Last month's answer -

The Internet was invented by the U.S. Department of Defense.

****************************

This month's question is:

When did Valentine's Day become associated with romantic love?

a) Victorian Era
b) Middle Ages
c) 19th Century
d) The 1950's

Be the first to call 717-291-4689 or e-mail Sue Worthing sue@ezsolution.comwith the correct answer to win a $20 gift certificate to Isaacs Deli or Starbucks!

I want to give you a FREE copy of Windows 7 for your home!

Since Windows 7 was introduced in the fall of '09 I have been impressed with Microsoft's latest offering in the desktop operating system category.

We have installed it in our office and in our homes and in client's office's without any issues or problems like we saw with Windows Vista. We have been very impressed with Windows 7's speed, ease of setup and use and its intuitive feel.

We recognize that if you are running Windows XP (as most of you are) that there will be a need for a clean install to get to Win7, since most of your XP installations are a few years old with multiple service packs and updates installed, the clean install of Win7 is not a bad thing.

We are so confident that you will like the speed and ease of use of Windows 7 that we are offering you a FREE copy, here's the deal!

Buy 5 copies of Windows 7 Professional for your office and we will give you a free copy of Windows 7 Home Premium for your personal use!

There are no strings attached with this offer, when we install the 5 copies in your office I will give you the version for your home!

The only qualification to this offer is that your computers must be Windows 7 ready and compatible. We can determine this for you by running the Microsoft Windows 7 upgrade advisor or you can download it and run it yourself by going to our tech website and clicking the link to the "Microsoft Windows 7 Compatibility Check" .

This check will tell you whether your PC has enough memory and hard drive space for Win7 and whether your video card can support Windows 7.

This offer is for the month of February only, so call today to schedule your evaluation or upgrade! As always, if you have any questions please call me at 717-291-0370.

I'm sure you have started to notice our INSANE dedication to branding EZSolution. This concept is constantly on my mind, so I thought I would share some branding strategies that have been working for me.

About five years ago, I meet Marlin Miller (MDM Creative). He started to talk to me about branding. Quite honestly, I just didn't get it!

I understood how Coke and Pepsi do branding with mass advertising, but branding for my little business? How is that possible without an ad budget of over $100,000? And why did I even need branding? After all, I don't market to consumers! Right?

About four years ago, Marlin talked to me about the issues I had with my logo. He had no arguments from me. My logo really only worked on my website. It was in full color and down-right impossible to have in one color. This was really my first step into branding.

Next, I started to look at my business cards. I liked the personal branding that I saw real estate agents doing. So I tried taking my picture myself. It was okay. I started to use it on my business cards, my website, and my yellow page ads. Marlin kindly suggested that I hire a real photographer. That was money well invested.

I'm sure you have noticed that when I use a photo of myself, you see one of two photos. The concept is being consistent and focusing on personal branding as well as EZSolution branding.

This last year is when I really got crazy with the branding. Now I get it!

Branding is not just people recognizing a company name or a person, but is making the association that the company or person is an EXPERT at something. Whether it's true or not is not the point. Branding is the market perception.

I upped the ante by writing a book. After all, if you are a published author you must know what you are talking about. Right? This has given me instant credibility when I talk with prospective business owners. I recommend that every business owner write a book. This was a simple process. It took me three months from start to finish.

Next, I bit the big bullet and purchased three vehicles and wrapped them with crazy graphics. It has been nine months of having four vehicles on the road and I am now seeing the benefits. I recently attended a Rotary meeting. There were six business people at the table. I knew one of them because he is my client. The five other people knew my business because of the vehicles. -WOW-what great brand awareness.

What I hope you take out of this article is that even a small company can create branding/expert status in the market.

Take a look your website. What else can we do to create a stronger brand on the homepage and also throughout the site. Here are some suggestions:

• Add video to the homepage and interior pages
• Add free reports to download
• Sell your book
• Add video testimonials
• Add success stories

If you would like to talk directly to Marlin, he can be reached at 717.285.3789.

Thanks - Tom

EZSolution Referral Contest!

We are giving away a 50" Samsung flat screen TV to the person who refers the most businesses to us between February 1, 2010 and April 30, 2010.

This TV is HUGE! But, which is bigger? Tom or the box!!

How the contest works:

• Call or email us with your referral Information.
• We will call to schedule an appointment.
• We will send you a check for $25.
• If your friend becomes a client we will send you a check for $50.
• We will also give your friend a $100 discount off our services.

Contest Starts: February 1, 2010
Contest Ends: April 30, 2010

The winner will be published in the May 1, 2010 newsletter.

* In the event of a tie, the person who had the first referral will be the winner.

** A Special thanks goes to one of our clients, J.B. Zimmerman, for offering us a great price on the TV. Visit their website at: www.jbzimmerman.com to find other great deals!

• FREE On-Site Data Security Analysis - $350 value
• Must schedule data audit before February 28, 2010
• Offer only valid until February 28, 2010
• Call us at 717-291-0370 or e-mail us at bdr@ezsoluton.com

Hire Tom Malesic and his Quartet to sing to your sweetheart (or office staff)!

