PSPINC Official Company Blog

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 192 “Dreamersi Email Hosting”

11月

2日

As a small business, one of the most important parts of marketing your business consists of boosting your overall credibility. Bigger brands have the advantage of being well-known and, therefore, trustworthy. So, they don’t have to work as hard to gain that trust from potential customers. An easy way to establish your business’s credibility is through your email. If your email ends with your website name, it looks much more professional as opposed to if it were a Gmail or Yahoo email address.

Right now, we are offering free email migration from your current email (excluding Microsoft 365) to our premiere email hosting service, Dreamersi. The best part of Dreamersi email hosting is that you can add as many users as you want to your email hosting plan. For just $8.25/month for an unlimited number of email accounts, you can’t get better than that. If you don’t already have your own domain name for your website, we’ve got you covered there, too! You can get a free domain included with our Dreamersi email hosting plan, or pair it with our web hosting plan! Get started today.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #dreamersi #ecommerce #email #emailhosting #hosting #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #newsletter #pspinc #smallbusiness #tech #technology #webdevelopment #webhosting #website

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 191 “Pass Wizard Pro”

10月

26日

As a small business, we continually improve our services and products so that they’re the best they can be for our customers, which is why we’ve been hard at work doing just that for our password manager, Pass Wizard. Today, we are happy to announce that you can now sign up for Pass Wizard Pro without signing up for the free plan!

Before, users had to sign up for the free plan and upgrade to Pro, which just added more steps to the overall customer journey. So, we made it easier by letting customers get Pass Wizard Pro right at the start of the signup process. With features like unlimited password storage and management, multi-factor authentication, group management, and shared passwords, it’s never been easier to keep your data safe. Sign up for Pass Wizard Pro for just $1.67/month, making it one of the most affordable password managers on the market!

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #cybersecurity #marketing #passwizard #passwizardpro #password #passwordmanager #passwords #pspinc #security #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdevelopment #website #webtools

Why Threads Hasn’t Taken Off (Yet?)

10月

24日

Back in July, Meta (the company behind Facebook and Instagram) released Threads, their text-based social media platform after weeks of speculation that would directly compete with X (formerly Twitter). Because of how easy it was for users to sign up, ten million people joined the app within seven hours of its launch according to Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO.

But now, more than three months later, Threads’ popularity has dwindled. Sensor Data reports that at its peak, 44 million daily active users were on Threads. Just a few weeks later, at the end of July, there were only eight million daily active users—an 82% drop. Many users have stopped posting and many have even forgotten about the platform altogether. Largely due to the fact that it just isn’t built out enough with the robust features that users crave on social media.

Lack of Popular Features

Every popular social media platform has its own niche, along with key features. However, Threads is still missing a lot of those features, including but not limited to a Discover page, direct message functions, and the ability to share Threads posts via Instagram direct messages, among others. It wasn’t until the end of July when Threads rolled out a Following feed and it wasn’t until August when Threads released a web version for desktop users. The other unknown thus far is whether Meta will expand their advertising network to Threads. Meta is known for being great for advertisers, but unless their daily active user count goes back up, advertisers may not be willing to spend advertising dollars on Threads.

While they’re going in the right direction in terms of working on adding more features, Threads is still missing something that will make them stand apart from their competitors. Many saw Threads as the direct competitor to X, and the fact that users’ accounts could connect to their Instagram pages and bring over their following was an attractive asset, but it wasn’t enough to keep users on the platform. Overall, many have theorized that Meta released Threads quickly when users were looking for a better alternative to X. Unfortunately, developers hadn’t really built out the program enough to really retain users on the platform. While Meta developers continue to work on adding more features to the platform, it may be a while before users will consider Threads to be a real threat to a platform like X.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #app #blog #branding #business #businesstips #digitalmarketing #facebook #instagram #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #meta #mobile #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #technology #threads #twitter #web #webdevelopment #website #x

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 190 “Norco Print”

10月

19日

Recently, we had a customer, Norco Print, who came to us needing some updates to their website. When we looked over their requests and how they’d set up their previous site, our experts realized the scope of this project would be well over their budget. Instead, we suggested we rebuild their entire site for them with one of our web packages. That way, they wouldn’t spend thousands of dollars to update their site in the way they needed it.

