been pleased with the Microsoft antispyware program lately, and use it now as the first line defense for antispyware. Currently it is in ‘beta’, meaning it is free for downloading.

Corrupted PC’s find a home in the dumpster from the New York Times, (registration required…etc. etc.)

You know it is bad when people have some much trouble with spam, pop-ups and slow performance from “mal-ware” that they just throw out the PC and buy a new one. I spent eight hours last week trying to get a pop-up program off a client’s machine. In the process I probably deleted another 100 bad cookies, spyware entries and general gunk. I made sure that Windows XP was updated to the latest security and service pack 2. I charged them for three hours…about the cost if I had completely reformatted the disk and reinstalled all of their programs.

On a recent Sunday morning when Lew Tucker’s Dell desktop computer was overrun by spyware and adware – stealth software that delivers intrusive advertising messages and even gathers data from the user’s machine – he did not simply get rid of the offending programs. He threw out the whole computer.

Mr. Tucker, an Internet industry executive who holds a Ph.D. in computer science, decided that rather than take the time to remove the offending software, he would spend $400 on a new machine.

He is not alone in his surrender in the face of growing legions of digital pests, not only adware and spyware but computer viruses and other Internet-borne infections as well. Many PC owners are simply replacing embattled machines rather than fixing them.

There are several key issues to bear in mind:

• Prevention is always better than cure. When using Windows, make sure it is up to date. Use the XP firewall. Keep the anti-virus program updated. Use a spam catcher program. My current favorite is Microsoft Anti-Spyware.
• When using OutLook and OutLook Express, turn off the preview window. If you don’t turn this off, any time you click on a message in the message list the message automatically opens. If it is an HTML formatted messsage (like a web page with nice fonts, colors, and pictures…) it could contain a spyware program. If you don’t know who sent the message, or you know it is a “joke”, eMail letter, or other kind of junk mail, delete the message without opening.
• Be very careful when surfing in Internet Explorer. Some popular sites try to install adware, and popups. Fortunately the later versions of IE will suppress pop-ups.

Once an infection takes place, the first place I always look is on the Symantec security site. Symantec (and the other security vendors) offer a number of free downloadable programs to get rid of specific problems.

In my recent case, the problem was a program, Aurora, that insinuated itself into Windows, that would run on startup. This program would launch another program that would then start popping up web windows. It proved amazing difficult to kill, but there were discussions about it that I found through a Google search. The best was at good old BroadbandReports.

It’s been a busy two weeks at TFNP World Headquarters, and I’ve been programming my brains out on several projects. Interesting to note that perhaps none of the programming languages are particularly esoteric or sexy…just things that Get The Job Done.

Visual FoxPro Version 9.0 — The latest version of this continues its incremental improvements, while being the fastest way to do ad-hoc data manipulation of any kind, from data that comes from any environment. The new report writer has several enhancements…and you can chain reports now. VFP is available for something like US$279, and you can compile and release programs for it without any additional runtime or licensing charges.

Access 2003/Visual Basic for Applications. As several people recommend, the best thing to do when programming Access is to dump all the macro stuff, eliminate separately stored queries, and do as much as possible in code.

Microsoft ASP.NET. Looks promising. I tried to convert a project to this…but decided to revert back to the original Dreamweaver/ColdFusion code, because I wanted the final product to be available to all web browsers, not just Internet Explorer. Visual Studio 2005, the current Beta 2, looks incredibly cool. I’m actually glad that I didn’t spend a lot of time with VS2003, as it looks as if 2005, which is the proverbial third release of the product, will be brilliant but still restricted to the Microsoft platform…and still relatively expensive to buy.

Dreamweaver MX/JavaScript/ColdFusion MX. Still works like a charm for web-based applications. Dreamweaver will also produce code for ASP.NET, Java Server Pages, and PHP web-based back-ends. Dreamweaver also makes sense (to me at least) of cascading style sheets. Since ColdFusion is Java under the covers, the cross-platform compatibility is good. DW will also produce code for Java Server Pages running under Apache/Tomcat. One question going forward is the fate of both Dreamweaver and ColdFusion after Macromedia merges with Adobe.

Very nice discussion of remote desktop support via Coding Horror

The 20-20-60 Rule

Experience has shown that in most organisations, 20% of the people are avid supporters of process improvement and 20% are avidly not supporters. The people in these two 20% groups are basically fixed and no amount of persuasion is likely to change their view. People in the remaining 60% are interested but need to be convinced. Application of the 20-20-60 Rule means that your outcome is best if you focus on the 60% group by addressing their concerns, doubts, and questions. The people in the 60% group are the ones who are most likely to get involved in continual improvement in the future.

This, plus a a host of other ideas for process improvement, from the Trent Improvement Network of the National Health Service