October 2003

	October 2003	Issue 6

	In this issue: Welcome Uniform your documents Stop getting spammed! Funny Stuff! 99.9% is not enough NO MORE SLACKING! OK so I give 110% at all times as I'm sure you do too ... but do your employees? Well, as long as they're giving 99.9%, right? Wrong! The following is just a bit of fun, but can really highlight what just a tiny bit of slacking on the job can accomplish. Now, with a perfectionist V.A on your side, the world is your oyster!! IF 99.9% IS GOOD ENOUGH, THEN ... 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily 114,500 mismatched pairs of shoes will be shipped/year 18,322 pieces of mail will be mishandled/hour 2.5 million books will be shipped with the wrong covers Two planes landed at Chicago's O'Hare airport will be unsafe every day 315 entries in Webster's Dictionary will be misspelled 20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions will be written this year 880,000 credit cards in circulation will turn out to have incorrect cardholder information on their magnetic strips 103,260 income tax returns will be processed incorrectly during the year 5.5 million cases of soft drinks produced will be flat 291 pacemaker operations will be performed incorrectly A typical day would be 24 hours long (give or take 86.4 seconds)	Dear recently-renewed subscribers, Firstly, let me thank you all for taking the time to re-subscribe to this newsletter. After all that, I have actually now been informed that the regulations now don't come into effect until 11 December, but it's definitely better to get in early!. Sorry it's a bit late this month, everyone - phew, I've been so busy, I might need to start thinking about hiring my own V.A!! :-) So now onto the October edition of the newsletter ... UNIFORM YOUR DOCUMENTS Have you ever had to email an important document, only to find out that when it reaches the other end it looks nothing like you intended? Or perhaps you are wary of emailing important documents because a Word or Excel document can easily be changed by the recipient, which is no good for things like booking forms and invoices. The answer is converting your documents into a PDF - Portable Document Format - file, but how do you go about this? Well, the usual answer is to buy the software from Adobe for creating PDF documents, which is what I use for this purpose. You can either buy the software or use the service online by following this link - Adobe PDF Online - this link also allows you to try out the PDF software for FREE for your first 5 conversions. There is also a completely FREE PDF Converter called RoboPDF, which works in exactly the same way! You can download this FREE software using the link below, however please read the regulations regarding use of this FREEWARE. http://www.computeractive.co.uk/Download/1142744 STOP GETTING SP@MMED! If you're anything like me, you get bombarded with seemingly endless amounts of spam email - anything from Viagra to those kind people in Africa and the Middle East who want to give me millions of dollars (!) It's extremely annoying, but can also lead to virus attacks on your P.C, so what do you do about it? There are several answers; many ISP's offer spam filtering services, you can set up blocks in your email client (such as Outlook) or you can download a 'spam filter'. Below are some links that may help you with your decision ... Spam removing downloads (see disclaimer) ZDNET Articles Computer weekly Business Know-How The fight against Spam! Spam.Abuse.net - "Fight Spam on the Internet!" information centre http://spam.abuse.net CAUCE - Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email http://www.cauce.org Funny stuff! If you're at all interested in what would happen if you responded to one of the 'money scams', take a look at this: Nigerian Money Scam ... and if you just want a laugh, go here! Nigerian Conference Spam University Not that much variety in the content this month, I'm afraid! But hopefully, all that spam information and the links will keep you busy for a while! If you do get those Money scam emails, make sure you check out the funny links as they really are hilarious! Anyway, as usual if you have anything you'd like to contribute to an edition of this newsletter, have any feedback or want to find out about how Virtual Assistance can work for you, please contact me. Till next time... Nicola Clark Virtual Assistant This months quote: *"You'll always miss 100% of the shots you do not take."* *Wayne Gretzky*
	email: nicola.clark@virtual-assistance.com tel: 01843 293213 web: http://www.virtual-assistance.com