Strong passwords are important. A strong password should contain uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. The use of a child's name or common dictionary words is not advised and can easily be fooled. If you have problems remembering cryptic passwords, consider using character substitutions to make bad passwords at least decent passwords. Following is an example of how that works.

Kelsey Childress, BIGSHOT's Social Media and Search Marketing Specialist, has been featured as a social media expert on the 'Collective Wisdom' annual report on the website Who's Blogging What. Jeff Ente, Director of the site, asked experts questions like How do we separate hype from reality in social media as we enter 2010?

To see Kelsey's answers, visit her individual social media expert profile. Additionally, here is the complete Collective Wisdom report with all the experts' answers.

Some of you may not be aware but BIGSHOT's own Kenneth Crowder has authored a Joomla book titled Using Joomla along with fellow Leadership Team member Ron Severdia. Combining years of experience, they have written 400 pages of easy to read information to give you a firm understanding of how to build and more importantly, manage your Joomla web site. The book is published by the leader in technology books, O'Reilly Media.

This book is easy to read and covers all aspect of the Joomla content management system including the upcoming Joomla 1.6.

We are excited to say that after months of writing and editing, Using Joomla was sent to the printer yesterday and will be shipping soon!

Pre-ordering is available through Amazon.com

Our very own Kelsey Childress and her blog The Social Robot have been nominated for Invesp’s Top 100 Marketers of 2009! Kelsey says, "Being nominated in the ranks of Matt Cutts, Aaron Wall, and Jordan Kasteler is certainly an honor and a privilege!"

Please vote for Kelsey by going to the nomination page (or clicking on the button below, searching for her name (Kelsey Childress), selecting it, and then hitting ‘Vote’. Every vote counts! Please share this post on Twitter, Facebook, and with friends to encourage them to do the same! We'll keep you updated on the results.

One of the best parts of the advertising business are the relationships that you form. I have been working with the folks over at Shawnee Mission Medical Center for over 5 years now, and when you work with someone that long, you really get to know them and their product.

Recently, we had a client who had issues with spammers registering on their web site. Typically they do this to spam your forum. Since oftentimes this is done by bots and not humans, setting the "New User Account Activation" option in Global Configuration to "Yes" will prevent them from ever actually activating the account. On top of that the email address is often not legit either. This does not solve the problem of Administrators getting the New User Registration emails.

Over the last I do not know how long, I have been looking for a solution. I am pleased to say that I have found one that I am very pleased with. It is called AlphaRegistration. And, it's free.

What would you say if you only had 3 seconds to say it? Statistics show that a person opens or closes his thinking to another person within the first three seconds of a conversation. Think back over the conversations you’ve had today. Did your approach open the other person’s mind, or close it?

Looking back and seeing what you should have done is easy, especially on Monday morning after a weekend of watching football. Looking back in your business life is a little tougher because you have to own your missteps.  I should have hired this person or not hired that on,e or done this or that, or maybe even said out loud in frustration, "Wow, that was a really stupid decision!".

I have been meaning to blog about this for some time now. It seems that now is the time to do it. For beginners, the concepts of how content is organized in Joomla can be a little confusing. After a little bit, it will become second nature. A couple of months ago, Steve Burge over at Alledia.com compiled a list of the several of them.