With WebdeXpress, our experts went to work building out the new website for Norco Print, making sure to incorporate their original change requests while doing so. Using a WebdeXpress template, we made a few design edits in addition to creating a new logo for their new website. Because of how easy it is with WebdeXpress, we also showed them how to update their site themselves moving forward.

Norco Print’s Website Before:

norco print's website before desktop and mobile view

norco print's website before desktop and mobile view

Norco Print’s Website After:

norco print's website after desktop and mobile view

WebdeXpress is a simple, user-friendly web builder that makes it easy for non-technical business owners to create a simple, professional website. Get started with one of our budget-friendly web design plans fit to meet your business needs.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #branding #business #businesstips #businesstools #design #marketing #norcoprint #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #smallbusiness #tech #technology #update #web #webdesign #webdevelopment #webdexpress #website

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 186 “Extortion Fraud”

9月

21日

Online scams have been around for a long time, but over the last few years, they’ve gotten more popular. Specifically, extortion frauds have become popular as many of our customers have received them in their email inboxes. Extortion frauds usually occur over email and consist of cybercriminals sending threatening messages demanding payment in exchange for not releasing sensitive information. While they may seem threatening, these emails are scams where hackers are just trying to trick people into giving them money. They don’t actually have any sensitive or embarrassing information on you, as they claim.

Our advice is to just mark those messages as spam and delete them from your inbox. As great as spam filters can be, cybercrime continues to get more sophisticated, which makes it easier for emails like these to make it into your inbox. Our Dreamersi email hosting customers have the option of adjusting their spam filters to try to weed emails like these out. If you’d like any help to clean out your inbox or adjust your spam filter, reach out to our support team! They’re always happy to help!

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstools #cybersecurity #digitalmarketing #dreamersi #email #emailhosting #marketing #marketingdigital #newsletter #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #security #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdevelopment #website

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 185 “Scam Letters”

9月

14日

Recently, our San Diego office received some scam mail disguised as a domain renewal. Upon first glance, it looked like your average domain renewal request, but since we manage our own pspinc.com domain, we immediately realized it was a scam. Apparently, some of our customers have also received similar letters, but have thankfully asked us first if they needed to make a payment. For our web hosting customers, please be aware that our hosting services include domain management (unless you have a separate contract with a separate provider), so there shouldn’t be any additional domain-related charges. If there are, please know that it will come from us at PSPINC directly rather than the domain registrar.

If you ever receive similar scam letters or emails, making payments will potentially result in:

· Unauthorized credit card usage or
· Loss of domain

Luckily, we’re here to assist you with any hosting-related and/or IT-related concerns and issues. So if you ever have any suspicions or questions about these types of scam letters, please reach out to our support team and they’d be happy to help!

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #ecommerce #hosting #marketing #newsletter #officetips #pacificsoftwarepublishing #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdevelopment #webhosting

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 184 “Web Builders Vs. Custom Designed Sites”

9月

7日

Today, people have built many websites using popular web builders that make it easy for non-technical people to create a website. But as great as that is, many of those sites end up looking the same, just with different content. This isn’t to say that there aren’t great website templates out there because there are. But because of how popular these sites are, it results in a lot of similar-looking sites. The only differences are the images and word choices.

While that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it does make it harder for new websites to stand out amongst the competition. That’s why many businesses decide to get their site custom-designed. It guarantees that your site will stand out and lets you add features that may not be available from templates. Get your site custom-designed by our expert design team with one of our budget-friendly web design plans.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdesign #webdevelopment #website #websitebuilder #websites #wordpress

Deepfakes: Explained

8月

29日

Deepfakes are images, videos, and/or audio that are digitally altered to convincingly appear to be something else using artificial intelligence (AI). AI development has been progressing rapidly over the last few years, and deepfakes are no exception. With how popular they’ve gotten over the last few years, it’s become much harder to detect what’s fake and what isn’t online. And with it, the concern about those using the technology to spread false information. But there are, thankfully, other non-malicious uses for deepfakes that more people are exploring today.