We will deliver a Singing Valentine, a rose, a card and a photo all for

ONLY $50!

We will be delivering Singing Valentines on: Friday, February 12th between 8:00am-9:00pm, Saturday, February 13th between 1:00pm-9:00pm Sunday, February 14th between 1:00pm-8:00pm.

To place an order, call (717) 560-9130 or go to
www.redrosechorus.com/singing-valentines.asp

To be sure that you get Tom's Quartet (3 Dads and a Lad),
you must specifically ask for us.

All proceeds benefit the

Trucking In A Virtual World

Earl R. Martin trucks are a familiar site on Lancaster County roads, a leader in transportation and related industries, moving gas, liquids and dry bulk materials. The company founded in 1965 by Earl R. Martin Sr. has constantly grown by taking care of the customer and getting it right the first time.

When Wayne Lapp became General Manager at ERM the company had 1 server and was contemplating the 2nd. Within his first 2 years they added 2 more servers.

Aware that they lived in a 24/7 environment, Wayne was concerned about the lack of redundancy in their dispatching operation. The price of gas is as volatile as the liquid itself and late dispatches can cost the shipper money and the hauler customers if it is not delivered in a timely manner.

Wayne began discussion with EZSolution about this issue and came up with an effective cutting edge solution that also brought long term cost savings. The solution was Microsoft Enterprise Server 2008 running virtual servers. EZSolution installed 2 Dell 2950 Servers running Windows 2008 Enterprise Edition and created 10 Virtual Servers on them.

Now instead of 4 physical servers ERM had 6 physical servers with a total of 14 Windows 2008 and 2003 servers running their applications. The new servers were configured in a fail-over cluster environment. If a server goes off-line the 2nd server comes on-line in about 15 seconds and the users are able to continue dispatching loads. All without any intervention or downtime!

Wayne said, "We absolutely had to have redundancy, to do it with actual physical boxes would have been cost prohibitive. It was actually less expensive to go the virtual route and we got more servers in the process. We still have available servers we can bring up when we need them in the future. It has worked well and we are extremely pleased with Jeff Weaver and his team and this innovative solution. They wanted to do it right the first time and so did we."

Matt is a graduate of Millersville University with a degree in Computer Science in 2007. After completing two successful internships and working for an insurance company, Matt joined the EZSolution team as a programmer in 2009.

He enjoys working on large scale database driven websites and providing solutions to complex problems. In addition to programming, Matt also brings search engine optimization and social media skill sets to the table. This helps our clients obtain and maintain the coveted Top 10 Ranking placement in Google's organic search engine results. In his spare time,

Matt enjoys driving his Mustang, playing Texas Hold E'm Poker, and spending time with family and friends.

Favorite Foods: Pizza, Wings, & Cheesesteaks
Favorite Cars: Saleen S7 & Ford Mustang
Favorite Sports Team: Dallas Cowboys
Favorite Hobby: Surfing the net
Favorite TV Show: Lost
Favorite Animal: Cats

Flash and Reader expected to be big targets

With more and more people conducting transactions and spending ever increasing amounts of time on the computer, hackers are increasingly targeting software and other computer services as a way to steal information and other nefarious tasks. The security community is working as hard as hacker groups to prevent attacks from compromising the computers of users around the globe.

Security firm McAfee has announced its 2010 Threat Predictions report. According to the report, in 2010 Adobe will surpass Microsoft as a target for hackers. Hackers traditionally target Microsoft software products like Office more heavily than applications and software from other vendors.

McAfee figures that the popularity of Adobe products like Flash and Reader, two of the most distributed applications in the world, will lead hackers to target Adobe applications more in 2010. McAfee reports, "Adobe product exploitation will likely surpass that of Microsoft Office applications in 2010."

Hackers will also step up attacks on social networking sites in 2010, believes McAfee, as well as stepping up attacks on third party applications in general. Hackers are expected to take advantage of HTML 5 to create Trojans and botnets that are cross browser capable.

McAfee's Jeff Green said, "We're now facing emerging threats from the explosive growth of social networking sites, the exploitation of popular applications, and more advanced techniques used by cybercriminals, but we're confident that 2010 will be a successful year for the cyber security community." We recommend you keep your virus protection, flash and Adobe updated to the latest versions.

Computer Programmer's Creed "Not even computers will replace committees, because committees buy computers."

"If a program is useful, it will have to be changed."

"If a program is useless, it will have to be documented."

"Software complexity must grow until it exceeds the capabilities of the programmer who must maintain it."

"There's always one more bug."

"Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later."

"Any given program, when running, is obsolete."

Koch Demarco
www.kochdemarco.com

D2M Group
www.d2mgroup.net

LTD Management
www.ltdmgmt.com

Kace Group
www.kacegroupllc.us

Nestico, Druby & Hildabrand
www.hersheypalaw.com

Lancaster Mattress
www.bedroomsolutions.com

Headrush Hair Design
www.headrushdesigns.com

Locker Room Storage
www.lockerroompa.com

Midwest Investment
www.midwestinvestmentre.com

When your referral becomes a client (and has spent $1000 or more) then we will pay you $50 more. And, we will give your referral $100 off their purchase.