ELECTRONIC HOUSE CALL - February 6, 2004

I am back in Portland this weekend -- I won two tickets to the Portland Jazz Festival in a radio contest. Margene and I plan to take in some good music in the Rose City. Of course, we should probably be spending the weekend getting ready to leave for Germany on Wednesday, but first things first.

Pay Attention
In the June 20, 2003 issue of EHC, I had this to say: At lunch on Cape Cod today, I noticed that the restaurant had a "Low Carb Special." I haven't seen this too frequently but I think it is a pretty good idea given a) that so many people are favoring a low carb eating pattern and b) the continual hype in the press equating obesity to restaurant meals. The fact of the matter is that people may talk low fat but when they go out, they still tend to order the high fat selections. That will probably not change any time soon, but by making it clear that you accommodate special diets, you make yourself part of the solution no matter what they order. Who knows? Something as simple as a low carb special may help deflect charges that your restaurant is somehow single-handedly responsible for every overweight adult and child in your area! If you watch the news and keep your mind open, you will see dozens of marketing opportunities in the daily paper -- this is one of those.

That was over seven months ago ... and now chains are jockeying to position themselves as having the low carb option. Did you take my advice, see an opportunity in the low carb arena and beat everyone else to be first in the minds of your market? You could have claimed the high ground.

I bring all this up not to say "I told you so" (well, maybe a little of that) ... but primarily to wake you up once again and urge you to pay attention to what is going on around you, whether it comes from me or not and whether or not it appears to directly impact the restaurant industry. The Universe rewards action. Action starts with information ... and a willingness to apply it.

I think of my job with the EHC is to keep my radar searching for ideas that I think might become factors in our industry and to pass that information along. Your job is to do something with the information and kick your competitors around the marketplace!

When Good Computers Go Bad
If your computer is getting slammed with as many virus-laden messages as mine, you need to read this note from Kim Komando's Daily Computer/Internet Tip for February 3rd.

I'm dispensing with the Q&A format today to talk about the MyDoom virus. This malicious program poses a threat to all of us and to the Internet. This is important, so stay with me. Last weekend, the SCO Group's Web site was attacked by thousands of infected machines. These are mostly private machines, owned by individuals. They have been turned into zombies by the MyDoom virus. MyDoom is a backdoor virus, so-called because it uses an obscure Windows communications channel out of the zombie computers to reach the Internet.

More attacks are expected. Microsoft also is expected to be attacked. McAfee, the anti-virus company, estimates that 175,000 machines have been turned into zombies. Other estimates range over 1 million. The incident over the weekend is known as a Distributed Denial of Service attack. These attacks bombard network servers--in this case, servers at SCO Group--with requests for service. The overwhelming traffic slows the Web site to a crawl, or causes it to crash.

Programs like MyDoom can do much more than attack Web sites. They can be used to find credit card and Social Security numbers, passwords, and other sensitive information on the zombie computers. They can then send that information back to the people who wrote the virus. Backdoor programs like MyDoom also are used as spam engines. They can send millions of spam e-mails from infected machines. In most cases, the owners never know. You could be spewing pornography to the world without your knowledge.

Click here to read the whole article.

The Perpetual Question
What did you learn from your staff today?

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