How It Works

an artist's illustration of artificial intelligence

There are two ways to create a deepfake. The first way is specific to creating deepfake images and videos through a face swap. With this method, developers use an encoder to run thousands of face shots of two people. The encoder then reduces them to their shared common features and compresses the images. Developers then add two decoders to the process, with one recovering one face and the second recovering the other face from the compressed images. The face swap occurs when the developer feeds the encoded images into the wrong decoder. This means that the decoder trained on person B’s face gets fed person A’s compressed image and vice versa. But for it to result in a convincing video, developers need to do this for every frame.

The other way developers can create deepfakes involves using a generative adversarial network (Gan). A Gan pits two AI algorithms, a generator and a discriminator, against each other. With the generator, developers feed it random noise and it turns into a synthetic image, which developers will then feed into the discriminator, made up of a stream of images of real things like celebrities’ faces. After repeating this process multiple times, the discriminator and generator will improve over time with performance feedback. Eventually, it’ll result in very realistic images of nonexistent people.

Deepfake Use Cases

While the technology initially caused concern for malicious uses like putting harmful words in important political figures’ mouths, there are other completely innocent uses for them. Some other examples include, but are not limited to:

Restoring people’s voices when they lose them to disease with voice-cloning deepfakes.

Enlivening museums and art exhibits.

Dubbing foreign-language films.

Providing personalized responses to caller requests for receptionist services and/or simple customer phone support services.

Manipulating actors’ voices for specific scenes in post-production.

The danger that more people are concerned about is how realistic deepfakes can be. There are a few telltale signs that it’s fake, but even those constantly change because of how fast developers fix it. Fortunately, the technology’s popularity has shifted from malicious intentions to those using it to entertain others. But as deepfakes progress, they will continue to improve quickly, as they already have. What we choose to do with it, however, will largely be up to those who know how to use it.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#ai #artificialintelligence #audio #blog #business #businesstools #customerservice #cybersecurity #deepfake #deepfakes #images #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #photos #security #tech #technology #video #web #webdevelopment #webtools

Bloguru’s Twitter Integration Changes

8月

16日

Earlier this year, Twitter started charging third parties for API usage, which caused many websites to remove Twitter from their website. API stands for Application Programming Interface and lets developers integrate existing software systems into new applications. Usually, websites use APIs to share information or carry out diverse tasks. With Twitter’s new API changes, many websites have removed Twitter integration. Now, Bloguru has done the same.

It is, however, worth noting that our team is investigating a new API for our users in hopes of enhancing and upgrading the overall experience for our Bloguru users. If you’d still like to share your blog posts with your Twitter followers, copy your post’s URL and paste it into a new tweet.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#api #blog #bloguru #business #businesstools #developer #development #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #marketingtools #pspinc #smallbusiness #socialmedia #technology #twitter #twitterapi #web #webdeveloper #webdevelopment #website #webtools

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 179 “Simplify Your Products”

8月

3日

When creating a new product for your business, it’s important to make sure it’s easy for customers to use. The last thing you want your customer to experience is not knowing how to use your product or abandoning the sign-up process midway. It may give people a negative opinion of your product and perhaps even your company. Even if you think it’s self-explanatory, sometimes you just need to go through the entire process yourself. Then you can see if there’s anything that could be even remotely difficult for users. And it’s even more important to let employees that haven’t built the product try it out. What may be easy for your product developers isn’t necessarily easy for everyone else.

When we created our password manager, Pass Wizard, we had to reassess and rework the overall signup process. We had done all this promotional work, but we weren’t getting the results we were looking for. After going through it again, we realized we could make the overall onboarding process easier. So, that’s exactly what we did. After that, we marketed the product again, and we saw the difference; sign-ups for Pass Wizard increased and now we can happily say we have over 1,000 users! So, if your product isn’t selling as much as you’d like or expect it to, examine the checkout process and take another look at your product’s usability. You might find something that could use some tweaking.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.